unlearning adulthood
It wasn’t until I started growing up that I realized that I couldn't really do anything to effectively change the world in order to make it a better place. Don’t we all remember that as teenagers and young children we believed that we could actually do something to help the world? I heard it once said that it wasn’t until seminary that they realized when Jesus said “sell all that you have and give it to the poor” he really meant to be willing to. In the same vain it wasn’t till I grew up that I realized that it is important to be willing to have imagination and ideas about how the world should be but that’s it. We should expect to be able to actually affect change in the world as we know it. I think that is absurd to say the least but it definitely may explain the apathy and the confusion about what we think it means to be a Christian in modern culture. It may explain why we align Christianity with a certain set of political ideals that may or may not be Biblical. It may be why we need to seek out good theology as a replacement for the bad and not just throwing theology to the wind. The challenge for us is merely to dream, to be creative, to have imagination and see the world reconciled into the eschatological utopia God willed from the beginning. Simply to say we are responsible for having the vision to be part of the reconciliation of this world into the New Heaven and the New Earth.
posted by Deke at
1:55 AM
4 Comments:
Deke,
I really like your title. Thanks for your thoughts, they inspire dreams, literally. How can we begin, as followers of Christ, to change the world? What does that look like? How do we do that? Just throwing it out.
I think some things we can do might include, hanging with people, loving people, going to the places nobody wants to go, feeding people, helping children keep their imagination's and fantasies, encourage those fantasies. I think for us to develop imagination is hard but something that has helped me is to be reminded that when God talks about heaven and we on earth as it is in heaven that maybe we need to wrap our minds around Earth being heaven after reconciliation and we are intricate in that process. So what should we be doing for that to happen? I don't know if that is helpful or just more stuff.
Deke,
I really like the idea of encouraging creativity. As you said, "Helping children keep their imagination's and fantasies, encourage those fantasies." The idea that we that we can have our own ideas, new ways, and different ways, has been lost somewhere. This brings to mind the thoughts we here at our church have been wrestling over....How can we bring Arts back into the Church, but without creating another program, or an "arts ministry", but how can the Church truly again be at the forefront of the Arts? How can we (the Church), be the most creative organization on the planet? How can we set the newest trends, instead of following them? I would love anyone's comment on this.
Kenny, I was reading some more in Irresisitible Revolution and also just thinking a little bit. I was thinking that we could include our children in hanging out with kids of homeless families or the underpriviledged. I think it would be awsome just to give them some chalk to go decorate the sidewalks. Also in terms of the practical application to our ministries. I ultimately think video and drama and painting and storytelling as a sermon style are all ways that we can use the arts in our worship. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a worship service centered around an operatic motif. By letting the music be the conductor of or worship and how it is acted out.
But one way I see us boosting our creatitvity is by serving others and helping them have an opportunity to be creative and dream big.
I also think we should encourage people to read stories that are absurd fantasie fiction be it C.S. Lewis or The Davinci Code whatever will help us imagine and think ourside our norm.
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