The Social Forces of Denominationalism

by H. Richard Niebuhr

Christendom has often achieved apparent success by ignoring the precepts of its founder.

The church, as an organization interested in self-preservation and in the gain of power, has sometimes found the counsel of the Cross quite as inexpedient as have national and economic groups.

In dealing with such major social evils as war, slavery, and social inequality, it has discovered convenient ambiguities in the letter of the Gospels which enabled it to violate their spirit and to ally itself with the prestige and power those evils had gained in their corporate organization.

In adapting itself to the conditions of a civilization which its founder had bidden it to permeate with the spirit of divine love, it found that it was easier to give to Caesar the things belonging to Caesar if the examination of what might belong to God were not too closely pressed.

This proneness toward compromise which characterizes the whole history of the church, is no more difficult to understand than is the similar and inevitable tendency by which each individual Christian adapts the demands of the gospel to the necessity of existence in the body and in civilized society.

It has often been pointed out that no ideal can be incorporated without the loss of some of its ideal character. When liberty gains a constitution, liberty is compromised; when fraternity elects officers, fraternity yields some of the ideal qualities of brotherhood to the necessities of government. And the gospel of Christ is especially subject to this sacrifice of character in the interest of organic embodiment; for the very essence of Christianity lies in the tension which it presupposes or creates between the worlds of nature and of spirit, and in its resolution of that conflict by means of justifying faith.

It demands the impossible in conduct and belief; it runs counter to the instinctive life of man and exalts the rationality of the irrational; in a world of relativity it calls for unyielding loyalty to unchangeable absolutes.

Clothe its faith in terms of philosophy, whether medieval or modern, and you lose the meaning of its high desires, of its living experience, reducing these to a set of opinions often irrelevant, sometimes contrary, to the original content.

Organize its ethics – as organize them you must whenever two or three are gathered in tlie name of Christ – and the free spirit of forgiving love becomes a new law, requiring interpretation, commentary, and all the machinery of justice – just the sort of impersonal relationship which the gospel denies and combats. 

Place this society in the world, demanding that it be not of the world, and strenuous as may be its efforts to transcend or to sublimate the mundane life, it will yet be unable to escape all taint of conspiracy and connivance with the worldly interests it despises.

Yet, on the other hand, Christian ethics will not permit a world-fleeing asceticism which seeks purity at the cost of service.

At the end, if not at the beginning, of every effort to incorporate Christianity there is, therefore, a compromise, and the Christian cannot escape the necessity of seeking the last source of righteousness outside himself and the world in the divine aggression, in a justification that is by faith.

The fact that compromise is inevitable does not make it less an evil. The fault of every concession, of course, is that it is made too soon, before the ultimate resistance “to the blood’’ has been offered. Even where resistance seems to have gone to the uttermost the loyal man remembers that it might have been begun earlier, that it might have been continued a little longer, and that any compromise of the absolute good remains an evil. At last men must continue to condemn themselves not only for their failure to do what they could, but also for their failure to perform what they could not, for their denial of the absolute good whose categorical demands were laid upon their incapable will.

But compromises are doubly evil when they are unacknowledged, when the emasculation of the Christian ideal remains undiscovered and when, in consequence, men take pride, as in an achievement, in a defeat of the essential gospel.

Such unconscious hypocrisy not only bars the way to continued efforts to penetrate the stubborn stuff of life with the ethics of Jesus but is the author of further compromises made all too early. So it produces at last a spurious gospel unaware of its departure from the faith once delivered to the saints.

Denominationalism in the Christian church is such an unacknowledged hypocrisy. It is a compromise, made far too lightly, between Christianity and the world. Yet it often regards itself as a Christian achievement and glorifies its martyrs as bearers of the Cross.

It represents the accommodation of Christianity to the caste-system of human society. It carries over into the organization of the Christian principle of brotherhood the prides and prejudices, the privilege and prestige, as well as the humiliations and abasements, the injustices and inequalities of that specious order of high and low wherein men find the satisfaction of their craving for vainglory.

The division of the churches closely follows the division of men into the castes of national, racial, and economic groups. It draws the color line in the church of God; it fosters the misunderstandings, the self- exaltations, the hatreds of jingoistic nationalism by continuing in the body of Christ the spurious differences of provincial loyalties; it seats the rich and poor apart at the table of the Lord, where the fortunate may enjoy the bounty they have provided while the others feed upon the crusts their poverty affords.

For the denominations, churches, sects, are sociological groups whose principle of differentiation is to be sought in their conformity to the order of social classes and castes. It would not be true to affirm that the denominations are not religious groups with religious purposes, but it is true that they represent the accommodation of religion to the caste system.

They are emblems, therefore, of the victory of the world over the church, of the secularization of Christianity, of the church’s sanction of that divisiveness which the church’s gospel condemns.

Denominationalism thus represents the moral failure of Christianity. And unless the ethics of brotherhood can gain the victory over this divisiveness within the body of Christ it is useless to expect it to be victorious in the world. But before the church can hope to overcome its fatal division it must learn to recognize and to acknowledge the secular character of its denominationalism.

On Dreams, Desires, Justice and Fellowship

At the root of all injustice lies a dream.

The dream presents a standard, and makes judgment possible. The dreamer judges himself by the standard of the dream, and then judges others by the same standard.

The dream is never inspired by what is, but what can be. The dream lies in the realm of the miraculous, which provides the power of its magic and enchantment. In the dream voices are allowed from another realm, which is why its inspiration seems divine.

The dream creates a new reality: The tension between what is and what can be. This tension is unbearable for the human soul, and it can only be conquered by one thing: Desire. Desire is the sweet voice that ensures the tension can be resolved. The distance between the dreamer and the fulfillment of the dream is eradicated by desire, for desire is the faith that promises to make the unreachable reachable.

When this judgment occurs, the dreamer leaves the path that he is on and ascends on the stairway of imagination offered by desire. The journey disengages the dreamer from his reality and allows him to escape into the nebulous world of the gods. Driven and energised by his desire, the dreamer takes the light at the end of the stairway as the standard for judging himself and others. He does not see that he has become inferior in his own estimation, and that the illusion of his future greatness is but a tranqualizer by which to suppress the horror of his nothingness in this world. He does not see that the world of goodness has been transformed into a prison of injustice by the power of his desire. Equality has been transferred to the top of the stairway, and justice becomes a crusade instead of a gift of the present.

There is only one antidote for the dark magic of desire’s fever and its hallucinations of injustice. It is to discard the dream and see God. God is not a dream, and he is not to be found in dreams. It is this one thing that separates him from the world of the false gods as expressed in images that aim to concretize the dreams of those on the stairway of desire.

God is in the present. His invisible attributes and divine power can be seen in the things he has made. God has made himself so visible that it is impossible to not see him. His life in all its goodness is around us all of the time. There is only one way to be blinded to God, and that is to turn him into a destiny, a dream, an accomplishment of the self’s ingeniousness. Idols are always imagined.

The serpent understood this, and that is how he beguiled Eve. Divinity was presented as a destiny. The present became the future. The contentment of all that she had was replaced by the desire of the one thing that was out of reach. The justice of creation’s fullness was replaced by the injustice of a single prohibition. Gratitude became offense. Fellowship became a dream. Unity became rivalry.

