I do not remember everything that I have ever heard from the pulpit, but for some reason some stuff just sticks. One statement I heard when I was visiting a church while I was in college sticks in my mind. The preacher with conviction yelled from the pulpit, “the Old Testament is about law and the New Testament is about love!” Even then, as a sophomore in college, something did not sit right within me regarding this statement, but at that moment in life I could not really put my finger on it. Throughout my life the Old Testament was always talked about in reference to “the law,” the “sacrificial system,” or the “old covenant” and how Jesus came and did away with “all of that.” Yet, I always wondered if it was that simple, or if something was being overlooked. I always asked, why is there such a difference between the Old and New Testaments?
My transition of thinking all started in seminary while sitting in an exegesis class focusing on the book of James and 1 Peter. In both books I continued to read about how the Church was a “chosen people” (1 Peter 2:4, 9). Years later it finally came together while I was doing my devotional in the book of Jeremiah.
In the book of Jeremiah, chapter 12, God says, “I said, Obey me and do everything I command you, and you will be my people, and I will be your God…The LORD said to me, Proclaim all these words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: Listen to the terms of this covenant and follow them. From the time I brought your ancestors up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, ‘Obey me…’ They have returned to the sins of their ancestors, who refused to listen to my words. They have followed other gods to serve them. Both the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the covenant I made with their ancestors” (context is from 12:1-17).
What hit me at that moment was that once someone comes to faith in God it has been, is, and always will be about one’s identity being changed. From the time that God brought Israel out of Egypt and they worshiped him, they became “God’s people.” The identity given never had anything to do with what the people did; it was about what God did for his people. The people of Israel were “God’s people” because they where in covenant with God and worshiped him. It was only when they worshiped, followed, and served other gods that the covenant was broken and Israel was no longer God’s people.
In what has been deemed “the church age,” meaning the time post-resurrection, this reality still has not changed; we are God’s people because of what he has done. God acted and we believe and follow him. In that belief our identity changes, we become sons and daughters of God, the people of God. Just as Henri Nouwen so eloquently points out in In the Name of Jesus, just as when Christ was baptized and a voice came from heaven saying, “this is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” The same thing happens when a new believer comes to faith, a voice calls out from heaven, “this is my son or daughter in whom I am well pleased.” While the voice might not be audible as it was in the gospel accounts, this does not change the fact that God sees a person this way once they come to faith. Paul confesses this same reality in a different way when he states in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” The new is here is not to come, but it is here now. That is the beauty of conversion, at the point of the confession of faith people are made new, they take on a new identity.
Looking at Simon’s confession of Christ as the Christ in Matthew 16 one can see that Simon’s confession results not just a spiritual rebirth, but a full identity shift. It is after Simon states “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), that Jesus looks at him and saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter…” (Matthew 16:17-18a). Jesus changes Simon’s name to Peter showing a change in Simon’s identity from who he was before to who he now is. In the Hebraic mindset the name held within it one’s identity. When Jesus changes Simon’s name, he changes Simon’s identity. He is no longer Simon, he is now Peter.
Now this is where reality meets the lie of dualism. In a dualistic understanding our faith, or spiritual reality, is separate from our bodily, or non-spiritual reality; yet, this is a false understanding of faith. If it is true that in conversion identity changes, it is not only the spirit that changes, but also the body, the day-to-day life, and everything that changes. Within conversion someone becomes a new person, both physically and spiritually, both outward and inward, both at church and in the routine of your day to day. As Dallas Willard points “…if we understand that the ‘inward positive reality’ and the ‘external positive manifestations’ are not two separate things, but one unified process in which those who are alive in God are caught up in their embodied, socialized totality” (The Spirit of The Disciples, Dallas Willard, pg. 78).
Becoming a follower of Christ changes everything, not only our spiritual relate to relationship with God, but our identity and everything we do, are, and will be. May you find hope that in Christ you are new, that in Christ you are a son or daughter of God, and may you live out that reality in all you do.
(Next week we will turn to discuss our consumer culture and how it fights against our identity.)
