YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN! INSIDE OUT UPSIDE DOWN.

You must be “Born Again.”

Effective personal transformation is not a product of the mind, but of the human spirit.  When the human spirit opens up to the Spirit of God, a new life is born.  The Mat 6:33 Imperative is the atmosphere in which this new life takes a lungful of oxygen, and develops towards its God given destiny.

The human spirit, and the human mind are not same; the spirit is the being in us created in the image of God, and the mind is the rational seat of that being.  Christ taught that, ^{Jn 4:24} “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”  We are created in the image of God, as scripture says, ^{Ge 1:27(TNIV)} “So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”   Our connection with God is Spirit to spirit.  When we reduce God to the limitations of our environment, we end up with religion, as Paul wrote, ^{2Ti 3:5} “having a form of godliness but denying its power.”  Only spirit can understand Spirit.

It is common knowledge that every living species will give birth to its own kind, and even more that the physical body we focus on so much, Christ came to restore the original “Being” in which we were created.  Paul said, ^{Ac 17:28} ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’  As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’  To be born of the Spirit is to be born of God.

That recognition is essentially a restoration of the human being’s authority over nature and environment.  We were created to reign—to act upon, and not to be acted upon.  Scripture says, ^{Ge 1:26(TNIV)} Then God said, “Let us make the human being in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

In the Genesis creation narrative, Adam and Eve had a spiritual relationship with God, and the serpent reduced that to an environmental relationship.  This is the precise point where our anxiety was introduced, ^{Ge 3:19} “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”  Since then, success is measured in terms of pleasure, power, possession, and achievement. 

When we are “born again,” our spiritual relationship with God is restored, and our relationship with the environment changes.  We are defined—not by the environment and its success indicators—but by a rich and dynamic relationship with Christ in God.

That truth is what Nicodemus could not walk away from; to be “born again” meant giving up known idols for the Truth.  His idols were not so conspicuous because they were disguised in religion.  As a veteran Pharisee, he was used to a sense of power covered and flowered with god-talk. 

Pharisees adhered more to their interpretations, than to the God they were interpreting.  To be sure, whatever they did was more about them than it was about God.  Nicodemus’ idol was exposed because his constituency had discovered a sterner truth.  It is better to discover the truth about you, before your lie is exposed.  The worn-out cliché is true, “You can lie to some people some of the time, but you can’t lie to all the people all of the time.”  Your sin will find you out.

Traditionally, Nicodemus worked his way backwards to his ancestors, which was more rational than spiritual, but this new challenge was about working forward and spiritual.  The challenge of the Mat 6:33 Imperative is about the future, not the past—and the future needs a new attitude.  Paul reminded the Ephesians that they needed, ^{Eph 4:23}”… to be made new in the attitude of your minds…” in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus Christ (V.21).

The Mat 6:33 Imperative is an invitation to return to the depth of our innermost, and to search and constantly probe our reason for being.  To search for one’s life-long aspiration; one’s deepest and best hope of what one’s life might be.  Nelson Mandela and his comrades were kept alive in prison by nothing less than the “Ideal” of a just and democratic South Africa.  Martin Luther King was motivated by his “Dream” of human equality in the United States of America.  WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR LIFE?

SOW THE SEED, IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO EXPECT A HARVEST

in many and various ways taught that patience is a spiritual virtue, it involves sitting on the banks of a river with your fishing rod and hook in the waters and waiting for your fish to swim by.  Sometimes the wait is short and sometimes it is long but that is entirely outside the angler’s scope of control, he can only go as far as setting up the rod, the fish and the waters are outside his influence.

The farmer knows he/she can’t harvest without first sowing the seed even though he/she is not responsible for its growth.  First, he/she prepares the soil in the best way he/she knows how, throws the seed into the ground, and leaves the rest to natural forces buried deep in the soil.  The farmer recognizes that he/she is only part of a whole intricate scheme of things that must happen before harvest; in the meantime, he/she must sit and wait because the processes of time are not emotional, just realistic.

When soil lies bare, not many people see the opportunities in it because they don’t scream out, but if you have an eye, you can identify opportunity where others see waste.  When the seed is buried beneath the soil, the surface looks as bare as it is unfarmed, but the reality is there is a lot of activity underneath that the naked eye can’t pick up.  Many people have seen advantage where others have seen nothing.

