Batfort

Style reveals substance

Tag: Christianity

Tree Christians vs Flame Christians

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.

—Ephesians 3:14-19 (emphasis mine)

To preface, this is not doctrine. This isn’t anywhere close to it. I’m just trying to illustrate and explore what I observe to exist. I really enjoy the language of prophets like Jeremiah and authors like Robin McKinley, who use little nature vignettes to bring life and playfulness to their words.

I’ve recently come into a heuristic that there are two types of Christians. There may be more types—I haven’t embarked on an exhaustive study. But in terms of those I meet and interact with, this has been a helpful heuristic.

These two types are “Tree Christians” and “Flame Christians.”

Both are acting in good faith. Both are seeking God, as best I can tell. But the two come from different angles, which sometimes causes issues with communication and priorities. Like all human beings, we all have biases and blind spots.

Tree Christians are very concerned with Truth. They vigilantly keep watch over scripture, agonizing about translation and interpretation. They grow roots down deep and unfurl leaves, but don’t move. Woodland creatures can find rest under their branches, but they have to come to the tree—the tree doesn’t come to them.

A mascot verse might be this first bit of Psalm 1:

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And on His law he meditates day and night.
And he will become like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season,
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.

Now, the opposite of this type is the Flame Christians. Full of zeal—rushing like wind—not always stopping to think. Love and Spirit shines through in their rush to do all the things that have been left undone in this world. Their failings are not in the doing, but in the understanding, the rootedness in Truth.

These Christians like to quote Acts 2:

And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

The coolest part about this visual analogy is what happens when you put them both together—the burning bush. Deep roots, burning mightily, and not consumed. The tree will burn with faith and catch on fire; the flame will shoot down into the ground and grow roots.

We are called to speak the Truth—the Good News—in love. Action, and contemplation. Faith, and works. The burning bush that is not consumed.

I love that there are both types of Christians. Put them in close proximity to each other, and the flames burn away the chaff from the trees, which provides extra fuel for the flames. The best kind of feedback loop. Just trees, or just fire, and stagnation would occur—the cycle would break.

The trick is not to judge each other harshly, but to bear each other up in love.

If you are a Flame Christian, listen to truth. If you are a Tree Christian (and if you’re reading blogs on the internet, you probably are), contemplate why you haven’t caught on fire yet.

Good Friday, full of Joy

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:55-57 ESV

On Quitting YouTube for Lent

It’s true, I quit watching YouTube 30-something days ago.

It was time. My attention got sucked into YouTube, away from the things I wanted to be doing, like writing blog posts and doing printmaking workshops and getting my house in order.

There were a few ground rules. First, it wasn’t just YouTube. It was also Vimeo, or Bitchute, or any other streaming video service (like Unauthorized.tv, which was launched at the most inopportune time). Second, regular TV and movies were allowed, because I don’t get sucked into them. They are discrete packets. Third, I could access YouTube at work for work purposes only—watching a replay of a webinar, but not listening to Pewdiepie in the background. There was also one (1) time when YouTube was accessed when I was in a group setting.

The transition was not nearly as difficult as I thought, although I did struggle for a bit at the beginning filling my evenings with sound—to drown out the quiet—as I had become used to the endless chatter of the tellybox. Not the way I want to live my life.

I appreciate the silence now. It gives me space away from the rest of the world. I only see what I choose to see.

I also discovered some pretty great internet radio stations.

You don’t notice, often, when something creeps its way into your life and grows roots. YouTube was certainly like that for me. Here are some ways that removing it revealed pain points:

  • By far my biggest practical frustration is not being able to use YouTube for “how to” videos. There have been a few times when I’ve encountered a problem and known I could find the answer on the ‘Tube. But, no. I have to do it myself, the old fashioned way, by reading the instructions. Similarly with product reviews.
  • It’s awkward telling someone in your life that you can’t watch the video they just excitedly sent you, because you quit YouTube for Lent. I have a whole list of things built up to watch now, which almost defeats the purpose of quitting in the first place.
  • Western fans of K-pop are very dependent on YouTube. I still haven’t reviewed NCT 127’s “Wakey Wakey” because it just got uploaded to Spotify, instead of a month ago when the music video was posted. The lack of video content has also highlighted how much of k-pop is a visual experience.

Mostly, these are first-world problems. I will probably continue to keep YouTube to a minimum in my life, even after the season of Lent is over. The sheer amount of time that I have to be productive is amazing.

I did find myself, occasionally, after finishing an episode of Cadfael, hover over the “browse” button. My brain wanted to settle in to a good session of moving-picture-theater. The temptation is real. So I closed out and did something else.

If anything, the YouTube ban has shown me that I can, in fact, be in control of my YouTube watching habits.

Gotta show the restlesss spirit who’s in charge.

What are you giving up for Lent?

Growing up, I had no idea that the concept of Lent existed. I’d heard of it in the vague way that I’d heard of all things associated with the Catholic church, but our family never did anything of the sort.

I’m the most “liturgical” of my family, you see. I’ve willingly attended Catholic, high Episcopalian, Anglican, and Orthodox services—though I’ve never joined any of those churches.

