Why I Changed The Title

This blog used to be called “TRUTH – Christ To A Post-Christian Culture (v. 3.0)”  Even before that, it was called “Seeking the Truth”.  I recently (in case you’re a new visitor or someone who spent hours wondering why the title had changed) re-titled it so it’s become “Christ To A Post-Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms”  Because I’m casting about desperately for content since the ill-conceived H. Jackson Brown fiasco, I decided to spend this post on the very inane ‘why I changed the title’ subject.

A very pessimistic young man once wrote in his journal ‘life is change’.  In the years since I wrote it I’ve come to some pretty startling understandings about what it actually means, understandings which I hope that I can redeem from the culture that produced them and that you can receive as valid and worthwhile.

First – it qualifies nothing.  Yes, life is change, and when I was thinking about it I was also reading Dan Simmons’ Endymion, and his messiah for the human race condensed her message to two words – choose again, which probably influenced my thinking at the time.  I wanted to be concise in my understanding of the world. but that conciseness has been at the expense of a number of other things.  So to simply say ‘life is change’ is simply saying that things need not affect you, nor need you take them as formative or destructive. This opens the doors to some very strange understandings.

Second – It alleviates one from the responsibility to try and effect change, because it nullifies causality, distancing oneself from it.  Change happens, but what do you do about it?  How is it started?  Is it for the good or for the bad?

Lately, this belief has been coming back to haunt me.  But I’m going to use it for good, now.  Because life is change is also a very concise message of optimism.  You’re never anywhere, or in anything for long, and that can be very liberating.  I think of Tristran Thorne in Stardust, whose statement “I”m not a shopboy” is the rallying cry for taking the steps you need to take in order to effect that change.  And to truly believe that life is change is to truly believe that the condition in which we find ourselves is not a permanent one.

And that brings me ’round to why I changed the title.  “Paradigm’ means two things.  First, a paradigm is an example that serves as a model or standard by which to measure.  Secondly, it means a set of assumptions, concepts, values and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.  These are very limited Wiktionary definitions, but their essence is important.  I’ve given this blog the title “Christ to a Post Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms” for two main reasons.  First, it intimates that the message of Christ necessitates radical change.  The assumptions by which we govern the world must be altered to have as their foundation the call to take up our cross daily, to come from labour and heavy drudgery and receive rest.  The call to deny mother and father so that we might be counted worthy of Him, to count everything as loss that we might gain Christ.  Yes, even the call to suffer and rejoice that we have been counted worthy to do so in his name.  The call to do greater works than these.  The call to go out in the world and make disciples of all men.  We must demand of ourselves adherence to the new standard of Christ, by which we must measure all things.

Second, the understanding of shifting paradigms that I hold is that life is change for this reason – we are always in motion, at the physical, at the molecular, and at the spiritual levels.  We are always in the movement of sanctification, we are always changing.  But the object of that change must be Christ-likeness, and the fitting for the glory for which we hope.  Thus to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we must be so different as to be intolerable to a world that already tolerates so much.  That we must be party to collapsing worldviews (even our own) and be there to preserve the hearts and minds of those who emerge afterwards.  And finally, to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we need to understand that everyone else is always moving, too.  Or at least, always being moved.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Easter Sunday: The Resurrection Miracle – New Birth

It is tradition in many churches to observe a sunrise service on Easter Sunday, wherein those souls who really, really want to have a good cup of hot chocolate in the morning will get up at 5 or so to spend time with fellow silly people; or, if they’re particularly foolish, stay up all night, in preparation for the service. I fall in the latter category, because if I’m asleep, I like to be asleep. Regardless, the sunrise service is, hopefully, the first step in the redemptive resurrection of Jesus Christ. We walk in the steps of those women who, early in the morning, rose to go and prepare the body of their Lord, only to find that He had risen. We rise early because God’s mercies are new every morning, especially on this one. He is risen indeed.

This is the third and final Easter Weekend post, where I hope to put together the reflections of the past few days and come up with a tie-together to end part II of TRUTH. I’ll be turning to a new posting style come this week, as befits the new birth that I’m going to talk about briefly today.

Let me first say that A World Apart has given me some insight into a number of things, but that it’s reached its limit for now. There’s only so much you can say about rebirth, about resurrection and redemption – the three Christian R’s, intertwined but distinct. It’s a good idea to put them in the proper order. For our redemption, Christ was resurrected that we might be reborn. He is sole mediator. But what does that literally mean?