This is the curse of every human who does not see God. It is also the curse of those who claim to know God but have allowed the dream in their midst. This is true even of the church of Christ. When fellowship becomes a dream, it is destroyed. The enchantment of the dream is a bewitchment and a destruction of the real. The only church that will ever taste the fellowship and unity that exists in God alone is the one constituted by those who have died to the dream.

This death must first take place in the life of the individual before it can manifest in the life of the fellowship. Indeed, this is what it means to lose one’s life – to stop feeding on the image of an accomplished future self; to anticipate no future greatness in this world; to demand and expect no peace and comfort as this present age defines it. It is this collective death to aspiration that will bring the gathering of believers face to face with the glory that has already been bestowed on them as the church of God.

Unity that is constituted by a common dream and common vision, and expressed in a name that captures the essence of the commonality, falls apart when the anticipated penetration of the divine destiny fails to materialize. Its adherents will then be scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Such a church will be revealed as a daughter of Babel, not the Bride of Christ.

The true bride rejoices in the presence of the groom. She loves him in the here and now, and she does so with all of her being. She is immune to the voices of other lovers and the lust of desire for their images. She is content with his provisions. She rejoices in his love. She sees him as just, and shares in his justice. She becomes just as he is just. She loves as she is loved.  And so she remains with him forever.

Oh God, when every dream fails; when all anticipation is revealed to be but the dust of death; it is then when we return to you. Forgive us our idolatries and the imaginations they have inspired. You are the treasure in the field. You are the pearl of great price. Who do we have in heaven but you? And on earth we desire nothing but you. You are our shepherd. We shall not want.  

 

 

The Wisdom of the Little People

… Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Colossians 2:4

 …For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Matthew 18:20

It has been very quite on this blog, mainly for two reasons.

Firstly, Revien and I bought a school a little over a year ago. To say that I have never been busier in my life is an understatement.

There is an amazing back-story to how it all came about, which I may share here some day. Also, we have a sense where this could be going and why God sent it across our paths. If we are correct, that will be part of the story. But at the moment we are simply…busy.

Secondly, I have been involved in a personal research project that has left me somewhat dumbstruck, and that keeps on reminding me of Aquinas’ famous words to his secretary and friend, Reginald: “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.”

I am obviously still writing, but I do struggle to find words to convey what I have recently come to believe regarding certain fundamental matters of our faith. It is as though my senses need to adjust themselves to an intricate and unimaginable beauty that they never knew existed. To try and explain it through the medium of mere written words would be a bit like using smoke signals to discuss deep philosophy. The form can never do justice to the content.

A Tug of War

This reminds me of an age old problem that dates back to the Garden of Eden, namely the war between two types of knowing. Where is the eternal spring of knowledge? Is it within a person, or without? Who and what introduced the notion of subjective knowledge. Was it the Tree of Life or the serpent? When knowledge is discovered, can it be conveyed with words, or does it require an encounter of sorts on the part of the recipient – a type of enlightenment or illumination?

Study church history and you will soon find that people have murdered one another in the name of Christ because they could not see eye-to-eye on this matter. The battle continues to this day, albeit in a slightly more sophisticated manner.

Interestingly, on the side of the “absolute truth” theorists, the ecclesiastical canons are usually fired at words and connotation terms that are endowed with suspicion because their existence and content allegedly derive from the dark world of secular philosophy or even witchcraft. Dare to suggest that true meaning can only be discovered when accompanied by some form of personal experience and you have instantaneously distinguished yourself as one of the ideological offspring of that cursed race known as the existentialists. Or you are a mystic, which is almost like a gnostic, which is perilously close to an ancient form of paganism obsessed with penetrating the mysterious non-material realm of the gods and spirits in order to trip the light fantastic – a dubious goal which again links you to the anti-establishmentarianism of the sixties and the period’s obsession with everything Eastern. You are also a post-modernist, which means that you subscribe to chaos theory in some or other form, and that you have betrayed the cool, calm and collected world of enlightenment rationality by exchanging it for the pale counterfeit of subjectivism and relativism and a host of other isms that will certainly damage your immortal soul irreparably.

Is all of this true? I think not. I think a great part of the church suffers from an ecclesiastical version of what we used to call “combat neurosis,” or the “Nam syndrome,” or “bossies” here in South Africa (“little bushes” in Afrikaans, referring to the “bush war” of the seventies and eighties), and that is now more often referred to as PTSD or at least one of its derivatives.

As they say: “He has left the war, but the war has not left him.” This simply means that the coping mechanisms associated with defense and survival have eventually become a greater source of security than the absence of the war itself. Thus, I have to preserve the illusion of attack in order to justify the application of my defense system in order to keep my wayward emotions in check. For my apologetic system to remain intact, the heretics need to remain heretics, in other words. I wrote extensively about this elsewhere, and do not wish to repeat myself here.

The point is that there were indeed times when the church succumbed to gnostic tendencies, and Greek ideas of wisdom and ascendance, and dreams and visions that came from below and not above, and so on. Yet none of these qualify as irrefutable proof that God prefers to speak from without and not within. The abuse does not abolish the use, as they say, nor does it justify a retreat into the safe haven of protectionism.

Would the written code have been necessary if our ancestors chose to feast from the other tree? Again, I think not. The Scriptures tell us that life comes with its own light: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Partake of life, and share in the awareness that is unique to it. This is a knowing that transcends the intellect, a covenant knowledge that ensues when two lives blend together as one and share in each other’s consciousness. “Adam knew his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and bore a son.”

This knowing is different to the knowledge of good and evil in the sense that it is deeply intuitive and relational, and can never be reduced to a series of propositional statements that can be “taught” in the way that I have been explaining the secret life of atoms and molecules to my Chemistry students over the past few years.

The knowledge of good and evil is very much like those lectures – a type of knowing that relies on a classification of sorts, a binary distinction between irreconcilable opposites: Positive and negative, protons and electrons, on and off, one and zero, chaos and order, yin and yang, right and wrong, and so on.

The seduction of this knowledge lies in the illusion of control that it imparts, the seeming ability to run the program at will, the insidious pride that comes with the awareness of wisdom: “I know that I know.”

This type of double-knowing sets the knower apart from the knowledge, as though standing outside of it. To know good and evil is to become clinically detached from good and evil, to force a divide between subject and object. Here there is no encounter with life, no knowing from within. All that remains is the cold objectivity of the outsider, and the ensuing ideology that attaches itself like a leech to the knower.

Here the religious dilemma arises: “What good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?” I construct a dogma of goodness, but goodness itself evades me. My creed masquerades as enlightenment, blinding me to my blindness.

A Personal Reflection

Reflecting on the above, I am reminded of a question that has been nagging me for some time: Why have I lost my taste for so much of my previous Christian experience?

On the one hand, it is a worrying thought. Much of what I had deemed essential for momentum and eventfulness in my Christian life have simply gone stale. I look at those allegiances now as I look at the box of old toys that survived my childhood, my children’s childhoods and decades of storage in between. They represent a lot of things: Precious memories, nostalgia, perhaps a bit of money (some rare Dinky Toys from the Sixties), and so on. But one thing evades me: The exhilaration of playing with them. Try as I may, I simply cannot conjure up the magic that once kept me spellbound for hours on end.

