I have done more thinking on what the emerging principle, transforming secular space, includes. As I thought, I remembered the oft-quoted saying by Abraham Kuyper, "there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: mine!" This truth is at the heart of what it means to transform secular space. It is the recognition that God does not just rule at church and among church folk but that he is active in all of creation and has invited us to join. We are so self-absorbed in our own "getting saved" that we miss the whole point of redemption. The good news is not that we "get a ticket to heaven" for when we die but that we are given invaluable insight into what it means to truly live and that life involves bringing heaven to earth, transforming the secular space. This concept of "bringing heaven to earth" is key to understanding the believer's role in the realized eschatology of the Kingdom of God. It is not just a future, hope-oriented reality but has broken into this age in the death and resurrection of Christ. We, as those united to Christ, are called to bring this new age, this renewed creation, to our worlds.
But this isn't the type of thing that people like to hear because it consumes everything you are. Like CS Lewis said in his book, The Weight of Glory "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." This goes for Christians too (if not especially).
3 comments:
This is definitely a serious problem in today's church...I think that we tend categorize just about5 everything we do. I'm reading a book right now called Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas...and one of the things that he talks about is sort of the same thing, in that, most of the early church fathers i.e. Augustine saw married believers as second class Christians...Thomas says, and I agree, that rather than marriage being a hindrance to spiritual intimacy with God...marriage inhances our relationship with Him...if we let it--that is...So I guess it's the same kind of idea...as far as not putting sex within marriage in a "carnal" slot and celibacy...which one could probably argue sex within marriage is...in a 'spiritual' slot. Anyway, I think my comment pertains to the original post...later man.
crap I spelled enhance wrong too...
You've been posting more lately.
On eschatology, I think that one of the reasons (although it wouldn't be articulated) why so much of the modern church falls back on the dispensationalist, pretrib rapturist premillenialism is because it's easier to just anticipate the coming of the kingdom than it is to commit to attempt to live it out in our own lives as we anticipate its fulfillment in broader creation.
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