Opportunity is rare and often surfaces at the most unexpected of places, if we can’t read beyond the obvious we miss it.  No breakthrough is ever possible without learning how to wait and patiently watching the place where the seed was buried, Solomon wrote about wisdom, ^{Pr 8:34(NLT)} “Joyful are those who listen to me, watching for me daily at my gates, waiting for me outside my home.” 

Waiting is futile if we don’t know what we are waiting for or if we are waiting at the wrong place.  If we wait for a door to open, it has to be the right door at the right place, if you want bread you go to the bakery not the butchery.  If we don’t know what we are waiting for we can’t identify it when it comes along, and if we are waiting at the wrong place, what we are waiting for may never come along.  Waiting for what you don’t know or at the wrong place is foolish even if by some accident you end up with what you need.  Waiting for what you know and at the right place is virtuous even if you may never find it; the spiritual processes at work are different.

On the natural, it is better to be foolish with something than be virtuous with nothing.  That is to completely miss the crux of the “Kingdom Imperative” because the focus of the imperative is not on the finding but on the seeking.  The finding is only an effect of the seeking, if you keep looking in the right places you will find what you are looking for.  No seeking is complete until we find, just as no finding is complete unless the processes of waiting purify character.  Shortcuts may deliver an end but they don’t produce the emotional robustness of the process.  Victory, as Samson’s honey is sweeter if found in the carcass of a lion you killed.  If you worm your way through any sort of achievement, you will lack the moral stronghold to sustain it.

IGNORANCE EXPOSED IS IGNORANCE DEPOSED

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.”

REVISITING OUR FROZEN MENTAL MODELS...

When Jesus announced the Mat 6:33 Imperative, he was in every sense calling the processes of history to look beyond themselves for answers to the questions that emerge in the tensions and contradictions of its activities.  He was calling for a moment of silence and reflection.  Something was missing, and he called it the kingdom of God.

Blaise Pascal said, “The sole cause of our unhappiness is that we don’t know how to sit quietly in a room.”  But why would one sit quietly in a room when the rat race is so hot among individuals and nations?  We live in a culture of “Se mphete ke go fete,”[1] and often racing past each other to where nobody wants to go.

 

The Christ had the answer, ^{Lk 12:30} “For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them.”  Existential questions revolve around “things.”  To be sure, they revolve around life’s meaninglessness, and we try to create meaning around “things.”  There are things which are indispensable to the survival of the human species; and Maslow called them “needs.”  But in the rat race of human existence there are those who chase, and those who are being chased.  Therefore, the problem is relational; it is not the “thing,” but how I choose to relate to the “thing.”

Martin Buber sheds more light on this predicament, the problem is not “It,” but how “I” relates to “It.”  If “It” replaces “Thou,” then “I” become “It.”  Paul Tillich was right, in manipulating things, we are transformed into the things we manipulate.

But do we know any different?  Is life not about power in some sense or another?  The Mat 6:33 Imperative seems to ignore all of these environmental demands.  The Pharisees must have felt like they are being surrendered to the very forces they sought to be liberated from.  They had become the very structures they erected.

Nietzsche (1967, pp. 122-123) was upset with Christ for all the wrong reasons; he did not question his existence in history, but was nauseated by his seemingly dis-empowering message.  Why would anyone reject the answer to the questions that one wrestles with every day?  The question is rhetoric, and yet it sheds some light into the deep and dark corridors of our own existence.  We penetrate the skies, and yet we fail to explore the depth of our own being.  And with deep insight, Tillich observed, “No one can experience depth without stopping and becoming aware of himself.”

This is true, not only for religion, but depth about anything is impossible unless we recognise the need for self-awareness.  This is important because none of us is a bastion of all knowledge.  Where something is known, there is always something else to be known on a higher level.  This seems to have been the problem with the Pharisees and their legal counterparts.  They were tenured in traditional religion, and could not conceive of anything else coming outside of the established perimeters.  This is typical horizontal or linear thinking, if it doesn’t come the way it is known, it can’t be accepted.

How do you search for what you thought you had all along?  But that’s what the Mat 6:33 Imperative implies.  The proposition is simple yet deeply complex.  We have a problem.  We are missing something, and unless we stop and think deeply about it, it will elude us for ever.  That calls for a thoroughgoing re-visitation of the models, symbols, and myths we hold about God.  Symbols may be helpful in facilitating our expressions of God in time, but with time, they are rendered obsolete.  Like people, symbols are born, and they die.  Jewish religion was high on symbolism, and the Christ called for a re-visioning of the situation.

