A biblical pattern

I'd like to get feedback on this. Here's a pattern I see in the bible. First, Genesis 1:

• Begin: the earth is formless and void and dark.
• Day 0: God said: "Let there be light!"
• Day 1: Divided the Light from the Darkness
• Day 2: Divided the Sky from the Water
• Day 3: Divided the Land from the Sea
• Day 4: Filled the Light and Darkness with Sun, Moon, stars
• Day 5: Filled the Sky and Water with Birds and Fish
• Day 6: Filled the Land with Animals and Humans
  (anticipation of something new - humans)
• Day 7: Rest

Now in this, there's an obvious pattern. 3 days of separation, then 3 days of filling in those separations with something to "rule" them. The sun is said to rule the day, the moon rules the night, birds rule the sky, fish rule the sea, and humanity rules the earth. It's a nice parallel.

Another thing I'm pulling out here is that what happens on Day 6, the last set of "fillings", sets the stage for an entirely different order of things. After Genesis 1, God will no longer be dealing with the sky and sea and land as much as he will be dealing with humanity. Humanity appears in this creation order as the anticipation of something new - the human order.

Interestingly, at least 6 days of this pattern seem to hold in another way as you continue to read through Genesis.

• Begin: a human is formed out of dust
• Stage 0: God breathes into him the breath of life
• Stage 1: Divided man from nature (naming the animals)
• Stage 2: Divided man from woman (the rib)
• Stage 3: Divided woman from serpent (temptation)
• Stage 4: Fill the division of man and nature (cursed with toil in working the ground)
• Stage 5: Fill the division of man and woman (cursed with pain in raising children)
• Stage 6: Fill the division of woman and serpent (cursed with enmity)

The curses God hands out line up precisely with the separations he caused the first time around. Where before man and woman were separate, now they will struggle with each other. And as Adam will have struggle bringing forth food from the ground, Eve will have struggle bringing forth children. In the same way, the serpent's offspring will struggle with Eve's offspring.

And in the curse on the serpent, there is the anticipation of something new, a perplexing prophecy that indicates a new order of things is coming.

Your thoughts?

A Christian Band? - embedding Christianity in life

This is from my personal adventure blog. It deals with an alternate approach to how Christianity plays in public today. I call that approach embedded Christianity.

This weekend I was asked for the thousandth time if my band is a “Christian band”.

It’s a tricky question - with many ramifications on either side.

If I say, “Yes, we are a Christian band”, then I pigeon-hole us in a way I don’t want to be pigeon-holed. In many people’s minds, at least, this would mean that we only play songs that directly talk about a spiritual or religious subject. To most people, it would mean we were playing “Contemporary Christian Music”, a genre that has less to do with Christian subject matter than with a particular sound that has broad appeal among the Christian market.

Neither of those things are true about us. We do not play CCM (Contemporary Christian Music), nor do I limit my songs to ones that have religious themes.

My approach to music is from a different direction altogether. Rather than set out a genre that I want my music to fall into, I set out from the start to write music about things I cared about. The things I think about and immerse myself in become the subjects and the inspiration for the songs I write.

Rather than set out to write a song about the theological notion of God’s grace, I write a song that arises suddenly and spontaneously from my experience of the utter depth of my faithlessness - and the recognition of God’s presence even there.

How could I say we’re a Christian band? But how could I say we’re not?

The issue is that we’ve divided the world up into the “Christian market” and the “secular market”, into “the Christian subculture” and everything else. We have Christian movies, Christian music, Christian comedians, Christian television, Christian books, Christian bookstores, Christian colleges, etc, etc, etc.

I don’t think Jesus intended things to be done this way. Jesus didn’t intend to set up a subculture - an insular group creating content only for themselves. Instead, he intended to create a group that would go out into the world and draw from his example to create, to transform the situations they found themselves in.

Rather than Christian movies, we should have Christians embedded in Hollywood, involved in the making of movies, influencing them to be deeper, more artistic, more authentic. Rather than Christian musicians, we should have Christians involved in the creation of music at all levels, embedded in the music culture, authentically expressing the human spirit.

If we shift from the idea of a Christian subculture to this idea of embedded Christianity, we will see something far more productive than simply an alternate version of whatever’s popular in secular culture. Instead, we will see the rise of an entirely new level of cultural and creative development, as Christians everywhere begin to use their God-given creativity to transform all of their lives.

If we shift to this idea of embedded Christianity, we won’t just see more songs written to be sung on Sunday mornings, we’ll see songs written to cruise to, to climb mountains with, to sing to your friends and neighbors. We’ll see music that addresses all of our God-given human emotions, that honors the depths of humanity created in the image of God.