I find that I’m really not getting into the meat that I want to get into in these most recent posts. They’ve been completed out of a sense of obligation, but I don’t know to whom. They’ve been dealing with some of the truths of the Christian faith, but not in any way that you can really hear them. That, I can’t do. Most cuttingly, they’ve become too intellectual even for me. I find reading them is rather tiresome, and that’s not where I want to be with them. So onward and upward, as we’ll hear coming up in Prince Caspian, to be released very soon. I’m looking forward to it with a great deal of excitement and hope. It’s probably one of the most carefully thought-out allegories in Lewis’ Narnia, and I pray that Walden has remained faithful to it.

That’s slightly tangential, so I’ll move on. I was planning on looking at two major themes today: the legacy of Christ and His resurrection; and rebirth.

What is the problem most people seem to have with accepting the gospel? I’ve said that Christ is the gospel, and Him alone. If that is the case, then what do people find so repulsive or so worthy of conflict? If you look back at the passage from Isaiah in yesterday’s post, you’ll find that God knew what He was saying when he inspired Isaiah in prophecy. There is certainly nothing in the form of a whipped, crucified, bloody man that one would find appealing…at least not in any normal moral sense, so that is certainly true. Paintings, sculptures, classical understandings of Christ have beautified Him, making the suffering servant palatable and robbing the Isaiah passage of a great deal of its significance (Hmmm. Interesting thought for a later post). I read the passage in church on Good Friday and I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in it, and I tried to convey some of that sensation to the congregation. It may have succeeded, and if so, to God be the glory. So on the one hand we have a stinging picture of our sinfulness punished in Chrsit, and on the other we have a feelgood, holiness-emphasizing canon of illustration regarding Christ. Where’s the joy in a holy (and wholly) unreachable God-Man, so pure in his appearance that we cover our eyes or avert them from his radiance? Well, I’d like to suggest that the joy comes from knowing that He’s alive, that He is as pure and good and holy as He looks, and that in Him, in the destruction and rebirth of something beautiful, sin is atoned for. With this in mind, let me return to the question of Christ’s appeal. I’d like to think that what people find repulsive is the knowledge of their own sin, their own shame and their own failure, all lifted up on the cross for all to see. That’s the core of repentance, by the way: Humility and maybe even humiliation, your darker places dragged out into the light for people to see. And that’s the core of what Christ did for us. He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be spotless before the radiant and holy Father. He dragged our sins out into the open and put them to death with His own death, and was then resurrected after having completed the task. ‘It is finished’ echoes through our minds once again in this.

If we accept Christ’s sacrifice as genuine, then what we have now is the remnant, the carry-over once-for-all atonement. That, too is what people find so difficult about the gospel. That Christ has his eye on things and his intercessory cloak on right now, watching, weighing, judging. That we are part of the redemptive plan of the world, and that we can be forgiven. See, we like to live in our failures, not have them forgiven. We don’t think we can ever be worthy of what has been done for us. You’re right. We can’t. We like to wallow in failure because it proves our own points. With new birth, it’s all put away. The afterbirth is discarded, and the new child looks up into Daddy’s eyes and smiles.

Happy Easter, and Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Good Friday: "It is finished", Complete Atonement and Forgiven Debts.

This is the first of the Easter Weekend posts. I’m excited, because last year I wasn’t maintaining this blog with enough regularity to warrant such mediations. This year I can call them breaks in a pattern! I”m hoping to look at a few things in some detail for this one.

You may have noticed, over the past few months, that I’ve been sticking around several themes in Christianity. Centrally, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and peripherally, what results when Christ is preached and when He is allowed to change lives. Good Friday is the beginning of the three days that are the core of the Christian faith, the assurance of salvation, the completion of Jesus’ earthly ministry and heavenly mission, and the reason for the celebration of the Christian life. This post is part one of a three-part reflection on what this Easter weekend means to me this year. It’ll all come together in the end.

The title of this post is composed of three things: the words “It is finished”, the statement “complete atonement” and the acknowledgment of one part of the Lord’s Prayer as a central point of the day. I’m going to look at each of those briefly, and try to pull in some of the thoughts that have been arising as the last little while has been happening.

