In both parable and paradox, the objective in the pedagogy of Christ was to expose the gap between awareness and ignorance. Ignorance exposed, is ignorance deposed. God’s Word exposes our ignorance, and facilitates new levels of awareness—a paradigm shift from what is known to what is unknown.
The Mat 6:33 Imperative is a call to shift paradigms from self and environment to Christ—an absolute surrender to the authority of God in Christ. As the journey unfolds, we begin to see us in the context of the Light of God. It enables the individual to begin a process of breaking down models deeply rooted in environmental limitations, and replacing them with new ones loaded with charged possibilities in the context of the eternal and divine.
Every butterfly must go through certain transformational stages before it flies its own unique fly. Personal transformation in the Christ-Logos is a metamorphosis of the tensions and contradictions of the dynamic interaction between the Spirit of the divine and the churning of the human spirit. We are transformed as we experience God in our relationship with the person of Christ as being—very God, and very human. Christ went through it all, Heb 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”
In all biblical teaching, the Word of God is central and crucial to the transformation of one’s mind, Dt 30:14” [T]he word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” Paul quotes the same scripture in Rom 10:8, and links it with Faith and confession—confess with your mouth, and believe in your heart. True transformation begins in one’s heart, and ultimately affects one’s language. The power of confession is not in what you say, but in what you believe; and Christ as Logos is both the substance and object of our faith and confession.
In much of self-help literature, scripture is used as rote recitation and incantation and personal gratification. To be sure, it idolizes the human mind, and uses biblical scripture as a religious invocation to dispel or invoke a desired result. If it works, you can safely walk away from it, and perhaps try it the next time you are in trouble. The problem is relational in that God is used as we would a voodoo charm, but there is often no personal relationship with the Christ of God.
Many of these mental rehearsal incantations are based on “tried and tested” theories of the human mind; and thrive on psychological manipulation. The challenge of the Mat 6:33 Imperative is to let God transform our minds through God’s word—not us transform God through human theories. Paul warned, Col 2:8 (NLT) “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.” Scientific theories change with time, but the word of God endures forever.
Human nature being what it is, will always question its own competence to stand above itself, it is always in search of a higher Divine. Whenever we run into a glitch, we want a more powerful intervention. St. Augustine confessed (Pusey, 1996:11), “Oh God! You created us to praise you; you made us for your own pleasure, and our hearts are ill-at-ease until they find rest in you.”
No comments:
Post a Comment