Perspectives

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.

My background is rooted in Jesus needing to be my ‘personal Saviour’, but over the years I have come to believe that we have obliterated the bigger picture by insisting on this aspect being central and the entirety of the offer of hope. Scripture is full of encounters with God at a personal level, and the author who shaped so much of the NT (Saul / Paul) testifies to the shift in his understanding that took place through a personal encounter where the person spoke to him audibly in his own language. He expected that there would be something similar for others who became part of that early Jesus-movement. In one of his dense passages he says how can they believe unless they have personally heard Jesus (Ro. 10:14 translating it as per the convention that the verb to hear takes the ‘genitive’ case when it is personal – hence not to hear ‘about’ but to ‘hear Jesus’).

Personal encounters. Ever so present in Scripture. Questions such as ‘was Paul saved before his encounter on the road to Damascus?’ are at one level not for us to answer, but the NT is clear that the ‘salvation’ that comes through the cross was first for Jews and it was to a Jewish audience that the words ‘there is salvation in no other name’ were addressed. I think part of the confusion arises as ‘salvation’ has been reduced to ‘safe as I have my free pass to heaven’.

Salvation is essentially about a corporate experience resulting in a purpose.

We see that in the Israel story. A people chosen so that the whole of humanity can be redeemed, with redemption carrying the weight of delivered from slavery. This is why at the heart of ekklesia is that of movement – a movement carrying the conviction that it is part of something wider but with the desire / mandate to see the wider context changed through embracing the values, beliefs and practices of the movement. MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ is such a summary statement of the heart of a movement. Or in some of the most challenging words in Revelation after all John saw we read that he saw a new heaven and a new earth.

Personal encounters are present, but the wider context must not be lost. Paul’s message was not understood as a private call to acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and then to express it in a privatised religious setting; it was understood as a universal claim that the crucified Jew was none other than Lord and Saviour and thus a challenge to all other rival powers, and very specifically to the one whose empire promised peace, security and prosperity.

Into that comes the personal encounter of being delivered from the powers of this age to being transferred into the realm of Jesus’ rule over all hostile powers.

The marginalisation of all other powers… imagine if that marginalisation became ever more visible and real… the kingdoms (realms of rule) of this world would indeed ‘become’ the kingdom of our Lord and God. A world shaped by those rulers becoming a world shaped by the cross. That is transformation.

The western world is cracking; the hegemony is being weakened; the façades are no longer able to hide what is being exposed – for those who have eyes to see. There is of course a strong ‘we have to get back’ to where we were – whether expressed politically (MAGA and the like) or through a historical lens of how Christian faith has shaped the West… but there is always another path that beckons, one that says you have not been this way before, a vision shaped by the future… another ‘I have a dream’ scenario.

Yes the challenges are enormous, but I do not believe that to ‘offer the ticket to a better destination’ at a personal level is either sufficient for the moment nor in line with a NT vision. My paradigm has shifted; deeply grateful for every personal encounter that says the Gospel is not simply about a set of beliefs of values; but also grateful that we have hope for this life and this world.

Paradigms – the lenses that we wear to view the world, see people, read Scripture – are so important and shape our lives enormously. Often we are given lenses to wear (from our traditions, family, and sometimes our experiences) that determine our sight, and the longer we wear them the stronger becomes our reality. It is compounded when we have a conviction that the Scriptures themselves have given us the lenses, thus leading to an inability to read Scripture differently. Once we are encouraged or provoked to change the lenses, or at least question the prescription, different worlds open up – one of those of course can be that of losing any sense of faith that there is a ‘god’, but more often one of questions that mean we have to move from old convictions though not knowing what any new convictions might consist of. A ‘I can’t go back, but have no idea how to go forward’ kind of experience – disturbing, unsettling but open to a growth in our faith.

I often think (wrongly) that I have not changed at all, but I do realise I have. In the same way that I think I am still around 26 years old – until I look in the mirror, or exert myself too much! Years ago I had a call with an invitation to be part of a cross-generational gathering and the one inviting me said ‘and we will be the older generation’. That was a good wake up call for me as we need to act our age. No longer running with individuality on steroids, but being a resource to those who are running so that they can run with a spiritual energy that I did not have at their age. All goes to say I have changed, and probably enormously. I know less now than I did a while back, though my knowledge then was very narrow – truth was contained in the ‘four spiritual laws’ (or something similar)!

So over the next few days I will try and reflect – not my strong point – on where paradigms have changed for me, and what I think that has resulted in. Beliefs and practice go hand in hand, or at least should. So many Pauline letters follow the pattern of ‘God, Jesus, the Spirit, the gospel etc’ and then a word such as ‘therefore’… therefore here are the implications of the beliefs for ethics and lifestyle.