The worrying part is the realisation that a great part of my early Christianity has gone the same route, that there is no way of rekindling it, and that my faith is heading the way of the Dinosaurs if that is all there is to it. I flip through the Christian channels and I see talking heads. I see advertisements of revival meetings with Christian celebrity names splattered all over them and my disinterest startles me. I skip the Christian publications when I browse through the magazine racks at the bookshops and supermarkets. I send prophetic end-time emails to the trash without opening them.

On the other hand, I marvel at the blossoming of new romances in my life. I have always loved the Scriptures, but they have become more astoundingly alive in the past few years than ever. I seem more pathetic if I fail to pray regularly, and so my prayers have become as vital to me as breathing, and my neglect of them as suffocating as death itself.

But perhaps most surprising of all is the enchantment of face-to-face fellowship with mere brothers and sisters; non-extraordinary Christians who do not have testimonies of signs and wonders and miraculous breakthroughs and financial blessings and astounding visions and maximizations of potential.

When we meet there is no “there,” no elusive destiny or some or other anticipated happening that will authenticate God’s worthwhileness and provide a raison d’etre for our togetherness. We are not bound together by any common goal or holy place or name or teaching, but by a shared participation in the divine nature.

Aside from Ephesians 4’s maturing of the bride and Romans 8’s ushering in of the age to come, no one is waiting for anything. There is no lusting after any anticipated dramas or breakthrough occurrences. The consensus is that God in Christ has broken through to humanity, and that our challenge is to discover and celebrate what is instead of yearning for what is not.

Remarkably, the dumbstruckness that I referred to at the beginning of this writing has evaded me in these settings. It has been no problem to share the unshareable in the presence of my brothers and sisters and Christ. And so I have become increasingly intrigued by the notion that truth seems to flourish in a relational atmosphere, that this is God’s chosen context for its conveyance, and that it’s life-giving properties are rapidly diminished when individuals unknown to us channel them through the airways, the printed page or the screen. Why else would the greatest preachers of this age not have the same effect on me as the sincerely spoken words of the littlest Christian sitting at my table – words that seem like life to my soul?

And of course I am not saying that we should discard all records of words spoken for Christ’s cause by people whom we have not met. Only that they can never compare with the miracle that happens when two or three of us meet in his name and his word manifests itself as his living presence in our midst.

Is this not why we have a collection of passionate letters written to flesh and blood individuals – people known to the authors – as the sole legacy of the apostles, and not The Institutes of Paul? These letters are extensions of relational bonds and not clinical codes of conduct, or, as Berkhof put it, formulations of a “complex system constructed for their own entertainment by scholars in the quiet retreat of ivory towers.”

And so I can carry on, but of course I am also a stranger to many who are reading this. I will have to borrow John’s words: Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

In Conclusion

I have a sense that I am not alone in this. There seems to be a growing revolt against the notion that theological insight resides in some or other punditocracy, that is, an elite inner circle of enlightened individuals who possess knowledge not accessible to the masses.

Just this morning I happen to read Walter Brueggemann on distributive justice:

“This justice recognizes that social goods and social power are unequally and destructively distributed in Israel’s world (and derivatively in any social context), and that the well-being of the community requires that social goods and power to some extent be given up by those who have too much, for the sake of those who have not enough.”

I took my pencil and wrote “and knowledge” behind “power.” Is it not time that we broaden our understanding of justice to include the most precious of all commodities, that of wisdom and knowledge? But to do so would necessitate a break with our preciously held belief that some people are more eligible than others as custodians of God’s truth. It would be a call to relinquish that most subtle power of all, namely religious ideology.

I foresee a return to the wisdom of the little people, emboldened and enlivened by the presence of Christ in their midst, when they meet in twos or threes or more. I see a hunger for truth that is true in the moment of relational encounter, never contrary to one jot or tittle from Scripture, but always as the pouring forth of that life that breathed out Scripture in the first place. And I see a collective disenchantment with the formulations of the super-apostles and religious ideologues and denomination-makers, the manna of yesteryear, the searching and categorizing of the Scriptures apart from Christ’s presence in our midst.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. 

Jeremiah 31:33-34

 

 

 

Mansions in Heaven?

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. Psalm 27:4

I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. Matthew 12:6

The idea that heaven looks like a celestial version of a luxurious suburb where the rich and famous live, lined with multi-storey “mansions” that have been prepared for us by Jesus, derives from the King James Version’s translation of Jesus’ words in John 14:2-3:

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

The word “mansions” is an unfortunate mistranslation of the Greek “moinia,” which is the plural form of “moné,” a word which is more accurately translated as dwelling place, abode, lodging or room. Thus, modern translations have dropped the usage of “mansion” and typically use “room” or “dwelling place.”

But here is the interesting thing: As always, the Bible is its own best interpreter, if one would only look. The word moné only appears twice in the entire Bible, and its second appearance is but a few verses on, in John 14:23:

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

Thus, the dwelling place that Jesus said he would prepare for us in the Father’s house is the very dwelling place that he said he and the Father would bring back and make with us!

Even more amazing, Jesus spoke these words to clarify his statement in verse 20:

In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

This sentence makes it abundantly clear that the dwelling that has been made possible by Jesus is reciprocal, namely us in Jesus/the Father and, at the same time, Jesus/the Father in us.

How will all of this this happen?

Verses 16 to 19 answer this:

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me.

With this in mind, we are ready to re-read verse 3 which immediately follows the KJV’s “mansions” statement:

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

For Jesus to receive us “unto himself,” so that we can be “where he is,” is to receive us into the very dwelling place “in the Father” that he alone had enjoyed since eternity before time. This is the “dwelling place” that he had to go and prepare for us in order to receive us into it so that we can be “in the Father” as he is “in the Father” and so that both he and the Father can indwell us.

It now seems incredible that one could miss the obvious meaning of Jesus’ statement. The “coming again” of verse 3 is clearly not a reference to Jesus’ second coming on the clouds, but a reference to his coming through the Holy Spirit. This is confirmed by another one of Jesus’ statements in the very passage that we are busy with. Note verse 26:

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

The Ultimate Aim: Abide in Christ

If any doubt remains, note that the whole of John 14 serves as a precursor to John 15, a chapter that gives us the following statement right in its introduction:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.[1]

Firstly, note the reference to the reciprocal indwelling: Us in Christ, and Christ in us.

Secondly, note the word “abide.” As you may have picked up, it closely resembles the noun “abode” spoken of earlier, and is in fact its verb form. This is not only true in English but also in Greek. The Greek word for abide, believe it or not, is “menó” which happens to be the root word from which “moné” is derived!

Thus, to abide in Christ, as we are told to do in John 15, we first need the abode of John 14! Put differently, we cannot dwell in Christ unless he has first prepared a dwelling place for us in which to dwell!

The logic and simplicity of Jesus’ teaching is astounding once we see it, and provides us with profound insight into the central aspect of the Spirit’s ministry: To enable God to dwell in our midst, according to all the Scriptural promises in the Old Testament, by dwelling in us and allowing us to dwell in him.

