rix rantz ravz & revelashunz

by John Brimacombe

Have you ever thought about the fact that In Christ all things are being restored. The Scriptures tell us that God through Christ was pleased "to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (Col 1:20).

Think with me what this means. It means that anything in our world that was trampled by the fall has been restored for God's glory and to be used for his glory. Sex, music, dance, art, business, and many other venues that once was thought to be the world of the devil has actually been redeemed for God's glory.

Albert M. Wolters has a nice little book out that talks about this called "Creation Regained." It tells the story of how God has provided our salvation through Jesus' death on the cross for our sins. This salvation covers not just our sins, which enables us to have a relationship with God, but redeems back those things which were once only used for our own selfish gratification. He goes on to say that what actually happens is a "re-creation" of sorts. God doesn't, as Wolters says, scrap his original creation "but rather to suggest that he hangs on to his fallen original creation and salvages it. He refuses to abandon the work of his hands--in fact he sacrifices is own Son to save his original project. Humankind, which has botched its original mandate and the whole creation along with it, is given another chance in Christ; we are reinstated as God''s managers on earth. The original creation is to be restored" (Wolters, 58).

What this means is that all those old things that we once struggled with can now be used to glorify God. All things have been reconciled to himself and God desires that we live our lives, not in some slavish attitude towards him, but in creativity and in various activities.

Many, when they think of serving God, immediately think of becoming a professional minister." They think of going to Africa and being a missionary. God may call you to a full-time ministry or mission status, but not all are called to this specific situation. If the fact were known, God calls the majority of us to an everyday, normal, hodge-podge type of existence. I'm not knocking that. I'm saying that very few of us will be called to be a Billy Graham, or live the life of a contemporary Christian rock artist. This is not bad...it is the life that God has called us to and we must find our own way to serve God.

What does this have to do with God's redeeming all things? Much! God has redeemed all things. Every avenue of life can be used for his glory. Are you a dancer? Dance for God! Are you a singer? Sing for God. Do you own your own business? Then conduct business in light of your relationship with God. And I'm not talking about becoming a contemporary Christian artist. Nothing wrong with Christian music...if that is what God has called you too. What I'm talking about is realizing that God can use you, in your everyday life, as a witness for him.

Saying that, I think God can use people's talents and abilities in the church too. To many churches have got stuck in the traditional rut of an opening prayer, hymn, message, and invitation mode. Churches today need to explore different ways of expressing their love for God through drama, dance and art. Multi-media is a medium through which God can use a person. Some churches today are hiring communication pastors that help in the multi-media presentations for the different ministries of the church. They provide skills that are much needed in our 21st century world.

What I am ultimately saying is break out of the normal mode of viewing things and realize that God can use you and areas most often thought of as embracing the so-called secular world. God has redeemed all things to be used for his glory. Let's not waste the gifts that God has given us.

Stephen Shields just posted a nice article on the faithmaps blog regarding online community. As a member of a number of these communities, I still miss the intimacy afforded f2f communications. So I merged the best of both worlds and hooked up with two Matts earlier this week while traveling to DC.

Matt Oskvarek (a faithmaps community member) was a renewal of an acquaintance that I had made in March. I had a lovely visit with him and his dear wife Bonnie in their home. Tuesday night I met Matt Bianco (of the Historic Baptist Symposium) at the airport and went out for some Italian food. We had a good time fellowshipping around a mutual faith and shared love of the Lord.

Online community has its shortcomings but it also has the advantage of forging friendships across geographical boundaries that make it possible to travel someplace one has never been and still find friends waiting. I love the ability to join together with those I have "met" on forums and spend some face time with them. It enhances the online relationship where I can put face and voice to the printed word.

I never cease to be amazed at differences in apprehending truth. I have found people who have read The Life of Pi seem to either love it or hate it. They find it unsatisfying or fulfilling. Interesting

I remeber the first time I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, that the left brain in me was disappointed but my right brain was intrigued and watched it again and again.

Big Fish is another. Candy didn't like it but the kids, especially the older ones, and I loved it. The same with The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit which is based on a Ray Bradbury play. Candy hates it when I talk about Flatland but many love it.

