My Place In The Cosmos

In case you haven’t noticed, humans are a rather self-centered folk. Child psychologists tell us we are born that way and only as we leave infancy do we recognize that the world does not revolve around us. Well … most of us do, even if we struggle with that notion from time to time. Some of us never do. “Narcissists,” we call them.

As we grow and mature, we become aware of others (parents, playmates, teachers), Others (groups, society, ethnicity), and begin to recognize our moral obligation towards others. We marry and begin to realize that living for ourselves is incompatible with healthy relationship. Many bear and raise children – now we must work hard to support, protect, and nourish others. Eventually, we age, recognize our time from the stage is done, and work to mentor and coach the young punks to take their developing place on the stage.

Yet, still, during all that time we are still enamored of ourselves.

That leads me to one of the beloved tenants of Evangelical Christianity – which I strongly affirm: that Jesus’ mission was to die in our place for our sins so that we might have a vibrant relationship with God.

Here’s where that tenants goes off the rails: that the ONLY reason Jesus lived was to eventually die on the cross for us. Why is that a problem? Well, this narrative completely ignores Jesus’ teaching work, his prophetic ministry, his ministry of physical and mental healing, and … wait for it … his resurrection. The basic outline of this notion is that Jesus’ death on the cross was the culmination of God’s work in creation. Everything before was preparation; everything since is working out the details.

This gets worked out in another misunderstanding in the pews: that “Getting Saved” is The Big Point. We are sinners (true!) alienated and hostile to God. We confess Jesus (yay!) and are saved from the spiritual consequences (death) of our sin (Yay! Yay!). After that, we can coast in our saved status and go to heaven where it will be nice (no, you don't get to coast).

Both of these narratives are misleading, seems to me. God has a far greater project going on than our personal salvation. Do not get me wrong: our personal salvation seems to be a big part of that project. From our self-interested perspective, the substitutionary penal atoning work of Christ is the start of my spiritual healing! My hope in Christ is not merely that I am saved, but that there is a new life for me now AND there is a New Life for me for the rest of eternity … an eternity where there is a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Consider our text for today:

“having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might" (Eph. 1:18-19 ESV)

“Know what the hope which he has called you …” We need to understand The Hope to which God has called us. We are part of his big project to redeem all of creation. Yes, it seems to me that we are a big part of that big project. More on that later.

So what this text reminds me of is that my personal, eternal, God-effected hope is not only good news to me but also that God’s work in my life is part of something much greater:  when Jesus brings Heaven and Earth together. That is THE Big Goal, not my personal salvation (which is true, but merely a part). The Big Goal is the cosmic rebuilding; and of which God has called me to participate – both now and then.

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This gives me a sense of perspective – all that this life is - as busy and challenging as it seems now – is intended as preparation for our hope: a new life to come. This understanding is helpful because it gives a perspective to my day. My routine and practical life, here and now, has a purpose that feeds into the ultimate Purpose that God is working out.

Michigan Transitions – D

Once I’d been here and observed people and the environment, I tried to engage in a little amateur anthropology. Sure, being in the upper mid-west and being in the northwest, or even being in southern California aren’t really big differences. It’s not like I found myself in Zaire, after all.

But that’s the challenge, isn’t it? There are differences, even though they are subtle, and it is important to attempt to understand them in order to determine how you will respond to the differences.

Much of what I learned came from people already here. People who were born and raised here, but had travelled and spend significant time in the places I was formed in, were able to give me a perspective. “Where you’re from, things seem to be like this …, but around here, it’s more like ….”

I’ve had to come to grips with my “sub-culture perspectivalism.” That is, my perceptions are shaped by my formative environment. I was born and raised in southern California. That, right there, is a sub-culture apart from most of the rest of the nation of the United States of America. I am a “SoCal boy” and my formative years were spent living a mile away from the Pacific Ocean. The rest of the country was about football or hockey; we were about surfing and volleyball. Southern California, because of the movie and television industry, became the media capital of the country. Though all the media money was in New York, much of the creative talent was in my neighborhood.

I grew up in suburban sprawl, pleasant weather, and was surrounded by people who came from somewhere else. In fact, that “somewhere else” was a subliminal message: “Where I came from was not good.” That is, the east coast, mid-west, and south were places that were bad. California was the land of “opportunity,” meaning that the rest of the country were places of stifling tradition, oppressive conflict, and narrow-minded bigotry. That was the worldview that formed me.

So here are a couple more differences:

• One of the natives here in Michigan says that they are not an optimistic people. Life is hard, the future is not always bright or hopeful, and it is entirely possible that things will get worse. This is in stark contrast to the “California mindset:” life is good, the future looks better, and we can have hope. I’m not really convinced that mid-westerners are pessimistic, but there is a mindset of “toughing it out.”
  