One of the main problems, it seems, is that we derive our understanding of the Spirit’s work from the book of Acts rather than from the teaching of Jesus, especially as it has been recorded in John’s gospel.

Whereas Acts focuses on the effect of the Spirit’s outpouring, Jesus’ teaching focuses on the reason behind it.

The difference is monumental: Note that Acts is all about the activities of a church who have experienced a divine life exchange due to the fact that they have received the dynamic life and presence of Christ in the place of their old carnal lives.

This is the result of the Spirit’s infilling, and can be compared with the way in which a young man’s schedule and habits may be completely changed as a result of having entered into a relationship with the woman of his dreams.

But to say that the purpose of a romantic relationship is to receive the power and ability to change one’s lifestyle is to put the cart before the horses and to lose all romantic perspective!

Yet this is exactly what we have done by elevating the power of the Spirit above the relational dynamic between God and humanity made possible by it.

The Location of the Father’s House

Finally, let us note that the KJV’s “mansions” that we have now identified as “dwelling places” or “abodes,” are prepared by Jesus in the “Father’s house:”

In my Father’s house are many mansions…

What and where is this house of the Father?

Again, Scripture is its own best commentator. When Jesus was twelve years old he stayed behind in Jerusalem after the Feast of Passover, without his parents’ knowledge. They looked for him for three days before finding him in the temple. When they finally did, this is what he said to them:

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”[2]

Similarly, earlier on in the gospel of John we read the well known story of how Jesus drove the money-changers and religious merchandizers out of the temple in Jerusalem.[3]

Note Jesus’ words while he was doing so:

“Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

When Jesus spoke about “my Father’s house,” he was referring to the temple! There is not a single example in the entire Bible where he, or anyone else, uses the phrase in any other way.

This is where it gets really interesting. The incident with the money-changers continues in John’s gospel to include the following conversation:

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Whilst we are told that Jesus was referring to the “temple of his body,” there is a clear play on words here. The “destruction of the temple” hints to an event that Jesus predicted elsewhere,[4] and that was literally fulfilled in 70 AD when the Roman armies sacked Jerusalem under Titus.

But it also refers to his crucifixion, which explains what he meant when he said that he would “raise it up in three days.”

Here Jesus begins to expand our understanding of the temple. It will no longer be a building made with bricks and built by human hands. It will be the resurrected body of Christ.

As we know from the rest of the New Testament, Jesus was not only referring to his physical body, but to the regenerated saints who would become his dwelling place, thus his “body.” We are raised with him, we are in him as he is in us, and so we are called his “body:”

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.[5]

So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.[6]

It follows naturally that if we are the resurrected body of Christ, then we are also the rebuilt temple that he spoke of to the Jews, namely the place of his indwelling through his Spirit. This is not just a logical inference, but the exact way in which the Bible refers to believers:

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.[7]

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?[8]

For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be My people.”[9]

In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit.[10]

If the “Father’s house” is the temple, and we become that temple, then it follows naturally that we also become the “house:”

But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are His house, if we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope of which we boast.[11]

…you will know how each one must conduct himself in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.[12]

Once we see the glorious outcome of it all, it becomes extremely simple to understand why Jesus had to prepare a dwelling place for us in his Father’s house before we could become that house. The “rebuilding” of the house necessitated such a preparation, and makes perfect sense when we consider another verse that refers to this issue:

…you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.[13]

The bricks of the temple had to be replaced with living stones, and Christ had to prepare a place for those stones to be laid. Thus, we are given a ”dwelling place” in the Father’s house, but we also end up becoming the very fabric of that house, enabling God to dwell in us through his Spirit even as we dwell in him.

The Chambers in the Temple

There is one last point to consider, and it is to be found in Peter’s words quoted above. Note that the living stones are also identified with the priesthood who offer spiritual sacrifices.

To “dwell in the temple” was no New Testament invention, and neither was the idea that there were specific “rooms” or “abodes” in the temple to enable such a dwelling. This is clear right from the beginning of the history of the temple:

Be careful now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be strong and do it.” Then David gave Solomon his son the plan of the vestibule of the temple, and of its houses, its treasuries, its upper rooms, and its inner chambers, and of the room for the mercy seat; and the plan of all that he had in mind for the courts of the house of the Lord, all the surrounding chambers, the treasuries of the house of God, and the treasuries for dedicated gifts; for the divisions of the priests and of the Levites, and all the work of the service in the house of the Lord; for all the vessels for the service in the house of the Lord…[14]

The description of the chambers in the temple bring to mind Jesus’ words “in my Father’s house there are many rooms,” and illustrates the ridiculousness of imagining that he was referring to heavenly mansions that resemble the estates of the Hollywood elite.

The Jewish historian Josephus wrote about these chambers in his famous Wars of the Jews:

Now, about the sides of the lower part of the temple there were little houses, with passages out of one into another; there were a great many of them, and they were three stories high…[15]

These chambers had a variety of functions, which included priestly service. This dated back from the time of God’s first “house”, the Tabernacle:

…the four chief gatekeepers, who were Levites, were entrusted to be over the chambers and the treasures of the house of God. And they lodged around the house of God, for on them lay the duty of watching, and they had charge of opening it every morning.[16]

It goes without saying that the disciples who were listening to Jesus’ words in John 14:2 would immediately have thought of these priestly chambers and the functions associated with them. This was Jesus’ way of preparing them for the very truth that he would establish a new “priesthood” in his “Father’s house,” and that this would be linked to his return to them, when he and the Father would make their home with those who have placed their faith in Christ..

This could only take place through the “Spirit of truth” who would be sent to “dwell with them and be in them.” Here we find the true ministry of the Spirit, and a fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose, namely to have an offspring in his image and likeness with whom he would dwell eternally.

 (The above is an excerpt from Romans: the Big Picture)

[1] John 15:4

[2] Luke 2:49

[3] John 2:13-22

[4] See Matthew 24:2

[5] Ephesians 1:22-23

[6] Romans 12:5

[7] 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

[8] 2 Corinthians 6:19

[9] 2 Corinthians 6:16

[10] Ephesians 2:21-22

[11] Hebrews 3:6

[12] 1 Timothy 3:15

[13] 1 Peter 2:5

[14] 1 Chronicles 28:10-13

[15] For Josephus’ description of the temple, see The Wars of the Jews, V 5: 1- 6

[16] 1 Chronicles 9:26-27

The Basics of Life

Revien and I have just returned from an unforgettable weekend spent on a Free State game farm with a group of over 30 believers.

There were no special speakers.

There was no set program or agenda.

There were no presentations, projectors or video clips.

The were no musical instruments, except for a guitar.

I knew almost everyone in the group, and so I was aware of some imposing academic qualifications and remarkable professional accomplishments. I also knew how incredibly gifted and skilled some of these people were. And I knew that quite a few were involved in areas of selfless, sacrificial service that would qualify them to be sainted by the Pope.

But hardly anyone else knew, none of it mattered and nothing was ever mentioned. We were mere brothers and sisters, and what we had in common far outshone everything else we had done in our lives, both good and bad.

Our common ground, I believe, can best be described as a simple conviction that the fullness of God is to be found in Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ has made himself unimaginably accessible to each and everyone of us.