And bearing the image of God in all that you do is definitely not a narrow genre.

Music

When I was growing up, the church I was part of was offended by Christian music. According to the argument, worship only occurred in the church, without the use of instruments. Therefore, any music that DID use instruments was okay, as long as it was NOT intended to worship or praise God in any way. For instrumental music to offer thanks to God was for it to encroach on "God's music".

Thus, in a strange twist of logic, Christian music became the "devil's music". It was okay to listen to country, rock, or pop - just not Christian.

At the same time, I was hanging out with another group of very conservative Christians. But their conservatism was in the other direction - they believed that all "secular music" was sinful, and it was only appropriate to listen to explicitly Christian music.

I was in a very confusing situation.

Driving up to someone's house with my radio tuned to the local Top 40 station would potentially earn me some looks and a reprimand. But to switch over to the local Christian station would offend others' conscience.

Either way, I was straying outside the lines of what GOD considered appropriate.

This odd dichotomy was characteristic of how I grew up, and it forced me to think very hard about a lot of things. One question I asked myself was "what music is from God?"

I thought very hard. Who was behind the melodies of different genres of music? Who was behind the driving beats? Who was behind the lyrical cleverness I admired so much?

And it occurred to me that ALL of this was a creation of God. Just like Peter saw the unclean animals, and heard God tell him "eat!", I realized that there was no dichotomy. There was no music of the devil - all of it was from God.

Every bit of a piece of music, from the rhythm to the chord progression, from the timbre of a singer's voice to the words of their lyrics, comes from God. The fact that notes can come together to make chords, the way a rhythm resonates with you, our entire ability to appreciate another person's musical creation - it's entirely a gift from God.

Which is not to say that some music isn't offensive or disturbing. But nothing can be disturbing or ugly without a reference point - a God-given beauty hidden inside it. Even if I don't choose to listen to rap, r&b, or much country, I still have to acknowledge that the existence of any of those genres can only be traced to God.

In the middle ages, there was a theory called "The Ape of God". The devil, the argument went, can only imitate what God has created. Therefore everything evil is simply a distorted imitation of something good. It was an insightful way to look at the world, and all the things attributed to Satan.

But it did not go far enough. There is nothing that a devil can create that God has not already made - no pleasure that can be created that God did not call into existence. Even if there is something horrendous and ugly, it is not even an imitation of God's handiwork. An imitation of God's creation can never escape the fact that only God allows its existence.

The devil himself can only exist because of God's graciousness.

Everything that exists is from God. Look closely and see it.

Unintended Consequences

Greg Newton posted a good piece about the Uncertainty of Justice over at Emergent Village.

It's easy to talk about justice. It's harder to actually do justice.

As he points out, even something like giving food to struggling farmers can actually undermine the local economy.

The problem is unintended consequences. Our world is a complex network, an ecosystem. Human society is an ecosystem to itself. And when you try to alter an ecosystem, you find that the task is much more complex than expected.

Another name for this is the Butterfly Effect. A butterfly's attempts to drink nectar in America can result in a tsunami in some other part of the world.

Almost all political solutions sound promising. That's why they're developed, after all: to sound really good to a large number of people.

But the downfall of political solutions is in the doing. All political solutions result in unexpected side-effects.

The problem isn't just in politics. It's in improving the economy, saving the environment, treating diseases, waging war, and dealing with religion. Complex systems are difficult to tinker with.

But complex systems are exactly what our future will consist of. And so humanity's new job is to discover the science, the technique, of working with complex systems in organic ways.

This is our task, and our hope of survival.

Beyond Polarization

People often say, "God is not a democrat or republican". This is a welcome change from a few years ago, when people often claimed that a Christian could only vote for a particular political party, or face the wrath of God.

But it is not enough. That statement does not adequately deal with the depth of feeling on each side of the issue.

Conservatives, for example, feel that liberal policies are blatantly immoral. They steal from one group to distribute to another, they advocate the death of children, etc. Opposition to the "liberals", then, is not just a political preference, but a deeply held ethical belief.

On the other hand, liberals protest that conservatives have gutted the gospel. Jesus' statements about the poor are ignored by conservatives in favor of their wealthy constituents. Opposition to the "conservatives", then, is an attempt to deliver divine justice.

Both are right and wrong in this. Liberals bring the realization that law does not equal ethics; whether to outlaw abortion is a different ethical question than whether abortion is good. This is something the conservatives have yet to realize. Conservatives bring the realization that the "means" are just as important as the "ends"; that every means of helping the poor is not equally right.

There is a lot that each needs to learn from the other, as old party lines are transcended, and new social and political realities begin to form.

What insights can you bring from your traditions?