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OUR SURE FOUNDATION 5
` My Tabernacle shall also be with them '
`In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' - so say the opening words of Scripture delivered to His chosen people Israel. The world as we know it in this Age is God's creation, for in six days of creation the heavens and the earth together with all forms of life were created: (Genesis 1:26-2:3)
"Then God said, `Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth . . . '. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. 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 all 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."
Clearly we are writing from the opening verses of the Book of Beginnigs, the Book of Genesis, but we shall now turn to the Letter to the Hebrews and record again verses from the first chapter. The Letter to the Hebrews was written primarily to the early Jewish Believers, for some, facing extreme persecution even to the point of death, were thinking of returning to Judaism as a way of avoiding the persecution. In the opening verses of this Book the writer was reminding them of Whom they would be deserting: 1:1
" God, Who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, Whom he appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds (in Greek that is `aion', a given period of time of the heavens and the earth). And (v10) You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You remain, and they will all grow old like a garment. Like a cloak You will fold them up, and they will be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will not fail. "
Here the Greek word for LORD is `Kurios' which has a meaning of `an Owner', and so here in this Letter we see the writer drawing on the opening words of Genesis where we have the first revelation of the One Triune God Who created all things. In Genesis, where it says: `Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness', this does not denote an honourary title given out of respect for a superior person. The opening words of Genesis speak of God creating, which in Hebrew speaks of `Elohim', the great Creator God Who in the second Person of the Triune Godhead, God the Son, here in Genesis has willingly taken the role of a Creator in order to create. We see this mystery within the Triune Godhead in the opening words of John's Gospel, where it says:
" In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and was God . . . . All things were made by Him, and without him nothing was made that was made. "
Again, as Paul says, when writing to the Colossians: (Colossians 1:15-17)
" He (Jesus) is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or power. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist and hold together. "
In the fulness of time He took upon Himself human form in order to redeem all creation to His Father: `For the Father . . . . had given all things into His hands (John 3:35). And as the Letter to the Hebrews records: `You, LORD (in Greek, Kurios, Owner of Your creation) in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands'. This certainty is the `bedrock' of the belief and certain hope of all His chosen people and confirmed to our spirits by God the Holy Spirit.
When writing on spiritual matters there is the problem of slipping over into generalities, forgetting that in the beginning God created . . . `male and female, He created them in His own Image'. Recently, in answer to a question concerning history, politics and economics within the concept of His-Story, we ourselves came close to replying in generalities, until we reminded ourselves of these opening words in Genesis that God not only created man and woman but He also created them in His Image. But through their disobedience Adam and Eve and all their descendants over the past six thousand years have lived rejected and fearful lives in this broken world, forming themselves into families, clans and tribes, and eventually into nations for protection and provision. In our reply to the said question we mentioned that in addition to history, politics and economics there is a more fundamental area not often referred to in Christian `prophetic' writings, that of `Anthropology' - that is, the study of a gathered people. If, as Christians witnessing and proclaiming to the people, we forget this in our zeal, then surely we are dismissing people formed in His Image into generalities - indeed there is a danger of dismissig God Himself into a generality, if that were possible! So it is with this in mind that we consider this `Sure Foundation for our Times'.
It is commonly said in Christian `prophetic writings' that in rejecting God unredeemed people have rejected religion - and they may well have `fenced off' God Himself from a personal relationship, but as we shall see they haven't rejected religion. Certainly since `Enlightenment thinking' entered Western common culture, with its cry of `Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', it may seem that man has been elevated to the pinacle of life, but this is not so according to Scripture, for in Ecclesiastes the Koheleth says: (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
" He has made everything beautiful in His time (its proper time). Also He has set the world (the Ages of this world) in their hearts so that no-one can find out the work (the whole of what God does in His time) that God does from beginning to end. "
From these words of Scripture we see the results of sin through the action of Eve, for God had spoken to Adam - the man the LORD God had commanded not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil'! Adam was called to live a life of innocence in total trust and obedience, not touching the `fruit' of good - which would lead to the `fruit' of evil for you cannot have `light' without `darkness'. The clear inference in these words of Scripture is that man has eaten of the fruit of the Tree and has gained knowledge of good and evil. This has blighted man's life throughout the Ages of the world, thereby losing the beauty of innocence that he was called to live in. But this is now history! In modern times `Enlightenment thought' entered the common culture, giving man the erroneous belief that the good which lives within all men could overcome - by enlightened thought - the evil which is inherent in all unredeemed people. And so came the `fencing off' of God, which of course is impossible for God has placed the knowledge of Himself in the hearts of all men, leaving man living with this conundrum - a common sense of rejection, anxiety and the fear of his loss of protection through the evil that is so evident to all, but is supposed to be overcome by man's inherent good!