March 30, 2010
March 9, 2010
A Break...
There are times in life where breaks are required because other things in life that are more important come up. This is one of those times. For that reason I am taking a break from the blog world for a little while. I do not know how long it will be, but I have some people in my life that need my energy more than this blog does right now. Hopefully the break will not be to long, only two weeks or so. Until then my friends...
March 2, 2010
Discipleship: Why Dualism is Not so Good
Last night I was sitting with my future wife talking about what we had both read in our last personal devotionals, when she looked at me and said, “I don’t think faith and works in the Bible have ever really been separated.” To be honest I sat there for a while and amazed at my future wife’s proclamation I begrudgingly said, “I think you’re right.” The reason I was so apprehensive to agree with what my fiancé had just said was because I realized not for the first time, but yet again, how messed up my own life was. How I had somehow fell fallen victim to that which I hated, separation.
In the long process, in which I am just one person among many who continues to seek to discover why the church in the United States lacks so many disciples, I have come to two conclusions. The first is the dualism separating the spiritual from the physical, which despite what some might believe has plagued the church rather than helped the church. I do not say this to start some debate about the separation or lack there of between the body, spirit, and/or soul, but just to discuss what duality taken to the fullest extent has done to our church community. Secondly, there is a lack of individual understanding among people today, which is directly related to dualism. Thirdly, consumerism has been allowed to breed because of both the first and second issues, but is not necessarily a result of them.
In the simplest terms dualism is the separation of two different parts, one from another. In a Biblical spiritual mindset, dualism did not exist when it came to how the spiritual affects the physical. This is why when Jesus came he did not just speak and work in spiritual terms, but worked to heal and restore the physical. In the world of Jesus, the spiritual and physical where directly related, which is why in Jesus’ world someone was not “mentally-ill,” but possessed by a demon. Take the story of the mute man in Matthew 9:27-34, who was thought to be demon possessed, not just mute for physical reasons (I am not saying that a demon did not cause this man’s muteness, I just using this story for the sake of proving my point). In today’s word things are interpreted differently, mute persons are mute because of physical reasons, not spiritual reasons, thereby separating the physical and the spiritual from each other.
This dualism plays itself out in more practical terms as well; for many across the country, what happens on Sunday morning at church has little to no affect on their life outside of the building they meet in on Sunday. As one mom recently said to me, “it is hard trying to balance religion, school, and sports.” In a first century mindset this sentence would have never been said; in fact, if someone said it they would be labeled philosophically crazy. Religion was not something to be balanced amongst the rest of one’s life; religion directly affected one’s entire life. Take what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:13-16,
“13Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 14As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
As Peter sees it, once someone has been given grace and become a child of God, one is no longer to “conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” The grace of God literally changes the reality of that person who was not, but now is a child of God, and now they are to “be holy, because I (God) am holy.” Peter does not give a suggestion from the pulpit, but outlines an expectation of the reality that he expects followers of Jesus to live like. Think of Saul before he became Paul, when Jesus showed himself to Saul on the road to Damascus; this event changed everything in Paul’s life, even his name. Throughout scripture, name changing is a sign of a spiritual transformation that has taken place. Think of Jacob in the desert before he meet his brother Esau; after Jacob wrestled with a man and declared that he “saw God face to face,” his name was changed from Jacob to Israel (Gen 32). These experiences with God changed the identities of both Saul and Jacob, just as our spiritual experiences with God should change our identities; yet for many it does not.
The reason for this is because somewhere down the line people begin to separate different aspects of their life from one another. Even marketers have picked up on this reality, which is why the slogan, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” makes so much sense to people. As sad as it is, most people are already practicing this type of separation out in some aspect of their life. Whether it is who one is at work vs. at hour or who one is at school vs. at church. At times, it might not even be very apparent. A person looking at porn usual employsthe ability to separate the reality they create in their minds from their everyday life in order to escape into a new world for a little while. Duality allows us to separate different aspects of our life in order to allow ourselves to become comfortable with the reality we have created for ourselves. The issue with dualism is that it disconnects aspects of one person’s life from other aspects of that same life, allowing a person to almost operate as different individuals in different instances. This can create, and has created, a scary reality for many in today’s world. Yet for our purposes, dualism allows people to disconnect what happens in a worship service from the rest of their life outside of their worshipping community.