Something raises my hackles with the contrast between the deep administrative structure and Christian Truth.

Anyway, I first observed Lent in college. I didn’t really know what I was doing, or anything about why Lent was important. Looking back, even the concept of fasting was completely foreign.

Since then, I’ve been selectively observant. Off and on. One year I used Lent as an excuse to quit eating gluten. Another year I “gave up staying up late” and imposed a bedtime.

Since reading Antifragile and learning about the importance of fasting in the body’s healing, I feel like I understand the intent of the Lenten season a lot more now.

I’m not ready to do a prolonged fast from food, but I am looking forward to a period of renewed spiritual searching.

This year, I’m giving up YouTube.

I need a rest from inputs, from many voices with opinions and ideas about the world. I need time to seek God, and to sort through my own views of the world. I need to spend more time working on substantial projects.

There are things that I’m going to miss. I’ll probably miss the last days of Pewdiepie’s reign. I like the way that Owen Benjamin illuminates the spiritual realities of the world. And even though I don’t eat plants, I love a good food/travel video.

But it’s okay. Life isn’t YouTube. I’m not going to be completely cut off from communication with the world.

And it will be good to stretch myself.

Questions for a new church

I’ve been checking out a new church. It’s young. It’s aggressive. The type of church that is run by Millennials for Millennials. The infrastructure is online and designed to work without “elders.” The all the trappings are specifically aimed at college students.

  • Why have you chosen to use all-new nomenclature and symbols? I understand that you are trying to make a new “experience” for people in the church, but at what cost?
  • If you are accepting “investors” to help pay the bills, what do they get or expect in return? Equity? Saved souls?
  • What led to the decision to have nobody serve communion? Self-service is an interesting semiotic choice.
  • Why is there no explicit mention of the Gospels in your church membership “vows.” Yes, someone would have to be a baptized believer to join your church, but the membership requires more explicit buy-in to the mission of this specific church than the mission of Jesus Christ.

We’ll see. I’ve seen the “invisible hand” destroy some churches in my time, and I hope to never witness that again.

Compline

We humans are so great at making things complicated.

We solidify what should be kept fluid, and refuse to differentiate those things that are dangerously ambiguous.

Traditions are handed down over the ages that we meticulously hold to, while forgetting the purpose, the telos, the soul.

And yet, instead of rediscovering the soul, we think we can do better. Chasing new for the sake of it, instead of reviving and reexamining the old.

Things survive for a reason. Most of us can’t see it.

I’m so fascinated by the old ways, and yet I see how broken they are. New ways are broken too.

Sometimes I wonder what we would do if we were forced back to first principles; then I wonder if that will happen in my lifetime.

Today I encountered a rental company that creates a huge barrier out of unnecessary rules, which it then bends thoroughly in order to become reasonable again. I ask myself: why?

To keep outsiders out, that’s why.

I feel like we do the same thing with religion, with making things complicated.

We don’t need Compline, we need a sincere and seeking heart.

And yet.

A Meditation: The Lamb of God

Not the metal band. Jesus Christ himself.

The phrase “Lamb of God” brings up images of sacrifice, of innocence, of docile purity.

It’s a true thing–Jesus Christ was indeed the perfectly innocent sacrifice for our sins–but like many sides of the story, it’s missing something.

The lamb symbolism very much fits the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” imagery that is heavily pushed by cat ladies and people who desperately want Jesus to be a socialist.

But think about lambs a minute.

Lambs are not just gentle and mild and whatever.

Lambs are cheeky.

 

 

Lambs like to frolic and play.

(Mute this if you value your ears.)

Lambs jump and play and headbutt and generally don’t pay attention to rules.

Kind of like Sassy Jesus as depicted in the Book of Luke.

So next time you think of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, don’t just think about how sad it is that we sacrificed an innocent being as atonement for our sins.

Consider also how you might defy gravity out of sheer joy.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth

When symbolism invades your life, your boss becomes a stand-in for the entire world.

To many, “meekness” suggests the idea of passivity, someone who is easily imposed upon, spinelessness, weakness. Since Jesus declared Himself to be meek (Matthew 11:29), some perceive Him as a sissy-type character.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In the Greek New Testament, “meek” is from the Greek term praus. It does not suggest weakness; rather, it denotes strength brought under control. The ancient Greeks employed the term to describe a wild horse tamed to the bridle.

In the biblical sense, therefore, being meek describes one who has channeled his strengths into the service of God.

I wish to be only meek before God. I am starting to feel the weight of a million petty human systems, of rules made by people who can’t think or see or even feel.

When I drive according to the rules of the road, I submit. When I pay my credit card bill in a manner that earns me airline miles, I submit. When I go to work and play by my boss’s rules, I submit.

It’s funny how when the biggest shackles in your life come off, you don’t feel more free. You can feel the cloying breath of everything else that’s trying to enslave you.

I’m out of debt. I’m no longer tethered to medical insurance via a high-powered medicine. I’m no longer “owned” so other things are seeking to own me.

I refuse. I want to serve the Living God and no one else.

And for now, that means submitting to petty systems.

Reality is the literal word of God

(Listen to it.)