To see how man lives with this conundrum we need to step back into the dark ages of history long before the Enlightenment burst upon this Age. From early on man overcame these inherent fears through close family ties, and joining with others to form a tribal community, for together they could withstand any threat - particularly the unseen threatening world of the unknown! Paul, writing to the Romans, gives that sense of a primeval fear of an Eternal Being beyond sight: (Romans 1:20)
" For since the creation of the world His (God's) invisible qualities (His eternal Power and Divine Nature) have been clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made . . ."
The myths that emerged concerning this mystical `Force' soon led to what we have called `a communal god of the collective culture' who would protect the community from the fears and anxieties inherent in all men, and therefore religious ritual gave a tribe a sense of community worth, overseen by their unseen, mystical tribal god. The rites and rituals which came from that understanding soon formed the cohesive `heart' of the tribe. `Rites of Passage' were not merely social occasions, for collectively they created an ongoing living community with the people's shared beliefs and hopes. But now these were not merely overseen by the tribal gods for they had become an integral part of the whole tribe! Funeral rites were not just the disposal of a person's remains for they were being passed into the care of the tribal god and were still a part of the collective community, and the memorial gravestones were evidence of their continued part of the community. Now the agony of death was overcome and death was merely the transition from one state to another within the community. By this they were lifting death to an unseen yet real part of the whole, and religious rites marked this transition as sacred.
This passed on the obligation of marriage within the community, which again was marked by sacred religious rites to honour the dead and respect the living as a continuity of the community. Baptism of any issue which came from marriage was also a sign of the continuity of the community. Earlier these religious rites were more than a social occasion for they were centred on the community and made sacred by the unseen presence of their gods. These rites were sacred in the communal sense for `the spirit of the community' had taken his place within it, forming and giving cohesion to the common culture of the community. From this would come a separate priesthood to perform those sacred community rites, and within a short passage of time belief and trust in the acts of religious activity gave the gathered people of a community a sense of security and the tribal gods were now relegated to the remote unseen world beyond.
And so we have the answer to our earlier question. Secularisation is the process of changing religious rites from the spiritual realm to the natural realm while the rituals are still performed through a belief in the rites themselves, for their god was `up there'. It is not a question of removing God from the community, rather it is a `fencing Him off' from life by trusting in the community rites of religious activity. However due to lack of space we need to move from this primitive tribal community to more modern times, yet, as we shall see, they brought with them their common culture of `community', in the same form but with `different clothes'. As Enlightenment spread throughout Western Europe during the 18th century, at its heart was the desire to free all men from the shackles of the practice of religion and into a universal `community' of free men with man as the highest form of life. It was never the intention to remove religion, but merely remove from it the sense of the Eternal. The `spirit of man' was now to be the true religion. This resulted in a return to fear and anxiety through the loss of a gathered community with a common culture wherein `the spirit of community' amongst them gave that sense of security through its continual rounds of religious rites and ceremonies. The raw idealism of the Enlightenment needed softening, and that came through the birth of its child, `Romanticism', which was merely a modern form of classical Greek life which had been repressed though the onward march of Western religion. Now the life of Romanticism emerged in the form of `Aestheticism', which is clearly a Greek word with a meaning of `the love of beauty in all its forms', centred around the religious rites and practices beloved by the gods of the Greeks. More acceptable to the common culture of Western communities, Aestheticism entered their `life blood'! And so as the spiritual realm receeded the elevation of the natural realm began, but the `new clothes' simply covered the old practices of the rites of religion and the security within a common culture of the community prevailed.