I think some people are geared for fables and fabulous tales as insightful life tales and others aren't. It's that concrete/abstract thing.

And there's little I can do about it in my writing.

I got this from my e-buddy Buff Scott.

He publishes: Reformation Rumblings

Notation Before we get to today's question, I need to announce that I have added an additional feature to my Web site under "Mad Church Disease."Here is part of the "Overview" or Introduction: "A few years ago, a new malady surfaced among cattle that was labeled by medical professionals as 'Mad Cow Disease.' The disease subverts the brain and nervous system and throws the afflicted animal into a quivering plight, from which there is no known recovery. I have chosen 'Mad Church Disease' as the caption of this feature because it depicts the disease that has attached itself to the body of believers-a spiritual disease that has caused untold division and turmoil within the Christian community."

You may connect by clicking on<http://www.mindspring.com/~renewal/MadChurch.html>www.mindspring.com/~renewal/MadChurch.html .
Your comments arewelcome.-Buff.

I just re-read Stephen Shields' Next Wave article with Nancy’s comments. I’m also reading Ken Wilber’s “A Theory of Everything” which more closely resonates with my own approach than a lot of what I’ve read on many of the pomo lists. Here is my take on things.

Much of the conversation is about out-growing the trap of modernism or moving from modernism and propositionalism into postmodern deconstruction of prevailing oppressive metanarratives is no more than same old stuff that we have come to expect from our modern counterparts. I think this is the wrong approach.

But old habits die hard. Let me try an analogy:

I have a friend who works at a prison. He walks the same halls the prisoners do. He breathes the same air. He sees the same bars that they do. But there is one big difference – he can leave. He has the keys. The prisoners are bound by the prison and constrained by it. Mike, otoh, employs the prison as a source of income. It may define his career but it doesn’t define his life. He comes and goes; he uses it to his advantage but he isn’t confined by it, even though it is a prison.

I am much the same way with modernism. To those who are stuck in it, it is a prison, but to those who have the keys, we can come and go at our pleasure. We ought not to view it as something bad – prisons do serve a vital purpose for society and this is where the analogy breaks down because I don’t think modern thinking is a prison but a paradigm – but as something useful for organizing a certain kind of thought into a constructive pattern that achieves definite ends and answers certain questions. I would never advocate that we discard modernism any more than that we abandon the contribution of the Magna Charta just because we have a Declaration of independence and a Constitution. The first is a means to the last, not a structure to confine us.

This is why I am NOT AGAINST even the most fundy of churches. Just because I have outgrown them, doesn’t mean they do not have a place in God’s kingdom. If I am what I am by the grace of God, then they must be what they are by the same grace of God. And some people need the confines of various stages of fundyism to shelter a nascent faith that can’t handle things like uncertainty, doubt and conjecture. But for me to look down my nose at them as less than us, or not as enlightened, or in some way lower than we are is the height of elitism and narcissism. It’s not about me – or us. It is about God, and His Kingdom and His Righteousness. And bad-mouthing moderns or Willowback/Saddlecreek folks is as far from kingdom righteousness as I can imagine.

And here’s the defect of pomo – by denying hierarchies, it is blind to hierarchies that subsume postmodernism. My background is science so I have no trouble with hierarchical arrangements. Some are merely taxonomical like the cataloguing of biological life into a “Taxonomic Tree” that shows organizational relationships such as kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. Even more useful is chemistry that shows organic hierarchies in both directions from atoms. We can get larger and larger into molecules, compounds, structures, cells, tissues, organs, systems, organisms, families, communities, ecosystems, etc. or smaller and smaller into protons, neutrons and electrons, quarks, bosons, mesons, to supersymmetric strings. But no one argues that “molecules are better than atoms” or that “organs are preferable to tissues” because you can’t have the higher form without the lower.

I see postmodernism as a summation of all that has come before, not a replacement for it. And even that is an incomplete statement. Pomo is a KIND of summation and is certainly not the pinnacle of thought. The pomo/mo conflict is like an argument between the Kool-Aid and the sugar as to which has the “right” flavor or makes the largest contribution. We can’t have one without the other and they’re both swimming in the water, so why see it as a dichotomy? I don’t think the mo/pomo split IS a dichotomy, any more than I feel that there is an atom-molecule dichotomy.

