PERCEIVING GOD

Perceiving God

I see a young man standing in the sun at a bus stop. He stands with a backpack slung over one shoulder. He has a pleasant face and he looks purposeful. He is of university age. He is travelling locally so he may attend a technical college. He is living in the moment. His mind may be on what lies ahead in his day, an assignment, a project, a person with whom he will spend some time. I surmise that he is not thinking, "How did I get into this world?" "Why am I here?" Big picture thinking for this fellow as the bus moves toward him, is probably concerned with nothing more extensive than what he will do after graduation? 

Yet, seated in my car, I pass him and my eyes are multi-tasking, observing the road ahead, vehicles attempting to merge, the speed I am travelling, the time on my car clock, and the blue sky that expands forever. I am projecting my thoughts into the frontiers of space and to the metaphysical reaches of origins. I am a man with a faith but fleetingly I seek to consider how a person without faith can imagine the genesis of all things.

I think of the other 7.125 billion humans on this planet, 2.1 billion of whom are overweight like me. Still we expect to live 70 years on average, and that's that. We will be gone. Others will take our place just as they presently are doing at a rate of 1.2% annually, which is why only twenty years ago we were 6.5 billion people. Forty years ago there were only 3.999 billion people on earth, and while we have almost doubled the world population, we still depend completely and solely upon this biosphere and minerals of this sphere. I marvel at my earth home being one of the four terrestrial planets in our Solar System, yet it is the densest planet and the third from the Sun, and earth is the only planet that is known to accommodate life. Mercury, Venus and Mars have not supported life. But why here on this earth and since when were we here, and who or what started this?

This is what my mind is doing as I drive to my gym to keep this body healthy for a few more years.

OPINION ABOUT OLD TESTAMENT (1st of several)

I grant you that this is not a topic the non-follower of Jesus could care anything about, since the authority of the entire Bible is rejected. To the believer however, this is germane. 

It will be a tragedy if Christians dismiss the Old Testament.  

The easy conclusion is that the Old Testament, suffused in Mosaic Law was written for a Jewish population. It's irrelevant to us today. That's faulty thinking.

DUBIOUS ABOUT MIRACLES

We are so comfortable with the mundane, that we do not anticipate anything supernatural. We are theoreticians, academics. We state a belief in the phenomenal God for whom nothing is impossible, but we expect nothing beyond the routine as the consequence of our prayers. We believe He can, but we don't believe he will. Ours is a virtual reality. It's a pretense to trust. We ask for so little. We petition using banalities, truisms and clichés because we lack confidence in God, to ask boldly. "We" means all whose faith identity is Christian, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox branches, whether denominational, undenominational, non denominational. We are a jaded bunch of professors, who make excuses for God. We are doctrinally dogmatic and practically agnostic.

Admittedly, I am overstating my case, painting this portrait with a broad brush. The subject is a Bride, whom I could paint precisely like DaVinci painted Mona Lisa, but my work here looks like an abnormally featured Picasso. We determine not to be identified with wing-nuts who charm snakes, and fake healings so we treat the miraculous as unscientific and irrational. Trying to insure that we are perceived as sane, we have placed ourselves in straight-jackets. Of course we should acknowledge our doubts or inability to understand everything about God, but surely we do not have to be cynical, contemptuous, disparaging, and suspicious of a God who can do very much more than all that we ask or even imagine.

A BLEAK SCENARIO - NO CHURCHES ALLOWED

If all church buildings in Canada were banned, burned down, confiscated or taxed into closure, would we refer to our movement as a churchless Christianity? My own answer is a resounding "No!"

In that bleak hypothetical scenario, Christians particularly would understand and society and judicial authorities would eventually realize that church is Christ within people; is God-filled Christ followers, unquenchable, destined for glory. Wherever they meet, they are church. Stop them from meeting and they still are the church.

This triumphant outlook is possible because Jesus loves his church, referring to the church in the feminine (her). She, the church, is his bride. He laid his life down for her and he promised to never leave her or forsake her. Not only would he build his church but he would also complete that work which he started. All these promises are fulfilled irrespective of deeded properties and towering edifices. His work with his church nears completion in remote villages, in downtown city cores, high in mountain communities, in the squalor of refugee camps, in the quiet of a student lounge and in the confines of a prison conference room.

Possibly my preferred take-away from these comments is that each reader who follows Jesus, should pledge today to be conscious that he or she represents Jesus and is an integral member of God's ongoing church building mission which may involve your love, words and life touching someone else with eternal results. Someone today may meet Jesus Christ and in that meeting find forgiveness, peace, salvation, life, joy, hope and a new network - Christ's church. In the instant of that surrender and faith, there is undeniable connection with the past and the present and the future of all the believers in Jesus as Son of God.