A significant change had occurred in the short space of time between the late 19th century and contemporary times. In Romanticism we find in this new Aesthetic world the `worship' of human natural endeavour replacing the religious spiritual world that has its consciousness centred on an `unseen force' which could threaten or protect and provide for the community. The common culture now is concerned with what people feel, rather than, as in the past, what they hoped for, which hope was central to the past tribal culture. As we have said, this is but the `new clothes' on the past classical Greek culture where the sensual was worshipped as `the fruit of the gods' - which has now become the common culture of a fractured community. As in ancient Greek culture, where the elite sought to proslytise the people as a means of increasing the wealth of their preferred god, the people sought it as an end, a satisfaction of the senses! In our day we see this in the new Consumer culture which dominates the Western fractured community, driven by the `elite' as a means to increase their wealth. The glue which binds the new community together is still religion, but it is a religion of the senses within a fractured community, not centred now, as in the past, on a common gathered people, but fractured into groups with common social purpose and meaning, for man still needs the protection of a `community'.
The Enlightenment which swept though Western Europe had its source in ancient Greece, which we can see in the `Games' of the ancient Hellenes, and the spectators of those original Games were as much a part of them as the participants. They were all one, not in the sense of a means to a national identity, but as the ends to a communal loyalty, which in times of conquest would find in the `Games' a commonality, for in their midst were the gods! The `Games' were a common offering to their gods, who not only brought them victory but gave them the sure joy of `oneness' - not as a means to victory but as an end in itself, for wherever there is a true common culture sport is always at the centre of the gathered community. The overwhelming joy in the `Games' takes on a religious sense for the gods themselves are present along with all the spectators and the participants, all in an encouraging joy akin to worship. But the moment these `Games' become the means of setting one against the other, rather than that common end, they cease to be common culture and become Aesthetic, the enjoyment of the beauty of the skill of the players - but yet not necessarily desired by the spectators for they are caught up in a personal sense of the eternal realm of the gods and are satisfied with the ends.
Romanticism, the child of the Enlightenment, has grown into adulthood in the Western common culture, bringing with it the individualism of its `parent' and the primacy of each individual, with their own personal feelings and opinions paramount, and a `fractured community' where in today's culture the commonality has all but disappeared as the older generation have run their natural course of life. Yet still in this fractured community sport dominates the culture of the individual groups where we now find `star players' are purchased for enormous sums, leaving the team participants, together with the spectators, trusting the `star' to elevate the team (and spectators) into the realms of the eternal gods. The Star Players, the team's champions, men of renown, have now become the means and not the ends of this fractured community, for a new `group culture' has come forth, each one looking for a champion who will elevate that group into a sense of the eternal.
We have majored on sport here, for it has become the epitome of this new fractured culture, but as we have mentoned above this new intensity in groups rather than in the common gathered community of earlier times - which goes back through the ages to primeval times but reveals the deep-seated knowledge of a true God, Whom they have `put away' yet still trusting in the rites and ceremonies to appease `the gods'. In bringing in this understanding of a fractured group culture we are not particularly concerned with political party groups but more with the large social groups that have evolved since the Enlightenment - such as the Freemasons, the Knights Templars and other affiliated groups such as the Rotarians, the Round Tablers and even the Lions - and we leave the reader to recall the multitude of smaller groups, all of which form into self-protecting groups, giving social protection and care to the adherents. Initiation into such groups usually has some form of religious rites and ceremonies, for the `gods' of any organised group must contest with the `gods' of others for predominance within the fractured community. However such fractured grouping is by its very nature fragile, as is seen in times of national danger, for then the groups seek common unity in national Days of Prayer. And to retain that national sense it is seen in days of National Remembrance of past wars, when the `gods' of a once-common gathered people delivered them from danger. Such common activities as sport, Days of National Prayer and Days of National Remembrance bring together, for a short time, the participants and spectators as an offering to the common `gods' - as we have shown earlier in the Greek Games. Such events are the means of invoking the blessing of the common `gods', and paying tribute to them, while the ends assure the people that the `gods' of their imagination are ever present.
