lasers and rainbows - home domain

(i reverted this to a draft for a couple of years, as being a bit unbalanced - happier with it now  - balanced it out a bit more - so my son's example has moved on a bit)

(having previously looked at the basic metaphor of tightly focussed lasers against wider rainbows, this post looks at how some of that plays out in a family life; how tightly is faith conceived around church etc)

my son chooses, for his nightly bed time story; whatever he wants ...superheroes, school readers, maybe a recorded book, and sometimes something from his children's bible

there is faith going on in that child

He was happy to miss church this morning and go sailing  ... yet spontaneously asks as we drive out....do we love God? we do don't we dad?

i know him well enough to sense that this is not any anxiety at missing church  ... don't think we've managed to instill that religiosity in him :)

no, its the same impulse i see in him sometimes when he is touched by the experience of worship; when the music and sense of Gods presence draws him in; a response that is genuine ...and i can see that something of that personal intimacy is occuring as drive out under a sunny sky; the relaxed nature of what we are doing has evidently helped opened things for him, and a touch of God is upon him

back to his night time reading : he has asked for a story of Moses recently; likes the little section titled God's rules....and i quite like how it is done; very simplified for a first grader of course

until we get to the 'follow up questions' which are placed at the end of every little chapter:  

"God spoke to Moses and gave him some special rules" (pictures of Moses on mountain)

"How does he speak to us now?" ... pictures of :

of what.....? what should go in there?

the book has chosen to show bibles and church

(not children driving out to sailing boats under sunny skies, relieved to avoid church for the day...experiencing Gods touch and affirmation as we drive)

no, the creation frame is absent ...no mountains...

and other things are absent ...

evidently Moses experienced God in powerful and unusual ways ...but "how does God speak to us now?"

cue, echoed through all evangelical sunday schools : "through the bible and by going to church"

so the experiential dimension of God is relegated to times past; and the New Testament experience is codified as (a) textual, and (b) church centered

of course there is truth in both - studying the Word and assembling together is significant

but something is lost too

where is the prophet on the mountain experiencing God face to face? - the one God calls a friend - in this version

while we don't need to suggest amazing or primitive personal experiences of God are the rule, neither should we rule it out

I feel part of the church's pact with modernism - we will subscribe to belief in a God who is sufficiently transcendent that we can attribute all sorts of attributes to Him, who is distantly conceived of as Author and Judge, and also ascribe some limited personal private experience; he might stir us with a little encouragement.

In between these two extremes ...distant eminence and muted personal presence, we won't expect too much; not a God who actually turns up in biblical dimension.

we call ourselves biblical by knowing the text; but read through the idea of his distant greatness and his general local mildness; no flames of fire.

ironically, though the reformation restored many of the experiental truths of faith, it lost some as well; although the Catholics still preserved an open-ness to supernatural dimension (mixed with various other strange things i know - but my point is they never ruled out the supermatural the way many Protestants effectively have)

(its helpful to not rule life into spiritual and non spiritual bits in arguing against this omission though - the lived experience of life is a spiritual thing - and God's gentle presence and guidance is more often pressed quietly into our hearts in this way; but if He wishes to rain gold dust, i'd like to be there)

next : part (3) lasers and rainbows in the workplace