The Christian Imagination

They want the Formula for Life-but they want it so they can institutionalize it. The problem, of course, is that life is anti-formulaic, anti-institutional. The most fundamental quality of life is something the corporation can never capture, never possess. Life can’t be shrink-wrapped, caged, dissected, analyzed, or owned. Life is free. (Locke 181-182)

The author is specifically talking about corporations, but can be equally applied to both governments and churches. Christopher Locke just really nails it. Deep down, I think many of us want to feel free to be ourselves, and have this deep desire to connect with one another. Years of modernism and mass-everything have tried to reduce everything to a manageable level. There are certainly many great advances because of this philosophy, but life is more than that, and people are more than things to be managed.

Why are there so many self-help books? Why are there so many books on how to do business? Why are there so many books on how to raise a family? A more important question is this: How in the world did people survive before research and science were there to enlighten us? If life can be fully-managed and there are answers to every question, then it’s just a matter of finding them, and if you can’t follow the instructions and get it right, maybe there’s something wrong with you. Since other people seem to get it right, perhaps it’s best to be silent and pretend to get it right?

How often is the grand story of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ reduced to a few principles and formulas? Are you struggling? Here’s a formula on how to get what you want in life! What happens when God decides to not play along? What if God cannot be so easily manipulated? What if God wants us to know Him and trust Him more than He wants us to rely on formulas for life? In my experience, the Christian life is more than formulas and principles. I really like Matthew 6:33, about seeking God first and letting Him take care of the rest. There’s a lot of important truth there. However, that is not a formula whereby I do my best to follow God and thereby get everything I want out of life. Life, and God, can’t be packaged and handed out.

We do have a vision of what life could be like if we ever make it through the current transition. It’s hard for some to imagine the Era of Total Cluelessness coming to a close. But try. Try hard. Because only imagination can finally bring the curtain down. (Locke 182) [emphasis mine]

Locke, Christopher.The Cluetrain Manifesto. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books. 2000.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
-Hebrews 11:1

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes struggle with faith. I believe in God, and I believe He’s good, and that I’m going to heaven one day. That’s easy for me. What’s hard is truly trusting, even when all my efforts seem to indicate that I can’t get somewhere in life or something can’t happen in my life. Actually taking steps of faith, sometimes in the dark, isn’t easy.

What of prayer? Does God not encourage us to pray and ask Him for things? He does. Yet God doesn’t always seem to answer. And if God doesn’t give me the desires of my heart (at least when they’re good desires), why pray? At times, my faith is nothing more than intellect, with it not really touching my heart. And my prayers? Weak.

One of the ideas I’ve gleaned from reading Larry Crabb is that the greatest blessing God has given us, is Himself. I have been down at times today, and minutes ago, I decided, made a choice, to not be down, and to have faith. It then ocurred to me how powerful the love of God is. I mean, I crave that love, the acceptance, the grace, and the forgiveness. Beyond that, I desire what is referred to in Galations 5, the fruit of the Spirit. The first three evidences of the Spirit being in our lives are Love, Joy, and Peace. Those all sound so wonderful to me, I thirst for them. And in saying I thirst, I catch a glimpse of what I really do thirst for. Maybe I won’t always be all that I’d like to be. I have no idea whether I’ll ever be married. But, beyond the tangible, I see God at this moment, and the blessings He gives that are so hard to grasp, yet are the things we truly long for. In the context of Hebrews 11, perhaps that’s what the early pioneers of our faith understood. They saw more than themselves, they saw God.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.
-Hebrews 11:13

One of the many blogs I read is called Slow Leadership. I quote from one of their recent posts titled, Debunking today’s mythology of leadership:

Truly successful leaders don’t even try to control events. They recognize that the only way to direct a large group of people is through some ruling idea. That’s what they supply: a vision to believe in; a set of ideas to guide the thousands of individual decisions being made every day without any direct input from them. “Without a vision, the people perish.” These biblical words sum it up. What we should be doing is seeking out leaders with imagination: people who can think and produce fresh visions for others to follow.

Because I’m involved in leadership roles in multiple organizations, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a leader. Sometimes I think I’m doing okay with leadership, other times I don’t. I just told one of my friends that I’m proactive in theory, reactionary in practice. It’s easier to let someone else make a decision. It’s always easier to help the person who comes to me, and work on the project that’s brought to my attention. It’s easier to present options to someone rather than a definitive recommendation. It’s easier to ask someone what they want rather than imagining what can be AND presenting a way to get there.

A leader will take responsibility and make a decision. A leader will ask the hard questions and choose a path. A leader will care enough to pursue a project or person rather than just waiting to react. A leader will have the guts to share a vision and take a position. Maybe part of the fascination people have with leaders, real leaders at least, is it’s easier to look to someone else rather than to take a stand. Leadership, though, is not a position, but a state of mind, a choice. I’m still learning what it means to be a leader. At least I know what I’m aiming for…

God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for your life.
-1st of the 4 spiritual laws, as written by Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ

I recently commented on an article at TheOoze.com titled Plans. The author is questioning how A) how specific a plan God has for our lives and B) how well we can know that plan. The last comment is as follows:

simple common sense proves the value of learning by trial and error, but I think Christians have a dim view of learning by trial and error. like if you make an error, then it means you didn’t seek God hard enough. if you had, then you wouldn’t have made the error. this is bs.

Now, it’s hard to say whether this person is a Christian or not, but it appears not. Is learning by trial and error ’simple common sense?’ The funny thing about common sense, is that it’s not as common as we’d hope. Also, there are plenty of people making a living talking to both Christian and non-Christian audiences about things that are common sense. Yet, people have a fear of failure, avoid pain, and prefer not to take big risks. I don’t find this just a Christian phenomena, though it is indeed prevalent within Western Christianity, though there are many Christians who don’t ‘have a dim view of learning by trial and error.’

I agree with the last two lines of the comment though. Using God as an excuse to play it safe and avoid failure contrasts sharply with my understanding of the Bible and faith. Faith is about taking steps, often without knowing where. Sometimes faith means using our imaginations to create something that doesn’t exist. However, God NEVER promises that we’ll live a mistake-free life if we follow Him, nor do I see Biblical evidence that God has one specific plan for everyone’s life that we ‘have to get right.’ Does God have plans? Yes, but I’d say they are much more dynamic in nature, and much more relational in nature. It is important to seek God, but we sometimes miss that God created us to BE what He wants us to BE, and what we DO flows from that. And I’ll tell you this, when God wants to build character in a person, and when God wants to create a faith in that person so they will trust Him no matter what, do you think that means an easy path or a hard path? Do we learn dependence more when we already make the right decisions, or when we fall flat on our faces?

There have been plenty of time I’ve overanalyzed in my Christian walk, trying to get it right. I missed the point, and to the degree I still do that, I miss the point. The God of grace, love, and forgiveness wants me to be, and to trust Him like a child. He’s promised struggles in this life, but He has overcome the world. Am I a victim of this life, or an overcomer, not matter the circumstances?