Two fundamental elements: (1) We are otherworldly in our focus and (2) we are determined to obey our calling regardless of the worldly results.
Like most things I write, I can tell when it’s bigger than a single post, but not much more than that. The Spirit moves and as an obedient servant, I am left guessing where things are going because I can’t pretend to know who needs this or how. What is obvious to me is the need for a pastoral voice pointing out the elements of sanity in a world of madness and delusion. Thus, we start with the contextual reminder that this world is not important nor are our lives. What is important is how our lives are used as tools to clarify God’s truth. His truth is rooted outside this universe, even outside of Creation as a whole. We use our presence in this world as the means to expose that truth in the way, and to the degree, we can discern.
God has revealed the proper way of human life, but we are surely aware that humanity instinctively rejects the entire premise. At the same time, there is something in human nature that draws them to our witness of God’s glorious truth. Not everyone at the same time and place, but the drawing is there and you can’t miss it. So an obvious first step is to embrace the complexity of what we are in our fallen state. The divine logic applicable to our situation includes a vast array of mutually contradictory impulses and threads of consciousness. We aren’t supposed grasp all the details and elements because it will never completely make sense to us. We can learn this logic, but it’s a monumental task, a long journey back towards God’s revelation. Our world has drifted so very far away from that revealed ideal.
Sanity means we don’t take ourselves seriously, nor anything else in this world, except for the mission to live that truth. The fancy word for that is “humility” — we are prostrate before the Lord and His mighty works. This is not our show; we have at most bit parts. Still, the rewards are far beyond anything we can imagine, a richness and goodness well outside the scope of human grasp. If any part of you is aware of this, you can’t say no.
A critical image is that we should be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16). The context of that passage is Jesus sending out the Twelve on their first mission, wherein the biggest threat is the political-religious leadership of their people. It’s no surprise I would tell you that’s our biggest threat. Not so much the politicians, but those who mix their religion with political power. That happens to be most of the Western Christian religious organizations we encounter. They forgot long ago, beginning at least in the early 300s AD, that our calling is to avoid entanglement in secular politics. We aren’t called to fix this world because God said it would only get progressively worse and He would destroy it. His Kingdom is active on this earth, but rooted far outside this dimension of existence. He is saving souls as individuals, not the world in which we live.
So our human life is disposable, but useful. In our minds, we must let God decide when the end comes. Be ready at all times, facing it with total aplomb. Meanwhile, those thousands of little points of death we face along the way are part of that same package. Jesus was born pointedly to die, and we are following Him. Die with a purpose, marking out His path for others to notice. But we are not heedless; we are called to participate in His glory with some level of understanding appropriate to our condition. That’s the business of “wise as serpents.” We know how to take full advantage of human foibles, but we aren’t predators; we are “harmless as doves.”
I’m little better than the dirt under Apostles’ feet, so I can’t offer their warnings about the near-term future, aside from noting that a time of tribulation is upon us. While it’s possible we could face a direct persecution, I tend to doubt it. Instead, some portion of the mainstream Christian churches will pretend they are the target of religious persecution, when it’s actually little more than the fruits of normal human political entanglement. Part of the Apostles’ warning to their flocks in the First Century was to stick with the message, don’t pretend to change the social or political context, and take what comes. Numerically, very few Christians faced official persecution. That we as Christian Mystics should be a select few possessed with the notion that activism is a lie is simply in our favor. The problem is mainstream Christians who will vehemently insist we join their political tomfoolery or be counted as pagans or useless. So long as we avoid activism, the government will seldom notice us.
The single greatest threat is focusing on the wrong threat.
On the other hand, today the business of communication is the very center of political activity. This is the leading edge of the Networked Age, and the majority of human attention is, or soon will be, via the Internet and related means of communication. Try not to confuse the Internet with networking itself; the latter could well take off in new directions. The Internet is more of a symbol in this regard. My point is that a very significant portion of human attention is focused on cyber-this-n-that. A human government’s single biggest problem is gaining control over information traffic. It’s never been like this in human history, where ideas could travel the entire globe instantly.
Human idiocy prevents it being the pure force for good we might imagine it could be. It takes only a small measure of human evil to make it far worse. As with most things, our insight into God’s moral character can aid us in making good use of global free networking, but we still have to plow through a vast ocean of lies. A significant element in that problem is how folks with savvy and power are making it murky intentionally as a means to blunting resistance.
More in the next installment.
