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.

Blogger’s Block

For the last week I’ve had nothing.  You see, I believe that writer’s block is a bit of a construct to justify apathy.  It’s necessary to have a passion for your craft, or for your ministry, or for your Saviour.  When you don’t have it, you need to ask for it.  When you don’t ask for it, you’re not going to receive it.  But sometimes, just sometimes, you’ll get it without asking.  You’ll know you needed it,  and you’ll know that things are measurably better when you have it, and what’s even better, and Biblical, is the hope that your Heavenly Father knows what you need, exactly when and where you need it.

Essentially, I’ve not been asking but I have been needing.  And for most of today, I received the stimulus I needed.  Sometimes you just have to be far away for God to draw you nearer again.  And then you ask yourself why you ever left.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Facebook Flipside – What You Consider Valuable.

I can’t really leave Facebook alone just yet, because you need to consider what it does to relationships outside of the computer screen and keyboard.  Sure, you can send Muppets or throw sheep.  But what happens when this becomes the only form of contact you have with people?  In my experience, it leads to a terrible isolation.  When you publish your status for others to read, it’s writing down how you feel, or something quirky, or inviting questions.  But how does that make up for time spent with friends?  How does that make up for going out for a coffee or some lunch and really taking the time to talk?

The direction that we’re taking is a dangerous one.  I can’t help but think of the desperate need for something to unify us that Facebook pretends to fill.  I can’t help but think of what it means when we no longer know how to interact with one another outside of, for example, playing meaningless games or ‘poking’.  I could go on a very long time about the nature of translating physical realities into digital languages.  Or about shorthand emotions, which eventually lead to us cutting off any wide-ranging passions.  In fact, I probably will go on a bit about that one soon.

The question really is, then…what kind of time do you consider valuable, and is it a correct assumption?

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

A World Apart – Christ, The Author

There’s a passage in Hebrews 12 that I’ve seen translated a number of ways. The version I see most often in my own translation of the Bible is ‘founder and perfecter’ but I’ve also seen it as ‘author and perfecter’, and that’s the translation that keeps sticking in my mind. Why?

I would suggest that it’s because Christ writes Himself out of the Bible into the hearts and minds of Christians. Furthermore, as it says in 2 Corinthians 3:2-6, the life of a Christian is a life of recommendation, if lived correctly:

“You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills but the Spirit gives life.”

What I take from this is twofold. First, that the covenant of ‘the letter’, that is, the law of do’s and don’ts, kills, but the spirit of God – the Holy Spirit – as sent by Christ – gives life. Second, that as we are transformed inwardly, Christ becomes more evident, more visible, outwardly. Further, that as this happens, we become more and more a recommendation for the life lived in the Holy Spirit and in Christ. What this means in the life of a Christian is that although the Bible was written and completed thousands of years ago, by different authors and at different times, it is essentially a work that remains actively writing and being written by our lives. This is not to say that we are expanding the Word, modifying it or controlling it, but that the Bible is a book of truth that shows up in the day to day life of the believer, a Word written both in words and in actions, and containing both.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Call for Responses

To my faithful few readers, whoever and wherever you are;

I’ve decided to begin grouping these posts into essays, and maybe looking into publication. My call here is for you to indicate via comment to this post what, if any, I should put together, polish up and perhaps formalize. Go back through my archives, drop me a line here, and suggest away. I’ll also be searching for topics that I might make into series on here, because I find it’s getting a bit too numbing, and very much a narrowly-focused forum, lamenting the church’s decline rather than edifying by its truths.

Secondly, tell me which entries are the most accessible and the most relevant to you, and I’ll try to make the newer entries more like them, as I write. This is, as I believe, a ministry opportunity if not a ministry, and I need to know if it’s actually a valuable one.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Conviction

This is a blog about beliefs, absolutely.

It’s also a blog about questions, mine and many others. Representatives began to cover that.

It’s a blog about the tenuous things of faith, why they seem to make no sense in a world that has moved inside of itself, isolating one from another. We’re not solitary creatures, despite whatever conspires to make us that way. But by the same token, we’re creatures that seek community.

Somewhere along the way, we lost what it meant to sit by an oil lamp and share the closeness of a storm with family. We lost the support of friends, brothers and sisters in arms who want to bear our burdens with us. And we lost the greatest treasure of all.