The statement ‘it is finished’ is, interestingly enough, recorded only in the gospel of John, although all four gospels record Jesus uttering a loud cry just before he breathed his last. In all cases, there is a great gravitas in the final minutes of Jesus’ life, a sign of something pivotal happening in his crucifixion and death. John makes it clear what this is. With the great ‘it is finished’, Jesus is speaking to a number of things. It is firstly the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 21:22-23:

“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”

which raises some interesting points. For example, what crime did Jesus commit that would cause him to be put to death? And how is the land defiled if a man remains hung all night on a tree? These are areas of interesting speculation, but draw one away from the intent of this first point: Jesus was cursed by God in being hung on a cross. So, too, were the thieves beside him, but even in that curse, Christ could look at one and say today, you will be with me in paradise. In his death lay the potential for redemption even outside of the condemnation of the law

Jesus is also speaking to the work of redemption that God set in motion for man. In the crucifixion of His Son Jesus, God has declared the complete work of fall and redemption, atonement and justification. Christ came into history at a specific point by our reckoning, but (when you think about it), instantaneously in His. God sees both sin and redemption contemporaneously, and that’s what makes Christ’s atonement so incredible. I’ll look at that in just a minute. Hard to wrap your head around, but worth thinking about. Christ is the fundamentally important point of the entire work of the Bible, because it is in Him that everything is fulfilled.

Additionally, Jesus is speaking to the work of his earthly ministry. All that needs to be told about Him, all that is necessary, has been said. He is the gospel. Not his actions, because not all are recorded. Not his teaching, because he has said “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt.7:12). Not ‘this is what the Law and the Prophets mean,’ although that is implied, but that is what the Law and the Prophets are. No, what ‘It is finished’ speaks to is the truth that He has done what was required. Everything else is going to be trying to understand that.

Which brings us ’round to complete atonement. If the message of Christ is complete, and if He is the gospel truth, then all that we need to believe is that what we are told about atonement through the precursors in the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the New is valid and that it applies to us. Amazingly, it takes the comprehensive insights of multiple authors to arrive at that conclusion in the Word. To return to the point I suggested not too long ago, the contemporaneous understanding of Christ’s atonement means that by its very nature it is complete and universal. It covers all of mans’ sin because all of mans’ sin is that which is in perspective. I’m going to look a bit more at this on Saturday.

Finally, to round off this post (much longer than I had thought it would be), I want to look at the phrase forgiven debts, related as it is to the Lord’s prayer and to what I’ve been saying prior to this. Atonement is one of those fancy theological words that can be said much more simply in ways like this: Debt forgiveness, prices paid, account credited. Financial terms for a spiritual transaction. The great debt that we have towards God — for not killing us in our sin, for example, and for sacrificing His own Son to overcome it — and its only repayment in Christ Jesus is what truly needs to be thought about in this time. Today is the day of Christ’s death, and it is a cause for jubilee, because in it all debts have been forgiven and all credit history erased. Praise the Lord for what He has done.

Blessings;.

Christ-bearer.

A World Apart – Preaching Christ II: Conviction

Back to the World Apart content tonight, folks. I hope you enjoyed the last one, as Jennifer did, and now I want to get into the stuff I was thinking about just a few days ago.

When Christ is preached, things happen. Things change. And it’s always miles beyond what anyone might expect. When Christ is preached, people really get their dander up for some reason, and people also get excited beyond what we normally consider excitement. There are excuses and there are shouts of rejoicing, and there are long and pregnant silences and loud choruses…at least, that’s what should happen. But where Christ is not preached, nor revealed by the Holy Spirit to the hearts of the hearers, a much narrower range of responses happens. Silences, yes, but hollow ones, expecting the next quick fix for the week. People sit and listen to a man – or a woman, but let’s not go there – speak for fifteen or twenty minutes, attempting vainly to draw connections between text and application, between what’s supposed to happen and what actually does, and not mentioning the very reason for the hope we have. What happens when Christ is preached with faith and hope is conviction.

Conviction in all of its senses, mind you. Conviction of sinfulness, but also conviction of a great and wonderful gift in grace. Conviction in His power to overcome whatever it is that we set our petty little minds on, whatever keeps us blind to the need of the world for such a level of amazement as Christ offers. And conviction of His presence in the very room in which you are meeting. This happens when Christ preaches and we are empowered by the Spirit to hear what He is saying, as well. For that, however, you’ll have to wait. That’s coming.