Postmoderns who portray things dichotomously are really trustees in the prison. They may think they are different than everyone else, but unlike the guards, they don’t have the keys and they are still stuck in the prison. Pomoxians who don’t embrace the moderns in their midst are still prisoners of modern thinking, no matter how pomo they claim they are.

So who is up for an integrative form of Christianity that embraces all God’s children regardless of where they are as fellow travelers on the journey from whom we all have much to learn and possibly a little to contribute?

More from Wilber on the changing face of hierarchies in politics and why it’s needed:

The green meme (egalitarians) – which constitutes approximately 20 percent of adult American population and is the core of Paul Ray’s misnamed “integral culture” – now has a chance to move into second-tier (integrated) and genuinely integral constructions. The green meme has been in charge of academia, the cultural elite, and much of liberal politics for the past three decades, but it is now being challenged on all sides (it internal self-contradictions, its failed political agenda, the harsh intolerance of the politically correct thought police, its claim to be superior in a world where nothing is supposed to be superior, the nihilism and narcissism of extreme postmodernism, an aggressive marginalization of holarchies (holistic hierarchies) and thus it lacks an integral vision). As it happens when any meme begins to lose its hegemony, its Inquisitors begin an often belligerent and reactionary defense – what might be called in this case “the mean green meme” (which is especially the home of bomeritis. And it is boomeritis and MGM that are now some of the primary roadblocks to a truly integral, more inclusive approach.

This is one of my favorite quotes because it hints at the passage of liberal hegemony in society in general. As I watch the next generation coming up, I see a lot of the Gen X and Bridgers (those who span the turn of the century) saying to us Boomers, “OK, people. You’ve made your point. We aren’t living in the sixties any more. Get over it.”

My daughter announced to me that a recent graduate from her high school came out. Shockingly, I wasn’t shocked by revelation. But on reflection, the casual way in which she said it and the addendum that “we were all wondering when he was going to finally face up to it and admit what we all knew already” is pretty surprising. It was no big deal. No shock. No fear. No surprise. It had all the significance of announcing the weather. Her generation has gone from "accepting" gays to whatever is beyond that.

My activist butch lesbian co-worker would make something out of the boy’s coming out as if he had done some heroic thing and in her day and to her it would have been. But the times they are a’changin’. Sure our churches may be behind the times but that is because the old guard holds on for so long. But this is just one example. Multi-ethnic dating and marriages barely get a flicker of attention on campus. Drug use and casual sex are curiously held in low esteem as stupid holdovers from Boomers. That is not to say that they don’t happen but that they are largely regarded as serious moral defects rather than exploring the Brave New World. I hold out a good bit of hope for this next generation for whom many of the things we think of as innovations, they take for granted and wonder why we are such old farts about stuff.

This from Wilber’s chapter on Government:

Moreover, from this spacious vantage point (of an integral view of politics), the prime directive of a genuine integral politics would be, not to try to get everyone to a particular level of consciousness (integral, pluralistic, liberal or whatever) but to ensure the health of the entire spiral of development at all of its levels and waves. Thus the two steps toward an integral politics are: (1) including both interior and exterior and (2) understanding stages of the interior and thus arriving at the prime directive.

So what I was thinking was what if this applied to church? Is our job to move everyone along the path to our enlightened, higher, elevated level? Well, no. If we believe that each level has multiple dimensions and functions to help us all in some way, then no, we can’t be so arrogant as to think that not only is our way the best way but that everybody needs to imitate our way. This is the attitude that caused me to leave fundyism. Hopefully I’m not leaving one fundyism for another.

If we’re going to be truly integral than we should help moderns be the best moderns they can be and fundies to be the best fundies they can be. After all, they have worth and value before God, do they not? This seems a radical concept to me that I’m not here to change you into me but to make you the best you that God has called you to be.

It’s also the most liberating concept I’ve run into in some time.