Such understanding of what has changed in the now-fractured communities gives the lie to many Christian ministries, which in themselves are a `group' within the fractured Christian community with their distress over the loss of the nation's Christian-Judaic Heritage, which, they say, has led to the `break-down of society'. The great Move of the Holy Spirit in that Jubilee Year of 1967 was meant to restore to God those that belong to Him as their rightful Owner, thus enabling them to break free from the `religious shackles' which had kept them from proclaiming the Full Gospel to a people who were merely performing religious rites and ceremonies for provision and protection to a God of their imagination. However the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is no imagination but One Who seeks for all men to worship Him as an End for Himself alone, not as a means for personal or community provision and protection! Surely this should be the bedrock of belief for His Redeemed Israel - to live a life of trusting obedience to Him, as revealed by the Holy Spirit through His Word, whilst proclaiming the True God in Jesus Christ to what is now a fearful fractured community who are trusting in themselves for provision and protection. All else is the fantasy and imagination of mankind who have `fenced off' the True God for a belief in themselves!
Today's common culture is totally Aesthetic: Its life is one of personal experience, one of `touch and feel', an enjoyment of all things sensual that appeal to the senses. The visual has become as a god, all-appealing to the senses. All becomes fantasy, which is unreal but reaches out into the world, seeking to satisfy real inward personal desire through the unobtainable. This has given rise to the increase in Paedophilia, Pornography and the voyeurism of Celebrity-following (an object desired), all fuelled by the mighty world of IT. Sensual imagination is also `unreal' for it exists in a person's mind without them losing any sense the `real' world. This can be experienced through watching a film or a dramatic play where enjoyment lays in the fact that although it is unreal, by using imagination we can bring it alive - once enjoyed we can leave the cinema or theatre and return to reality. Sensual imagination does not seek a surrogate for satisfaction, but instead by an act of the mind it obtains a short fulfillment of desire - there is a sense of reality in an unreal world.
Although we have travelled far in this short Letter, we must turn our thoughts back to what was written at the beginning in order to bring our thoughts to an ending - and for that we return to religion which forms the heart of both a settled, gathered community and our continually fractured community. By its very nature religion demands an idol to `worship', which is merely an object purporting to be a god, but on focussing on religious feelings towards the idol a person brings down and enters a fantasy world which satifies their desire, whereas true worship of the One True God takes our worship into the reality of the spiritual world, a world beyond the imagination of mortal man and into a life of trust and obedience which seeks no reward other than to glorify God for Whom He is! The recording of Moses and Aaron with the Israelites in the Wilderness shows this very clearly - the gathered people, impatient for the return of Moses from his meeting with God on the mountain, `gathered around Aaron and said: Come let us make gods who will go before us'. And so he made the golden calf with his own hands, and they danced around it, deceiving themselves that an inate man-made object was more sacred than the Eternal God Who had given them redemption from Egypt. Such acts profaned not only the Sacred but also the gathered people, all of whom were made in the image of God Who had redeemed them and delivered them from bondage, asking only that they would live a life of obedience and trust in Him. Uncontrolled sensual imagination takes the mind beyond reality and into a fantasy world of sensory feeling, creating a god of sensual desires and into idolatry, worshipping an object lower than the transendental (that is, the true spiritual life in the One True God) turning man into a `brute beast' lower than the base idol he worships.
