This is easily one of the hardest lessons of Christian Mysticism: Peace, prosperity and safety are not valid goals. They are at best the by-products of pursuing goals that are valid. The only valid goal of human life under Biblical Law is communion itself — communion with the Lord and His Creation.
Ditching goal-oriented thinking is a monumental task for Westerners. We could characterize goal-seeking as the fundamental assumption at the root of Western mythology. This is why we sometimes have to shock the Western mind with the blunt statement: Life is not precious. This life is a prison to escape. The only question, then, is how to escape it.
The means to escape is shining the light of divine glory. That translates to promoting a particular orientation on what matters and what doesn’t, what is good versus what is evil. That orientation can never be described, but it can be indicated. Our lives are properly indicators, manifestations and demonstrations. The thing itself can only be caught, not taught. It’s always a miracle of God, never a human decision.
It requires pulling the mind away from it’s own self-absorption and linking it to a higher faculty. That linkage is our native state; it’s how we are designed. Another way of expressing that is we encourage people to move their conscious awareness out of their heads and into their hearts. The heart of conviction should rule over the head full of reason and desire. The flesh is what it is, but God grants us some power to rule over it. We need to school the mind to desire the right things. We cannot trust our minds for anything, but we must delegate to the mind the task to implement and organize the fleshly activities according to a higher purpose.
That higher purpose will never be within the grasp of the intellect. We cannot put it into words; it cannot be formulated. Formulation is an act of intelligence and reason, and ours is fallen; it’s part of the carnal nature. The flesh cannot be redeemed, but it can be enslaved for its own good. What’s in the flesh’s best interest is to let the heart rule. The heart can grasp and process the divine moral character of God directly and turn it into moral imperatives that the mind can use.
So the ultimate divine moral imperative is not to do any particular thing, or collection of things, aiming at some accomplishment. The moral imperative is to reflect divine glory like a mirror. It’s all about cleaning the mirror, polishing the surface to reflect more clearly the living being of God. It’s all about the mirroring. What God decides moment by moment is sure to change with the changing context, so the issue is being ready to reflect whatever light shines from above. We reflect Him into a fallen world until He is pleased to break the mirror and call us Home to be with Him.
So this life is not precious; it’s just a tool. It’s certainly an asset the requires maintenance, but the impulse to preserve life itself is misguided. Death is not the end of all things; it’s just a circumstance of the eternal soul.
What’s the mission of a church? It’s not institutional growth. Indeed, it’s to avoid becoming an institution. The church is meant to be a living organism with the goal of communion itself. Whatever it takes for the church to become a community reflection of Christ is what a church should do. You cannot state it in objective terms. The only goal of the church is the health of the organism itself. That means purging sin, and the greatest sin of all — the crux of the Fall itself — is imagining that anything worthwhile is within human control. The ultimate task of human existence is to fan the flames of love for the Lord. The ultimate task of the church is to promote good feudal subjection to Christ.
No two churches will do things quite the same. There is no standard we can put into words. Nothing about this can be objectified. It is either alive, with attendant growth and change, or it is dead. But the business of the church is the church itself. It means the church being very church-like in every circumstance. It means bringing the gospel to life so the world will see. How the world reacts is God’s business alone. Nothing about church activities should aim at bringing about any particular response. Don’t study outside human response; study purity of commitment within the body.
Study how to live with each other in the inevitable frictions of our fallen human existence. It’s a matter encouraging people to change themselves under divine guidance, to reduce the impact of natural friction. It’s about hardening ourselves against the provocations of Satan to make us resent each other.
Stop counting bodies and budgets as if that measures a church’s performance. Talk about how your church encourages people to commune together like a natural family, however many people there are and however much stuff the group has. Getting that message across to Western mainstream churches is the hardest thing we will ever do in this world.
