The authors of \u201cColossians Remixed\u201d write:\u00a0 If with Christ you died in your baptism to the principles of autonomous consumerism that still hold the world captive, then why do you live in a way that suggests that you are still in the iron grip of its ideological vision? \u00a0Why do you submit yourself to its regulations to consume as if there were no tomorrow, to live as if community were an impediment to personal fulfillment, to live as if everything were disposable, including relationships, the unborn, and the environment? Why do you allow this deceitful vision to still have a hold on you? \u00a0Don\u2019t you know that copulating with the idols of this culture is like climbing into bed with a corpse that is already decomposing?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n This paraphrase of Colossians 2:20-23 is intended to shake us a awake because God knows that we fall into the slumber of the curse<\/em><\/strong> far too easily, which is the sleep of accepting the world in which we live as \u2018normal\u2019.\u00a0 When this happens we lose our capacity to imagine a better world, which leaves us stuck in status-quo lives.\u00a0 The greatest tragedy though, is that we don\u2019t know we\u2019re stuck, having accepted the captivity to cultural mores as \u201cnormal\u201d.\u00a0 In such a paradigm, faith is stripped of its transformative power, having been reduced to simply a matter of adding a dash of Bible reading, chastity, piety, and a few key doctrines about Christ\u2019s deity to our \u201cnormal\u201d lives, the way we add seasoning to an omelet; nothing changes other than the hope that things taste a little better with Jesus.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n John Lenin did a better job of imagining a different world than the church has done.\u00a0 What steps can we take to recapture our imagination?<\/p>\n 1. Get out<\/strong> \u2013 By \u201cout\u201d I mean, out of the prevailing winds and waters of the culture.\u00a0 Jesus withdrew to a quiet place to pray, often to the mountains.\u00a0 This is perhaps more significant than we realize, not only the praying, but the withdrawing.\u00a0 This is because our spirits and psyches quickly adapt to our image saturated culture, resulting in our passive acceptance of things that should horrify us.\u00a0 A simple walk in the park, listening to the birds, watching the ocean, and paying attention to the rhythms of life sustained by the Creator, becomes a sort of \u2018reboot\u2019 for the soul if we practice actually paying attention and giving thanks.\u00a0 These regular forays into the realm of silence and solitude create a soul attuned to how the world ought<\/em> to be, so that we come to see ourselves as sojourners, foreigners, in our daily living.\u00a0 We\u2019ll recoil at the disposability of everything: relationships, plastic water bottles, the elderly and ill, employees who are reduced to \u2018units of production\u2019.\u00a0 We\u2019ll grieve over the obsession with body image that\u2019s literally killing young girls, even as we grieve over the damage to health that comes from people sitting, eating fake food, watching TV, and calling it a life \u2013 withdrawn from sustaining sunshine, health giving food, and the vibrancy that comes from movement of body, mind, and spirit.<\/p>\n Perhaps the greatest impediment to imagining a world of hope and beauty is our passive acceptance of things just as they are.\u00a0 They way out of that prison will always include changing the air we breathe \u2013 breaking out of the prisons of consumerism, nationalism, violence, and individualism, so that we\u2019ll be free to inhale the life giving air of Christ\u2019s peace, beauty, simplicity, and hope.\u00a0 But this won\u2019t happen by using our precious discretionary moments only to sit\u00a0 in front of the TV, or the computer screen.\u00a0 We need an alternative reality, because as it turns out, we are in fact transformed by the renewing of our minds, not by the inspiration of reality TV.<\/p>\n 2. Become obsessed with Christ\u2019s reign<\/strong>.\u00a0 Jesus says something about the impossibility of serving two masters in the context of his exhortation to live more carefree, like the birds, and less like the anxious striving that usually seems to be the lot of those seeking to make their mark in this world, or at least get their fair share of economic pie.\u00a0 What\u2019s most interesting to me about this section of Jesus\u2019 famous sermon is that Jesus says we can\u2019t serve two masters.\u00a0 It\u2019s noteworthy that he doesn\u2019t warn us about the danger of trying to serve the kingdom of God and the kingdom of upward mobility.\u00a0 He says that you CANNOT serve both; it\u2019s an impossibility.\u00a0 Whichever one you serve, you\u2019ll hate the other.<\/p>\n Wow.\u00a0 That\u2019s challenging!\u00a0 If I try to have my \u201ckingdom of this world\u201d cake, and seek to make Christ\u2019s reign visible, I\u2019ll fail \u2013 every single time.\u00a0 I need, then, to become obsessed with only one of these two options, and Jesus makes it clear that the best option is to choose His reign as our obsession.\u00a0 This will mean that everything \u2013 my time, money, property, body, vocation, travel plans, vacation, sexuality, recreational pursuits, exercise program \u2013 can all fall under this single consideration:\u00a0 \u201cwhat will best make Christ\u2019s reign visible?\u201d\u00a0 Far from being constrictive, I find this single focused approach to life to be liberating as everything is brought under the single consideration of making Christ\u2019s reign visible.<\/p>\n Of course, if we\u2019re going to go this route, we need to become obsessed with understanding the kingdom.\u00a0 Otherwise we\u2019ll create, in Jesus name, some sort of controlling legalism, or prosperity\/healing thing, or obsession with creating conversions while we ignore the entire glorious physical dimension of Christ\u2019s reign.\u00a0 All of these have been tried, and they all end up being ugly.\u00a0 We\u2019d better be working hard to get it right.\u00a0 This is where good reading can help, like this book<\/a>, or this book<\/a>, or even this book<\/a>. Understanding\u00a0 the kingdom, coupled with our pursuit of intimacy with Christ will conspire to create something beautiful:<\/p>\n An imagination saturated with a Christ formed view of our world, and some clear steps regarding our part in making it visible.<\/p>\n You may say that I\u2019m a dreamer \u2013 but I\u2019m not the only one.<\/p>\n Imagine that.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The authors of \u201cColossians Remixed\u201d write:\u00a0 If with Christ you died in your baptism to the principles of autonomous consumerism that still hold the world captive, then why do you live in a way that suggests that you are still in the iron grip of its ideological vision? \u00a0Why do you submit yourself to its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,28,32,39,23363,23364,49,51],"class_list":["post-2262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-discernment","tag-discipleship","tag-ethics","tag-hope","tag-justice","tag-life","tag-silence","tag-solitude"],"yoast_head":"\n