Monday, February 09, 2009
The Winsome Church
Cereleun Sanctum recently posted on a theme we discuss here often in two parts. From part one:
Which filters down to the tips. Good ideas all, but they are, somehow, based a little too much in the here and now and not in the eternal. God's idea of beauty is somehow so transcendent that I believe it defies our concepts thereof. Our art and beauty may reflect the merest glimpses of but a portion of it, but capture it, never. Because God's beauty is so transcendent, and therefore, so very difficult to grasp we run a great risk of misidentifying it.
A physicist once described trying to build a fusion reactor, by holding the plasma in magnetic fields, as "trying to hold jello with rubber bands." So I think it is when we try and grasp God's beauty.
The mirror cannot describe that which it reflects, and so we cannot define nor describe God's beauty - we can but reflect it. The key to being the attractive church is to stop trying - to work simply on being the church.
That is to say, being God's people in this place.
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But I believe that the way the Church of Jesus Christ should appear to the world is as a winsome beauty. The Bride of Christ is meant to be beautiful. The Bride of Christ is supposed to be attractive. People should look at the Church and think, Wow!In part two Dan looks at some "tips" for being so winsome:
Yet somewhere along the way, we Christians, especially in America, developed a kind of self-inflicted persecution complex where we aspired to stop being the natural beauty we were meant to be, instead cultivating the attitude and lifestyle of the plain Jane friend. We tried—badly—to be a fashion plate, made every makeup mistake known to Man, and developed an attitude. In short, we grew to epitomize the friend character perfected in films by Rosie O’Donnell.
I agree wholeheartedly that the church should be attractive, and I don't have much beef with Dan's tips, but I would like to point out one caveat. Even Christ was not considered universally beautiful. Think about it, there were a bunch of people that thought He was so ugly, they had to crucify Him. Now, of course, it could be argued that there motivation was jealousy over his beauty, but try and get them to admit to that. They'd have called Him "hideous" every time.
- Listen more; talk less.
- Be the other person.
- Never let our own cherished opinions serve as an impediment to others.
- Live the truth rather than deliver well-intentioned speeches about it.
- Nurture beauty at home.
- Foster beauty in all its expressions
- Because some aspects of beauty are solely cultural constructs, embrace a broader definition of what is attractive.
Which filters down to the tips. Good ideas all, but they are, somehow, based a little too much in the here and now and not in the eternal. God's idea of beauty is somehow so transcendent that I believe it defies our concepts thereof. Our art and beauty may reflect the merest glimpses of but a portion of it, but capture it, never. Because God's beauty is so transcendent, and therefore, so very difficult to grasp we run a great risk of misidentifying it.
A physicist once described trying to build a fusion reactor, by holding the plasma in magnetic fields, as "trying to hold jello with rubber bands." So I think it is when we try and grasp God's beauty.
The mirror cannot describe that which it reflects, and so we cannot define nor describe God's beauty - we can but reflect it. The key to being the attractive church is to stop trying - to work simply on being the church.
That is to say, being God's people in this place.
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