If this truth does not strike you as mind-bogglingly profound, then it can only be because the reality of it has never dawned on you.

The fullness of God… Can we even begin to imagine what this means? Those famous Hubble telescope images testify to one small part of who he is. The rainforests of the world to another. The beauty of romance, and of music… The inexplicable nature of young children… The ocean… The fragrances, from flowers to freshly ground coffee beans… The tastes…

The list goes on and on, and still we are nowhere close to describing or comprehending his fullness.

God poured the totality of this fullness into Christ, and then Christ invited us to come to him and partake of him as a starving man would partake of a banquet prepared for a king.

This is who he is. This is what he has done for us.

Most of all: He knew who he was dealing with. He knew what he had to to for the whole thing to work out and not be undermined by our imperfections.

And so he bypassed us and gave us a single instruction: Forget about yourself and look at Jesus Christ. Behold him, hear him, trust him. That’s all you need to do. Learn from him. Do so, and you shall find yourself coming face to face with the living God…

If you believe this, I mean truly believe it, then you will soon experience an unintended and inevitable consequence: You will begin to lose the taste for depictions of him.

Mere words will no longer suffice. Screaming men in suits will no longer seem to channel him. Neither will hulky youth leaders with Jesus tattoos and designer specs, or trance-like worship songs sung by beautiful girls with angelic voices, or fog on the stage, or feathers from angels’ wings, or street healings, or football stadiums filled with people…

When compared with the face of Christ, all of it will seem like the dust of death. This disturbing awareness will become progressively stronger, and you will not be able to shake or suppress it.

It will be a natural consequence of another awareness rising up in you, something that you may never have experienced and that you do not have words for. And then, slowly but surely, you will begin to understand: This thing that I am experiencing…this is the love of God…this is love for God.

I spoke and preached about faith for more than three decades, and I realize now that I hardly knew what I was talking about. What I have just described is faith. Faith is not, as some have suggested, a type of positive mindset magic that can coerce God into falling in with your plans. Nor is it a confessed belief in a series of propositional statements called a “creed.”

No, faith is to simply look away from yourself and to look to the Author of Life. This is what Abraham did, and this is the only thing that will ever qualify any person to be worthy of the name “child of Abraham.”

Believe me: Apart from this, no salvation exists.

And so God has given us faith and love, and a way to him that is so simple that a child can find it, yet too simple for those of us who think that he needs our gimmicks to turn him into an object of interest.

What type of a god needs an atmosphere in which to reveal himself? What type of a god requires dimmed lights, and mood music, and the astounding facilitation of his presence by some or other dynamic individual who knows just “how,“ in order to show up?

I’m not sure. The hypnotic prerequisites for this type of manifestation makes me think that he is not really a “he,” but an “it” – a god of our imagination.

The good news, as mentioned earlier, is that Jesus Christ knew who he was dying for. He understands our pagan inclinations. He understand our propensity to redefine faith and turn it into something “we must do.” He understands that sheep fall prey to wolves. He knows all of it, much better than we can ever imagine.

The fullness of God indwells him, remember?

And so he is patient with us. He will even allow us to see something of him whilst pursuing his presence in the most ridiculous of manners. But this is not to endorse our behavior. It is to assist us to turn from it. Whilst we are presuming on the riches of his kindness and forbearance, he is giving us time to repent.

Which brings me back to the weekend. And to an observation of what happens when a group of people who have been spoilt for the God-facilitation industry come together in the name of the One who has spoilt it for them.

It is an amazing thing to share a common interest in the Christ who is within us. It is to stare at one another in utter wonder and amazement, knowing that the revelation of the Jesus in my brother is complimentary to the revelation of the Jesus in me.

It is to behold one another as though one is beholding Christ, knowing that we will encounter dimensions of him in and through one another that is not accessible anywhere else.

And so we had to force every conversation to come to an end. Our insight into the mystery of God expanded again and again. It would have been no different if he was sitting there in our midst, speaking to us, revealing the Father to us.

In fact, that is exactly what he did. He was there – in his body.

A wise brother said something towards the end of the weekend: “You cannot put the wind in a box.” And we all understood. There is a depth of understanding and “knowing” that is restricted to the fellowship of the body. When we “behold” Christ in one another, we see things that are not seen when we are by ourselves. We cannot capture these revelations, box them, take them home, turn them into information and retrieve them at leisure. Moses and Elijah won’t camp on mountains.

And so we left, longing for our next gathering, longing for that part of Christ that can only be seen when we come together as his members and display the miracle of God’s fullness in our love for one another.

Where Can I Find a True Church?

He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. (Paul, writing to Timothy)

Have you ever heard a fellow believer say that he or she is interested in the “deep things” of God?

Perhaps the words were stated differently, but with the same basic meaning: “I believe the Lord has called me to a higher Christian life.” Or something similar.

Have you ever witnessed the excitement when such a person discovers a group of believers with similar noble intentions, especially if the group appears to have already made some progress into these “deeper” or “higher” things of God?

Have you ever noticed how often such liaisons fall apart? And how often somebody (or a few bodies) ends up disappointed, offended or hurt? Or, if they manage to stick it out, how often the group tends to become so insular and elitist that you end up feeling more comfortable around the shallow folks from the little traditional church around the corner?

Paul’s words to the Romans come to mind: The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

Why?

1. Romans 7: The Efforts of the Flesh

Firstly, Paul’s apt words above come from Romans 7 – the chapter that is famous for teaching us that any religious intentions are doomed if they depend on the abilities of the flesh. Whilst the law does a great job of formulating the spiritual “ideal”, it does not impart the life necessary to live up to that ideal.

Of course we regularly forget this, and so we take God’s “thou shalt” to mean “thou can”. But we are mistaken. As Paul concludes in Romans 7, the desire to do good does not imply any ability to do so.

Similarly, a group’s desire to be the “true church” says absolutely nothing about their ecclesiastical aptitude. Passion is not necessarily an indicator of talent, as television music reality shows regularly reveal. Spiritual passion is even less so, according to Paul. When acted upon, it will only succeed in revealing spiritual incapacity, the aim being to force us to look away from ourselves and to God who is the builder of his own church, thank you.

2. John 4: The Religious Wish Dream

Secondly, human liaisons that aim to fulfill personal needs are doomed to fail. The alarming divorce rate testifies quite clearly to this. When we are attracted to people because they make us happy, we will end up feeling contempt for them when they make us unhappy. That is, unfortunately, the tail end of the deal.

Of course the same goes for people who make us feel spiritual…

No chapter in the Bible illustrates this quite like John 4. Jesus uses the water at the bottom of the well as a metaphor for the serial marriages of the Samaritan woman. “Drink of this, and you will thirst again”, he says. In essence: “You keep on drawing from a well, but it does not satisfy. You are looking for me, but you are looking in the wrong places. No husband can fill the emptiness within you or make you whole. You are, in fact, attributing God-like characteristics to fallen human beings when you expect them to do so.”

The answer? “Come and drink from me. That is the only place where you will find life and satisfaction.”

The same goes for church life. When our personal needs manifest as an ecclesiastical “wish dream”, as Bonhoeffer called it, we are heading for disaster.

Wayne Jacobsen has done a wonderful job of addressing this very thing in his article Why House Church isn’t the Answer (you have to read it) so I will not elaborate any further.

