What is the Difference?

Author Dick Keyes once wrote, "In seeking to become like God, we have become less than human." The biblical story says we were created to be in a relationship with God. When humankind rebelled, we lost our orientation, and we lost our immortality. There was nothing left to give order and meaning to our existence. Human existence became the land of the living dead.

We were made for a purpose. We were made for eternity. The land of the living dead is an intolerable place to live. We create civilizations and cultures (symbolized by the city) to shelter us from our absurd existence. Inequities inevitably emerge in these cultures. Powerful elites use culture to justify and perpetuate their power. Often many are oppressed. Still, the masses honor the social structures because of the stable orderliness they bring.

But these human shelters are, in the end, little more than elaborate illusions. The illusions collapse if pressed too hard. Consequently, human culture aims to keep the populace sufficiently diverted from seeing the absurdity of their existence. Idols are offered as objects of worship. These idols may be graven images or something as abstract as credits in a bank account. If most people buy the illusion most of the time, then all is well.

Walter Bruggemann speaks of culture creating an "eternal present." People are deluded into believing that things are the way they have been and always will be. The present order is the moral imperative. Those who would challenge the order are either insane or evil. They are subversive.

In this context, a subversive God steps into the picture. God intervenes in human history. God begins by calling Abraham and starting a nation that will reflect God's character to the world. It is a subversive God leading a subversive people. God leads God's people into the grasp of the most powerful human illusions ever on the face of the planet, ancient Egypt.

The amazing story of the Exodus is not just one of God setting his people free. It is a story of God systematically debunking the "eternal present" of the Pharaoh and Egypt. This event points to the end of time when God will bring God's people out of the "Egypt" of human culture and into the New Jerusalem. God will debunk the human pretenders, and every knee shall bow.

As I mentioned, God accomplishes God's mission partly by calling out a new people to model the relationship God intends between humanity and God's self. Later it became the Church. The visible presence of God working in God's people is a sign to the rest of the world and a constant subversive challenge to other cultures.

So, what is it about God's called-out people that make them different? What are we to make of Old Testament laws? What are we to make of the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament Church? How do we even begin to apply these ancient texts written to a world of rapid globalization? We risk dangerous errors without the Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic I wrote about last week.

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Comments

[Michael Kruse]

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will spotts said...
Still thinking this over.

Egyptian religion seems to have been pretty much the extreme example of what you describe. Everything moved in cycles, but it was within that context eternally unchanging.

The Abraham narrative literally introduces "narrative" -- the individual role in the story, and something new -- unforeseen. I find myself doubting that this story would have made sense or been regarded as a good thing to Egyptians.

Does this mean we're going on to Exodus?

July 25, 2005 11:48 PM

[Michael Kruse]

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Michael W. Kruse said...
Brief pit stop in Exodus coming up but I don't expect to plod through other parts of the Bible like I did Genesis. Still expect to stay with the theme of disillusion but I may jump around a bit more from here on out.

Thanks for hangin with me!

July 26, 2005 8:45 AM