Many years ago, however, in a relational context, I accidentally formulated much of what I'm about in a very refreshing way. I was writing a letter to a German journalist who I had met on a trip to visit my cousin in Belgium. He was as agnostic as they come and yet open to spirituality in a general (pantheistic) sense. I represented his first-ever encounter with a Christian who seemed to attach his spiritual interests to the Gospel, rather than barage him with a litany of his errors. Caught up in my passion for writing to him, brain for the moment servant to heart, I wrote these words: "My mission is to cause non-Christians to think about Christianity--and to cause Christians to think--about anything!" I realized as soon as the words presented themselves before me, I had opened up a door that I would be walking through for the rest of my life.
And so it began: my efforts to interpret culture, create postmodern apologetics and present the Gospel free from all the religious trappings that keep people away. I feel as strongly as ever the call to both awaken the spiritual mind in the body of Christ and to redeem the awakening spiritual mind that is "out there" in the culture. (I'd rather connect with Oprah and lead her back into the God she has shunned rather than criticize her constantly for searching beyond religion...)
Considering the terrain I'm taking on, it is no surprise that being misunderstood is a frequent landform. Most of the opposition I encounter doesn't merit description. (I pour my heart out making Acts 17-based comparisons between the poets of the Apostle Paul's day and the lyricists of ours only to have someone rejoice afterwards with the gross oversimplification: "I'm so glad I can listen to secular music at this church.") The other day, however, in yet another one of my forays into living my mission, I had an encounter so poignant that it begs description here.
Ever since I rediscovered, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," (see the blog entry with that name) the tragic story of Syd Barrett has pulled at my heart. Much like the death of Kurt Cobain, Barrett's story and the music Pink Floyd produced in tribute to him seems to represent the cry of a generation who was desperate for more reality than the church was able to produce (for the most part--that too is a gross oversimplification, but give it to me for now). Recently, as I stood staring down a whole aisle of "new age" books in a Barnes & Noble, I heard the beginnings of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" on the store sound system. I knew ahead of time I was about to be broken:
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
The words at that moment were alive. The whole first section spoke so strongly about the knowledge of good and evil--the desperate search for meaning doomed to futility by the limits of the human brain--insanity is the only logical outcome when the Eternal is not in the system. And the line, "and did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage..." seemed to cut through me as sharply as the best preaching has ever done. At that moment I wasn't feeling for Syd Barrett any more. Rather I was thinking of the pathetic taming that seems to happen in Christians as they watch a few dreams take on the appearance of disappointment. I was asking myself to what degree I had exchanged, for whatever reasons--none of which were good enough--my strategic assignments in the Kingdom for something that appealed more to my needy self-image...only to realize down the road I was in a cage. Yes, I wept that day as I stood there, blown away by the fact that the God I know as the Father the Lord Jesus, breather of Holy Scriptures, worker of signs and wonders by his ever-powerful Spirit, was somehow speaking to me through seemingly godless rock stars.
I deemed that moment worthy of sharing and did so in the next scheduled time I had to give a "church talk". I described the encounter and what it meant to me. I talked about the army of "when pigs fly" t-shirted people who had listened to those words a thousand times. I knew that they were lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year--always and only running over the same old ground and bumping into the same old fears. I described my desperate passion to introduce them to the Jesus who could change that situation. At the same time I admitted my extreme grief caused by the thought that the church itself was so similarly disposed! If we are brutally honest--and we so seldom are--many of us feel a bit like that describes the secret wilderness we hide from even Jesus because we think we should be "doing better". I expressed the pain I felt for the world and the church simultaneously. After all, the thing they have in common is simply their humanity and no human condition is glorious when unsubmitted to the big picture of Kingdom life. So, I cast restraint aside and poured out my passion before my hearers, certain that God was igniting a call.
When I had finished, we had a lively discussion and many people affirmed, suggested and had words from heaven to add to the emergent message. However, one lady who had come, raised her hand and said, "I don't get it at all. Those words sound just made up to me--like gibberish. They don't make any sense to me and I haven't understood a thing you have said." I stopped short of suggesting to her the acquisition of "a life" and instead pulled from some training somewhere in my past about how to affirm divergent opinions in group dynamics. I hated every second of it however.
Today, as I sit musing, it occurs to me why I hated it. The lady who said these things was not a complete novice. She has been a Christian for years and hears words from God, prays them out, and many times has blessed many people. She has a heart for God and the Kingdom and does not just deserve to be filed as "too religious". She didn't object based on the fact that it was (blush when you say it) Pink Floyd drug era rock lyrics. She just honestly didn't get a thing out of those lyrics or my discussion of them! Why? Because she honestly did not know how to THINK about things outside the scope of the Christian experience. It all went back to my mission...I had asked her to do something that she wasn't accustomed to church asking her to do: put some previously disconnected thoughts together into a new perspective; see a new view; experience a concept beyond its surface value...LET HER RIGHT BRAIN INFORM HER LEFT...and she immediately felt the disorientation.
It's not her fault: WE the church have conditioned her. Like a lost skill or atrophied muscle, there is an area of our brains that we have abandoned through our fear of ending up in "reasoning" that would hinder the Spirit of God. I get it! I have fought and conquered that kind of reasoning (strongholds in thinking that oppose the Gospel) all my Christian life. BUT, I want to say that there is a positive action to that negative. The Christian life is not just about "UNDOING" the negative thoughts and rejoicing that we are purged! There is a thinking to be done! There is a "waking up" of the mind that represents another level of Kingdom effectiveness--an ability to not just have ears, but HEAR!
The mind can serve the Spirit and do great exploits for God. WHEN WE SO SEPARATE THE TWO THAT WE THINK WHAT GOD DESIRES IS SOMETHING LIKE A LOBOTOMY, WE ARE STILL BEING A VICTIM OF THE GREEK DUALISM THAT PRODUCED THE REASONINGS OF WHICH WE ARE SO AFRAID. Let us fully escape the aritificiality of compartmentalization and embrace the joy of being a whole, united for God. It is helpful and desirable to realize that we are triune beings and that the spirit and the mind are not one and the same. God redeems the Spirit instantly and the mind is being renewed as a process. But being renewed to what??? Just to be sumbissive or to learn to THINK FROM A NEW REALM???
Here's the real rub: There are some seekers out there who will be pulled into Christianity by their attempts at spiritual thinking. If they honestly approach the spirit dimension--whether it be through the motions of quarks and Schrodinger's cat, or through lyrics that reflect the devastation of spirtual emptiness--at some point they will poke through the mist and strike something solid. And when they grope towards that Rock that they have stumbled upon, they will find out it is not just a body of ideas, but a living Being capable of not only providing shade and substance, but also pouring out living waters of refreshment. True seekers will find. My question is simply: where will the church be standing when they do? Will they be anywhere nearby, or will they be safely locked away in the cloister? Will they have been able to "think" far enough outside of their own inner world to see the panorama of God-possibilities that has played out?
Maybe the lady I described to you here is just "not my tribe". Maybe she's fine the way she is and I have a different calling and audience. Or maybe she represents a general need in the body of Christ to have some splashes of water land upon our sleeping brains. Perhaps we could summon them (our brains), not just to "get out of the way and stop hindering" but rather to participate with the swirling realities that are the Kingdom of God and put on a uniform and go to war!
I have only scratched the surface in this quickly-written blog. This subject is deep and wide and clearly, "the rest is still unwritten..." However, if just one person has been inspired in the least to Kingdom open-mindedness, I have lived my mission here in print.