Today is Easter. The day when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the act that frees those who believe from the bondage of entropy, sin, and death.

I’m going to take another stab at putting into words what I mean by “upside-down world” and “right-side up world,” because I finally put some pieces together – thanks to the requisite Easter sermon – that provide some additional links in the chain.

This is a mental model that has helped me figure out how to interact with people who are not believers, or who are not on the road to believing. I don’t know if it will be helpful for you, but maybe it will bring some illumination to your understanding of reality.

At the beginning of time, God spoke the universe into existence. The words of God became reality. Normal, garden-variety right-side up world where “yes means yes and no means no.”

God creates Adam and then Eve, and they Be in the garden with God. All of what He has created He has given to them, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Man participates in creating reality by naming the things that God has made; it’s not the phenomenal cosmic power that is held by the God of the Universe, but it’s still pretty cool. We create within the boundaries of our comprehension.

Then enters the Serpent, the Deceiver, the Father of Lies. He tells mankind that the truth is the exact opposite of what God had told them. They believe him, eat of the fruit of the tree, and behold, upside-down world is created. It’s not a new reality because man can only create within his comprehension, but it’s a distorted version of reality where yes means no and no means yes.

Upside-down world, in which every man does what is right in his own eyes, wreaks havoc on mankind and the earth that God has created. During this time there are some people who seek God and His Truth, who uphold rightside-up world.

Many years later, God sent another of his Words into the world He created – this time His Son, Jesus Christ. Literally the Word of God became flesh and blood and lived as a human being in upside-down world.

Jesus spends much of His time on earth upending the high muckety mucks of upside-down world – the pharisees, the tax collectors – and generally defying the laws of thermodynamics in the best possible ways. He can, you see, because His manipulation of reality is not bounded by human comprehension.

In the end, the political machinations of the pharisees catch up to Him, and He lets them, because it is His purpose. The reason that he became human in the first place. He, a completely innocent man, takes on the guilt of mankind, so that the guilty man can become as innocent. He does the exact opposite of what should be done in upside-down world, and by doing so shatters the distorted version of reality so that it has no more power. His resurrection conquers death.

Through Him, Jesus Christ, the Way and the Truth and the Life, we can stand upright in rightside-up world. Not all of us stand completely tall – some are still stumbling along in the darkness or the mind-tricking light of twilight – but those who are headed in the right direction can generally all see things in common with the rightside-up frame.

There are those, however, who choose to turn away from the Light and who decide to follow the Father of Lies into the darkness. Those people still live in upside-down world, who say that black is white and white is black.

Because these two worlds exist simultaneously, it can be difficult to suss out who lives according to which frame. We all use the same worlds to describe things, although those worlds mean different things to people in each version of reality.

This is how I can have a conversation with my neighbor, but each of us is getting the opposite understanding of the exact same worlds.

Some people call this “two movies on the same screen.” This is true. But its roots are much, much deeper than mere perception. The roots go all the way down to bedrock reality and the acceptance of Truth, or the rejection of it.

The two cannot coexist.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)

This is how I’m starting to see the Truth of the Bible as I get older and my eyes can see more and more. These stories are not merely cutesy anecdotes that can be overlaid on our lives – the metaphysical implications of this stuff strikes deep into the core of each of us, and deep into the core of the earth.

If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend reading the book of John. John delves more into the metaphysical and philosophical angle of the gospel story.

Mary vs Martha

When I was younger, I remember listening to a tape (yes, back in the day) of an old Christian kid’s radio show called Adventures in Odyssey. All my suburban-raised evangelical youth group compatriots know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, there was an episode in which we listeners were ~ transported through time ~ to Biblical lands where we could be a fly on the wall in Bible stories. The only one I can remember was the ongoing saga of Lazarus, especially the bit with Mary and Martha.

You see, like most of the publications written for suburban-raised evangelical youth group kids, this was coming from a place of uber-industrious SJ-type writers. Of course everyone listening would identify with Martha.

We are all too busy Doing Things to be bothered with trivial stuff like thinking or learning. Martha was the harried-but-perfect hostess, ignoring the party because there were dishes to wash.

I have this theory that the movie Frozen was secretly written by a bunch of ladies at brunch. I’m beginning to suspect that Adventures in Odyssey was too.

The whole point of that radio spot was that we need to quit doing things and learn how to listen.

The MISSING point of that radio spot is that the writers were probably projecting their own inadequacies, and completely missed that there is another entire subset of people who are 100% going to be Mary.

No way would you catch me doing dishes if someone like Jesus was at a party with me.

I’m the exact opposite; I don’t need reminding to learn something new but I absolutely need an alarm clock to get me to bed on time and to make myself do the dishes.

There are do-ers who need to calm down and focus more on being, and then there are be-ers who need to rev up and do more.

The Christian media I grew up with assumed we were all do-ers. It tried to get “busy” people to become more contemplative, never mind that a portion of your readership is going to try contemplativeness to the 2nd power and reach levels of non-effectiveness that we didn’t think were possible.

It’s funny what you start to see when you try to grow up and live your own life.

© 2024 Batfort

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