BLOG 8/31/14. COLONIES OF GOD’S NEW HUMANITY: ONLY POSSIBLE BY THE SPIRIT.

One of my respondents asked the question: if this concept of churches being alternatively called colonies of God’s New Humanity was something I had invented? I don’t have an answer to that, but I do know that to listen-in to the self-promotion of all too many churches is like listening to an advertisement for some kind of Christian self-help society. But this misses a very critical piece of the New Testament teachings about that community which Jesus Christ is building. He’s not talking about some patched up, and improved community. He’s talking about a human community that is being radically transformed into his own likeness—and is unequivocal in his insistence that we are totally incapable of accomplishing on our own.

Jesus came into our human darkness as a realist. The problem was a cosmic rebellion in which humankind sought to become, in essence, their own gods. This, however, is a ‘dry well’. Such an attempt at self-sufficiency leaves one captive to all of the uncertainties of meaninglessness, hopelessness, loneliness, lack of a creative source or any authority outside of themselves. It is not that we cannot achieve some pretty remarkable inventions and survival techniques, but it pretty much leaves us without a final goal, or any confidence in what we are ultimately about.

Jesus says this, flat-out: “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper/Spirit will not come to you. But if I go I will send him to you …” (John 16:7). Or again: “ … for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Or: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth …” (John 16: 12).

We are so prone to downplay the seriousness our natural condition. In New Testament terms we are dead in our own God-rejecting attempts. We are blind to true truth. We are captives to an alien dominion that we are not even aware of. Our self-focused, self-destructive ways, our attempts to design our own gods … are so vain. We watch all of the crap of human violence, tribal strife, inhumanity, greed, indifference to others, escape into cyberspace and all of the unrealities which that encompasses, and seldom slow down to ask: ‘why?’. This is the “normal” human condition that Jesus came to rescue us from. He came to set us free, and to create us new and purposeful and to be a humankind in intimacy with himself/God-self … and with each other.

But such radical recreation is humanly impossible. “Without me you can do nothing.” It is why the church is called: the dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit (Eph.2:22). We are capable of creating comfortable enclaves of ‘religious Christianity’ with merely human resources, but we are not capable of opening blind eyes and creating receptive hearts, and self-denying love, and deliverance from deep-seated dissonances in our psyches.

So, on this Labor Day weekend, and before I proceed with these Blogs lifting up different dimensions of the colonies of God’s New Humanity, I want to record that Jesus didn’t leave us on our own with this humanly impossible enterprise, but has given us his own Creator Spirit to make the humanly impossible, possible! And so the church’s classic prayer: Come Holy Spirit!