the simple life, part 3

We're moving toward the practical realm here, and I think there are some worthwhile Biblical reflections that will help us to get from the inward to the outward. There is a danger in cultivating any spiritual discipline, but I think especially this one, that we will lean toward overly pietistic forms. It would be quite easy to think about Jesus' commands to seek the kingdom and his righteousness with a sort of aloof, esoteric spirituality. We could take this command to basically mean we need to get out of the world, away from all of the distractions of the physical realm, alone with God to seek His kingdom. But this would be in direct contradiction to the teaching.

In the search for simplicity, we must guard against the dangers of Gnosticism that have been prevalent for ages. Gnosticism is the basic idea that the physical world is evil, and that true spirituality is only attained by disconnecting ourselves from it. With this view, seeking the kingdom might become nothing more than a perpetual monastic retreat. However, while retreat is a part of true spirituality, it is not the full extent of it. We must remember a few things:

1) That God created this physical world, and called it very good. Creation is, as John Piper says, "God's glory gone public." God has a passion and love for the material world. It is intended to point us to his glory by all of its awesome majesty, pleasures and beauty. (Genesis 1, Romans 1)

2) That God originally blessed mankind's relationship with the created order, setting him as steward over it, and calling him to cultivate it and use the stuff of creation to make a human culture that would reflect the glory of the Creator. (Genesis 1-2)

3) That it is our sin that has distorted the original goodness of the created order. Genesis 3 shows us that the immediate result of the first sin was a disruption of man's relationships - with God, one another and creation itself. Now the world is falling apart, and we inherently abuse and serve the created things rather than the Creator (Romans 1). Our use of the material world for twisted ends is not due to the inherent evil in it, but the evil in us.

4) Christ is the ultimate "Amen!" to the goodness of God's creation. God comes to us "in the flesh," fully entwined in the grit of physical reality. Christ displays for us in his Incarnation the restoration of man and his relationship to the material world. God cared enough about his creation that he willingly entered it and lived a life in it.

5) That God's redemptive purposes extend to the entire creation. He is at work not to bring us into some fluffy heaven where we all float around in a happy spirit land, but instead he works to renew the entire creation and make it once again very good. He will restore all of the brokenness that we have wrought on the physical world. (Isaiah 11, Revelation 21)

This is all important because it provides important perspective for how we should "seek the kingdom and his righteousness." Part of this seeking will of course involve retreat and separation from the confusion of the world. We must get before the face of God and seek to have our eyes opened to him in all of his glory. But we must also seek to bring the reality of the restored creation (aka. the kingdom) into the real world. This cannot be done by forsaking all things material. Instead, part of displaying the kingdom means displaying a right relationship with the material world. We show what it looks like to enjoy created things, but without our very life depending on having them. We show the world what kingdom stewardship looks like, using the material things to cultivate a beautiful culture that reflects God's glory. Any desert retreats should be for the purpose of drawing us back to this God-given work. So let us not seek to escape the "burdens" of the real world, but instead seek to restore the right and God-intended balance to our relationship with it. This must be done in community with our fellow man and with deep reflection on God's redemptive purposes in Christ.