The Mystery

The book of Ephesians is an epistle I have taken a deep dive into recently. While the general theme is supposed to be about expanding our horizons. However, it occurred to me this time around that the misapplication and misunderstanding of the principles within have actually minimized the horizons of the church. For example, the Greek word musterion appears 6 times in the book of Ephesians. (1:9, 3:3, 3:4, 3:9, 5:32, 6:9) Which literally means mystery or secret. While most scholarly translations maintain the mystery, simplified translations will sometimes marginalize the word. The current church has marginalized this mystery in practice as well, and the ramifications are catching up to us. Alan Hirsch has already highlighted one of them with his book 5Q, which I have blogged about already. So we have been there. If only the church would do that. Here is a brief recap of some of the other misunderstood truths I found in this powerful epistle.

Chapter One, Predestination.
Some people take this concept to the extreme. Thinking it means that all our choices have been made for us already and that there is no free will. I imagine the appeal is that it absolves us of all responsibility. Leading to a very passive church that has fallen way short of the many things promised in Ephesians. In chapter one alone it talks of blessings, unity, and power. Clearly, passivity has not led us there. There is so much more to be had. We were predestined to be gifted with the means to live the Mystery of God’s will. Too many have chosen not to embrace those options fully.

Chapter Two, Works.
One of the most quoted passages in Ephesians is 2:8-9 which says we are saved by grace, not by works. Since works have nothing to do with salvation, people assume works must have no value at all. Leading to a very passive church. If only they would keep reading to verse 10 they would realize how wrong that is. Works have tons of value in areas other than salvation. Passivity is not God’s will, because it doesn’t work at all.

Chapter Three, The Holy Spirit.
Here it is revealed that the Holy Spirit is the key to unlocking the mystery. How we live out a love that surpasses knowledge. However, since we cannot qualify or judge the spirit systematically. Or embrace it without making a spectacle of it. Many just dismiss the idea. The church's horizons have diminished as a result. There are teachers and even denominations that openly blaspheme the spirit by saying that there is no other authority other than the Bible. Despite that, the Bible itself rebukes such ideas. (1st Thessalonians 5:19, John 3:5-8)

Chapter four, The two sides of righteousness.
Many teachers merely define righteousness, and just tell people to go live it as the Pharisees did. (Matthew 23:1-4) If that worked we wouldn’t have needed a savior. As Galatians 5:16 says “if you walk by the spirit, you won’t gratify the desires of the flesh.” In other words substitute instead of suppress. Don’t just take off the old self, but put on a new self in its place. Don’t just put on a new self either, the old self underneath will soil the new. Applying this truth one-dimensionally has only led to continuous failure.

Chapters Five & Six, Rules for Christian Households.
When some people read this all they see is the privilege of masculinity. Yet failing to notice this comes with huge responsibilities as well. Men who don’t live up to these responsibilities have no right to demand said privileges. Men who want all the privileges but not all the responsibilities are bad husbands, fathers, bosses, ministers, and leaders. It’s irresponsible men who have brought on radical feminism. The thing is feminists want all the privileges of femininity and masculinity as well. Yet not necessarily the responsibility that goes with it. In the end, their attempt to prove that they are better than men has only revealed they are no better than men.

Ephesians closes with the famous passage of the armor of God. This is in no way a call to passivity, apathy, or privilege. Quite the opposite. It is a call to step up in preparation, a call to action, a call to live the mystery of the gospel. But a church with such narrow horizons just isn’t up to this mystery that surpasses the mere knowledge they idolize.

The Visual PARABLEist  

This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”-Ephesians 5:14

Birthmark Society

Excuse me for breaking free from my regular subject matter to say something about May being vascular birthmark awareness month. (May 15th specifically being birthmark awareness day.) Some may be rolling their eyes and saying to themselves "Do we really need another awareness day?" Well, as the old saying goes “First seek to understand, then to be understood.” While such days may always start as an invitation to understand. One cannot help if some merely see it as a demand to be understood. The easiest thing in the world to do is dismiss someone who dismisses you first. So an innocent invite can easily escalate into a demand when people refuse to allow their assumptions to be disrupted. No wonder there is so little understanding these days.

With that out of the way, as someone who has a prominent birthmark here is what it has taught me about humanity. Despite all our virtue signaling, and conditioned tact, there are still a lot of shallow and superficial people out there. You would be hard-pressed to convince me that people are basically good because of it. It’s one of multiple reasons I tend to distrust people. That’s one of the biggest demons I wrestle with right now. I get judged for that too, but humanity in general earned that distrust, so their judgment carries little weight with me. Which brings me to the flip side of it. This has taught me not to be motivated by acceptance, approval, and validation. This frees me to pursue my genuine interests, rather than what the world around me wants to validate. Let’s face it, we live in an age where acceptance is so coveted, that you can get people to do just about anything if you only validate it. 

Children will ask straightforward questions about my birthmark out of curiosity, and I don’t fault them for it. I usually tell them I’m part leopard and those are my spots. Most are smart enough to know I’m teasing them, but it does defuse the spook factor of it. Unlike a bunch of technical jargon. Even adults would not likely know what a Nevus Flammeus is after all. The caveat to that is that autistic kids have responded in absolute terror, regardless of the type of language I’ve used.