TAKE SOME TIME OFF!  SCRUTINISE WHAT YOU BELIEVE!  HOW RELEVANT IS IT?  

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[1] A phrase in Setswana (African language mostly spoken in western parts of South Africa) depicting how in the human rat race one person seems to call out to another, “Don’t pass me, let me pass you!”  Martin Luther King called it, “The Drum Major Instinct” (Clayborne Cassel, 1998).

THE MAT 6:33 IMPERATIVE: "SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD!"

In a journey of faith, you respond to a voice within that only you can hear.  You see things in your spirit that cannot be measured on the scoreboard, and somehow you know you are right even when everything else around you says you are wrong.  That is not conventional thinking, there is no logic in it, and sceptics will quickly point that out, and yet that is the core of its genius and ingenuity.  The Imperative is an invitation to rise above conventional thinking, and to see the universe from a God-in-charge and God-created perspective.

Kingdom thinking begins with the conviction that God is in charge, reigning high over all, and enthroned in glory.  That notion immediately calls for the absolute surrender of every fibre of our total being to the rule of God—that in part, is the kingdom of God.  Our challenge from the very beginning is to let God be God over God’s creation.  The Imperative is a call back to the “Garden” beginning, and a challenge to work on what we have been given.  The greed to extend our borders is more often than not an indication of our spiritual, not our social condition.

The panaceas prescribed by social theories provide some relief, but they run short of curing the illness; what we need is deep spiritual insight into the predicament of human existence.  Biblical scripture is clear; our deliverance is found at the precise point where we sinned.  Greed will always seek to extend its borders; eventually it searches for opportunity to overthrow God.  It may hide under acceptable norms of pleasure, power, and possession; but eventually it turns out to be a dragon with many heads, and it marches forth, stark naked and spitting fire on everything in its way to occupy its coveted territory.  Greed is idolatry, Paul warned, ^{Col 3:5} “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.” 

When greed hides in religion, it becomes an enemy of God in the name of God, because it promotes itself in the name of God to replace God.  When Adam and Eve stretched forth to eat of the forbidden tree, the promise was nothing less than to be God.  Alfred Adler was right; every pursuit in society is an overt or covert attempt to gain power, not so much over others, as it is over self.  We are our own enemy.  Our own feelings of inferiority drive us to pursue achievements that will instil in us a feeling of superiority.  We worship the idols we carve, because we associate them with the power we crave.

Adam and Eve were made to feel inferior, and prompted to seek definition and superiority from the immediate environment.  The serpent in the Garden of Eden drove them to undermine who they were in relation to God. 

Our biggest problem with God is relational.  Idols undermine our relationship with God, in Martin Buber’s trend of thinking, the “THOU” becomes an “It.”  We relate to things as though they were God, and to God as though God were a thing.  Jesus introduced a kingdom principle, ^{Lk 12:15 (TNIV)} “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”  The problem is not the possessions, but greed—Christ spoke to the condition of the heart.

Every culture has established ways of dealing with God, why would the Mat 6:33 Imperative introduce anything different?  The Imperative is the defining moment of what Christ called the message of the Kingdom of God.  In religion, society defines how we relate to God, but in the message of the Kingdom, God defines the relationship with humankind.  We are in it for who God is, not for what we leech out of it.

The Mat 6:33 Imperative introduced a different dimension, ^{Ex 20:4} “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”  The contest between God and idols stretches back to the beginning of human history; Adam and Eve chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil over God.  There was more to the garden than they could exhaust, but they chose the tree because it promised more than what God had given.

Jesus challenged his crowds to revisit their loyalties; did they lie with God, or with the royalties received from idols of the environment.  It is common practice to worship an idol for royalty; you bow because there’s something in it for you.  It was Sigmund Freud who first popularised “The will to pleasure,” he attached all kinds of sexual overtones to it; but in the end we do what we do for our own pleasure.  Adam and Eve reached out to eat of the forbidden tree for their own pleasure; and our relationship with God was disrupted.

