This is a quote from a course text I am reading:
There is a duality withing the church’s nature which we must understand…The church is God’s personal presence in the world through the Spirit. This makes the church as a spiritual community, unique. The church also exists as a social reality with human behaviours organized withing human structures. But this human behaviour; through the redemptive work of God, is empowered by the Spirit. This is the duality inherent in the church’s nature. (Van Gelder – The Essence of the Church pp. 25)
I find this train of though most interesting. I was watching an interview with a man of cloth of some nature on TV the other night, and he was discussing how much the Greek philosophies have shaped the actual structures of our churches and society. He said that the Hebrew philosophy was so very different that on the initial translation from Hebrew to Greek that the line of thought was changed because woven into the words and beliefs of the Hebrew people was the lack of duality and the fact that God was in everything. There were not separated places for divinity and secular. Sacred and secular were unequivocally intertwined.
That means a lot to me as an artist, trying to hear from God throughout the entirety of my day and in all things I do. Hopefully everything I do includes God (even my redemption from my sin along the way and the obvious fact that as I live and breath I am constantly in need of cleaning up and forgiveness). As I put my brush to canvas, or pencil to paper…or whatever my medium of choice, that God is right there too wanting to paint with me, to be part of my life and the processes of what I am doing, what I am communicating, what I am experiencing, what I am learning.
Our lives are a process, I can’t imagine why God would only be part of some of it and not part of others, especially since he created us. It would be like a parent of a young child saying “I only want to be a parent when you are good, or perhaps sleeping…” We are in it for the whole thing, and God is too…God works with us and with our brokenness and failings as we go, it is the very fact that we are unable to do it all right that causes us to call out to Him and say “Help me daddy, I am messing it up again, can you show me again…” But I also don’t believe that God is not with those that have not yet called to Him. I believe He is there waiting, wanting us to cry out for him, desiring to help if we would only invite him into the whole of our lives…more on this later I guess…
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