by Tom Johnston
April 2007
Quite often, when I discuss the spiritual revolution the Lord is fomenting in the West, people consider the ideas and concepts around the issue to be “outside-the-box” thinking. (Some have actually said “Tom, get back in the box!”) In reality, it is simply a journey of radical rediscovery of the basic, orthodox truths of the New Testament scriptures. The core principles of loving God, loving others and making disciples for Christ everywhere all the time are actually the simple heart of Jesus’ teaching. It just seems revolutionary to some, because of their framework, their worldview, their box.
In the 1999 smash movie hit The Matrix, the hero Neo, on one of his journeys into the computer-generated reality of the Matrix encounters a child who is, apparently, bending a spoon with his mind. Neo sees this, and knowing this is impossible, asks how the child is bending the spoon. The child replies – “there is no spoon” – the child knows that the spoon doesn’t really exist, as it is just part of the Matrix sim-world. He is not altering the spoon; having been freed from the superimposed reality of the Matrix, he is willfully altering his perception of reality. Neo, having been recently released from the machine imposed domination of the Matrix, is still having trouble comprehending his reality. In an earlier scene, another character explains the Matrix to Neo, as the “world having been pulled over our eyes.” (Sounds like the first couple chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans to me!)
Many in the Western Church live in a virtual reality, a sim-world of their own making, the First Church of the Matrix, if you will. Not a box of orthodoxy, but a self-imposed box of orthopraxy – how we apply right belief to life and ministry. We have so compartmentalized our Christian existence, so boxed it in, labeled it sacred and secular, right and wrong, proper and improper – that we have marginalized ourselves in the culture. Indeed, even the word orthodoxy used to mean “right worship” – not as an event, but as a way of life lived unto God. We have changed it to mean “right belief,” as doctrine has become our focus. Our doctrine and theology might be O.K. (we all know in part, no stream has it all right - sorry), but our ecclesiology – our understanding of what the Church is, is so fundamentally flawed in the West that we live ineffective lives inside our Matrix-like box.
But the truth is – there is no box. The cultural (and sometimes doctrinal) definitions of “Church” which we hold create the limitations on our worldview, preventing the fullness of the knowledge of Christ to come to us, and ultimately through us to others (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). For His eternal perspective, beyond time and space, God sees no limits on His Church. We are the ones inside the box, inside our Matrix. He only sees His people – He sees sons and daughters, not the programs, budgets, buildings, crusades, outreach events, services or revival meetings. Embracing the simplicity of the Gospel is freeing to the soul, embracing the Church being simply the people of God is freeing to the Gospel.
Unfortunately, for those who think such simplicity is too far outside the box, the only other alternative is to try to “bend the spoon,” or in our case bend the box. Drawing on Jesus’ metaphor, these people have a focus on embellishing the wineskin, rather than focusing on producing some really good, mature spiritual wine (Luke 5:37-39). It is the heart of American marketing and consumerism to accentuate the packaging to sell a marginal or inferior product. Tweak the box all you want – you're still trapped inside it.
Join us in the revolution. Be free from your box. Cast your religious inhibitions aside and pursue Christ and His mission with reckless abandon.
What are your thoughts?
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3 comments:
The box ripped open with the cry, "It is finished" but many fear the risk of total dependence on the Holy Spirit. So many try to put Him in a box, bring Him out when they need Him, not realizing that where He is, there is freedom and power and fire and fruit.Too many are building boxes with wood, hay and stubble.Without the fire houses will stand a long time.Look at those bueatiful white church buildings, do not touch! "quench not the Spirit, for this is the will of God.." Here's what happened when John wesley came out of his box. "Monday, April 2, 1739, marked a signal event in the history of Christianity because it was on that day that John Wesley abandoned his reticence to preach outside the church and, at Kingswood Bristol, took to open-air evangelism. Wesley's decision brought him face to face with the common people and ignited a revival the likes of which England had never seen. Regarding that great day, Wesley wrote in his diary:
At four in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people. The Scripture on which I spoke was this . . . "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted; to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
No box anymore just the believer filled with the Holy Spirit working in a local body of Christ,His church. John Brigham
Sounds like the same deal Australia is facing. The MAtrix analogy is still valid and powerful and I have a feeling that God was co-author of that initial segment of the trilogy.
So many of my friends have become so much a part of the Box that they don't even know it. Our greatest fear as a new house-based church is that we create a new Box.
A great article, TOm. Appreciate it.
I think of the often derided mime act of being stuck in a box . . . but maybe he's outside the box looking in on us, maybe he knows that he's in a box and wants us to know it too.
When I was a teenager, I began questioning the relevance of the church in which I had grown up in. In my judgement on them, I didn't see much in the way of reaching outside the buiding and even inside the building. I was hungering for something more but didn't know what it was because even I was stuck "in-the-box". It took more than a decade for me to find the right guide/mentor to even realize the box I was in.
JA
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