The knowledge that there is more, that this is not the way it’s supposed to be, that there is something greater.

We lost what it means to have Christ. For many, such a treasure has never been in their lives. For some, the rank and file of a consumed life has dulled and deadened the keen edge of faith. I certainly include myself in the mass of men at work, lost in the morass of more, and out of a sense of the renewed waiting upon Christ the advent season brings to Christians I’ve been struck by how important it is to stop, to assess, the reflect, to act in love.

The most important thing to have is a sense of task, of purpose, of project. Not the mindless labour of the undirected soul, nor the busyness of the soul lost in service. I began the Fathers and Sons posts because I was touched by the Lord’s charge to Solomon to build His house for Israel, but I have not recently revisited that initial passage, and as I think about it now, I realize that what strikes me about that passage, in addition to the test of manhood, the charge of a father to his son, and of a Father to his child, is the simple fact that it is purposeful work, and it is work blessed and ordained by God. He will support it; he promises David and Solomon that Solomon’s reign will be one of peace and rest.

In all of the hustle to work, we sometimes forget to do, to act as the Lord commands. In fact, to be honest, that is the default mode of our lives. To simply fill our days with stuff, with things that are going to have no significance in the long run. They will not last.

So what this blog is really about, then, is the need to accomplish, to connect with a greater and more hopeful sense of work, and an ever more crucial need to hope for the Lord’s mercy and grace to a culture lost in its own purposelessness.

I wrote these words when I ushered in blog 2.0. I revisit them now with an understanding that these…these are the purpose of what I do here:

“I write to bring the Word to a culture where words define life, where life defines truth, rather than Truth defining life.
I write to a culture that has given itself over to a search, an endless search for meaning in words, in thoughts, in actions, in deeds.
I write because I know there is more.
I write because I know that there is a hunger in the minds and the hearts of those who are being turned out into a wild world without any understanding that they are not alone, and that that hunger can be filled.”

I write for myself, yes. I believe that in this sharing I glorify my Lord in one of the ways He has gifted me to do. But I write because hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and being satisfied, are a promise. And they are a promise to this generation, and to this time, and to me. They are a promise that I need to share.

I hope you will see it too.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Why I Write

The new look is in, and will be tweaked in the coming days. I’ll be dickering with the code and trying to incorporate more multimedia in the posts, but for now, a brief synopsis.

I began in October 2006, a little over a year ago if you look at the archives. Along with a few friends here, I decided to maintain (albeit sporadically) a blog dealing with some of my reflections on my faith.

It did not succeed as I’d envisioned, although I met a few cool people cruising the blogsphere, and read their stuff daily, as I could.

Now, a year later, things change. Looks, thoughts, (writer’s) voice, and content have all morphed and shifted. And now we come to this.

Life is change. And it is movement, colour, sound, information/technology. Life is. So’s God. So’s Jesus. In essence, in the beginning was the Creator, God the Father. In the beginning was the Word, God the Son. And now, in the beginning (again), there is the Word again. Unchanging. Eternal. John 1:1 eternal – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Stop and think – and the Word was God. Nothing held back, nothing varnished, nothing but the Truth.

And the Word was God.

This is amazing. The Word…Christ Jesus…was God. Is God. Ever will be God.

That is reason number 1.

I write because I am an image-bearer of God, and I am an adopted heir of promise.
I am made righteous by Christ and Christ alone. He is the Word who has been written already.

Why not show His righteousness by the word, by the humble gift of telling?

I write to bring the Word to a culture where words define life, where life defines truth, rather than Truth defining life.
I write to a culture that has given itself over to a search, an endless search for meaning in words, in thoughts, in actions, in deeds.
I write because I know there is more.
I write because I know that there is a hunger in the minds and the hearts of those who are being turned out into a wild world without any understanding that they are not alone, and that that hunger can be filled.

I write because I am able to write, when so many aren’t.

I write because I am free to.

Most importantly, though…I write to tell.

That is reason number 2.

Information, like life, is change. Knowledge is change, but only true saving knowledge is true changing knowledge. Words give bite-sized meaning to the universe, and the Word gives ultimate and undefeatable meaning to the universe of you. I want to hit that home with you. Not that you give meaning to Him, but that He gives meaning to you.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.