• Mid-westerners are rooted people. They frequently live within 10 to 20 miles of where they grew up. They are in weekly physical contact with family members. Their friends have been friends since elementary school. By contrast, the west coast is full of people who got there by up-rooting and travelling to a mostly unknown place. West-coasters are mobile people who will not find it hard to move from Portland to San Francisco because of job relocation. “Our real friends will keep in touch and we’ll make new friends when we get there.” Family ties are a bit looser in the west – it is not as important to visit mom and dad every weekend. In fact, because family and friends are more scattered, it gives an excuse to travel frequently to visit.

History II

History; well, that’s a tough thing.

Why?

First, because many people didn’t have my good experience with history classes in school. For them, history is boorrrrinnngggg – a real snoozer and anytime history is brought up, their lights go out. If you ever tried to pay attention, your likely response was: “What-ever.”

Second, history is, well, old. In our modernistic culture new is good and old is bad. Progress is the goal and “history is bunk.” We have lots of clichés for that attitude: “That was then, this is now;” “What have you done for me lately?,” "What's next?," “Let’s not dwell on the past,” “Forget the past, look to the future,” and so on. Really, our culture truly, viscerally, and with extreme prejudice believes with all its heart that history is, well, evil. I don't think I'm overstating here. People these days have an allergic reaction to history.

Third, history, …. "Dude, there’s just so much of it!" Humans have been around for a long time and even within ‘recorded’ history there’s just a lot of stuff to know. History can be overwhelming and it can be really difficult to place events, people, eras, movements, and cultures in coherent context.

Fourth, history is depressing. Face it, there’s not a lot of happy news in history. A lot of it is about meglomaniacal warlords in love with their own legends; wars, battles, killing, plagues, famines, dying, and a constant theme of trajedy, injustice, and oppression. History is frequently not a happy place. Here's something from Brennan Manning: "How does one dare to propose the way of trust in the face of raw, undifferentiated heartache, cosmic disorder and the terror of history?" Followers of Jesus see that matter differently, by the way.

Fifth, Yes - history can be prey to ‘perspectivalism.’ Yes, many historians wrote with almost comically transparent agendas and biases. Even those part of the ‘modern’ historical movement have been shown to be unconsciously influenced by their times, societies, and mores.

Yet, badly told history should be a motivation to demand well-told history.

• As to boring; even in our narcissistic culture, if we want to know ourselves even better, we should want to know where we came from, how we came to be, and what shaped us. History is our own story - it is interesting.


• And, yes, there’s a lot of history! But there have been a lot of people who have come before us and we owe it to them to try and capture their times and a small sliver of their lives.


• For Christians, who are deeply wounded by the injustices done in the name of their savior Jesus, we see history as a painful, yet needed, reminder that people are broken and have needed Jesus all this time.


• Lastly, that even noting the failings of historians, we still are motivated by a sense of objective truth. Those laughable ancient writers may have been engaging in covert sarcasm. Ever consider that? We become sympathetic with those who have struggled hard to get a handle on their times and occasionally came short. We applaud their efforts and ourselves take up the banner to even better understand the times.

We do history because humanity is a historical species. It is deeply ingrained in our overly large cerebral cortex.

History I

I’ve always enjoyed history. That, right there, marks me off as different from lots of other people in my society. Maybe I was just lucky, but my history teachers were good. They always seemed to be able to show how where we are now is because of what happened before. I specifically remember a professor at my Community College, Mr. Haydu, who I realized lectured in history like he was telling a story: characters, plot twists, motivations – all of those things were what made up history.

As I advanced in my education, I got the typical undergraduate stuff about perspectivalism: “All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon” – Voltaire. My favorite is the African proverb, “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.” But that attitude never satisfied. There has always been perspective, sure, but one reason why we tend to trust some historians over others is that those we trust seemed to work hard to eliminate their biases.

In any case, when it comes to history about the church, things get fun. Christianity places a Very High value on objective truth. Yet, because another high value is the recognition of human fallibility, Christianity is ‘realistic’ and recognizes that historians – operating by themselves – can record with unrecognized bias.

Christianity itself is a religion based on history: the historical facts of Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. In fact, Paul states that if the historical fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus is not an objective fact, then Christianity itself is just plain false. Without history, Christianity evaporates. For millennia, this has been known as the ‘soft underbelly’ of the faith. And yet, dispite this notoriously known fact, there’s been no soft underbelly to be found. Archeology and high-confidence history keep revealing more and more strength where the soft belly is supposed to be.

Judaism and Christianity both affirm the importance of history and note that the writing of history is left to its most capable people. Moses, equipped with the best education that civilization of his time had to offer, recoded a purposeful history of humanity to show how his people came to be. Unnamed prophets compiled histories of the Jewish people using the reign of kings as their narrative structure. Ezra, an extremely gifted priest, compiled a brief history of Jews returning to their homeland. Luke, a gentile physician, used his scholarly bent to compile a systematic biography of Jesus and early history of the Apostles.

