The following article begins a new series
this week that will be posted two places on our web site. This one is found
under the "Chronicles of Diversity" and includes for lack of better
wording "evangelism notes" and prayer requests or" Prayer
Plants". The other articles will have these portions edited out and will
be found under "Oikos, a dwelling place." In the email version, the
evangelism portion will be colored purple when sent in HTML format.
A question I had to ask myself last week was, why? Why should I begin this
path on describing a new method of organizing your life, your job, your
business and your relationships? Why should you want to read these words every
week, from all the many messages of email we all get each day, or why would you
even consider perhaps forwarding them to others?
The answer took the form of another series of questions?
Do you ever feel like?
A. You sometimes run around like a chicken with its head cut off.
B. You know someone else who acts like a chicken with its head cut off.
C. Both A&B.
If you answered affirmative to any of the above then another series of
questions follow.
Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off?
Or do you even know where the saying comes from?
Rather than answer that directly, let us frame it in the context of a farmer
raising chickens for his dinner table. How do you get from the cluckers in the
pen, to fried chicken on the table. Going to KFC for a two piece extra crispy,
or to the store for a cut up fryer leaves out a lot of steps. To put it
bluntly, it isolates us from the reality of life. This series hopefully will
look at those missing steps in a realistic fashion and help us to see both the
limitations and the opportunities that our culture and our life-style provides
to us.
To understand this we really must understand the concept of time, not only
daily time, but that must be put into context of eternal time, if you believe
that exists.
I received a mailing a few weeks ago from a Jewish Messianic singer
promoting his book "Delight in Yeshua, Our Sabbath Rest." I know I
have a hard time even beginning to understand that concept. Rest.
Thus the heavens and the earth and all the
host of them were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He
had done, and He rested on the seventh day from His work which He had done.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from
all His work which God had created and made (Genesis 2:1-3)
Our lives are really controlled by our models, patterns, or paradigms we use
to illuminate our path. Our paradigm in the context of a biological reality, is
a combination of the Greek para which means beside and digma which basically
means side by side. We have to dig into our lives (dig'm, it's a joke) beside
that thought process, or means we hope will give understanding to life. Just
what that process is, determines much of our understanding. The most
fundamental question is of course, why am I here? We all need to, in some way,
and some time, ask that question. In that bigger light to continue to buy our
chicken, fried at KFC, really is of little eternal significance.
It is my contention that man really is by nature a religious being. If his
paradigms don't allow for religion, he must then make that paradigm a religion.
Exalting that creative process as reason for existence. We evolved here from
nothing but a big bang, for lack of a better description.
I believe that there are basically three of these paradigms which have mixed
together over time to give us the gamut we now understand has our religious and
cultural heritage. What we will attempt to do over these weeks is to work our
way back to these three basic models and then see what we can use from a
descriptive, or scientific look at nature, creation, or Mother earth, as each
of these cultures would call it, or her. The fundamental paradigm in this
investigation, that is the why I initially ask, is that our culture really is
based on a model of the cosmos specific to our individual religious paradigm.
The fundamental concept is that biosphere is a eternal reality in some sense,
and our culture, our religion, our paradigms are really an attempt to control
it for our benefit. We will call this ability Enterprise Symbiosis. Enterprise
Symbiosis is just a natural term for the sum of the components of our
enterprises (our works) are sometimes significantly greater that the sum of
their individual parts.
This can be described mathematically as (A+B+C)2 = 9, while A+B+C = 3. This
sum can then be said to be raised by some higher power, in our example 2. It is
our fundamental underling paradigm however that really sets the limits upon the
range of these exponents. This is the difficult part, for when we are dealing
with the work of man we need to have a measuring stick or sticks. Next week we
will start that process, using some sticks that have been around a long time.
Enterprise Symbiosis is then really understanding the nature of our culture
by use of natural creation, and either our own ability to reorder that natural
environment, or can we, or should we invoke the influence of what most people
call the supernatural. That will begin with a look at an old tree known
scientifically as Quercus Trifecta or
the Betting Oak. That tree used to stand in the garden of a prominent estate.
Now however the estate is abandoned and the surroundings have become
wilderness. But the tree still stands as tribute the one who planted it and
nurtured it so many millennia ago.
Most of these basic premises were briefly
stated in my book "The Garden of God" which has yet to be published.
That basic approach is that the Bible is God's written word essentially to his
chosen people. It presents the context of His specific grace to his chosen
covenant. Creation is God's spoken word to all people, generally known as
common grace. Through all means of grace God sent a Jew, who we know as Paul to
western culture with the "Delight in Yeshua, Our Sabbath Rest". God
has chosen us, a western people with our cultural exaltation of the individual
and our desire to pioneer as the primary means to take that middle eastern
understanding to the whole world. Which we have done remarkably well. However,
over time that message has at many times been almost lost by the elevation of
the individual, and with the loss of community, both in the now and in the
eternal sense. The question remains, is the western Christian paradigm really
the eternal, one of the eternity, or perhaps now God is beginning to refocus or
restore Christianity back to a world that began when it was finished some two
thousand years ago on a cross just outside of the city of Jerusalem.
Recently the church has followed the world,
basing growth paradigms on the world's corporate business model. That model
elevates the individual (personal & corporate) by the superiority of
personal self and promotes egalitarian results to the masses. We see that as
seeker sensitive and/or soul winning at the expense of discipleship. We major
on the non essentials and minor on the true gospel, the reason we were created
in the first place.
As I write this morning, I sure don't feel that rest I have just talked
about. Finances are again becoming a real focus of concern and every
opportunity I see as alleviating that stress, seems to vanish as the morning
mist over Puget Sound. Over the years I have applied for many jobs that I seem
to believe would be worthwhile and they come to naught. And then just at the
last minute something completely unexpected comes out of an unknown source. I
consider this work to be important, and more doors seem to be opening to allow
this to develop into a worthwhile means of serving the greater body of Christ.
This truly is a unique ministry opportunity, both within and without the walls
of our religious cloister. But right this moment I am very scared, please pray
for the provision of the Lord's grace in His wonderful way of solving these
concerns. I know that it is really a battle between different paradigms taking
place on many fronts, but that knowledge is sometimes very difficult to
translate into actual enterprise. And so begins this process to further
understand man's God given gift, or the job of human enterprise.