Sabbath Meditation

Seeing Not as the World Sees

Only Jerusalem can Replicate the Balance and Harmony of God

Ever since the Enlightenment, there has been a constant emphasis upon the individual. This arose from the Enlightenment's elevation of human reason to a position of the semi-divine. The rationalist mind, the thinking man, became the highest locus of authority and truth. Descartes', “I think, therefore I am” is an apt encapsulation of this individualising of meaning, truth, and being.

Out of this came various political theories emphasizing individual human rights. Thus, classic Western liberalism was born. Also, and ironically, the same idolatry produced opposite political theories: Rousseau and others trumpeted the collective expression of individual autonomous reason. The collective Will of the People, as determined and mediated through the citizen deputies of the Assembly, came to be the justification for extreme tyranny and bloodshed.

The Church of the Lord has been infected by this relentless torrent of individualising mankind. Personal salvation, personal conversion, personal devotional life, personal divine guidance, and personal “revelations” have increasingly dominated western Christendom. Sadly, as is often the case, these emphases arise more out of the prevailing paganism of Athens than the Scriptures.

If you were to toss the influence of the “Enlightenment” into the garbage heap and cease looking at the Scripture through Enlightenment glasses, one of the things that would be immediately obvious is that in the biblical world-view, the individual is neither higher nor lower than the corporate, and the corporate is neither higher nor lower than the individual. Each has its place, authority, sphere, responsibilities and function. Each needs the other to be truly authentic. As God's people, both individually and collectively, obey His commands and instructions, a wonderful harmony between the One and the Many emerges.

The pattern for this is the Triune nature of God Himself. In the Godhead, we have three Persons in One God. The Oneness of God is not more important or fundamental than His Many-ness. In God, the One and the Many (which just happens to be a fundamental philosophical problem) are equally ultimate.

Likewise, in the creation, the Lord has called into being corporate entities and individual entities: both alike are equally ultimate.

A clear example is the institution of marriage. For the cause of marriage, we are told, a man (individual) shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his (individual) wife, and they shall be one. In the marriage, which is more important: the individuals entering the marriage, or the marriage itself? Neither. Both alike are equally important. Marriage has an aspect of diversity and an aspect of unity. In a wonderful divine scheme, it turns out that those marriages which work best and have the highest manifestations of unity, harmony, and oneness are precisely those which reflect enhanced individuality of the spouses. The popular adage “opposites attract” provides an albeit superficial hint of this reality.

The equal ultimacy of the one and the many within Jerusalem can also be seen under the terms of the Older Covenant. Israel was bound together as the one covenant people of God. Over and over the Lord indicated to Israel that He had set His love upon one people, one collective, one nation, one family and its descendants. He had not set His love upon all peoples, all nations (that would come later).

Nevertheless this emphasis upon the corporate entities of faith did not overshadow individual faith or the personal believing heart. In fact it enhanced it. For example, the Psalms represent the deepest trials, struggles, doubts, joys, and faith of the individual heart found anywhere, in any time, in any literature, throughout in all human history.

But a brief skimming of the Psalms also tells us that the longing of the individual believer was for corporate Israel, God's people, and public worship. The individual longing of the soul was also a longing to be one with the Lord and His people. It was a longing for the Lord of hosts.

O Lord of hosts, how lovely, Thy tabernacles are,
For them my heart is yearning in banishment afar.
My soul is longing, fainting Thy sacred courts to see;
My heart and flesh are crying, O living God for thee.
Psalm 84.

It is Greek and pagan rationalism which has distorted the understanding of the Newer Covenant into one which emphasizes the individual at the expense of the corporate, the many at the expense of the one. It is the animus of Unbelief which wants to pull apart what God has put together. If you read the Newer Covenant documents without Enlightenment glasses you will see immediately the continuation of the one and the many, the equal importance and weight of the individual and the corporate from the Older Covenant to the New Covenant. The weight and emphasis upon Kingdom and Church in the New Covenant is equal with that of the emphasis upon the need for personal repentance and faith and sanctification.

In the Middle Ages, again under the influence of Greek rationalism, the One became to be regarded as far more important than the Many; the corporate was more fundamental than the individual. Thus, the church (or the state) was more fundamental and important than the individual believer. It was the church which set itself up between (and above) man and God. The Reformation attacked this falsity at its root, with its stress upon individual repentance, faith and sanctification. But the Reformation also stressed the importance of the corporate, the church, the community, and the state as equally legitimate and divinely appointed institutions within the Kingdom of God.

But if paganism could not make the one ultimate, it would swing to the other extreme and make the many ultimate. So, the Enlightenment was born as a reaction of the many against the one, and the pendulum swung to the other extreme.

Jerusalem takes its mark and cue from the Lord, not from Athens. As part of sweeping its streets and carrying out its garbage, it needs to rid itself of the Enlightenment. Jerusalem knows that eventually the Enlightenment, which last century produced the bloodiest one hundred years in all human history, will eventually come to be seen as the beginning of a terrible Dark Age. Jerusalem needs to recover that wonderful harmony and balance between the one and the many, the individual and the corporate, that is so beautifully “archetyped” in God Himself. This is part of what it means to be the City set upon a great hill, the wonder of the whole earth.

As Athens progressively whipsaws itself into pieces, racked first with making the Many absolute, then flicking back to the extreme of making the One ultimate, the City of God will, by contrast, be seen as a bright and beautiful light in an otherwise benighted world.