One other thing about preaching Christ: He declared this in Luke, and with this I’ll leave you:

“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25-27)

and

“Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:31-32)

Conviction…’bout that.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

A World Apart – Preaching Christ

The purpose of the church comes out of the purpose of Christ (thank you Steve), and to that end I’ve decided to spend a few posts looking at what happens when Christ is preached, when Christ preaches (thank you Bible study) and what exactly that means. I was out for lunch with a good friend today, and one of the subjects of discussion was the preaching of Christ to the sick, the need for Jesus in this place particularly and in the world more generally. Because I think the way I do, I felt I needed to start reflecting on that more thoroughly here, so you get content for the next little while. This first post is going to focus on the church preaching the church and not Christ (apologies for the brief return to lament – it won’t be happening again this subseries), and then we’ll move from there outwards.

I may have mentioned it before, but I’ll return to it briefly – I grew up in the church, and I can’t honestly say that I also grew up in a personal relationship with Christ through that. I’m having to learn what that means now, but thank God that I’m able to really reflect on it and bring content out of it at this time and in this way. Equally unfathomable is the superfluity that I was satisfied with, when the heritage I call my own has such a weight of doctrine and tradition to draw from. It’s really a shame, but at the same time, it’s a gift. So why have I been satisfied with the milk of Jesus Christ for so long? The answer, faithful readers, is that I was never given to understand why I should crave the meat of Christ. There had to be meat beyond what I could ken, but I had no fundamental hunger for knowing who Christ is and was.

Looking back over that paragraph, I realize I’m using terms that seem strange, even frightening to those who have no Biblical background. Take this as an invitation to stay with me and learn more as I go onward and inward – but not to morbidity, as I’m also learning. So let me close with this: By saying that the church preaches the church and not Christ, I am declaring that the life led as a Christian and the life led as a churchgoer are not always the same thing. I am declaring that many of those who want to hear the church preached will and do not want to hear Christ preached, or Christ preaching.

Keep a weather eye out, my friends!

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Sufficiency III – Institution

What’s happened to the church as an institution? What’s happened to good doctrine taught and practiced in the lives and in the worship gatherings of the congregants in this culture? These are the questions fueling this post, building towards the observations of the insufficiency of community within the body of Christ and its effects on those trying to follow the path of the cross. It’s within many communities of believers that these failures really show, leaving so many adrift and wanting more than an hour each Sunday to shut the world out, close the doors and sing praises to each other (but not finding it). I’ve been blessed with a great community, but it’s found not within the institution, rather it’s shown outside.

So what am I trying to say?

I believe that the church as an institution has become a lost and wayward child, somewhere along the way. I believe that in its anxiety to work towards the mission field ‘out there’ overseas or trans-culturally, it’s forsaken its roots, it doesn’t know its own heart, and it has not equipped itself to deal with the men, women and children who come through its doors cursed under Romans 1. I believe that central to this failure is the lack of conviction in preaching the Gospel, the lack of reflection and meditation in the lives of the hurried and anxious masses, and the lack of faith in the power of God to uphold His Word in the body of believers that call themselves ‘the church’.

Insufficient.

Forgetting what it means to be the ‘bride of Christ’ in church-ese as an institution leads, without fail, to the forgetting of the power and the importance of community. Just today I was listening to some teaching on prayer, and in it was mentioned Matthew 18-18-21

“Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Next post, I’ll get into some detail on the nature of a failed Christian community and the necessity for a regroup and redeployment of gospel truths, intentional lives and resting in His sufficiency, but for now I’m going to leave it.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Sufficiency II – Doctrine

Fundamentally, the truth of Jesus Christ comes from assurance. Assurance comes from the gospel, and the gospel comes from God. Yet so many churches neglect to preach the doctrines central to the Gospel, assuming knowledge that is simply not present any more, and as a result congregants fall away and non-Christians turn away. You will notice that this entry in the series will correspond closely to the Institution entry, with some details expanded upon and others newly introduced when I get to that one. At the root of it all is doctrine, however.