Next week we will see how dualism also interacts with identity and consumerism, in order to finally see over the next couples weeks, how the church in the United States might work to create a discipleship culture.
In the long process, in which I am just one person among many who continues to seek to discover why the church in the United States lacks so many disciples, I have come to two conclusions. The first is the dualism separating the spiritual from the physical, which despite what some might believe has plagued the church rather than helped the church. I do not say this to start some debate about the separation or lack there of between the body, spirit, and/or soul, but just to discuss what duality taken to the fullest extent has done to our church community. Secondly, there is a lack of individual understanding among people today, which is directly related to dualism. Thirdly, consumerism has been allowed to breed because of both the first and second issues, but is not necessarily a result of them.
In the simplest terms dualism is the separation of two different parts, one from another. In a Biblical spiritual mindset, dualism did not exist when it came to how the spiritual affects the physical. This is why when Jesus came he did not just speak and work in spiritual terms, but worked to heal and restore the physical. In the world of Jesus, the spiritual and physical where directly related, which is why in Jesus’ world someone was not “mentally-ill,” but possessed by a demon. Take the story of the mute man in Matthew 9:27-34, who was thought to be demon possessed, not just mute for physical reasons (I am not saying that a demon did not cause this man’s muteness, I just using this story for the sake of proving my point). In today’s word things are interpreted differently, mute persons are mute because of physical reasons, not spiritual reasons, thereby separating the physical and the spiritual from each other.
This dualism plays itself out in more practical terms as well; for many across the country, what happens on Sunday morning at church has little to no affect on their life outside of the building they meet in on Sunday. As one mom recently said to me, “it is hard trying to balance religion, school, and sports.” In a first century mindset this sentence would have never been said; in fact, if someone said it they would be labeled philosophically crazy. Religion was not something to be balanced amongst the rest of one’s life; religion directly affected one’s entire life. Take what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:13-16,
“13Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 14As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
As Peter sees it, once someone has been given grace and become a child of God, one is no longer to “conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” The grace of God literally changes the reality of that person who was not, but now is a child of God, and now they are to “be holy, because I (God) am holy.” Peter does not give a suggestion from the pulpit, but outlines an expectation of the reality that he expects followers of Jesus to live like. Think of Saul before he became Paul, when Jesus showed himself to Saul on the road to Damascus; this event changed everything in Paul’s life, even his name. Throughout scripture, name changing is a sign of a spiritual transformation that has taken place. Think of Jacob in the desert before he meet his brother Esau; after Jacob wrestled with a man and declared that he “saw God face to face,” his name was changed from Jacob to Israel (Gen 32). These experiences with God changed the identities of both Saul and Jacob, just as our spiritual experiences with God should change our identities; yet for many it does not.
The reason for this is because somewhere down the line people begin to separate different aspects of their life from one another. Even marketers have picked up on this reality, which is why the slogan, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” makes so much sense to people. As sad as it is, most people are already practicing this type of separation out in some aspect of their life. Whether it is who one is at work vs. at hour or who one is at school vs. at church. At times, it might not even be very apparent. A person looking at porn usual employsthe ability to separate the reality they create in their minds from their everyday life in order to escape into a new world for a little while. Duality allows us to separate different aspects of our life in order to allow ourselves to become comfortable with the reality we have created for ourselves. The issue with dualism is that it disconnects aspects of one person’s life from other aspects of that same life, allowing a person to almost operate as different individuals in different instances. This can create, and has created, a scary reality for many in today’s world. Yet for our purposes, dualism allows people to disconnect what happens in a worship service from the rest of their life outside of their worshipping community.
Next week we will see how dualism also interacts with identity and consumerism, in order to finally see over the next couples weeks, how the church in the United States might work to create a discipleship culture.
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