Maybe one of the biggest paradigm changes to consider would be as I try to describe below…
In our evangelical world there are some paradigms that are shifting such as a very helpful and necessary move away from this world is dispensable and salvation is a ticket to heaven with some kind of eternal celestial spiritual life at death / parousia to that of thinking of the fulfilment of the Genesis story being that of a ‘new heaven and new earth’, the restoration of creation. The former view is very Hellenistic (influenced by Greek philosophy) and lends itself to language such as ‘saving souls’, or ‘soul winning’.
If we push the shift even further to where the ekklesia, those in Christ through a conscious response to the Jesus of history, are more to be the redeeming community rather than the redeemed community where might that take us? Or to make that clearer rather than the task of the ‘church’ to be that of ‘saving souls’ but to work in the direction of the redemption / rebirth of the world. If that be the only emphasis we could well lose the wonderful aspect of how it is within community that we find healing for our ‘souls’, but without the shift of emphasis that I propose I think we will continue to move far away from the call of Abraham – the father of faith for us all – and thus the call for the nations of the earth to be blessed.
I consider that there is a major shift taking place and where the soil will settle after this shaking of all things is hard to see with all the current dust and debris. We cannot simply carry on as is and if we take the disciples’ prayer seriously then our eyes have to shift to the here and now so that it moves toward the there and then.
I am deeply grateful for the path I have come along. Yesterday a person brought me an article I wrote some 35+ years ago. I cringe when I read it – how to shape Christian community. Ever so clear but filled with a world view of opposition to the world with a drive of our task being to get ‘them’ in ‘here’! I am grateful for the path but the landscape changes as one travels. What one saw then is not what one sees later on the path, and the future will open new horizons and the future will give us sight beyond belief.
Ekklesia is being taught to embrace the world and be embedded in the world; we are being encouraged to stop trying (emphasis on trying) to save souls and be a witness (so what is different in my household to next door?) so that people see / hear Jesus and can respond. As they do the redeeming community can recognise and support their creational context and gifting.
A mess partly results. But maybe if my Hebrew was better (existed at all!) we might then consider something akin to the opening words of Scripture – when God (the redeeming community) began to create (participate in the work of the values of heaven being expressed on the earth) the whole thing was chaotic, without any real shape or content.
The above is not a theoretical paradigm shift but one that is being forced upon us (in the Western world). Christendom is over and I meet many people who quote to me how intellectuals are expressing how the Western world has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values and then hold forth hope for a return to that context. (I think I might adjust the viewpoint to ‘some Judeo-Christian values’ while ignoring others.) Regardless the challenge of faith is to be shaped by the future not by the past, and the next couple of decades will be the context for the transference of those of faith into the ‘field’ which is the world so that wheat and weeds can grow together for harvest.
Another great perspective, I like the buzz feeling flowing from the wet ink of your well – it’s life giving..
Yes perhaps leaving behind old ways of operating to embracing new ways of relating..
I was thinking about some of this yesterday. I think we have a number of issues going on.
1. THEN and GONE – we are all stuck with legacies. Legacy cultural approaches, social norms, institutions, even infrastructure, assumptions about how things should be based on how they have been. At this point, these legacies and our adherence to them causes problems because our context has changed.
2. HERE and NOW – is, without us truly understanding or comprehending, a massive change from what we were used to. And it will keep changing. If we get our emissions down to net zero by 2030, we may limit the chaos to only about 50 years. If we fail to do that. . . well, anyone’s guess. So HERE and NOW is radically different and the legacies from social norms to sanitary pipe sizes do not work but we cling onto the legacies because we feel safer with them.
3. THERE and THEN – difficult to even imagine what it will be. We can certainly imagine what we would like it to be. But finding co workers in regeneration of the planet is difficult as so many hold onto the legacies. So many refuse to even grapple with the HERE and NOW. And many of those folks imagine the THERE and THEN to be exactly what was the THEN and GONE. And there is no chance of that happening at this point.
A story to illustrate. I building a new home, it is to a higher standard than code, that is, to passive house standard. The lot we are moving to however, is more vulnerable to overland flooding than the one we are leaving (also with an almost passive house we built). I was present when it came to doing the plot plan, where surveyors come and lay out the house and determine the ground floor elevation. I explained my concerns about overland flooding and cited numbers from floods in Toronto from just the week prior. I named amounts of rain. And they tut-tutted at me (the old guys) and told me that ‘if that happens we are all in trouble’. True, but why build a new house according to a reality that no longer exists? They were building to the THEN and GONE. I wanted to build to at least the HERE and NOW. And if possible, as far as I could imagine for the THERE and THEN. But no one would allow it. Even when I took the numbers to the contractor he still put the elevation of the house at 2″ too low for a 1 in 100 year storm, which now come more frequently than every 20 years. I will have to remediate the landscape to deal with their incapacities to imagine even what is happening today and last week, and will happen tomorrow. It is intensely frustrating for me and leaves me feeling very anxious about this move. And it did not need to be this way. I will spend an extra $30K to remediate the landscape with bioswales, dry wells, and rain gardens when they could have just elevated the house by 2″.
So living in the HERE and NOW is not easy with the refusal by so many to deal with the rigidity of legacy institutions, infrastructure, social norms, and cultural expectations. And it is every more difficult to live in the THEN and THERE. Would be nice if we all had a community we could connect with. . . you know, one that lived up to the claims to be seeking the kingdom. Just saying.
Is it possible to have a real paradigm shift without re-imagining our future?
The reason I ask is because a lot of our current model is informed by things that are not exactly Christ-like…for instance the entire book of Revelation…it is about “The wrath of God” while the beatitudes stand in stark contrast to its mapping of what the future looks like.
Not once does it mention the Love of God.
Not once does it offer forgiveness.
And then it ends with a rather materialistic perspective with gold and jewels and endless eating.
In it there is a lot of violence done by the most non-violent man in the entire New testament.
You have to bend the perspective to make it non-violent…you have to squint…and this is informing a LOT of the current model used by the church at large and everyone just kind of shrugs and squints and says “Oh its not about that”…but that is the illusion of “meaning” we apply when we don’t want to face hard truth.
It basically informs the entire model of the world burning and being destroyed and in the middle of it you have God seeming to be ok with torturing people for months at a time.
THIS is the playbook being promoted by the most influential of christian voices…or at least the loudest of voices.
If I were an unbeliever…I’m not sure I would trust a movement who included this kind of rhetoric and called it “love”…and I can see why Gen-Z wants no part of the christian future.
Of course this kind of talk is borderline heresy…right up to the edge of it…
But I’m kinda tired of squinting.
OK, Mark… a squinter over here!!! I love your borderline(?) heresy. Canonical (or maybe cannonical!!) questions as not a few in history have excluded Revelation. And for me at the heart is ‘lamb’ or ‘lion’ as the paradigm… I suspect in communicating the love of God – the God of love – we probably should not include Revelation in that, unless the apocalyptic genre is embraced. I think (and could of course be way wrong here) that I only squint because my eye-sight is suspect when it comes to strange literature. Please don’t vote to remove Revelation from the canon – I still think it is the best critique around of imperial power structures!!
And keep the comment coming… will help us all, at least in our own heads, distance ourselves from heresy.