The Diminishing of the Divine

Chapter 1 PROPOSITIONS & PROBLEMS “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” - Paul, I Corinthians 1:28 Propositions The Church is people. All kinds of people. The Church is people who believe in the illogical, unreasonable, non-stoppable grace of God in the form of Jesus (John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8, Acts 15:11). People who are created in the image of God with unique wirings and unique life experiences that make each person a magnificent, one-off; impossible to replicate. The Church is believing people with gifts (Romans 12:5-7, I Corinthians 12). Each person is perfectly embedded with a special thing (or things) given to them by Jesus (Ephesians 4:7-12). These special, spiritually energized abilities are necessary to promote a healthy Ecclesia, the Church of God. Each person with their gift(s) is absolutely essential (redundancy intended) to the whole. Each and every person makes the whole, indeed whole. There is this mutual obligation that each person is to share or teach or demonstrate their giftedness with other believers. When that person is missing or that person is not encouraged to share their special giftedness from the gathering, then the gathering of believers is less for it. The Church is believing people with gifts who are indwelt by The Divine (John 17, Romans 8:10,11, I Corinthians 1:30, II Corinthians 13:15). People who are at the same time profoundly broken are also mystically indwelt by The God of All Creation. A holy, just, loving God abiding in broken, reliably sinful humans. The Ecclesia is Jesus manifested to a broken world through broken people. Symbolically and in Reality. The Bride of Christ is a living, divinely indwelt mystical thing composed of everyday holy knuckleheads. The Church is believing people with gifts who are indwelt by The Divine who are on equal footing with each other in position, stature, authority, righteousness, worth and essence (Colossians 3:11). There are no rulers or those who are ruled (Matthew 23:7-9). No leaders or those who are led. It is a spiritual body of people that is egalitarian in its very core. The Church is simple. So incredibly simple. The early Church’s simplicity and leanness of organization made it a freak outlier in a world entrenched in strict Roman governance and rigid Jewish tradition. The church gatherings were simple (II Corinthians 14:26-33). The church mission was simple. The church structure was simple; structure so simple almost to the point of non-existent. Parenthetically, the only resemblance of ongoing, hierarchical order that could be found in the church came in the roles of elders and deacons. One was always intended to be more of an older God fearing, seasoned, wise mentor and the other a facilitator providing service to needy believers. The Church exists to love (Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37 and so many others. Over the years, I read the Old Testament, the Gospels, Epistles, New Testament letters and yes, even the book of Revelations and am convinced the resounding message is love.) It always starts with love. To love The Father and love others. We were made for loving intimacy with The God Who So Loved The World. Love that compels. Love that moves broken people to share his love with a hurting world. Love that compels us to love other broken brothers and sisters in the Church. Loving God and allowing ourselves to be loved by God is where everything else gets it’s origins. It’s a love that can look a bazillion different ways. Love that serves. Love teaches. Listens. Calls out. Bears with. Confesses. Confronts. Abides. Sings. Reaches out. Waits. Steps into. Submits. Refuses. Feeds. Fasts. Feasts. Holds tight. It let’s go. It extends. (I Corinthians 13 is a good place to start.) All this and so much more can all be loving God. So, there it is, at least as I see it, the amazing Church of God. This radical, new thing is nothing short of unprecedented and indeed mystical. What the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit ushered in has no religious equivalent in the history of mankind. The Church is indeed a brand new, wonderful thing. P roblems As magnificent and beloved as the Church of God is, she is far from perfect (Revelations 2-3 for a few examples). Even though She is destined for indescribable greatness, She is currently unfinished and fallible. She is prone to atrophy. She is susceptible to lies. She is vulnerable to attacks. From the very moment Jesus willingly let go of His last breath to when you just read this last printed word, the Church has been under attack. I believe the attack takes myriad of forms. I believe The Attack is on individual believers. And I believe The Attack is on the corporate Body of Believers. The Attack takes the form of physical persecution. And I believe The Attack is also in the form of subtle lies and counterfeits. From within and from without the enemy of God has used insidious tactics to snuff out God’s original design, intent and power. So, it is this internal attack of lies and counterfeits on the Body of Christ, The Church that I speak of. I’m proposing, that as a result of buying into these lies and counterfeits The Bride of Christ has been diminished and gotten lost in the weeds. The Bride of Jesus, The Church, has become a latent mechanism of what she originally was. Early on the assault and deceptions started. Paul preached the gospel. Paul planted a Church. Paul defended ag ainst external ideas and forces which destroy, distract or diminish. Think of the false teaching that infiltrated the Corinth, Galatia and Colossae churches. Even many of the supposed leaders in the young Jerusalem church participated in propagating a counterfeit message. And there is Jesus himself calling out the beleaguered churches in the book of Revelations to rid themselves of lies, idolatry, false teaching and lack of intimacy with Jesus. And so it goes today. God With Man The event of Jesus’ crucifixion and death contained numerous events. There were Roman soldiers throwing dice for Jesus’ clothes. There was an esteemed Roman officer and a condemned Jewish robber who confessed their faith in God. There were people raised from the dead. There were earthquakes. The sky went black in the middle of the day. But of all the events taking place, the most fascinating, I think, was the one of the massively thick, profoundly important veil in the Jewish temple being split right down the middle. (However, when you visualize it, it’s quite something to think about ex-dead people walking around town.) The curtain being torn in two was such a powerful act of God. It’s impossible to overstate its meaning and impact. The symbolism is mind numbing. Jesus’ death and then resurrection made us righteous beings before a holy God, but the divinely severed curtain signifies the beginning of a new, unprecedented presence of God that ushered in the end of a human mediator between the Creator and His created. God now encounters man like never before. The necessary temple curtain, designed to create a level of separation from an Almighty Holy God from sinful man, was effectively obliterated. Yet over the ensuing years and decades and millennia, man finds all kinds of ways to slowly weave the curtain back together. Incredulously he devises ways to willingly distance himself from His God. I propose The Sovereign Indwelling God has been insidiously and systematically compartmentalized out of our day-to-day life. For the very early church what was once a breathtakingly wild, day-to-day dependence on the Indwelling God Who Can Do More Than We Can Ask Or Imagine has turned into a predictable, programmable, executable, quantifiable, transactional event. So it began. And so it continues.