Jesus Over Everything: The Spiritual
So, the Matrix…right?
One world is real, one is in cyberspace. The real world is post-apocalyptic and full of suffering and hardship. The superficial matrix world is clean and shiny, not perfect, but able to be navigated with power and agency by the protagonists. In the real world, people are subject to machines and to the laws of physics. In the ‘matrix’ they can defy the laws (coding) of physics and manipulate the world to fight against their enemies. Anything really important is always happening in the Matrix. Everything dangerous and confusing happens in the real world. And while you can die in either world, you can only be your ’truest’ or most powerful self when inside the matrix.
You might be leaping ahead to what you think my point is: that we can tap in the spiritual matrix and access real power in God…right?
WRONG.
While this analogy in film-speak is easy pickings, it’s not accurate or in keeping with the Biblical landscape and Spiritual power.
You see, God never split the spiritual from the material, the earth from heaven, or His presence from our reality.
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It is hard to describe water to a fish. It’s the world they live in, the air they breathe. It’s all they’ve ever known.
So it is, when we speak to 21st century people about the natural and supernatural. We have grown up understanding this split and accepting it. The scientifically observable and verifiable world within which we live, is the natural world. And the unseen, unobservable and thus “unprovable” realm is the spiritual (universe, cosmos, karma, energy, etc.).
This split was not always accepted as normal and has never been sufficient to explain holistic reality – that is the reality in which God created the universe for us to live and interact with Him and creation simultaneously.
When did this split happen?
The Enlightenment
“By embarking on purely rational and mathematical investigations, Newton was able to show that the natural world was ‘amenable to observations and experiment’, engendering a feeling among the scientific community that ‘Nature had finally been fathomed’.”
The schism was the gradual push, during a period of over 100 years, by philosophers and scientists like Newton and Wilkes to elevate reason, rationality, mathematics, and scientific exploration as a means to find truth. This became known as the Enlightenment Period. These endeavors do reveal truth about the natural, observable world.
Historically proponents of science during The Enlightenment called anything that could not explained by scientific exploration a superstition. This led to the formation of the Deists and church splits of all kinds. There is a fascinating history of the church at this time period which we don’t have time for here. The essential points are these: a) Christianity and the Biblical view is NOT anti-science and b) the result of The Enlightenment is a categorization of the natural and super natural. Supernatural was never God’s intention because He doesn’t split the His spiritual presence from the natural world.
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Science can tell us the truth about WHAT is in the natural world and how it works. But as science can tell us what something is, it cannot tell us why it is. It can tell us what a human is but it cannot tell us his/her purpose. Scientific exploration is a gift that tells us WHAT but it can never give us an OUGHT.
We need OUGHTS as human beings. We need to know what ought to be done with the discovery of a cure. What ought to be done with a child born prematurely? We need to know what ought to be done with a request for euthanasia.
To find answers, we need to re-connect with the spiritual.
Our error is that we think the spiritual is another realm we have to “storm” and “enter by faith” and force like the matrix. The truth is, it’s been here the whole time.
What needs consideration is the return to a time when we saw both the natural and supernatural as interconnected. Not a time of superstition or underdeveloped science, but a time of heavenly perspective that see the full integration of God’s reality throughout. A return to magic outside our front doors that cannot be reduced to repeatable experimental results. A return to Eden.
In the Garden, God walked with man and woman. He spoke with them. Lion laid with lamb. Nature obeyed natural and spiritual laws simultaneously. Whether you understand the creation as a creationist (7, twenty-four hour days to create everything) or take a more interpretive stance (accepting the fact that Genesis 1 is written in Hebrew poetic form) we can conclude that the book reveals God’s intent for spiritual and natural creation to coexist.
What needs to change other than our perspective and our sensitivity? We are the church. We are not where Heaven touches earth. We are magnifying glasses here to show where Heaven is already present. We don’t pop in and out of the spiritual like Mary Poppins jumping into chalk drawings.
Jesus over everything--the spiritual over everything--has always been the truth. But we stopped seeing it a long time ago. We grow up in a world that takes it as given that the spiritual is less real than the natural.
But we must resist this notion.
We breathe the spirit into our lungs and souls. We exhale carbon dioxide and praise. We eat food and find our spirits renewed. We birth human children and miracles.
The act of baptism without the spiritual is but a bath in public exhibition.
The act of learning without the spiritual is a two-dimensional lesson.
The act of living without the spiritual is a puppet show, lifeless, on strings.
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