St. Maximos' Hut

In Renovation of the Heart Dallas Willard writes:

"The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon who come under their power." (p.15)

When I first read this I thought, "wow, since I've devoted most of my life trying to understand social institutions and laws, I guess I've wasted my life. I need to leave political science immediately."

But then I thought about it .... if Jesus's revolution is about a revolution of the heart, if its not about external control to induce good behavior, then it has implications for social institutions.

Social institutions should impose as few limitations as possible on the choices individuals make. If the heart is to be changed it is to be changed in an environment where people are free to make their own mistakes. Free to be challenged by the mistakes others make. Free to have an opportunity to learn and grow in such an environment. And free to be able to turn over their freedom to Christ and become a slave to righteousness.

This is not the world we live in, which suggests there are changes to be made in our social institutions. And studying the conditions underwhich changes in social institutions occur may not be a comple waste of time.

Please tell me what you think.... I don't want to waste another moment.

A couple of mornings ago, I was led to read 1 Corinthians 1, and it felt like the first time.

The second half of this chapter seems very Calvinist to me:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. …..Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

In otherwords, its as if God deliberately made it hard to believe so that “not just anybody” would believe – only those “whom God has called”. But as I read on, I get a glimpse into this that I never saw before….

“Brother, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; no many were influential; not many were of noble birth." Paul goes on to say that "God chose the foolish to shame the wise…. so that no one may boast.”

I think what Paul is saying here is that “Christ crucified” is a gospel that makes no sense in earthly terms. It is unreasonable – in the sense that reason can't get you to it. Consequently, it doesn’t require special training or superior intellect to comprehend because if it did – it would be like everything else in this fallen world. If it was like a higher form of mathematics, it would be captured, chopped up and sold like everything else – to the highest bidder – those able to spend the years getting the training needed to understand it. It would be doled out to – and controlled by - the rich and powerful … and that’s the world that God wanted to stand on its head. So God set up a story you’d have to be kind of crazy to accept, and this kind of craziness is uncorrelated with power because this kind of craziness is RANDOMly distributed. The weak and the strong, the insider and the outsider, the master and the slave, the Jew and the Gentile all have the same chance of catching it.

One consequence of this is that the church – when its not captured by Pharisees and scribes – is like no other institution on earth. Because it is representative. It includes the excluded. I wonder if that is why, compared to other institutions, it looks like it is run by and for the poor and the uneducated.