3. 1 Timothy 3: Conceit

Finally, and most importantly, the single thing that is most deadening to a group of believers is the sincere conviction that they have discovered something that others are still looking for. The problem with this type of thinking is more than the sheer arrogance that underlies it. It is the insinuation that God reserves his fullness, and the glory thereof, for a select group of believers who have discovered the secrets to access it.

Here too, Bonhoeffer, is worth quoting. (keep in mind that monasticism is a mindset rather than a movement.)

Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard—a maximum and a minimum standard of Christian obedience. Whenever the Church was accused of being too secularized, it could always point to monasticism as an opportunity of living a higher life within the fold, and thus justify the other possibility of a lower standard of life for others. …By and large, the fatal error of monasticism lay not so much in its rigorism as in the extent to which it departed from genuine Christianity by setting up itself as the individual achievement of a select few, and so claiming a special merit of its own.

And then, of course, there are the wise words of T. Austin Sparks:

We must beware of thinking in terms of advanced or special doctrines. Scriptural teaching is not departmental or sectional. We may hear of ‘higher truth’ or ‘advanced teaching’, as though there were something special reserved for the few. So there arises the idea of ‘higher life’ with ‘higher teaching’, as opposed to being a simple believer, content with ‘the simple gospel’. I want very emphatically to contradict any such notion. Wherever you look in the New Testament you will never find any support for this idea… Nobody should make a special kind of ‘Overcomer’ teaching, for this is what God intended Calvary to mean for every believer. God had spiritual victory as His thought when He first forgave us our sins, and in His mind this is to be the normal development of every Christian’s life.

Years ago I posted a cartoon that generated more interest on this blog than anything else I’d ever posted, probably because it was truer than anything else here. It was drawn by Saji George and beautifully captures the mindset referred to above.

The Way of Deliverance

There is a remarkably simple way out of this trap, and it is to be found in the realization that less is always more in God’s kingdom.

Paul solves the riddle of Romans 7 by stating that the Spirit does what the law cannot do. Similarly, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that there are no longer earthly pockets of God’s presence, and that worship will now be in “spirit and truth”.

True worship is now accessible without a pilgrimage, without ever having to ask “where”? We no longer need to look for the house of God. The house of God has come to us. Jacob’s ladder has replaced Babel’s tower. Knowledge is no longer the enlightenment of an elite inner circle, but an awakening to love which is accessible to all. The Holy of Holies is no longer an elusive and mystical destiny, but a continuous reality in the heart of the believer. The fire is no longer on the mountain. It has come down to rest on each one of us.

Where can I find a true church? The question is fundamentally flawed. You cannot find what you already are. To leave a group of regenerate believers to find the true church is like leaving your wife and kids to find true humanity. Unless the situation has become so dysfunctional that your personal spiritual health depends on it, or unless you have a sense that the Lord is sending you to become part of a group of believers for the sake of fulfilling your call to service amongst them, you should think twice before packing up.

“I, the one speaking to you — I am he”, said Jesus to the woman at the well. What we are yearning for has been under our noses all along.

The Lord has designed his body to function optimally in its simplest form. Two or three are needed, and there He is. Surely we do not believe that we need more than Him? So then what is all the fuss about? In Him is the fullness of the Godhead, and through Him that fullness dwells in us. His presence is continuously there, and it will not leave or forsake us. When two or three gather, his indwelling presence manifests as an objective bodily presence, and church happens in its most optimal form.

This, and this alone, is what matters.

(PS: Joshua Lawson has recently written an excellent article along these lines, Beware the homogenization of church life, which I highly recommend.)

The Elusive Elephant

Those of you who have visited my About page will recognise the picture on the left. It appears there as a biographical sketch, and that is indeed what it is. Literally and figuratively.

The picture is called Denominational Nightmare, and the man behind the scream is Confucius (A derivative of confusion, nothing to do with the revered Chinese philosopher). I drew it in the mid-nineties, when I needed to express an emotion that could not possibly be conveyed with words.

I use the picture nowadays for teaching purposes. It is an ideal representation of five main streams of Christianity. See if you can spot them:

1. The Intellectuals or Dogmatists. Some would say “the thinkers”.
Some key words: Doctrine, teaching, truth, study, objective.
Some labels: Reformed, Calvinist, Neo-Calvinist.
Some names: Piper, Sproul, Mohler, MacArthur, Schaeffer.
Some books: Anything by the Banner of Truth Trust.

2. The Contemplatives. Some would say “the feelers”.
Some key words: Meditation, solitude, quietude, inward, deeper life, subjective.
Some labels: Mystic, Existentialist, Orthodox, Neo-Orthodox.
Some names: Guyon, Nouwen, Brother Lawrence, St John of the Cross.
Some books: Lawrence’s Practicing the Presence of God, Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.

3. The Conservatives. Some would say “the doers”.
Some key words: Holiness, modesty, KJV, creationism.
Some labels: Independent, fundamentalist.
Some names: David Cloud, John Rice.
Some books: Anything by these authors, Jack Chick tracts and comics, above all the 1611 King James Version.

4. The Socially Conscientious. Some would say “the doers”.
Some key words: Conscience, poverty, hunger, brotherhood, compassion.
Some labels: Social gospel.
Some names: Ron Sider, Mother Theresa, Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo.
Some books: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.

5. The Charismatics. Some would say “the feelers”.
Some key words: Pentecost, Holy Ghost, power, gifts.
Some labels: Charismatic, Pentecostal, Neo-Pentecostal, Third Wave.
Some names: Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Hagin, Benny Hinn, Gordon Fee.

Confucius’ problem is a very simple one: Each time he runs into a representative of one of these streams, he is convinced that he has encountered the truth. But this only lasts until he runs into one of the others. Then, like the sheep in Animal Farm, he is swayed by the new rhetoric.

This leaves him with a problem. What should he do with his former allegiance?

Cognitive dissonance is the term used by psychologists to describe the discomfort a person experiences when trying to hold on to two conflicting beliefs at the same time. It is in fact impossible for the human mind to do so, which explains why you or I cannot serve God and Mammon simultaneously. The heart has the capacity for only one overriding allegiance.

This is Confucius’ problem. In fact, it is worse than that. Confucius is trying to hold on to five conflicting beliefs at once. His problem is more than mere dissonance. Confucius feels cognitively blown apart.

You may wish to interrupt me at this stage and ask: Why do these views need to be presented as conflicting ones? Why can they not be integrated? Why can someone not introduce Confucius to the old Indian legend about the blind men and the elephant?

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a snake!

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain, quoth he;
‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: Even the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!?

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a rope!

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

The version above is John Godfrey Saxe’s, and I share it because of the last stanza. Confucius’ problem is not the elephant. It is the blind men. Understanding the connection between the tusk and the tail is not the difficulty. Any sensible person who has a bit of time for exploration and reflection can connect the two. The difficulty arises when, instead of exploring and reflecting, one tries to connect them through the mediation of the second and sixth man in the poem. In fact this is impossible, for how can a rope and spear be the same thing?

This is the problem. The confusion does not lie in the different dimensions of our faith, but in the insistence of our faith’s commentators that their particular analysis of it is the most important one and the exclusive paradigm or interpretive grid for making sense of all the others. Integrating such claims is impossible, for each excludes the others.

