natural – Dancing In The Kingdom

Reforming our loves

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Reforming our Loves

[Bible references: Psalm 1; 42; 139:13-14; Proverbs 4:23; Matthew 5:3-12; 12:28; 13:1-22; Mark 4:11; 12:29-31; Luke 8:10, 10:8; 13:18-19; Ephesians 6:10-20; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Peter 5:8-9]

We are shaped every day, whether we know it or not, by practices – rituals and liturgies that make us who we are. We receive these practices – which are often rote – not only from the church or the Scriptures but from our culture, from the “air around us.”^{^[1]}

The Hebrew word for “hear,” “shema,” implies not just hearing, but obedience. Hearing with our mind should be connected to obeying with our body. God has made us with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Descartes had said, “I think therefore I am,” but that, in and of itself, leaves out the totality of who we are. We are not just brains on a stick,^[2] we are creatures with embodied souls, creatures made in the image of a loving God, whose love is not just expressed in a sentiment, but by everyday choices expressed in what He does and in what we do. 1 Corinthians 13 makes clear that nothing is worthwhile if there is not love expressed through our actions.

Unfortunately, as we have expressed in a previous chapter, our choices seem to always be shrouded in sinful behavior. Time after time, history has shown us that simply filling our mind with the truth of God is a good start but is not sufficient to prevent us doing wrong things. Although our love will not be perfect until we are completely transformed during our resurrection, that does not leave us with no means to order our loves in our current lives. For the time that we are in, God has provided us with various disciplines which can be used to train our habits and therefore train our loves.

Our hope is not just in the future. Jesus proclaimed two thousand years ago that the kingdom of God has come. Jesus’ work of restoration may not be completed but is already underway. We may sometimes fret that the work of restoration, within us and around us, does not happen quickly, but as we observe God’s character as manifested in the natural and spiritual world around us, God seems to relentlessly accomplish his work through processes of growth. God had specified that all birds of the air, fish of the sea, animals and even humans were, through normal processes, to multiply and fill the earth. God’s own plan of redemption worked through generations from Adam, through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and finally to Christ. Jesus even particularly specified that the kingdom of God is like a seed that over time will grow into a plant or tree.

As creatures made in the image of God, we are given the free will to participate in our own growth. But we should keep in mind that if our goal is to become more like Jesus, then we should expect that growing into the likeness of Christ will take time … will take normal processes of growth. But we also need to keep in mind that God’s work of restoration is not unopposed; there are spiritual forces at work against God and against us.

Ultimately, it is Christ who transforms us. But we can humbly submit ourselves to God and prepare the soil of our lives to receive His grace. Our growth will be impacted by our loves and desires, by our yearnings, hungering and thirsting,^[3] by where we choose to feed ourselves, by the habits and liturgies we allow to shape our lives,^[4] by the disciplines we submit to,^[5] by how we center our lives,^[6] by how we have integrated the love we have toward ourselves, our families, our communities, and God. In the meanwhile, we will face resistance from within and from outside ourselves. In the normal course of events, it will be a common experience to have times when God seems absent, but we must know how to stay the course.

Holding to our center, keeping our loves ordered, holding on to our identity in the face of the pressures of the world will take conscious effort and discipline. Of course, our discipleship is not just a matter of paying attention to our inner life but also in the expression of our inner life in our walk with others, inside and outside the church. Hopefully, within the church, we can find healthy mutual support as we share our complementary spiritual gifts with one another.

Spiritual Disciplines are those practices which keep us centered on Christ. There are books with various lists of spiritual disciplines available to help guide us and you will find them with slightly different approaches. For instance, in Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline,^[7] the disciplines are divided into three categories: The inward disciplines (meditation, prayer, fasting, study), the outward disciplines (simplicity, solitude, submission, service) and the corporate disciplines (confession, worship, guidance, celebration).

