Capturing Reality
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.”
Psalm 24:1 NLT
Reality is what you run into most days and there is no lasting good in denying it. When people speak of reality, they mean things like gravity, death, aging, pain, and progress of progressive thought. I viewed a seminar last evening from Harvard Divinity School. I suppose I could have attended there if they had a basketball team. I’m sure I would have been an Ivy League Divinity School All American, but they might have not recruited me because I’m not left-handed. The subject of the seminar was the End of White Christian America, a book by Robert P. Jones. The basic story line is that white evangelicalism is in decline, but so are all forms of church - Catholic, Protestant mainline, et al. Reality is that the younger generations are leaving the church before age twenty and very few are returning. This I believe has a great deal to do with the left’s Long March through our major institutions, particularly the university and public schools.
The problem with the deconstruction of the Bible is when you are done you are empty handed. The only hope you can give people to handle their reality is a harsher reality - you can’t really know anything or be sure of anything or rely on anything, but yourself and we know that is a dead end. However, it wasn’t this hopeless scenario that they were happily discussing, it was the fall of religious orthodoxy and they were conducting the autopsy.
The reality is that the juggernaut that was white evangelicalism, started and formed by Billy Graham, has now come tumbling down in the time of Franklin Graham. Reality then is that we are losing numbers, the world has out-discipled us. If we think that we can pray our way out of this, we are mistaken. Christ’s commands to us belies such a notion. What I would like to do is to present some insights I have about the reality of God in this world. Because I believe that God is the source of reality and I believe it is getting a hold on this idea that is the key to the communication of the Gospel.
Last week I was watching several of the Sunday Morning Church services online and television. It was the typical fare, telling this incredible story about God and how he is triune, how he sends his only son to die for me. Add to this that on some channels Christian rock was being played, hipster type singers and pastors representing an “untucked” world were doing their best to be relevant. One historic Presbyterian church uses a high church backdrop with candles, a pipe organ, and a high brow vocabulary, the speaker appeared with a sport coat, open collar, and low riding jeans. One service however had me mesmerized, it was a few musicians and one male singer all robed. The singer was probably sixty years old, he was singing a well-known hymn, his face was radiant, his voice soft, and he sang all six verses. Behind him were a pianist and two guitarists, all playing softly, and in no hurry to reach the end of the song. It seemed so disconnected to reality. It was still the 1950s to them, and they couldn’t have cared less about being relevant. I was thinking how absurd it all is to people who have not been converted to Christ and what they must think about this story and its people.
This realization struck me while watching these dear people: God can't be this small, provincial, and religious. After all, he created the universe.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
Genesis 1:1,2 NLT
“In the beginning” means God created time and started the earth project. God is the source of all that exists. He always has existed outside time and space. As Saint Augustine wrote, God invented time. And he used material in its raw form, “the heavens and the earth.”
It is very difficult, even insulting to God to reduce him to some sort of religious figure that can be captured in a painting, a poem, a song, or religious creed, joint statement, or theological system. These are all valiant efforts that fall short. And worse yet, that the way to know him is to follow our little subcultural formulation by saying a certain prayer, following a ritual, or getting baptized by the right clergy. It all seems so trivial in comparison to the power and majesty of God.
I am thinking of the many images and attributes we ascribe to God. I will delve into this in a moment, but first let me state my premise. God is so vast and so far beyond human comprehension that much of his communication with us is an accommodation on his part. He created human life; therefore, he is the only one that understands us. What we need, want, and experience is part of his original knowledge base. God always has been, he has no beginning and no end, he is not a captive of space and time. Therefore, he isn’t typically what we call human. He says he is a Father, that he has a Son, but we know whatever kind of Father he is or Son that Jesus is, differs from our experience. He also knows sacrifice, love, hate, and anger, he can forgive, change his mind, keep his promises etc.
Has God always existed in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or did he create an image of such in order to communicate to us and to serve us? I can’t answer that question, I can only say that I believe in the authority of scripture and that God has used images and language to reveal himself to us. In other words, there is Jesus the Son of God, the Savior of the world, but also there is the cosmic Christ, there is Christ the Creator. And this Christ is far above all things, including religion, he has laid claim to being the head of the body called the Church. Then there is God incarnate in Christ. Jesus is the word of God, he is the expression of realty, the logos.
What I expect when I see Jesus is not so much a religious person, a robed saint, or a person who likes church music and religious artifacts. I expect to meet someone whose capacity is beyond what I can imagine. One who is able to create the universe with its great complexity. Someone with unlimited power joined to perfect integrity and wisdom. It would surprise me if a being with such capacity would limit himself to one universe, he probably could multitask on his level.
Think about it this way; the Gospel is God’s story that he created and has told through language and persons and an awesome physical creation that speaks to humans from DNA and the microscope to the heavens and the telescope. To reduce him and the Church to a religious formulation is to make small what God meant to be big. Let me find someone who can say it better… ah yes, Lesslie Newbigin can always be relied on.
The bible is unique among the sacred books of the world’s religions in that it is in structure a history of the cosmos. It claims to show us the shape, structure, origin and the goal not merely of human history but of cosmic history.
It is as if God wrote a story of redemption and then made himself a character by inserting himself into human life as the hero. The only way Shakespeare could meet Hamlet is if he wrote himself into the play. God comes to the world with all its problems, pain, and death and provides a way out. It is irresistible in nature until the religious get a hold of the plan and make it very resistible. Christian television is a favorite tool for our enemy. It turns the meaning of the universe and our lives into entertainment. The Gospel is the best news and the best story, and every human can understand God’s nature and person by knowing it. God is the fundamental reality.
Let me allow Newbigin to send you off with some wonderful words:
“…the ultimate reality, the ultimate secret of the eternal truth for which the Greeks gave many names, but one of them was the name logos, the word, the reason with ultimately beyond history is the logos of reliable truth. That the word has become flesh in the man Jesus Christ, whose ministry, death and resurrection is the manifestation of God’s eternal being. Now that created a profound crisis, that the ultimate reality is no longer something available to reason and to the mind of the philosopher. It is known by accepting and following the core of Jesus. That the answer to the question what is the ultimate secret of the universe is this man Jesus.”
Jesus said, “Follow me.” My suggestion is don’t try to figure it out, just get on your feet and get moving. You will begin life in the kingdom of God.
