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READING THE SIGNS
What we have been talking about here is an exercise in what is called semiotics. The Greek word semion in the Gospel accounts is the word for sign. You may remember Jesus in Matthew 16 saying, “You can interpret the appearance of the sky but you cannot read the signs of the times.” Semiotics is reading the signs of the times.
As we have read culture, we have seen a couple signs that give us hints and clues to entry points into conversations we just haven’t understood how to have. My experience as I have talked about this with many Christians, is while there might be initial resistance to think in these ways, they are simply looking for “biblical permission” to think and interact around these topics because they are so common in the cultural airspace.
Semiotics is exactly what Paul used in his now famous Mars Hill interaction. And I want to make sure we touch on it because I think it is another permission giving touch point for us as we head into a spiritually interested culture but one largely hostile to the Christian version.
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I think the best way for us to safeguard ourselves from the charge of this being too New Agey is to recognize that while we are called to be gods, our god-ness is always derivative and therefore diminutive. This is a critical distinction that prevents putting humanity on the same level as the Triune God but at the same time acknowledges and engages what appears to be the full intent of the biblical material. Whatever it means that we are made imago dei and have the breath of God within us, it is certainly does not mean we are in every way shape and form identical to the Triune God the Creator of the Universe. There is a distinction between Creator and the Created. There is a qualitative and unique difference between the Maker and the Made. As the Created and Made ones, whatever similarities, likenesses, and whatever imago dei fullness we have, is derived from the God who made us. As a result of being derived it means we are less than the Creator. This is the safeguard and clarification of how we can have the first person conversation while allowing the Triune God to remain God and yet at the same time we can be imago dei, little gods, as Jesus says.
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GOD IN US
In our Protestant church tradition we don’t have many categories for understanding this first person, God-within pursuit. But Scripture teaches this first person perspective. Consider these passages in light of this 1st person conversation. (Emphasis added.)
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4)
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THE REST OF THE STORY
The Fall-Redemption story is part of the story, but it is really an abbreviated lo-cal excerpt of the fuller version. And here is the problem; to start the conversation with the Fall is to start talking about God’s Story at Genesis 3. Starting the conversation here and omitting the opening salvos of the first two chapters has locked us into having only one conversation about God: the 2nd person conversation. I would like to suggest when we start the conversation with a fall-redemption paradigm we only can talk about God in 2nd person. In other words the only way we can view God is as “Other” as “out there” as another person. While that is totally true about God our inability to see God from a couple other perspectives may be debilitating us. [read more...]
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I rarely see afternoon TV, but recently hit a twenty-minute segment and wow – was it compelling. Through sobbing and tears, person after person began recounting how after watching a TV show one month earlier their lives had instantly and forever changed. “Instantly” and “forever” definitely caught my attention. They went on to talk about how they were now in charge of their lives, bringing to themselves any outcomes they chose. The teachers of the phenomenon made it clear it was all because “you create your own reality, and that as a spiritual being you bring your spirit to bear on the circumstances of life.” I paused long enough to take in the details because of the confessed monumental change it brought. This was my introduction to The Secret, the most recent craze to hit American culture and propelled to cult status by current spiritual and philanthropy diva, Oprah.
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