Another approach to spiritual disciplines is to focus on deliberative lifestyles such as were originally developed for use in monasteries but have application in the everyday lifestyle. One such example is the Rule of St. Benedict.^[8] The Rule reminds us that we do not need to go about looking for God, for He is everywhere, including right where you are in your time and your place, in the humdrum everyday tasks of life. Freedom in Christ is achieved through the submission to three vows: obedience, stability and conversatio morum (conversion of life). These vows present us with paradoxes: our need to be in the desert so that we can be more fully present in the marketplace, our need to have prayer alone so that we can be more present in common worship, our need to commit ourselves to stability so that we can be more fully open to change, our need to detach ourselves from things so that we can fully enjoy them. The intent of all these practices is to help us more fully center ourselves in Christ so that we can more fully love our community.

Whether we are following an intentional plan or not, our everyday habits and practices do shape our spiritual lives. Even the normal, incidental routines we do, such as brushing our teeth, can shape us in ways we don’t think about. But if we take the time, we have the opportunity of using those same routines to help transform us in the ways we want to. But if we want to give our everyday routines a chance to transform us in the way we want, we will need to practice ways of waiting, hoping, slowing down, and preparing.

“When I brush my teeth I am pushing back, in the smallest of ways, the death and chaos that will inevitably overtake my body. I am dust polishing dust. And yet I am not only dust. When God formed people from the dust, he breathed into us—through our lips and teeth—his very breath. So I will fight against my body’s fallenness. I will care for it as best I can, knowing that my body is sacred and that caring for it (and for the other bodies around me) is a holy act. I’ll hold on to the truth that my body, in all its brokenness, is beloved, and that one day it will be, like the resurrected body of Christ, glorious. Brushing my teeth, therefore, is a nonverbal prayer, an act of worship that claims the hope to come.” ^{^[9]}

We need to be mindful that changes in our life are never neutral. We need to be intentional about choosing practices and patterns in our life that will transform us to be more in the image of Christ.

“Take heed, consider your temptations, watch diligently; there is a treachery, a deceit in sin that tends to the hardening of your hearts from the fear of God.” ^{^[10]}

We need to be aware of how much our sin is actively working against us, hardening our hearts, and turning us in ways, even very subtle ways, against Christ. To be diligent in following Christ, we need to be diligent in practicing spiritual disciplines in one form or another.

^[1] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred practices in everyday life.” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[2] Smith, K.A. James “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

^[3] Smith, K.A. James. “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

^[4] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[6] De Waal, Esther. Seeking God The Liturgical Press. 2001; Tozer, A.W. “The Pursuit of God” Christian Publications, Inc. 1948

^[9] Warren, Tish Harrison. Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[10] Owen, John. Mortification of Sin. In Believers The Necessity, Nature, And Means Of It: With A Resolution Of Sundry Cases Of Conscience Thereunto Belonging.” From The Works of John Owen Johnstone & Hunter Volume 6, 1850-3 www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/owen/Mortification%20of%20Sin%20-%20John%20Owen.pdf

Observe

Read Psalm 1; Matthew 13:1-22. How do you prepare the soil of your heart so that you can spiritually flourish?

Mystery of wisdom

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 13 – Distinctives within the body of Christ

Mystery of wisdom

[Bible references: Exodus 28:3; Deuteronomy 34:9; 1 Kins 3-4; 11:11-16; Psalm 49:3; 90:12; 111:10; Proverbs 1-4; 8; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Colossians 2:1-5; 3:15-17; James 1; 3:13-18]

The limits of reason

It is not just that the world is immensely complex, but it seems to contain unexplainable attributes like Beauty and Truth – and something about us seems designed to need to find a reason for our being and a sense of morality. The tools of philosophy and science have been very helpful in understanding our world – but those tools are limited. Philosophers are constrained by our limits to comprehend our world through using reason alone.

After surveying the significant problems we confront in trying to make sense of this world, [John] Lock remarked: “From all which it is easy to perceive what a darkness we are involved in, how little it is of Being, and the things that are, that we are capable to know.” … [Alexander] Pope concedes that this universe appears to be incoherent and ambiguous. Yet Pope insists that we have to acknowledge the frailty and fallibility of human moral and intellectual capacities in reaching this judgement. … [John Banville] . “I saw a certain kind of pathetic beauty in the obsessive search for a way to be in the world, in the existentialist search for something that would be authentic.” … was forced to deal with the irreducible fragility and provisionality of human knowledge. … The hope of finding the Enlightenment’s Holy Grail, the crystalline clarity of rationalist certainties, gradually gave way to a reluctant realisation of the irreducible complexity of the world, which simply could not be expressed in terms of the clear and necessary ideas that the Enlightenment expected and demanded.[1]

Scientists are equally constrained by our limits to comprehend our world through measurement and experiment alone.