We need to take this forward from the time of the ancient Israelites and into the fractured community of our own time, into the very heart of the change in our common cultural community, remembering our comment that at the very centre of that earlier now-lost community was the act of marriage. We read of this in Genesis 2:16 where the LORD God God said: `It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him' and `For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh' (Matthew 19:5). Within today's fractured community the secularisation of this central act of marriage no longer binds the gathered community to a `living' past from which they came, but they look to the future through any issue coming from the marriage act, all undergirded by religious rituals and ceremonies. In gathered communities in the past such acts of marriage had religion very much in mind, for in the common cultural ceremonies the bride and bridegroom would have had a spiritual understanding of them, and in a real sense as they pledged themselves to each other they created a marriage union. If at a later date these pledges were broken through divorce or separation, the spiritual life of the whole community became `broken' and suffered, which required a man-made religious ceremony to `redeem' the community. Our modern fractured community is now thoroughly secularised - religious words may well be spoken when such marriages take place in a religious setting, but the majority of those who enter into `civil marriages' and `religious marriages' make their pledges to an unkown God Whom they have no wish to know.
The first sighting of a break-down or dramatic change in the common culture is when the `we' in the pledges to one another becomes the `I' of an individual . . . my needs, my rights must be recognised. We have seen above that religion was at the very heart of earlier communities, for it gave a sense of the eternal life of the tribe with its rites for the dead, entrusting them to the gods, and for the living through the act of marriage and baptism of any issue coming from that union, giving hope for the future. But whether it is the religion of a primitive people, or the more developed religion of modern times, religion has always been central in the minds of the people. In the `West' the settled gathered communities, with their great gothic cathedrals and churches at the very centre of their lives, have been dominated by two major religious Institutes, the Church of England (with many dissenting churches sheltering under its `wings') and Roman Catholicism, whose vibrant spiritual life had very early on slipped into a communal acceptance of rites and ceremonies of a functional religious life, having a God Who was distant and unapproachable except through the ministrations of the priesthood. But the move of the Holy Spirit in the Jubilee Year of 1967 dramatically changed that sense of primacy, for it was released in order to restore to the LORD that which belonged to Him. A new living vibrancy was released within His people as they came free of the binding shackles of functional religion and into a new relationship with the personal God Who had released them.
However, within the short space of some twenty years that spiritual vitality had succumbed to that earlier spirit of the Enlightenment and its successive Romanticism, and a new spirit of soulish vitality entered the life of the Western Church with soulish music and dance replacing true worship in the Spirit! This entrance of Romanticism soon saw the break-up of the dominant institutional churches into a collection of small groups, turning the Oneness of the Body of Christ into its own Fractured Community, each group with their own `tradition', led by powerful charismatic leaders who have increasingly appealed to their soulish needs. Aestheticism, the love and pursuit of beauty, had also entered the life of the Church, and with it had come an excessive seeking after the gifts of the Holy Spirit as a means to personal satisfaction rather than for use in building up the Body of Christ as a vibrant community. Ever driven by soulish desires the larger groups within the Fractured Christian Community move on into providing ever more extravagent entertainment in order to bring in the people. As `the Church' has been drawn into this fractured life, with the loss of that spiritual vitality, it has become akin to modern consumer businesses, with strong Chief Executive Officers constantly seeking to increase `footfall' in order to `grow the business'! For sure, the `Brand Goods' are still on offer, but alongside them are cheaper less `nutritional' goods, and increasingly more exotic `foods' appear to tempt the people in - while the smaller `shops' are copying in order to maintain their `market share'.
Such is the surreal reality of modern Western Church life, which in its modern form is little different to the old Church life of the past settled Christian Community. This had become enslaved by a remote priestly religion, whereas today's Church has become enslaved by inordinate soulish desires which elevate `our group' over `your group' in order to meet perceived needs! Again, the simple joy which followed the 1967 Jubilee Year move of the Holy Spirit of meeting together for praise, worship, prayer and study of the Word unencumbered by priestly control has been channelled into smaller `Home Groups' under the watchful eye of their Leaders. But as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Rome: `Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God'. Sadly this has not happened in the modern fractured Christian Community!
However this is not a `Letter of Despair', but simply a summary of the change that has taken place in the culture of the people with whom we live out our natural lives - but be assured that the Body of Christ is emerging in the Glory of God! Other groups may well seek to bring everything into their `support', but we are assured that such a move will come to nothing - and as we wait we remember the words of Paul: (2 Corinthians 4:18)
" We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. "
Selah
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