Friday 15 February 2008

ChnMind 1:12 The Imperial Power of The Christian Faith

Not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

Some cultures are weak and insipid. They become subjugated. Some emerge initially as powerful, only to die away. Others are, and remain potent. Jerusalem's culture is the most powerful of all. It alone has the power, the resources, the inspiration, the hope, and the will to subdue all the earth.

The Christian Mind is one attuned to power and might. It seeks after power. But the power that it seeks is not that which comes from the sword. It is not that which comes from forced domination. It is not the power of politics or government. It does not come from lording it over others. It does not come from great wealth.

The power-complex of Jerusalem is diametrically opposed to the power-complex of Athens. Messiah Jesus charactertises the antithesis as follows: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not so among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be the first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20: 26, 27) The power complex of Jerusalem is distinct in its origin; it is distinct in its application.

The power of Jerusalem is spiritual power—which is to say that it comes from the Holy Spirit. This spiritual power is not anti-material—which is the old Athenian heresy—but it is influence over the entire creation which comes doing all things spiritually—that is, doing all things under the control and direction of God. Secondly, it is ministerial in its application, not lording it over others. Above all, Jerusalem seeks to minister to, or serve the Living God. This requires, in turn, that it is dedicated to the service of the creation. As Jerusalem serves all mankind and the entire creation, it subdues everything. Spirituality means doing all things in creation according to the will and command of the Creator. As Jerusalem ministers in this fashion, she becomes enormously powerful.

Which is more powerful (influential): the Formula One race car or the John Deere tractor? The correct answer depends on whether we are working on a farm or racing at Le Mans. When the tractor does the work for which it was designed and intended, it becomes extremely powerful, able to influence much in the creation order. Similarly with the racing car. When man starts to believe, think, live and act in the way intended and prescribed by the Lord, he becomes exponentially more potent and influential. The power of God to influence and fructify the creation flows through him.

Below are some of the keys to Jerusalem's power in the world—for Jerusalem is the city made up of people seeking to serve God, according to God's direction, in God's world. It is a city of people seeking to bring every thought and act into subjection to His Christ, Who is the head of the new human race.

The Holiness of Creation

The first building block of imperial Jerusalem is to regard all of life as holy and sanctified. Not only has every part of me (heart, soul, strength and mind) to be set aside for holy service to serve God, but all of creation is likewise holy—regarded as belonging to God, and created for His glory and honour. This includes every atom of the entire creation. It is universally valid. Whenever Jerusalem has been persuaded by Athenian whispers that parts of the creation are intrinsically evil and to be disregarded, she has lost spiritual power. God's covenant is with all that He has created, and he who refuses to accept this, loses spiritual traction and power. “Every square inch for Christ,” is the imperialist slogan of Jerusalem.

Mircea Eliade in his classic volume, The Sacred and the Profane argues that all religions have the motif of two realms: the sacred (special, holy, divine) and the profane (ordinary, common). The Christian faith has this motif as well: when we worship God, particularly gathering with His people to worship on the Lord's day, we are engaging in a holy activity,unlike any other. “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. . . . Therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20: 8,11) However, the Christian construct of the profane is very different from Athenian religions. For the Christian all of the creation is holy unto the Lord: Christian worship is declared to be particularly holy because it is a celebration of that fact before the Lord. Thus, the Christian sacred/profane distinction is one of focus, not a distinction of being.

Because Jerusalem self-consciously belongs to the all-creating-One, it knows that everything lives and moves and has its being in God. Therefore, everything in the creation belongs to God for His disposition and purpose—and, in that sense, everything is holy to the Lord. “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose; even the wicked for the day of evil,” declares the Proverb. (Proverbs 16:4) As Jerusalem carries out its duties and responsibilities under the Cultural Mandate—going forth to fill the earth, multiply in it, and subdue it—it sees these as acutely holy and spiritual activities.

God Milking the Cows

A second key building block of Jerusalem's power lies in the concept of vocation or calling. The Cultural Mandate represents a general divine calling by God to man to rule over the creation, subdue it, and cause its potentiality to become actuality. Within that call are manifold individual callings or tasks which come to every man—whether he will acknowledge it or not, obey or not. Jerusalem's distinctness is reflected insofar as Jerusalem is the city where the inhabitants acknowledge their callings and vocations and seek to carry them out with faithfulness and energy.

God calls some to be teachers, some to be artisans, some to be greenkeepers, some to be judges, and so forth—to represent Him and carry out His work in the creation. Within Jerusalem these tasks are radically and acutely spiritual duties, as spiritual as praying, meditating, giving, or worshiping. The classical text in this regard is found in Exodus 35:30—31, where God provided skilled craftsmen to build the ark and tabernacle: “then Moses said to the sons of Israel, 'See the Lord has called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And He has filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding and in knowledge and in all craftsmanship.'” Being Spirit filled meant that Bezalel became a wonderful craftsman.

As Jerusalem embraces the concept of vocation, its citizens prosecute their respective duties and callings with great energy, passion, excitement and skill—because they are spiritual services of worship to Christ the King. Herein lies the source of Jerusalem's power and influence over the world.

The Protestant Reformation has been viewed as a time of great progress in the Christian faith. However, in may ways, it was not progress, but a recovery (a re-formation) of vital life that had been lost, or had become deeply infected with the idolatry of Athens. Luther, reacting against the limp “other worldliness” of the church of his day, and reflecting instead upon what was taught in Scripture, declared that the plough boy, engaged in his furrows, was involved in just as spiritual and holy a task as the most eminent and effective preacher. The work of the plough boy was as spiritual as the great doctor, Luther. Still further, Luther declared that when the milk maid milked the cows, God was milking the cows! That is how spiritual the activity was and is.

