The trouble with allowing yourself to get carried away when you're typing is that you end up somewhere you didn't expect to be. Last post was entitled 'What do we become?' which was fitting with the content. And yet, I had on my heart something different to get across. As soon as I started talking about baptisms (and there's a danger for me to get carried away again), I got so excited by all the inner deep meanings of it. It's a wonderful thing in all sorts of ways. But I had wanted to talk about another universal truth that I had started to understand and wanted to express.
What do we become? It is full of meaning. The future is what I'm getting at; what do we become in the future? This is what can be described as the slippery slope of success, to use alliteration. Or the treasuring of a timely truth. (I know I'm annoying someone at this point.) Perhaps, to universalise it in completion; the worship of the world will go one way, the glory of God leads us another.
Two things are true in society today. One is that everyone believes something. The other is that everyone is worshiping something. This shapes a person, a community, a society/culture, and the world. The West would most likely believe they don't have God to worry about, life is about success and it is expressed by having a lovely house which is clean and has plenty of stuff in it. The East would most likely decide God is a silly thing to worry about, whether He exists or not, and the most important thing is the appearance of your family; anything that brings shame on you, brings shame on those who share your name so be very careful how you act, and what you allow out into the open.
A good question to ask both East and West is 'what is this God you don't believe in?' but I think that's for another time. The thing I wanted to drive at was this crazy wall of an idea that you become what you worship. Maybe a better term would be sacrificially love. So we can deduce (for example) that a generalisation of the West is that they 'sacrificially love' money, and as such they define themselves and others around them as customers, partners, debtors, creditors, rather than as fellow human beings. It becomes worse if there is a worship of power.
What am I saying? That we can't do community anymore? Well, there is a high class individualism I've experienced and it's not healthy. Sometimes, people don't realise we need other people. If I go out for coffee, I need one or two bus drivers, someone to take my order, someone to take some money off me, and someone to take my cup and clean it. The establishment needs a supplier, which would need transport, which would need a driver/pilot, etc.... That's a lot of people for one coffee. I don't think self-sufficiency is very cool. I'm not sure if that's a good term, but I have been watching a fair amount of 'That 70's Show'.
I suppose it's a danger to worship things that make us into objects rather than human beings. As humans we're supposed to be human and the only way to really be human is worship something that we bear the image of; let's say God as revealed in Jesus. So imagine a whole community worshiping Jesus; like church for example. It's getting to the point where I would say church is a great thing and it's full of wonderful people being really human :o)
It's not, but it's something that has more chance of happening among other people trying to be really human, than being around a load of people looking at each other in terms of good financial categories.
What's the church for though? We can worship Jesus until we're blue in the face, but that doesn't make it the best place in the world for every human being. Worship isn't just for Sundays, it's a lifestyle. The thing about God is as we draw near to Him in worship, He draws near to us. We notice in the gospels and elsewhere that the way God/Jesus generally worked was drawing His people into intimacy with Him and then sending them into the world to start it's healing. I think that is a good 'generally' for the church. We come together as a body to be corporately drawn to Jesus in His embrace. We live our lives together and apart being drawn to Him, and sent out by His same love to carry out healing on the world that He so longs to see.
He started it in the resurrection, and continues it in each person who believes in their heart He is risen from the dead. It's an ongoing process and it's hard work, but so rewarding in terms of where this world is headed; transformation.
What am I saying? That we can't do community anymore? Well, there is a high class individualism I've experienced and it's not healthy. Sometimes, people don't realise we need other people. If I go out for coffee, I need one or two bus drivers, someone to take my order, someone to take some money off me, and someone to take my cup and clean it. The establishment needs a supplier, which would need transport, which would need a driver/pilot, etc.... That's a lot of people for one coffee. I don't think self-sufficiency is very cool. I'm not sure if that's a good term, but I have been watching a fair amount of 'That 70's Show'.
I suppose it's a danger to worship things that make us into objects rather than human beings. As humans we're supposed to be human and the only way to really be human is worship something that we bear the image of; let's say God as revealed in Jesus. So imagine a whole community worshiping Jesus; like church for example. It's getting to the point where I would say church is a great thing and it's full of wonderful people being really human :o)
It's not, but it's something that has more chance of happening among other people trying to be really human, than being around a load of people looking at each other in terms of good financial categories.
What's the church for though? We can worship Jesus until we're blue in the face, but that doesn't make it the best place in the world for every human being. Worship isn't just for Sundays, it's a lifestyle. The thing about God is as we draw near to Him in worship, He draws near to us. We notice in the gospels and elsewhere that the way God/Jesus generally worked was drawing His people into intimacy with Him and then sending them into the world to start it's healing. I think that is a good 'generally' for the church. We come together as a body to be corporately drawn to Jesus in His embrace. We live our lives together and apart being drawn to Him, and sent out by His same love to carry out healing on the world that He so longs to see.
He started it in the resurrection, and continues it in each person who believes in their heart He is risen from the dead. It's an ongoing process and it's hard work, but so rewarding in terms of where this world is headed; transformation.
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