There is clearly only one way out of the predicament. Confucius needs to meet the elephant. A personal and unmediated encounter will reveal the truth. There is no other way.

In the first “Simply Organic” post I pointed out that I wished to say something about the fact that we (or some of us) are not a celebrity cult. I did this to an extent with The Last Revival post, I further elaborated on it here and I will do so in the next post. There we will address the obvious question:

WHERE IS THE ELEPHANT?

The Last Revival

A long time ago, in a world very far from here, two fingers were having a conversation.
“I like you,” said the one.
“I like you too,” said the other.
“You are prettier than that toe over there,” said the first.
“So are you,” said the other.

And so a long and intimate conversation began between the two fingers. They were amazed at how similar they were. They could relate with one another’s frustrations, hurts and dreams. They found it astonishing that they both preferred to touch rather than be touched, and they had many other traits in common. They soon became best friends, and began spending almost all of their free time together, speaking about the things that fingers most like to speak about.

One day a large finger arrived in their part of the world. They heard that he was giving finger talks, and so they attended one of them. They were stunned. The large finger articulated everything they had ever spoken about, only better and with more authority. He spoke so well that many other parts of the body also came to listen to him. The toes, especially, found him very appealing. But he also attracted hands, ears, eyes, noses and so on.
“This is the day of the finger!” he said.
“This is our day!” the fingers answered.
“Now everybody together: This is the day of the finger!” he shouted.
“This is the day of the finger!” everybody shouted, even those body parts who were least like fingers.

These events came to be known as the Finger Revival. The entire countryside was transformed by the understanding of how remarkable the fingers were. One would think that the other body parts would have been offended, or felt inferior, but in fact they did not. The large finger had taught well, and he had convinced all the body parts that it was quite possible for all of them to do finger things. Of course they would never be as good as the fingers, but the honour of being allowed to do what the fingers did was more than enough.

Many decades later, when community halls with finger signs on their roofs were found all over the countryside, two toes were sitting on a park bench.
“I like you,” said the one.
“I like you too,” said the other.

You guessed it. The whole process repeated itself. There was one difference, though. During the ensuing Toe Revival there was fierce resistance from the fingers. Some of them joined the revival and started doing toe things, which was not too difficult as toes and fingers are very similar, but mostly the fingers were outraged.
“Who do these toes think they are?” the leading fingers asked. “We need to warn the body parts against them. They are destroying all our work.”

This led to a very sad state of affairs in the country. Toes and fingers were fighting like never before, and not a few of the finger community halls were divided. Eventually the toes erected their own halls with toe signs on their roofs, and the body parts could decide for themselves which halls they would attend.

This went on for a while, but then the Ear Revival broke out. And after that two kidneys happened to run into one another and experienced an affinity that led to a very unusual revival.

So it went on for centuries, until each part of the body had had its own revival. You would drive into a small town and find twenty or thirty different community halls scattered all over, each with different body parts constructed on their roofs. It was truly an amazing sight.

One day, towards the end of the age of that world, it so happened that an eye and a tongue sat down next to one another.
“I don’t like you,” said the eye.
“I don’t like you either,” said the tongue.
They were quiet for a while.
“What is it that you do?” asked the eye.
“I lick ice cream,” replied the tongue.
“I have always wanted to lick ice cream,” said the eye.
“You can, but unfortunately you have to be connected to me,” said the tongue.
Again they were quiet.
“So what do you do?” asked the tongue
“I look at sunsets,” replied the eye.
“Wow,” said the tongue, “I have always wanted to do that.”
“You can, but unfortunately you have to be connected to me,” said the eye.
They were quiet yet again.
“Perhaps we should think of connecting,” said the tongue.
“Perhaps we should,” replied the eye.

And so the two of them connected, and they ended up spending many happy and interesting hours together, licking ice cream and looking at sunsets.

One day, while they were doing so, a solitary ear came past.
“Who are you and what are you doing?” asked the ear.
“There is no name for us,” replied the strange connection, “but we don’t mind because we’re having fun. We are licking ice cream and looking at the sunset.”
“Gosh, that does sound like fun. I’ve always wanted to do both those things,” said the ear.
“You can, but unfortunately you have to be connected to us,” said the connection.
For a while no one said anything.
“So what do you do?” asked the connection.
“I’m listening to Beethoven’s Fifth,” replied the ear.
“Oh wow…” said the connection.

I’m sure you know what happened next.

And so the last revival broke out. It was unlike any revival that had preceded it. It had no name, because the bigger the connection became, the more difficult it was to give it a name. And so it came to be known as The Anonymous Revival or The Revival of the Body. There were no strong body parts leading it. It did not exclude all of the other revivals, as every single one of the previous ones did, but included all of them. For the first time it was believed that all the other revivals were necessary, but only in preparation for the Anonymous Revival. It was truly something phenomenal.

That world is no more, in case you wondered. The final result of the last revival was something so amazing that the old world could not contain it. The Body, once mature and free from focusing on its parts, was taken to a world as glorious, whole and complete as itself.

We believe some sort of a marriage took place there, but it is said that the occasion was so wonderful that words cannot describe it. So I’m not even going to try. Besides, this story is for those in other worlds that may need to hear it, and that is why I wanted to share it with you.

(This post is the seventeenth link in a chain blog, started by Alan Knox, on the topic ‘One Another’. Please have a look back through the other links and comments to join in the topic. You can even join in the chain – read the rules below to participate.)

Links in the ‘One Another’ Chain Blog
1. Chain Blog: One Another – Alan Knox
2. Linking One Another – Swanny
3. What Does It Mean to Love One Another? – Chuck McKnight
4. The treasure of ‘One Another’ – Jim Puntney
5. This is how the world shall recognise you… – Kathleen Ward
6. Accepting one another in love – Chris Jefferies
7. One Another-ing: A meta-narrative for the church – Greg Gamble (also see part 2)
8. Individualism and ‘one another’ – Pieter Pretorious
9. All Alone with One Another – Jeremy Myers
10. When it’s OK for Christians to compete – Joshua Lawson
11. Jesus Christ: the Corner Stone for One Another – Peter
12. Be Superficial With One Another – Jon Hutton
13. The Unmentionable One Anothers – Alan Knox
14. Loving more fully and widely – Chris Jefferies
15. The one another weapon – Dan Allen
16a. Corporate one anothering (Part 1) – David Bolton
16b. Corporate UN-Anothering (Part 2) – David Bolton
17. The Last Revival – Tobie van der Westhuizen
18. Love: A ‘One Another’ Comic – Dan Allen
Who will write the next link post in the chain?

Chain Blog Rules

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One Bread Many pieces: A Question and Response

Some time ago our brother Dylan down in Cape Town (I know, he is a blessed man) commented on the One Bread Many Pieces post. Dylan asked an important question which prompted quite a lengthy response from me.