In declaring this, Luther was saying nothing new, but was restating in idiomatic force and colour what God had revealed to the Church in the time of the building of the tabernacle. Paul reiterated this when he declared, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” (I Corinthians 10:31); and, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father” (Ephesians 3:17); and, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,” (Ephesians 3:23).

Athens, in denial of the Creator, has no mandate to rule over the earth. It is gnawed with uncertainty, doubt, and guilt over the place of man upon the earth. If you ask an Athenian whether the world would be a better place if mankind were not in it, most would affirm that it would be better if man were not here at all. Nature would be far better off, left alone, without man, the great destroyer. For the Athenian who asserts that man has a right to rule and subdue Nature, if you ask where that right comes from and in what it resides, the only answer Athens can provide is that man's right to rule the world arises from his ability to do so. If you can, you have a right to. Might makes right. In either case, Athenians at root, are gnawed with the suspicion that mankind's presence and activity in the world is immoral and evil.

Cultural Power Explodes Under the Reformation

Medieval Christianity was deeply infected with Athenian platonic thought. It was virtually universally believed that the material world was unspiritual and warred against the “true” concerns of God's kingdom. True spirituality could be achieved only by escaping from the cares, distractions, and concerns to do with the material aspects of life. In other words, medieval Christianity had adopted the pagan view of the sacred and the profane. The Reformation—a widespread return to the Word of God as infallible and final authority over all of life—reversed a great deal of Athenian unbelief in this area. Consequently, as significant parts of Europe returned to a more biblical view, the believing community became empowered, and much more influential over all areas of life. Economic growth exploded, wealth increased, and the creation was more powerfully subdued, leading to a greater unfolding of latent potentialities than ever before.

The impotence of medieval culture and its inability to exercise dominion and power over the earth began to be replaced as Jerusalem started throwing down some of the more pervasively worshiped idols in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a result prosperity began to increase. (A perusal of Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [trans. by Talcott Parsons, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992, first published by HarperCollins in 1930], gives the case for demand side economic growth under the influence of the Reformation. The supply side case is found in Robert B Ekelund, Robert F Hebert, and Robert D Tollison, “Protestantism and Capitalism: A Supply-Side View,” [www.terry.uga.edu/~selgin/files/Tollison2.pdf. ])

Under the influence of biblical faith, all of life came to be seen as a holy calling, and all work spiritual. Feast days were abolished—which had accounted for about one third of all annual work days. Instead of six days of labour, the medieval man and his wife had their work week reduced to four days (the 30 hour week!)—as they wasted time attending endless and increasing feast days. Scarce capital and labour was re-allocated from monumental cathedral construction projects which consumed the resources of generations, pilgrimages, paying for religious festivals, and the construction and sale of pilgrim souvenirs (all designed to help people escape the mundane material world) to far more productive uses related to subduing the creation and causing its potentiality to unfold. As Ekelund, et al. state, “The important thing here is that there was a supply side effect of Protestantism on the labour supply. Festivals, pilgrimages, holy days, and widespread feasting . . . meant a large withdrawal of work effort.” (Ibid., p. 25.)

In addition the number of people materially supported in various capacities within the church was sharply reduced under the Reformation. The medieval church had, not only a profusion of monastic orders, but a wide variety of classes of officers and functionaries within them. Outside the monastic orders, the ecclesiastical establishment (the clergy) was represented in a vast array of offices, positions, and livings. All these offices were regarded as more holy spiritual than the the “office” of plough boy. The Reformation did away with all this leech-like waste.

Incidentally, the medieval church's adoption of the Athenian sacred versus secular distinction, did not arise out of nothing. It had its roots in pagan Rome. The medieval church did significant damage to Jerusalem by welcoming and abetting the insinuation of Greek idolatry into the holy city—and it was comprehensively done, so much so that it became largely an unconscious development. The development of a feast-day-economy came from Imperial Rome. At the end of the Roman Empire the number of pagan feast days had reached to between 175 and 200 per year. (Webster Hutton, Rest Days: The Christian Sunday, the Jewish Sabbath and Their Historical and Anthropological Prototypes [New York: The MacMillan Company, 1916], pp. 305,6) Many of the “Christian” festivals were borrowed from this pagan calendar—both as to frequency and spirit. The polity and culture of Imperial Rome in the end crumbled under this dead weight. Rome—which had earlier prided itself on its engineering brilliance—drowned itself in mysticism and superstition. Without a Believing Mind, Imperial Rome could not continue to subdue the earth. Its original vigorous practical pragmatism became an attenuated shadow of impotent superstition and ignorance.

Under the Protestant Reformation, there was a significant increase in the demand and supply equations of both capital and labour. This, coupled with what Weber called the Protestant Ethic, meant that post-medieval man was powerfully effective, far more so than centuries of predecessors, in subduing the creation. It serves as a signal demonstration of the imperial power of Jerusalem—power that comes from faithful service to God—over the creation.

When a people or culture work in the way that God has commanded and intends, that culture will become enormously powerful. Ultimately, that power and influence flows to Jerusalem, for she is the City of God. Athens has a name for being alive and potent, but it is dead. The Unbelieving Mind, ever gnawed by the uncertainty of that about which it does not know and cannot speak, by the uncertainty of the random other, is weak, and like Rome of old, will fall before the dead weight of its superstitions. The Believing Mind ever seeks to achieve and wield true, spiritual ministerial power, ultimately exercising enormous influence over mankind and the creation. It is overtly and nakedly ambitious for the glory of God in Christ to be revealed in an ever-increasing panorama.

The Christian Mind seeks the power over the world that arises from being a faithful servant of God.

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