Those who invoke the political nostrum “follow the science” need reminding it is an activity that’s never free of value judgement … scientific findings are empirically-based descriptions of the patterns and regularities that we find in the world around us. They are not the be all and end all of explanation. . They are local explanations of aspects of the world around us, that are provisional in nature…. Science does not say anything about the ‘meaning of life’, the nature of causation, the origins of the universe, whether there is ‘free will’, etc., until its findings are combined with additional premises in an argument. Arguments, being made as they are in human language, are strictly speaking, philosophical in nature … Scientific reasoning can never prove the truth or falsity of its own assumptions (which are values), nor can it have much to say at all about normative questions, only indirectly. A scientific argument can be used to support a premise used in a philosophical argument about some conclusion, but it cannot constitute the argument.[2]

When we look to find meanings in the context of Biblical cultures, we find differences between the Hebrew and Greek cultures. While each culture has its strengths, as we talked about in “Limits of theology” (p.161), the different languages can shape our thinking by focusing on different priorities. The following table presents some of those different focus points.

Hebrew culture	Greek culture
nephesh refers to whole being (soul and body are integrated	not just a soul that exists apart from the body,
shema = listen and obey	Akouo – listen, hear
objects described in terms of function	Objects describe in terms of physical description
supernatural and natural worlds are integrated	supernatural and natural worlds are separate
historical narrative is about meaning	historical narrative is about chronological sequences
material goods measure God’s blessings	material goods measure personal achievement
value is on what we do	value is on what we think
knowledge is about ethics and moral practices	knowledge is about intellectual categories
worship was a function of service, what we do in the body	worship was a function of service what we think

The Hebrew language has fewer words and focuses on creating stories and not creating descriptions. The fewer words that are used can have a wider range of meanings which the Hebrew writers of scripture use to create stories with intentional ambiguities and is sparse in details and descriptions. The Hebrew worldview assumes a world where the natural and supernatural are intertwined and there is an actively involved God. Hebrew ethics are focused on what is done than what is thought.

The Greek language is amenable to creating complex words and is amenable to developing philosophical and scientific thought. Greek story telling is full of details and descriptions and exact definitions. The Greek worldview separates the spiritual world and the physical world, where the spiritual world is considered the most important and that the activity of the gods does not necessarily affect events in the physical realm. Greek ethics are focused more on what is thought than what is done.

The church has been affected by the Greek way of thinking.[3] One idea, called Gnosticism, held that salvation could be obtained through secret knowledge; leading to the development of “secret” societies like the Rosicrucian’s where only those within the society have that knowledge. Another idea was dualism, where spiritual things are considered to be good and material things are considered to be bad. The consequences of that thinking have led to heretical teachings about the nature of Jesus, severe asceticism, unhealthy thinking about sexuality, neglecting our stewardship of creation, rejection of the arts, etc.

One reaction in the church against the Greek philosophies led to a type of anti-intellectualism called fideism,[4] which intended to focus exclusively on a type of faith that ignored the use of reason

The ideas of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, would resurface later during the Renaissance led to the development of modern science. However, the church hindered the development of astronomy for a while when it stubbornly clung to Aristotle’s geocentric view of the universe.

The limits of enlightenment[5]

[Bible references: Ps 111:10; Proverbs 2; 11:2; 1 Cor 1:18-31; James 3:13-18]

The church was involved various attempts to reclaim the glories of the past and to elevate the human condition in what used to be called the dark ages.[6] The discovery and rediscovery of the writings of Greek, Latin and Muslim philosophers and scholars enriched the thinking within the Roman empire. The sum of all these eventually led to the period of “Enlightenment.”

