The dogma of man’s self sufficiency
“…the idea of man’s self-sufficiency has been used as an argument to discredit the belief in revelation [that is, divine revelation from God to man]. The certainty of man’s capacity to find peace, perfection, and the meaning of existence, gained increasing momentum with the advancement of technology. Man’s fate, we were told, depended solely upon the development of his social awareness and the utilization of his own power…man is too good to be in need of supernatural guidance.
Yet we have finally discovered what prophets and saints have always known: bread and power alone will not save humanity…man is meaningless without God, and any attempt to establish a system of values on the basis of the dogma of man’s self-sufficiency is doomed to failure.”
It is one thing for the person who has not yet experienced the presence of God to reject any notion that the creator of the universe desires interaction with us. This is a natural outcome of the materialist, make-your-own-luck worldview of the present age.
It is quite another thing for those of us who follow Jesus to live our day-to-day lives without leaving room for God to move, to speak, to lead. In my own life, I have found that I must do two things before I am free to receive God’s revelation, his spoken word to me ‘in the moment’:
- Remember that God is present, he is God-with-us, and that he desires to teach and to lead (Matt 28:20 “I am with you always, to the very end of the age”) wherever I am.
- Remember that the outcome of making space in my life to listen and take action on what the Lord says is exponentially more effective than the outcome of relying on my own strength.
I am not self-sufficient. But inbred deep inside me is the tendency to rely on my own strength rather than turn to the Creator for guidance—only through deliberate discipline and action do I unlearn this habit of self-reliance.
I am giving a talk on Sunday 28 September at Southland Vineyard Church on Hearing God—I will spend some time discussing our tendency to self-reliance and how one begins to unlearn it, and also how one learns the habit of following the Lord’s lead.
Prophecy and imagination
Richard Foster writes of the debar Yahweh (Hebrew), the living Word of God, and the interface of the Old Testament prophets with the same voice that spoke the universe into existence—”By the word of the Lord [the debar Yahweh] were the heavens made…” (Ps 33:6).
This living Word of God is the ‘Thus saith the Lord” of the prophetic tradition. The prophets were not really religious soothsayers or social critics or village cranks. They were ordinary people who encountered face-to-face the One who, as Amos puts it, “made the Pleiades and Orion” (5:8). Abraham Heschel writes, “To the prophets, God was overwhelmingly real and shatteringly present. They never spoke of Him as from a distance. They lived as witnesses, struck by the words of God . . .” They fed off God’s living word to them. God was shatteringly present to them; the debar Yahweh had come to them; and their entire lives became oriented around this stunning reality. As a result they received what Walter Brueggemann calls a “prophetic imagination,” the capacity to see what is yet possible through the power of God, “It is the task of prophetic imagination and ministry to bring people to engage the promise of newness that is at work in our history with God.” (Renovare Perspectives, October 2005. Vol. 15, No. 3. Full text can be accessed here.)
That there exists a link between the calling and fruit of the Old Testament prophets and my life as a 21st century Western Christian is something I shall explore later (much more so that this calling is not for a special few). The mere possibility that God desires to engage with us in a similar way, here and now, as he has done since the beginning of time makes my pulse pound.
This notion of ‘prophetic imagination’ is the key—an imagination that comes through aligning our hearts and desires with what the Lord is doing around us. An imagination that is calibrated by the desire to see God’s kingdom to gain ground around us…your Kingdom come. An imagination inspired by the promise of newness.
How does this translate into action in the everyday, for the sake of others? I am captivated, gripped by the link between prophetic imagination and interaction with those around me. Newness…God is always creating, always up to good in the world he has created. Seeing that, engaging with that is the key. How to engage, how to learn to see? For later exploration.
Words
“For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good things stored up in him…”
-Matthew 12:34-35
I think it was Francis of Assisi who is credited with saying ‘preach the gospel as often as possible, and if necessary, use words’, and I agree with this sentiment—to a point. Words are powerful, and the heart behind them resonates in the listener’s mind long after the conversation is finished.
When words are chosen intentionally rather than spoken without a moment’s reflection, I rarely regret what I have said. I have also noticed an inverse proportionality between the amount of work on my plate and the quality of my conversations—learning to balance productivity with being fully ‘present’ to others in conversation is a gift from the Lord. It is also a habit that can be learned, I have found, through training and prayer. Morning solitude and prayer is essential in learning to ‘attend to another person’, as the Quakers put it.
Speaking intentionally gains power, however, when the Lord is consulted regarding what He is doing in the life of a person prior to or during a conversation—often a simple prayer, ‘Lord, what are you doing in this person’s life right now, and do you desire me to play a part in it?’ results in the Lord bringing to mind something in that person’s life that He is working on. It may be a word, an image, a phrase. This is ‘where the rubber meets the road’ in the life of an apprentice, I find, in learning to do ‘only as I see the Father doing’ (Jn 5:19).
The Physics of Major Particle Accelerators
Thesis written 2005 for Michigan State University Department of Beam Physics can be viewed here, or downloaded here.
