Dumbing Down is Not the Way of Wisdom
or Gaining the Mind of Christ
Richard Foster, way back in 1996, had this pastoral and prophetic word about and for the church.
I am concerned that our reading and our writing is gravitating to the lowest common denominator so completely that the great themes of majesty and nobility and felicity are made to seem trite, puny, pedestrian. . . .
In reality I am concerned about the state of the soul in the midst of all the cheap sensory overload going on today. You see, without what Alfred North Whitehead called, "an habitual vision of greatness," our soul will shrivel up and lose the capacity for beauty and mystery and transcendence. . . .
In this day and age having nothing at all to say does not disqualify a person from writing a book (or a blog). The sad truth is that many authors simply have never learned to reflect substantively on anything.
Heart to Heart: A Pastoral Letter from Richard J. Foster, November 1996
I believe our great need is to connect intimately with the Lord of Lords, King Jesus. We need to see the glory and majesty of our God. We need to see the holy God, high and exalted. We need to experience his mighty, august Presence moving through our communities and our souls.
We need the transcendent God to convict us of sin, to persuade us for the way of righteousness, to comfort us in our affliction, to encourage us in our faithfulness, to sustain us as we persevere.
Your Christian life cannot be any higher, any deeper, any better - then is your vision and experience of God. A shallow image of God, a superficial experience of God, a limited knowledge of who God is, a preoccupation with one little corner of God's chartacter - then you will be part of what J.I. Packer calls a North American Christianity that is "3000 miles wide and 1/2 inch deep."
But see God clearly, fully, deeply, bountifully, in all his manifest splendour and the multitude of his attributes and the manifold ways of his surprising ways - then you will grow wise and strong in the ways of God.
That means we need leaders, preachers, teachers, writers, bloggers and friends who will be possessed and mesmerized by God and the things of God and speak to us powerfully on these things, as well as their own experiences of the Living God. We need to "up the standard" A LOT.
Leaders, if our communities of faith and ministry have become "dumbed down" it is because we have become "dumbed down" ourselves.
May I encourage all of us to a fresh, vigorous pursuit of the Almighty... a renewed passion and commitment for ALL of His Ways... and the courage to chart out counter-cultural followership in a consumer culture.
Some of this may be stirred within you as you choose to read some substantial books, by those authors who read and write well because they think, study and pray well... and in that, they have come to know God. Their writings are a stepping stone for our own deepening.
We read their profound words... and then we meditate on and soak in their realities, allowing them to sink and settle in the soul.
Therefore, since we are receiving
a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
let us be thankful,
and so worship God acceptably
with reverence and awe,
for our God is a consuming fire.
(Hebrews 12:28)
Choose this day whom you will serve and once you have chosen, then fircely pursue WHO you have chosen.
Tomorrow - a post about worship.
Brian K. Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com