And we also believe that all these writers were not operating by themselves. They had supernatural guidance. Because, even with the most gifted of people, God was there to work with those writers to not only make sure that the facts were correct, but also that the writing would accomplish the purposes that God ultimately had for those writings.

History is important to Christianity.

Cross Cultural Christians

If there’s anything that my one intro-to-missions course reinforced for me was the importance of contextualizing the gospel. This obviously goes beyond language acumen – which is hard enough! It’s has to also be about deeply understanding the culture that the gospel has to go into.

I’ve also been doing some thinking about “gospel.” The Gospel is clearly the news that Jesus died, was buried, and rose according the scriptures as an atoning substitution for the penalty of sin. But I’m increasingly aware that “gospel” is – for postmodern U.S. – part of what we would technically call ‘pre-evangelism.’ Thankfully, Evangelicals are coming to grips with this.

How do we become “good news” to our community? How do we take the Jer 29:29 thing and be a blessing to our immediate context such that they see that we Jesus-people are around and would miss us if we left? So an example of ‘pre-evangelistic gospel’ would be the good news that those Jesus-people did a ‘pick-up the trash around the neighborhood’ event, that they opened their facility to the neighborhood association, that they unilaterally gave out some Christmas gifts (because, after all, they think Christmas is a Big Deal) to kids around the place-neighborhood where they meet. All of that while maintaining a fierce devotion to Jesus.

That is a combination of missional and attractional, of course. But then it’s only attractional if, should these neighbors come to see what it’s all about that they see authentic worship done in a culturally coherent way. For example, in the case of an urban church that I’ve talked to, hymns are dorky and even praise choruses are contrived – and that’s just the music part. But they frequently have people walk into their service from the street and so make sure that what they are doing makes sense to those folks – that it is coherent with their culture.

In our increasingly ‘Balkinized’ society, every Christian needs to think cross-culturally. There’s a double entendre’ there: the more a believer becomes like Christ the more they are changed from an aspectational-perspectivalism of ‘the world’ to a God-perspective. A Christian, seem to me, should be moving to a "Cross Culture." OK, that’s dorky, but stay with me. Christians need to keep feet in both cultures: the culture that is profoundly shaped by the ‘Christ Event,’ as well as the culture that urgently needs that good news.

Jesus is the thing

In school I’m taking a course, “Interpreting Scripture.” To those who like the big words: Hermeneutics. We are learning that interpretation is not just a personal thing (perspectivalism) but a rational and fairly objective process. It’s not that perspective doesn’t enter in, it is that we strive to not let that happen. We attempt to manage our perspectives so that they don’t interfere with understanding the author’s intent. We do that through a process that helps that happen. The process is called, “hermeneutics.”

OK, all that aside, we are using a section of scripture to practice on. It is the book of Colossians. Doing either a casual read of the book or analyzing it deeply you come up with a pretty clear picture that the main theme of this letter that Paul wrote to the Colossian church is something like: “The Supremacy of Christ.” A direct statement of this theme is Colossians 3:11 – “… but Christ is all, ....” For Paul, The Main Thing he wanted to make sure the Christians in Colossae got was that Christ is All.

We Christians today don’t get that. We are a bit fuzzy on whether Christ is The Deal or not. Over a year ago I was challenged by David Byrant to listen to sermons and “worship songs” and count how many times we actually talk about Jesus, Christ, Lord Jesus, or any combination of those words. We as Evangelical Protestants are, these days, all about a kind of generic monotheistic religion. We like to talk about “God,” “The Lord,” and the like. But we don’t talk that much about “Jesus.” Why is that?

I think it’s because we’ve forgotten that Christianity is about Christ. We talk much about God – but that doesn’t distinguish us from Jews or Muslims. Christians believe in Jesus. Christians love and worship Jesus. Christians believe that Jesus is worthy of worship in exactly the same way that we would worship creator God because we believe that Jesus IS creator God. I won’t get into the theology of that – save that for another post. But my point is that the Christian church has to be about Christ or it really is not Christian.

As a Christian, I invite you to an experiment. At church, walk up to a friend and ask them, “So what has Jesus been teaching you this week?” For most Evangelical, Bible-believing, born-again “Christians,” this will seem to be a kind of weird question to ask in a church lobby. But what is really weird is that it would be a weird question. Of all people, we ought to be able to talk "Jesus" to each other. As supposed fully-devoted-followers of Christ we should be able to talk about Christ with each other.Why are we reluctant to talk "Jesus?" Maybe because it hasn’t been modeled well by our spiritual leaders. Maybe because our theology is more impoverished than we thought and we don’t understand the supremacy of Christ (read Colossians!). Maybe because we are more comfortable with our vague generic monotheism than real Christ-ianity.

This much I do know: if we can’t talk about Jesus with each other then we certainly can’t talk about Jesus to those who don’t yet know him. If we aren’t comfortable talking about Jesus to Christians, how can we expect to talk about Jesus to seekers?