MAYBE THE TERM 'DE-CHURCHED' IS UNSUITABLE

Today, I have repackaged several insightful points written by respondents to my earlier post. Those points infer that the terms 'de-churched' or 'no longer churched' are unsuitable expressions to apply to a person who has made a difficult decision to no longer attend church. I am unsure what term fits the Christian who no longer attends church, yet loves God, reads the Bible, shares faith with others, hangs our with other believers at occasional events or studies or house parties, displays the fruit of the Spirit and serves other people. Perhaps there is no need for a term, since that Christian is doing everything that God expects of a follower of Christ who is a member of the Church.

Okay, she was a founding member of the church when it met in a school, gave her money, energy and time to help build the church with seating for 300 people, but she became disillusioned by prevailing models of church, and left her church, choosing not to attend a church any more, but she is still an integral member of the Church.

We use the same term 'church' to denote several dissimilar concepts, the local congregation, the people of God worldwide, the institutional church, and the church building. That may lead to unfortunate assumptions about people. Leaving a local congregation is not synonymous with leaving the Church. No longer attending the 10 am Sunday worship service is not synonymous with leaving the Church. Available programs and meetings at specific times on specific days do not define 'Church.’

Church life as we experience it institutionally today has been shaped by paradigms developed since the apostles obeyed Jesus to carry the good news into the world. Church has taken on organization and constitution, bylaws, governance, ritual, schedules, property, programs, departments, technology, specialists and debt. It is possible that those of us who are most heavily invested in and committed to Christian gospel, and service and church, innocently, unknowingly accept what is and continue to interpret church primarily in terms of the building. "Come to church this Sunday," the sign says. "We missed you at church last week," friends say. "The church construction costs will be $18 million dollars," That is the largest church in the city.

I am pleased that my pastors deliberately remind us each Sunday, "good morning church." There is a consciousness that the church has gathered and when we have worshipped God and enjoyed one another, the church leaves the building. Then back to the diligent believer who decides no longer to attend church. Our opinion must be that a member of the Church has left a specific building but continues as a member of the Church, God's Church.

I am still bothered by a couple of things. I appeal for understanding for the person who is done with church. Yet it is clear that church implies community/fellowship, and that is one thing this person is leaving behind. What will this person do for community? The person may claim that 10am on Sunday with 300 people hardly felt like community or family in an intimate sense. Being associated with the church's small group ministry offers a more predictable community experience. One would think that for the values and benefits of the Christian family of God need to occur somehow for the person leaves church. Another matter that bothers me, is the need for a personal plan of how spiritual strength and health and growth is to be nurtured if it is outside the context of the organized church. That must surely have to be considered, otherwise the departure seems selfish and futile.

DO BELIEVERS OUTGROW THEIR NEED FOR CHURCH?

Maybe there are times or intervals at which churches are no longer able to nourish some peoples' faith.

Why say something like that?

We know that people leave church for assorted reasons. Some leave church A to go to church B. That's not the theme of this piece. I know people who have stopped going to a church in a building, anywhere. They are people who have been in church for years and for whom the traditions have been important. Yes we can talk about solidarity and church being a family and small groups being where the growth truly happens. The people I refer to must not be faulted, because their reasons for departure are not chiefly because the preaching or the music or the programs have changed or because of church politics or petty squabbles as well as escalated rows. Those factors may have influenced their choices, but primarily they have a deep longing for more of God or more with God.

Do you think that some believers outgrow their need for church?

ATHEISTS & BELIEVERS CONTEST OVER GOD

Does God really exist? Is there proof? Is there truly a way of knowing? Is there a conclusive argument for God’s existence? Intelligent people are positioned on both sides of these questions. Atheists have become militant within the past one hundred years. Believers have become impassioned evangelists.
Atheists cannot help but to demean believers and to depreciate their beliefs. Disciples cannot help but to love non-believers and to pray for their conversions. Either atheists are correct and believers are irrational, delusional purveyors of wish fulfillment thinking, or Christians have placed their confidence in the supremely logical fact that God is the creator of something as remarkable as an expanding universe into which he has seeded a race of free creatures with whom he chooses to engage because he is love.

DON’T BECOME INDEPENDENT OF YOUR LOCAL CHURCH

If you are a believer, a marketplace Christian, maybe even a leader or a former heavily involved church worker, yet you are today frustrated that your church is not seeming to be visionary, mission driven or apostolic in nature, then why not ask God what he wants you to do, about your church or about yourself?

He may ask you to stick your neck out and open conversation with pastoral staff and church leaders to express your heart to see if there is understanding, shared concerns, a willingness to pray and to seek change. He may choose to lead you elsewhere, that is, to another group of believers, another church. But don’t, please don’t become independent of church or redo your theology to accommodate your cynicism.