“And the One who sat on the throne said, “Behold I make all things compliant…”
What is it about us that thinks that the Great I Am, the Word become Flesh, has unfolded His great plan of history with the ultimate goal of getting all of us to finally get in line?
That is actually an important question to ask. What is it about us? So often we think of our “fallen nature” as wicked and bent toward terrible things. While such a bent exists, I think it is more important to recognize that the effect of the fall has more to do with our way of taking in reality than simply the genesis of human badness.
What it is about us that is so prone to misunderstand the Genesis account, and the purposes of God, is that the fruit Adam and Eve took in was a source of Knowledge. It was a new and woefully inadequate way of knowing.
The trigger event of the rest of the Bible narrative shows mankind making a major shift in how they took in and processed the world around them. We went from The Breath of Life, to Our Knowledge. We went from God’s all encompassing perspective to our five senses. We shifted from the ability to see through God’s lenses, to only being able to see the Garden in front of us.
Not only that, we shifted from a way of knowing that included the whole of reality, to a way of knowing that only allowed us to apprehend that which is purely material. Sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. Only that part of the world. What of the wonders of God’s Presence and all encompassing activity? What of our awareness of the movement in the realm spiritual?
So now, rather than see from God’s perspective, from the Heavens toward the Earth, we can barely see the forest. Rather than seeing an integration of the life-giving realm and the life-receiving realm we only see the life-receiving realm. Odd how this perspective makes it so easy for us to make life all about us.
God wants US to get it right? Really?
What if instead, God sent Jesus to get it right? What if instead of making all things compliant, He came to make all things NEW!?
We, the church, would really have to Think Differently to partner with a God who has come to rescue the human race. We would have to learn to think from the heavens downward, and think from the perspective of a realm we cannot see.
If Jesus came to make all things compliant, we better get busy, and tell everyone else the same. If He came to make all things new, we should learn how to Think Differently and receive from the Life-Giving Realm.
“And the One who sat on the throne said, “Behold I make all things new…”