As kids age to the middle and high school range, curiosity tends to turn to disgust. This is where the bullying ramps up over inconsequential differences, making them seem very consequential. This is a time when the desire for acceptance, approval, and validation goes into high gear after all. This is where our culture starts to faction off. When individuals start to compromise themselves for the sake of being part of a peer group. Even so-called counter-cultural groups do so collectively. While they may choose to dis-identity with the mainstream because the mainstream rejected them first. They are still doing so in a formula way for the sake of having a peer group. As Eric Hoffer Once said. “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” Yet having a superficial difference of any kind can disqualify you from such foolishness.

Adults tend to make assumptions about it. A rash or burn is the most common in my case. That’s how adults are, once you get to a certain age you try to make everything fit into what you already know. Instead of assuming you haven’t seen everything yet. Many will even assume you are lying, even after telling them the truth. Especially when you are a kid. Being constantly disbelieved for telling the truth as a kid didn’t exactly increase my faith in humanity. However, with my birthmark being on my arm and chest I tend to have a different experience than those with a mark on their face. That conditioned politeness keeps most adults from asking me about it most of the time. They usually have to get comfortable around me first to ask about it. Hard to say how many don’t get comfortable with me because of it though. But it seems having a mark on the face tends to stretch the limits of manners as I hear it. With that being said, senior citizens can revert back to a childlike wonder about it in their final years.

Some people just love to be cruel regardless though. You can regulate “hate speech” all you want, but in the end, it just makes the fruit forbidden, i.e. more desirable to the sadistic. If people want to wear their ugliness on their sleeve like that, then so be it. It’s a red flag for decent souls. The thing is, people wouldn’t flaunt their ugliness like that if someone wasn’t encouraging it, or if it wasn’t attracting like-minded people to them. Yet it may go deeper than that. When a person makes another uncomfortable, the uncomfortable person often tries to shame the person triggering their discomfort. They want you to hate yourself for disturbing the illusion inside the bubble they live in. In hopes that you will steer clear of their hair triggers. For example, there are YouTube channels run by amputees sharing their experiences. Which is a great resource for recent amputees to adapt and adjust to their new situations. Yet some pathetic people will report these videos as disturbing imagery. A testament to how individuals think their comfort is more important than other people's trauma. This is exactly why I don’t hide my birthmark, or even get laser treatments for it. If you are really that shallow, I’d just assume know about it up front. Yet, I may delight in triggering your superficial nature. Besides, who am I to change God’s work. However, I do recognize if my birthmark was on my face, or it grew and thickened like many vascular birthmarks do, I may feel very differently. The trauma caused by basically good people would surely be on another level.

I am so much more than my birthmark, identity is more than skin deep after all. Yet, I do recognize its presence has shaped who I am. Not the mark itself, but how it has affected my relationships with others. Sure I could go to great efforts to try and convince the world to feel about me the way I think they should. Since we live in a culture that wraps so much of our self-worth in our relationships. Or I can just live my own life without revolving it around the people who hate me for dumb reasons. While promoting understanding can be a good thing, yet if you're basing your happiness and fulfillment on everyone feeling the way you want them to, you are just setting yourself up for misery. If people were that reasonable, we wouldn’t even be discussing this in the first place.

The Visual PARABLEist

Birthmark society Apparel

Imbalance

A minister friend of mine who has switched churches recently is revisiting the fivefold gifting found in Ephesians 4:11

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,

One point he lifted up that struck me this time around was the distinction between the outwardly focused roles versus the inward ones. You really do need both because they support one another. But do we approach it that way?

For example, I once knew a minister whose mantra was reach up, reach in, reach out. Yet the majority of the emphasis was on reaching out. His thinking was, that we need to reach out to build attendance. In his mind, that is what the church needed most. I tried to point out the shortsightedness in his logic multiple times. One time in particular I said, “Reaching up and reaching in is like boot camp for reaching out.” While he agreed, he still insisted on rushing everyone through basic training. So few felt up to stepping up to his challenge to reach out. So basically his outreach was limited by his reluctance to reach in where his church truly needed it, or lead the flock to more in-depth reaching up.

Another example from the other end is a church I used to go to that has fallen on hard times in recent days. So they have shifted from thriving to merely surviving. They are so busy trying to save the institution, they have forgotten what the institution is supposed to stand for. When you don’t support outwardly leaning programs just because they don’t serve you directly, you are clearly missing the point. Their inward focus has become more about the institution, for self’s sake. Instead of restoration of self through our relationship with God. Which is ultimately meant to equip us for discipleship.

Either way, an imbalance is created in the fivefold. So let’s look at the rest of the passage.

to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” -Ephesians 4:12-13

A church that only enables two to three of the gifts cannot truly be united in faith, because some people and their inherent gifts are excluded. Nor can it experience the fullness of Christ, because vital truths are being neglected. So consider this, the original Greek for "equip" can also mean repair, prepare, or perfecting. So I reiterate, a church that does not utilize all five gifts is far from perfect. If anything it needs some major repair of its inner structure. The question is, are we willing to let go of the familiar to rebuild the complete and balanced church that Christ intended.

“By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.” -1st Corinthians 3:10-15

The Visual PARABLEist