The issue is close to my heart, and so I post my response here for those who may have missed it. I quote from Dylan’s comment:

“Once moving out of institutional church there is a level of haziness with regards to oneness. Especially because there are so many different groups meeting outside the institutional church, but all in different ways. Before, in the institution, there is oneness in a way of doing church. But now, outside, there are also different ways – they just don’t have a brand name and bank account attached to them. Our desire is not to be fixated on a way but on Christ alone, and to have unity in Him with every believer. But is this realistic? And is it biblical? I do not know. Up until now, it is the one area of theology that we are all struggling with. I would very much appreciate your thoughts on this.”

Here follows a part of my response:

As far as the New Testament view on church unity is concerned: Paul links the unity of the body with the “knowledge of the Son” in Ephesians 4: “…so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

There are a few things to notice here. Firstly, the “building up of the body” is a process during which the church has not yet attained to the “unity in the faith”. This work of “building up”, together with the temporary offices necessary for it (as described in the previous verses) will continue “until” this goal has been reached.

By implication, the church being “built up” is marked by two primary characteristics that necessitates the work of “building up”, and without which spiritual maturity according to the “whole measure of the fullness of Christ” has not yet been reached: Disunity and an insufficient knowledge of the Son of God.

At the heart of all ministry we find these two ultimate aims, and the link between them makes perfect sense once you begin to think about it. The well known division in the Corinthian church (“I follow Paul”, “I follow Cephas”, etc.) was due to the Corinthians being “infants in Christ” (1 Cor 3:1). Paul says they were “being merely human” (v4) by following men.

It would appear that spiritual immaturity manifests itself in one primary way, namely division.

Why? Because people who are spiritually immature need “milk, not solid food” (v2). The difference between the two is that the one is a predigested form of the other, that is, it necessitates some spiritual mediator who can digest the food on behalf of the immature recipient. And so immature Christians are dependent on following some or other person for their spiritual well being as they cannot feed on Christ himself.

In the words of the Hebrews author, “everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness” (6:13) and in need of “someone to teach you again” rather than being “teachers” themselves (6:12).

The problem is that this inherent need of someone “to teach me” malfunctions when it comes to identifying a teacher, for the Adamic nature (whose mindset pretty much still dominates the infant in Christ) favours one who reflects his/her own sentiments. And so choosing a teacher becomes like choosing a rock star. The musical tastes in my house serve as a metaphor, ranging from Opera to Rap to Kurt Darren to Dan Patlansky to Flogging Molly to Pink Floyd to Teletubbies (amongst our nine kids there is a 3 year old). Furthermore, the younger the kids the harder to predict what they will get into next month (We had a High School Musical wave some time ago but it was replaced with the music from the Twilight Saga which is now also becoming old news).

All of this is strangely reminiscent of the statement Paul makes to the Ephesians to further clarify the “mature manhood” characterised by the “unity of the faith” and “the knowledge of the Son of God”: “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ…” (4:14-15).

What this means is that disunity has a purpose. It reveals the degree to which people has not come into a direct, unmediated knowledge of the Son of God, which happens to be the essence of spiritual maturity. This may very well be what Paul had in mind with his later statement to the Corinthians: “… for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine may be recognised” (11:19). Ouch.

The link between spiritual maturity and knowing Chris is confirmed in Philippians 3. Here we read that Paul has counted his Pharisaical past as “dung” for the sake of one pursuit only: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain to the resurrection from the dead…” (v10). This knowledge of Christ, culminating in the resurrection, is revealed in the next verses as the goal behind Paul’s “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (v13), and his striking, conditional conclusion: “Let all of us who are mature think this way…” (v15).

The bottom line? Mature people understand that the ultimate goal is to know Christ and to forsake the teachings and traditions of men as ends in and of themselves. They are the ones who “glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (v3). They understand that Christ is not divided (1 Cor 1:13) and that he alone is the source of our life in Christ Jesus (2:30). They have learned to feed on Jesus Christ, and they derive their life from him alone.

There are several practical implications to the above:

Firstly, unity amongst the brothers and sisters is a quality of their unity with Christ. Without the latter they cannot have the former. Unity is a flower, never a root. It reveals the true nature of what is within.

Secondly, division is the inevitable manifestation where the ego still dominates. The pursuit of self is always at the expense of relationships. Genesis 11 teaches us that our vision, our name, our building, our ability to build bricks, even our oneness… will result in one thing only: A God ordained division.

Thirdly, the growth of the church in this world is a growth from infancy to maturity, from division in the faith to unity, from following men to knowing Christ, from denominating ourselves from other believers to “receiving one another as Christ also received us” (Rom. 15:7) and from using names of people as a badge to distinguish ourselves from other believers to simply being the church in any given locality.

Fourthly, the “unity of the faith” is not an idealistic dream. It is a very definite destination and we will get there, according to Paul. The question is not “if” but “when”. It is interesting to note that Jesus also refers to this in his prayer that refers to both “knowing Christ” (John 17:3) and the unity of the church: “…I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Lastly, none of this detracts from our responsibility to make every effort to be one in a practical and visible manner in the here and now. This is clear from Paul’s rebuke to the Corinthians as well as his statement in Ephesians 4: 3-6: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” The oneness of the body is the logical and inescapable conclusion of the unity that exists in the Godhead.

And so, while we are awaiting the maturity of the body and the answer to Christ’s prayer, we are obligated to express unity as far as is possible. This means that churches who agree with the basic thesis as set out above are under an obligation to function as one body, even though they may meet in different localities.

One way to do this, I believe, is to adopt the naming convention I referred to in The Glorious Church post a few weeks ago. Another is to meet & eat together if and where possible. Another is to minister at one another’s fellowships. And so I can go on.

There is so much more to be said than this, and I have already been too longwinded. But let me close with a last observation. I am not sure I agree with any prescription as to how a church must be “planted”. No matter how much a group of brothers and sisters love the Lord and wish to express their unity with other churches, the moment that their “church” can only be officially established though the intervention of a certain “church planter” or “apostle” the human element enters into it and the subtlety of the “I follow…” attitude resurfaces. I am seeing this amongst Godly people who will shout “Amen” to everything written above. They heartily agree, but they differ on who is an actual church planter who is qualified to officially “plant” churches. And it is causing the same old division under a different guise.

One Bread, Many Pieces

The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 1 Corinthians 10:16 – 17

Over the past two decades the subject of Christian unity has become a big issue in our country. With the dawn of the new South Africa many churches and denominations were forced, for the first time, to review their beliefs and confessions in this regard, leading to fierce debates in the media and elsewhere.

According to the apostle Paul, the basis of Christian unity has nothing to do with cultural similarities, an allegiance to the same creed or the desire for similar worship styles or liturgies.

Unity is not uniformity, in other words.

The basis of our unity is to be found in one place only, namely our participation in Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that Paul rebuked the Corinthians, earlier on in the very same letter, for their schisms and sectarian tendencies by asking one simple question: “Is Christ divided?” (1:13)

In chapter 11 Paul expands on this theme by referring to the fact that Christ broke the one bread and distributed the pieces amongst his followers, saying “this is my body”. He took our brokenness and disunity on him and in its place provided us with his unity and wholeness.

The implication of this divine transaction is quite clear: We each possess a portion of Christ, and unless we unite as believers and express our spiritual unity visibly, his image will remain invisible. In our unity he will be made manifest.

As John Michael Talbot reminds us in one of his songs: “Christ has no body here but yours.”