The Lovers and The Search, Part 2
How New Covenanters Find God in Everything
The Search is the spirit of adoption, and New Covenant ministry is driven by it. The devil and Religion™ would have us believe that every non-Christian person merely dances to the beat of his tune, but the satan is a liar from the beginning. No matter how much evidence we observe to the contrary, the world is not going to hell in a hand-basket — there is a much deeper Engine at work.
In Asia, I watched as a police academy graduate stood up and declare that a deep desire she had had for so long was at last filled in hearing the gospel of Jesus. This is one of countless testimonies happening all over the world. As healing evangelist Shawn Hurley notes, “Deep down in every human being is the fundamental idea of God. Through love we wake that up.” This is achingly told in the poem, YHWH.
Jesus is the Word that gives definition to the inexpressible in every person’s heart. The Joy that, at last, fulfills every other mis-aimed attempt at happiness.
The heart of creation is clamoring for Abba; if not by name, then certainly in spirit. It is in the bars of our rap music, between the covers of our romance novels, illustrated in the origin stories of our comic book heroes, and hidden in the sub-plots of our TV shows. It is emblazoned lustily on our tattoos, overheard in late-night pub conversations and PM’d discretely in our chat rooms.
It is ingrained in all cultures of the world. One ground-breaking work, Eternity in Their Hearts, demonstrates how cleverly God has set up ethnic groups for the gospel.* But, is it also possible that human societies have been subconsciously acculturating echoes of their divine heritage and forgotten inheritance all along? Could it be what Jung laid his finger on in his musings on the collective unconscious? Whatever the case, doubtlessly we now see these God-shaped lodestones littering the paths of every human society — like cross-cultural messages-in-a-bottle from heaven designed to lead us to the Answer to our deepest questions.
And how eager He is to meet us.
J. Alec Motyer notes,
[God’s glory] is not only the one thing that is capable of filling everything but the thing which actually does so.
Actress Sarah Polley felt it:
I saw The Thin Red Line in a cinema in Toronto in Canada when I was 20. I entered the theatre militantly atheist, depressed and with the belief that working in film was a superficial thing to do with one’s life. I left the theatre with a glimpse of what faith meant, having been lifted and carried out of my sadness, and wanting to make my own films one day. In the dark of the cinema, among strangers, I was transformed.
The importance of musician and minstrel, poet and playwright, storyteller and sage are that they are de facto lore-keepers of the universal human cry. Stories, songs, scripts, and sculptures come from somewhere. It is part of us. It is us.
The problem is, to some of our more religious connoisseurs, the cry looks and sounds messy. It’s in our blood, and well, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but blood, like life, is messy.
In the Bible, blood speaks. Jesus, through all the lies, the trials, the whipping post, the cross; these he endured not only to shed his blood, but to be, arms-wide, the universal donor. The mess he made on Skull Hill was the way out of ours. “The blood is life itself,” says the Torah, and as one shepherd’s soaked red the earth of Golgotha, the wails of another, murdered millennia before, began to soften. Abel’s cry was not only heard, it was answered. And in the stead of that man robbed by Cain, the transfusing blood of a new (and last) Adam gave voice:
“My life for your pain.”
Examples of the spirit of adoption abound, and one of the best is surely a prototype of Paul’s Athenian adventure. It is a story that only John relates, in a gospel that seems to be written remarkably for lovers.
At the end of the first chapter, a man named Nathanael delivers an off-the-cuff remark that nothing good could ever come from Nazareth.† Though the insult is aimed at him personally, Jesus proceeds to do what can only be described as absorb it. Where some would see bitterness, God senses breakthrough. Man looks upon the outward, but this is the New Man looking now:
Before Philip called you,
I saw you
under the fig tree.
I saw you. It is a prophecy, the first blow of what will be many against an inferior cosmos ruled by hatred and indifference. Where other ministers may have lawfully shaken the dust off their feet against this future apostle, Jesus released a higher law, and, through the old sin-crusted atmosphere came a more primeval sound, one so ancient it had become new again. It hit Nathanael like a breath of air from a forgotten world. The result was magical:
Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the king of Israel.
In Moana, an animated Disney film of a few years ago, the climactic face-off takes a similar surprise turn.
Our heroine, on a quest to restore the missing heart of Te Fiti — a goddess with life-making power — suddenly realizes that the monster Te Kā is none other than Te Fiti sans her life-giving heart. In a decisive moment, Moana asks the ocean to clear a path for the enemy to approach her. Finally given opportunity to vent destruction, the fiery “demon” hurls itself forward, sending sand and debris billowing forward in blind, malignant rage. But Moana slowly, magnificently, steps onto the seabed, head held high in the boldness possessed only by those with true sight. Something stirs within, and as she lifts her voice, a song from another world floats to this one in gentle countermand to the onrushing chaos:
I have crossed the horizon to find you.
I know your name.
They have stolen the heart from inside you,
But this does not define you.
This is not who you are.
You know who you are,
Who you truly are.
The goddess stops. Crackling flames born only from the grief that follows lost identity are soothed away to nothing. As the once fearsome eyes close, Moana reaches up and administers the lost heart — chasing away the darkness forever. New life begins (Ezek. 36:26).
If we can see a person in the spirit, we can reach them. If we cannot, we will not. It is that simple. True colour can only be seen in full spectrum light. So it is with you and I.
Believers across the earth are awakening to The Search. Jesus said of Truth, “I am,” and we are slowly coming to realize that truth is therefore not defined by dogma, but incarnated in a Person. And if represented by a Person, it follows that Truth is best apprehended in people — anyone who possesses a deposit of that Person (Gen 1:26). This means no one is excluded. It is as if, from the womb, mankind had been marked by the brush of God all along.
Surrounding today’s Edenic New Covenant, there remains what some might think a hostile wilderness. But the command has not changed. May all the Lovers be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. May The Search continue, such that people are not only preached to, but legitimately found.
For Louw Ronquest and Tommy Green, who taught me to see.
* In the Bible, nation is not referring to our modern sense of an autonomous state (see card).
† At that time, false messiahs, prophets and zealots from Galilee (in which Nazareth was a town) were, like a living game of whack-a-mole, stirring up the populace and troubling the Roman prefects. Nathanael, then, was presumably a moderate who favoured the Sadducee sect. Further proof that Jesus’ twelve-piece band was quite the rag-tag bunch!
The more I learn, the more I discover just how vast a landscape of histories, languages and cultures feature in the Bible. It’s not easy! Where does one start? That’s why I made a deck of ultra-convenient cards unlocking a rooted understanding of the world’s most treasured book, one card at a time. And, while you’re at it, becoming a patron unlocks even more useful New Covenant stuff!
The Lovers and The Search, Part 1 ← P R E V I O U S
N E X T → The Lovers and The Search, Part 3