9^th Century Renaissance.[7] Monasteries were involved in the laborious process of preserving manuscripts by hand-copying them. However, for many years, some of the Latin and Greek classic writers were neglected in favor of Christian works. Charlemagne, the king of the Holy Roman Empire, was interested in giving everyone an education that included the Roman and Greek classic writings (such as the writings of Plato and Cicero). The main impact of this renaissance was on the development of literature.
12^th Century Renaissance.[8] Christians escaping the spread the Muslim empire brought new Greek and Arabic writings to the West. These included the writings of Aristotle about logic and Arabic writings about natural philosophy and Latin works about law. This renaissance led to advances in social organization, the law, technology, intellectual pursuits and attempts to make Christianity more human which led a general spirit of optimism and desires for a more personal and intense religious experience.
14^th century Renaissance.[9] The continued introduction of Greek texts from Christians fleeing the Ottoman Empire combined with the advent of the printing press made possible the wide publication of Greek ideas, particularly from Plato, whose ideas that some thought were more compatible with Christianity. These discoveries combined with discontent with the church led to the development of humanism, which elevated the capacity of humans. At first, humanism was very much a Christian topic but over time, humanism became an antithesis to Christianity.
18^th century Enlightenment.[10] The invention of the printing press in AD 1439 further supported the spread of science as well as humanism and would also be central to the Protestant revolution in the 1500s. During the same period, developments in shipbuilding and technology enabled the development of European empire building and the success of that contributed to the age of Enlightenment (AD 1714-1789) with the emphasis on liberty, progress and reason having priority over theology. The Enlightenment version of humanism, (different than the Christian version of humanism) stated that people are essentially good and do not need God to progressively improve over time. This version impacts even our modern-day culture and sometimes the culture within the church.

Advances in knowledge is a good thing, but knowledge constrained by human pride does not lead to wisdom. The “Enlightenment” was the name given by people who were proud of the age where God was cast off and where human knowledge replaced the wisdom of God.

Accepting paradox[11]

[Bible references: Matthew 5:6; 7:14; 11:29-30; Luke 17:10; John 6:35; Romans 3:28; Galatians 5:1; Ephesians 2:10; James 2:24]

Paradox: A seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which, when investigated, may prove to be well founded or true. (The Oxford Dictionary). A situation or statement that seems impossible or is difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics: (Cambridge Dictionary)

Religious truth often pivots on paradox … full truth about Jesus outruns the ability of human reason … all of the core truths of Christianity are twin realities, delicate paradoxes …it is dangerous to insist on flat yes-or-no answers to the big and perennial questions of life … we live in a fast-moving and rootless time when numerous theologians are trying to restate the Christian faith in relative and fluid terms that reflect the mood of our times more than biblical foundations (Callen, Barry L. Caught between Truths: The Central Paradoxes of Christian Faith, Emeth Press, 2007)

Embodying the gospel is … more than individualism. God is a social reality (trinity), faith should be a social reality, the best way to witness on behalf of the church is to be the church … More than rationalism. We are more than rational animals; rationality has its place but there is mystery that only faith can approach. Spiritual experience and interpretive concepts are reciprocally related. Doctrine is important but primacy is given to the transforming personal and community encounter with God in Jesus Christ … More than dualism. We are whole persons. Sin is both personal and systemic … More than knowledge. Knowledge, even biblical knowledge is not good in and of itself. Orthodoxy includes orthopraxy (Callen, Barry L. Caught between Truths: The Central Paradoxes of Christian Faith, Emeth Press, 2007)

The Bible is not written as a textbook that presents a list of topics and propositions. The views and values of the Bible are presented in the context of a story – a story of God and his image-bearers. The Bible’s focus is on relationships, and its views and values are found in the context of the stories of those relationships. Those stories sometimes reveal paradoxes.

One dimension of those paradoxes is revealed in how the values of the Bible are upside down compared to the views of the surrounding cultures. For instance, the Bible presents one God instead of many. The Bible presents a world of order which has a particular end in mind instead of repeated cycles of disorder with no end point in view.

Another dimension of those paradoxes are statements in the Bible which seem to contradict one another. Some examples are:[12]

• “We are worthless servants.” (Luke 17:10) “We are his workmanship.” (Ephesians 2:10)

• “Blessed are those who hunger.” (Matthew 5:6) “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry.” (John 6:35)

• “Take up my yoke and learn from me.” (Matthew 11:29) “Don’t submit again to a yoke.” (Galatians 5:1)

• “A person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Romans 3:28) “A person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)

• “My yoke is easy.” (Matthew 11:30) “How difficult the road that leads to life.” (Matthew 7:14)

Presenting values by means of paradoxes forces one to more completely understand those values by exploring them in different dimensions.