God did not deny the couple the pleasures of the Garden (not even in Freudian terms)—they denied God the pleasure of being God in relation to God’s own creation.  In prophetic terms, they prostituted their allegiance.  Israel was warned of spiritual prostitution, ^{Nu 15:39} “You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by going after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes.”

Allegiance defines relationship.  Jesus taught, ^{Lk 16:13} “No servant can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Money.”  Allegiance defines fidelity, ^{Lk 12:34} “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The problem with environmental idols is that their glory is short-lived; they are a journey with a defined destination, and once you arrive, you don’t know where else to go, or what more to do.  What do you do beyond becoming the wealthiest person on earth?  Could there be more beyond a person’s highest aspirations?  Not many people get there, but if you do, Jesus asked, ^{Mk 8:36 (TNIV)} “What good is it for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?”

"GOD IS DEAD!"

It is Nietzsche who told a parable of a man who pronounced "God is dead, and we killed him!"

Good Friday is a good reminder of how we killed God.  One is reminded of Mel Gibson's "Passion Of The Christ," a gruesome motion picture of how cruel we can become, especially if we wear the cloak of religion.  Religion crucified God in the name of God.

Christ was at his most ferocious when confronted by religious leaders.  The scribes and Pharisees of his time anointed themselves with the exclusive right to represent God on earth, and he overthrew that.  They had been waiting all their lives for the Messiah and when he showed up, they killed him.  That is very typical of religion, and that is why it thrives on dogma.  People who hold a thing to be the truth of all times are capable of the worst kinds of cruelty.  Religious people can be very dangerous, especially if they do what they do in the name of God

But who can kill God?  A God who dies does not deserve to be God at all.  And that is the difference between the Christ of God and every other known religious leader.  He died and he rose again!  Everyone else is still in their graves.  If he didn't rise again the religious leaders of his day would have been more than ready and willing to prove otherwise.  Mary Magdalene--the first woman apostle--carried the good news of his resurrection.  And of course the men thought it was all nonsense.  God's foolishness will always confound the wisdom of the day.

Jesus died and he rose gain!  All it takes is a leap of faith, believing that he was who he claimed to be, "Christ the saviour of the world, and the Son of the living God."  It's like banjo jumping, the only difference is that you land in the hands of God.  God never dies!

UPSIDE DOWN AND RIGHT SIDE UP

It's amazing how Jesus turned everything upside down, only to turn it right side up!  In a world of "Business as usual" that's bound to be a shocker, and you may even get crucified for it!

The world was a tense place when the Master walked in.  People were coming and going as in the usual give and takes of human existence.  And--as if ignorant of what was happening--he said in Mat 6:33, "Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need."  For the Romans, there was nothing as "all else" as power, Greeks were preoccupied with human intelligence, and the Jews were obsessed with religion.  All of that seemed meaningless unless priority was given to the Mat 6:33 Imperative.


Our greatest tragedy is that we are separated from God!  We are unable to function to optimum because we see ourselves as independent from God and the rest of the universe.  Our politics, philosophy and religion have pushed us even deeper into this quagmire.  The only success we've made of ourselves is a mess.  How do we turn it all around?

There is only one answer, and it is caught in the words of the late African Apostle Nicholas Bhengu, "Back To God."  We've missed it so bad, we must go back to the God-beginning, and Jesus called it "Born again."We need a new mindset for everything.  We must "Repent!"

Religion has stripped the word "Repent" of its original and more powerful meaning.  It is now limited to a list of do's and dont's that are palatable to human taste.  You either measure up to a rigid religious-list or you get thrown out.  Repentance is not a religious list of what to do and not to do, it is a spiritual journey "Back To God."  And that journey begins with the Christ of God, believing that he was whom he claimed to be, the Son of the living God and the saviour of the world.

God is a spiritual journey; a very long spiritual journey.  There is no religious list on human morality that can capture the processes of that unfolding journey, and that is why Paul wrote Romans12:2b, "But let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.  Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect."

The spiritual journey in Christ is a journey of learning (discipleship), and in the learning we are transformed.  We all have a personal pilgrimage, that journey we undertake between birth and death.  We either live it within the determinations of the human environment, or the unfolding processes of the Spirit of God.  Transformation is not a once-off instalment, it comes over time in a journey where we arrive yet never arrive.  Our intention is not destiny but eternity.  We live the not-yet as though it already was, and pray "Thy Kingdom come...and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."