I should start by admitting that I don't really know if any of this is going to work out. I'm not writing this because I have the big idea that is going to solve all the world's problems. My motivation is simply that, in addition to the natural pain and tragedy that attends mortal existence, I think we are adding to the mix self-deceptions and depredations. And, since we are the agents of these deceptions and depredations, we must examine if we can change things.
Here I introduce the seed of thought that is a splinter in my discontent. If not for this seed, I would be comfortable in my apathy. People never change really, they only alter the speed of their locomotion. Things will never change. Existence is merely divided between those with the courage to take and others, cowards, who are content to be taken from. Ayn Rand is right.
The seed is that our imaginations can be converted because of the power of God and the reality-shattering announcement of a New Creation. Our imaginations can be converted from the natural order in which we prey upon others to the spiritual order in which we love others. And not just that we love others, but that we might have such an imagination for the flourishing of all things on earth that we would spend our lives seeking that flourishing even if it would mean that we, because of our short lives, would become living sacrifices and would die without honor or accomplishment. The seed is that we might live and die for an idea. That we might plant sequoias that we will never see flower.
My fear is that at this point I may be dismissed. Do I think that this is a new idea, a novel insight? What do I think the church has been doing for ages if not planting this seed in every fertile mind? Well, I admit it; this is not a new idea. However, I do feel like we've lost, at some point I'll not debate, our imagination for how it might grow.
Our imagination is stunted by toxic ideas. One such idea is that our reality will not fully be shattered, our imaginations not fully converted, until the Second Coming of Jesus. In the mean time, Ayn Rand is right and the church is just a hospital for the never ending stream of casualties. The problem, as I see it, is that New Creation comes to fruition through the seed planted in the imagination. If the imagination is waiting for Jesus to come, the seed has died. If we are waiting for Jesus to make it safe for us to radically love other people without thinking first of ourselves, we should perhaps fear rather than anticipate his coming. We won't be ready; we'll be thrown out. So, yes, we must understand that whatever work we might do with our lives will be made of clay, but if our imagination is converted this will not stop us.
There's another toxic idea that is typified by what is known as "cessationism". I say that the problem is typified, not identified, by cessationism because the problem is in the radical break with the apocalyptic moment in which Jesus and the disciples lived. The problem is not being skeptical about faith healing, glossolalia, etc. The problem is that we witness the lives of these fathers and we take away the message that we're supposed to do what they said, and not what they did. First, a caveat, I don't mean to imply that we should be like Civil War re-enactors just playing the events as though the New Testament were a script. Not at all. My meaning is that when we see the nature of our fathers's relationship to the Spirit and to the scriptures, we should seek to emulate that in our own spiritual practice. We should practice going away to pray, like Jesus. We should read the Prophets. We should imaginatively apply the scriptures to our situation believing that we are led by the Holy Spirit and protected by the admonition of our brothers. Basically this boils down to a belief in the power of the Holy Spirit in the common life of the church. So much to say here, and I have more questions than answers, but the point is: my imagination is alive to possibilities.
A final toxic idea I'll note today: the separation of church and state. Now, quick here's another caveat: as it was originally intended, with roots back to the reformation, this is not a toxic idea. However, it has stunted the imagination of the church because we have allowed it to justify an unwarranted division of labor between secular life and sacred life. Christians, especially today in view of the advances of Sharia, see the danger of theocracy in this moment. We know that if we push toward a flourishing order, that we will err and that perhaps things will end in a holocaust or something. I think that we're justified in doubting ourselves, but are we not also doubting the Holy Spirit? My idea is not that the Church would try to establish a New World Order, but that it would become an order within the secular order. If the Spirit is moving within, then we have different needs for extrinsic establishments. We can become like a virus, or perhaps better, like mycelia. We can be like a fungus that operates on a different order of metabolism. We can take what the world throws away, call it the beloved, and practice resurrection with our short lives.
We can never know what will never work. We can only know what isn't working. If we look with eyes of faith at the world today, how can we not come together to deliberate if we might be missing something. Perhaps we are accepting what is given by the current order because we have calcified imaginations.
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