The Bible contains everything that one needs to understand about who Christ is, why He came to die, what the effects of his death and resurrection were and are, and what that means for His church. These truths are expanded upon throughout the letters of Paul, which compose the majority of the New Testament. The problem lies in the poor or neglected teaching and understanding of these things, and the unwillingness of many to ask questions of faith and seek answers in strong teaching on those questions. I am a firm believer in the fact that if we ask the right questions, we will be given the right answers. I take an illustration from the recent film adaptation of I, Robot, reminding you that in order to proceed, Detective Spooner had to ask the right questions to lead him down the right trail. I do have assurance in the fact that the Lord does answer questions as we ask them, and sometimes in great detail. And as we ask them, we grow in knowledge and understanding. But, we are still faced with the insufficiency, in many cases, of the teaching of doctrine in those churches that claim the name Christian.

My intent with these three first posts is to establish a claim for insufficiency in man and sufficiency in Christ and His teaching, and in careful prayer and meditation on what it means for each of us that He is sufficient. As I have said, the teaching I’ve had as I’ve grown up is only now appearing inadequate, and I want to share my examinations of what really is adequate. I’m coming at this with the intent of demonstrating sufficiency, so look forward, dear pilgrims.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Reduction

The question the Christian Vision project asks this year is simple: Is our [being the Christian] gospel too small? Is it going to reach those who need reaching? One view regarding this conundrum is found here:

http://christianvisionproject.com/2008/01/the_lima_bean_gospel.html

I can attest to what it means in one’s life when the gospel preached is too small – often, we turn away, or try to solve things on our own. It’s not that we don’t believe that God can do it; rather, it’s that we can’t conceive of a God big enough to do it. We trust far, far too much in our own abilities, and as a result can’t believe that God’s abilities are greater. We say ‘Oh, I’ll let God handle it’ without the faith to live that way. It’s no coincidence that Isaiah 55:9 is today’s verse of the day: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” says the verse. This is where we need to really address our self-sufficient arrogance, and our inevitable narcissism. Do we actually live that verse? Does it ring true in our lives as more than comfort in sorrow, or a cop-out answer to the question “How big is God?”

Examine, if you are Christian, what it is that you believe God is capable of. Examine, if you are not a Christian, why you have not received assurance that this faith is worth pursuing, or worth keeping. And examine, in the light of what you discover, sufficiency and insufficiency. I’m going to spend the next few posts on this very topic. So begins the Sufficiency Series.

Blessings, and talk to you soon;

Christ-bearer.

Confusion – Representatives Series I

I was prompted to start a set of posts on Christianity as a lifestyle, not just a religion, by a rather interesting conversation just last night. I’ve been thinking about it all day, and tonight marks the first of a series on representing Christ. Let me rephrase that

Re-presenting Christ.

It’s a catch phrase, certainly, but a practical one. Sin is insidious in its effects, and those who’ve been scarred, mutilated, bloodied, confused or destroyed by the tactics of Satan in the churches need to hear it now more than ever. The desperate wanderers in the desert need to know that there is hope – for a Christ who is real, and for a life that has been changed. Most importantly, they need to know that God is, and that Christ is.

Lest they die.

I speak as a Christian when I say that we are guilty of manslaughter, of wholesale hypocrisy, of wickedness, of adultery, and of blasphemy.
We have broken the hearts of millions, torn their spirits into pieces and pushed them back together, destroyed lives.

And we, even we under the blood of Christ, continue to do it today. With every callous glance, every angry word, every pretension of righteousness…

We are guilty

But the wonder, the magnificent and overwhelming beauty of it all, is that the man who beats his breast and cries out ‘Lord have mercy on me, a sinner’…

The woman who bows her head in silence over an aborted child and whispers ‘I’m sorry’…

The myriads of the godly repentant; the broken-hearted; the lonely wayfarers…

Have been saved.

They are given new life by His death, and offered the gift of mercy from He who is infinite in His capacity for wrath, yet infinite, too, in His incredible willingness to love. And yet they have been blinded, hurt and deceived by the very teachers who have taken on the great charge of gospel-bearer to this generation. They fall away from hope because hope seems an illusion in the lives and hearts of those who preach it. They see men and women of vice call themselves the pillars of authority, and they see the struggles of holiness in the lives of the believers and turn away in fear.

Hope is real

It is no illusion, and Christ no joke.

Stay tuned, and blessings;

Christ-bearer.