Out of Context: Tim Keel

There's a lot of talk and buzz these days about simple church. Numerous people and organizations are making a significant amount of money talking and teaching about it as the answer to getting more people to church. Yes, to church. Whatever they call it or however they organize it... church. Action and reaction. Pendulums go one way and swing back the other.

This quote was posted the other day on a blog I read occassionally.

In the modern world, we tend to reduce the complexity and diversity of the Scriptures to simple systems, even when our systems flatten the diversity and integrity of the biblical witness.

So now, there's already a reaction beginning to build on how the teaching of the church has been oversimplified. The pendulum swings are getting closer and closer together.

I find it amazing that my own back to the words of Jesus approach actually un-veiled a very simple message.

From there he went all over Galilee. He used synagogues for meeting places and taught people the truth of God. God’s kingdom was his theme—that beginning right now they were under God’s government, a good government!

Matthew 4:23

So, this brings us back to Mr. Keel's quote from the Out of the Ur blog and the position that churches have oversimplified the Bible. Perhaps as man, we tend to look for systems. Complex or simple, we need a system so we know what we do and do not have to do. So we can keep a little book about whether we've fulfilled our religious duty each week. I read somewhere that when relationships fail rules are required. God in the flesh required three years of life on life living with the twelve chosen to carry the message to the uttermost parts of the earth. Three years. Nearly 24/7/1095 (3x365).

I contend that Jesus' message was very simple. So simple in fact, he had to untrain them from the religious way of thinking so he could re-orient their thinking to the simplicity of the central theme of his message. More simple than the books and seminars on simple church have made it. I contend that Jesus continually showed the difference between living with the temporal things of the world at the center of your life and living a God-life with the Kingdom at the core. What we've built the systems around, simple or complex, are what I have discovered and call the contexts of which he took advantage to illustrate his simple message. His message can truly be applied to any context and illustrated by uncountable stories and realities (14 When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. 15 They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Romans 2).

I contend that our fallen and corrupt nature alone cannot allow us to understand the vast simplicity of what he taught, and, most importantly what he lived and showed us through how he lived. I contend that religious systems, in order to thrive, must propagate a system upon which they can be built. Jesus left no system. Here's a great quote I read yesterday:

What has become a maximum of organization with a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism. Too much organization has, like a straitjacket, often chocked the organism for fear that something might go wrong. Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control; faith can trust. Control therefore may be good, but trust is better.

Houses That Change The World by Wolfgang Simson

And here's what Paul had to say about it in Romans:

What we’ve learned is this: God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does. 28 We’ve finally figured it out. Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade....

31 But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don’t we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it. Trusting God

Romans 3:27-28, 31

"Our lives get in step with God... by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does." That is the simplicity of living as a Christ Follower. That is the foundation upon which any sense of structure in the life of a Christ Follower should be built. Unfortunately, we've traded a visible structure (he goes to church, he teaches, he tithes, he serves) that looks like it has the right foundation for the true foundation itself (we respond to what God does). As long as what we see "looks right", according to the simple or the complex structure outlined by man, we assume the whole is in line with God. Unfortunately, what we have is people in step with checklists, and when those checklists happen to line up with what God is doing we're in line, but when they are out of line... so are those who follow them. Because we are focused on the list, on our own agendas, it seems simpler to follow that checklist than learn how to look intently for God, simpler to see a page of do's and don'ts than truly see God.

Think honestly for a moment. When was the last time you saw God, and responded to what you saw? I'm not talking about an emotional or intellectual response based on stimulus provided by another person. I'm talking about you seeing God up to something and responding. Sadly, I'm afraid few of those today who claim to be Christ Follower have ever seen God and responded to that glimpse apart from someone else's stimulus. God did not mean for it to be this way. It's not what Jesus showed his closest followers while here walking among them, and it's not what those follower's encouraged in the years immediately following Jesus' ascension.

Yes, since stepping away from the busy-ness of structure conscious religious life, which I used to think was the God-life, I've not "done" as much. However, waiting on and responding to what God is doing... I'm amazed at what I've seen God do. The life-change that was sadly missing from 100's of lives weekly invested in according to the checklists God allows me to see every time I simply follow Him. That's the complex simplicity of being a Christ Follower. I would re-write Mr Keel's quote thusly:

In the modern world, we tend to complicate and compartmentalize the simple message and example of the life of Jesus into formalized systems - complex and simple - even when those systems and their checklists become our focus rather than simply walking in step with God like his son showed us.