[1] McGrath, Alister. “On Truth, Mystery and the Limits of Human Understanding” Religion and Ethics www.abc.net.au/religion/on-truth-mystery-and-the-limits-of-human-understanding/10096364

[2] Copeland, Peter. “Knowing the Limits of Science” Convivium www.convivium.ca/articles/knowing-the-limits-of-science

[3] Got Questions “What is Hellenism, and how did it influence the early church?” Got Questions www.gotquestions.org/Hellenism.html

[4] Got Questions “What is Fideism?” Got Questions www.gotquestions.org/fideism.html

[5] Dartmouth. “Medieval Book Production and Monastic Life” Dartmouth sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/24/medieval-book-production-and-monastic-life/; Kreis, Stephen. “Lecture 26 – The 12th Century Renaissance” Mr Mccubbins Classroom folder mccubbin.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/1/5/23153786/lecture_26__the_12th_century_renaissance.pdf

[6] Hughes, Tristan. “Why Was 900 Years of European History Called ‘the Dark Ages’?” Historyhit www.historyhit.com/why-were-the-early-middle-ages-called-the-dark-ages/

[7] Kulik, Rebecca M. Carolingian Renaissance Britannica www.britannica.com/topic/Carolingian-Renaissance

[8] Reeves, Andrew. “The twelfth-century renaissance” LibreTexts, humanities human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/History/World_History/Book%3A_World_History_-_Cultures_States_and_Societies_to_1500_(Berger_et_al.)/12%3A_Western_Europe_and_Byzantium_circa_1000-1500_CE/12.15%3A_The_Twelfth-Century_Renaissance

[9] Cartwright, Mark. “Renaissance Humanism” World History www.worldhistory.org/Renaissance_Humanism/

[10] Encyclopedia.com “The Renaissance and Enlightenment” Encyclopedia.com www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/renaissance-and-enlightenment

[11] Moen, Skip. “Paradox” Skipmoen Hebrew Word Study skipmoen.com/2020/10/paradox/

^[12] Wilson, Aaron. Lifeway Research research.lifeway.com/2019/03/19/14-biblical-paradoxes-every-christian-should-know/

Reflect

Does a person need great knowledge to be wise?

Observe

Read 1 Kings 3:1-28 and 1 Kings 11:1-13. How does someone with Solomon’s wisdom make the kind of failure he did concerning women?

Process is important

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 6– A nation emerges

Process is important

[Bible references: Genesis 15:12-21; Exodus 1:1-22; 11:1-10; 12:31-37]

After Joseph and the Pharaoh who knew him died, the growing nation of Israel became enslaved in the land of Egypt just as it had been foretold to Abraham. There are various questions that surrounded the captivity of Israel in Egypt:

When there was a drought, why didn’t Yahweh provide for the Israelites in Canaan instead of having them go to Egypt?
If they needed to be in Egypt, why did they need to be enslaved instead of just living there as guests?

We know that Yahweh told Abraham that a great nation would come from him and that they would be given the land of Canaan to live in. But why the side-trip into Egypt and why the slavery? The only reason given to Abraham was that “the sin of the Amorites was not yet reached its full measure.”

The reason given to Abraham for being in Egypt follows a general pattern. Although God occasionally supernaturally intervenes in the course of events, it seems that God most often allows natural, normal processes to take place, whether they be physical, psychological, sociological etc. We see that process in living things: plants, animals, and even ecosystems grow through specific physical processes^[1]. Even the great flood in Noah’s time only occurred after evil gradually, through normal psychological and sociological processes, eventually reached a particular threshold.

^[1] Natural, physical processes are so well fixed and so well understood that they have become known as scientific laws.

Reflect

Joseph’s discipline involved finding God in the midst of difficult circumstances and discovering how God could use him there. Are there any difficult circumstances you struggle with? Have you found God at work in your life in those circumstances?

Observe

Read Exodus 11:1-10; 12:31-37. How did Yahweh provide for Israel as they left Egypt?