PORTALS & WORLDS

Today we step through a new doorway into a bright world; China! The dragon is awakening.

Though itineraries have been set and refined, what awaits in these next five cities and universities is still a mystery in many ways. In the next three weeks that mystery will unfold.

In addition to universities, we will also be visiting an International School to explore the "Arts and the Imagination" with children from Kindergarten through High School. This is going to be delightful!

In every place, from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, from Xian to Nanchang, people are excited about inviting us into their worlds. Yes, we go as teachers with much to share, but more than that, we go as students with even more to learn. That sounds like a cliche', but it is truer than truth itself.

This journey will be wondrous in many ways, and we are so grateful to all of our friends who have made this journey possible. Thank you! - thank you for participating with us in this adventure. We are so full of appreciation for special friends like you. You know who you are - and we do too :-) Your generosity will not be forgotten.

C'mon along! Stay with us to see what unfolds. Visit The Illuminatrium often.

My next blog will be from China!!!

COMPLETE PAINTINGS IN AN HOUR

Some of you know that I paint in churches during worship and sermons. It is fun and people seem to enjoy it, plus, ironically enough, God seems to use it to inspire both artists and non-artists. The comments people make always give me joyous insights into how God ignites the creative process in us, and how he uses us to do that for each other.

If you, or someone you know would like for me to come paint in a public event, go ahead, give me a shout. Let's make some notable art together.

No two paintings are alike. I do something unique for each and every service and group. There are no canned images, no formula-paintings. Each creation is fresh and special. Every painting is a "one-off" work of art done specifically for that group experience in that moment of time.

Sometimes groups auction off my paintings for various fundraisers, and sometimes they frame them immediately and display the art in their churches, schools, or group gathering places on the spot.

Paintings are brought to to various degree of finish, depending on what people want. Some paintings I take back with me to my studio and spend a few more hours tidying up and bringing the artwork to higher refinement, and some paintings go right on the wall after the public painting session.

To see more of these paintings, you can find them on my website at http://www.danielriceart.net/ and click on the GALLERY link. You will find more of these panels as well as other interesting things to look at. I do hope you enjoy it.

WE ARE HEADING FOR CHINA IN MAY

Many of you are aware that Connie and I are going to China. We leave May 22nd and return June 15th. Five cities and four universities will be visited during this time.

Our itinerary takes us from Seattle to Hong Kong, to Shenzhen, to Nanchang, to Xian to Beijing and back to Seattle. We will be teaching in four universities across China, about writing, the arts, tourism in English speaking nations, and much more.

This trip has been a dream of ours for a number of years. Now, thanks to the generous gifts of friends and relatives, this trip will be a reality. Thanks to everyone of you who has made this trip to China a possibility.

If you would like to be part of or team but have not had the opportunity to contributed to this venture, we invite you to do so today. Thank you for giving generously to the China team.

Check out the special gift for you described in our mid-April China team flier. Go here to take a peek. http://www.danielriceart.net/CHINA/update_d.pdf

A LOVE FOR THE TRUTH

This painting is called, "The Triumph of Truth," by Peter Paul Rubens. Why do you suppose he depicts Truth naked, and who are these other figures? What is Rubens trying to tell us?

Loving truth and recognizing truth requires a number of things. Not everyone loves the truth, not everyone loves the idea that truth exists independently of them; beyond their own personal perspectives, and not everyone is prepared to give truth a welcoming embrace - especially when it militates against their sensibilities and beliefs. Truth can seem harsh and unflattering. Truth can be hard to take. Truth can cut you down as well as lift you up. Truth is tough stuff.

Truth has to do with what "is;" that which is independent of us, not that which comes from inside of us. Truth does not originate from us, and is not dependent upon our approval for its existence. We do not decree what is true or false, truth is something we learn to recognize, something we discover, something we come to love or not. The discovery of that truth is often unsettling, and sometimes shocking.

What I mean is, truth is truth whether I consent to its veracity or not. Truth is never subjective. It is always first objective, then it becomes personalized as we adopt it, but North American culture does not like to see it that way. Truth, in contemporary America, is often described as the subjective product of emotion and personal preference. We say, "What is true for you may not be true for me,:" and that might hold strong in some circumstances, like saying vanilla ice cream is better than strawberry, but it does not hold true across the spectrum of life. Sometimes truth (in the form of facts) mean little or nothing to a person who wishes to place their own perspectives at the locus of highest esteem, but this does not mean that their own preferences or personal perspectives could ever equal truth. They don't.

Even when it comes to simple facts, people are not always convinced by facts. People don't always recognize or welcome truth either. The fact is, our beliefs and personal viewpoints are continually being colored by our preferences and our emotions. Truth is colored by nothing. Truth colors all other things. Someone said that a person's philosophy is dictated by their morality, and not the other way around, but this is not how truth works.

Truth is the judge of all philosophies, and determines their soundness, not the other way around. This is an unpopular thing to say, because as soon as one starts speaking about truth they get labeled as a fundamentalist. But to say truth does not exist is equally fundamentalistic because it asserts something as true. It is inescapable. Each of us has ideas about truth whether they are well formed or not. Each of us believes in truth of one sort or another. The only difference is whether our beliefs reflect the reality that stands beyond us.

People frequently believe what they FEEL to be true, and some people believe what they WANT to be true. For all of our wonderful complexity as human beings, for all of our intellect and thinking, we are still majorly influenced by our moral preferences and our emotions. This is upside down living, and it leads to despair and brokenness. Take for example our emotions themselves . . .

Emotions get the best of us and make fools of us all, yet which of us would give up their emotions for cold calculating bald intellect. Why? Because emotions take us places and provide us with richness that the cold intellect never can. A purely scientific mind can might use sex for purposes of procreation, but lovers make love. Procreation to them is a byproduct, not merely an end. We lament over the troubles our emotions cause us, but if there was a surgery that would remove our emotions once and for all, precious few of us would go for it. It seems that those pesky, unpredictable, troublesome, infuriating emotions of ours are some of the things that make us feel most human. I have often wondered about this oddity . . . emotions.

Art is often about emotions. I wonder if the arts could exist without emotions. I don't see how they could. Here is an even weirder thing, the Bible speaks of God's emotions. Is the Bible merely speaking in the language of accommodation for the sake of our understanding . . . so WE can relate to God . . . or does God really and truly have emotions like us? Can it be that such a view of God is not provincial, not merely anthropomorphizing the deity? Can emotions be important in the heavens?

The profound mystery of the "incarnation" is that God took upon himself human flesh, and we see that God in the form of Jesus of Nazareth displaying really honest emotions. I don't know about you, but that kind of Divine identification with human emotions says something wonderful to me about our own thought life as well. Jesus' own words are profound and meaningful when he said, "Be angry, but sin not." He is not denying us the use of our emotions, not even of anger. He says, USE THEM, but don't let them lead you into the wrong path.

Emotions may be as transformable as the surface of the water, but this does not make them worthless. Emotions are not our enemies. Emotions are important to the intellect, to wholeness as a human being, but let us never forget that reason is given to balance out the inherent weaknesses of mere emotion. Logic is not merely a construct of Modernity, it is part of human civilization in every culture. Emotional maturity, that is, putting emotions to their proper work for us, is a mark of maturity and wisdom. It is both winsome and wise.

When we construct our personal belief systems, let us not forget the need for emotion. Let us retain it and embrace emotion, but let us never give our emotions the final say. The last word belongs to our minds, our reason, our intellect and our ability to make sound judgments -- but beyond that, our maturity relies not in our intellect but in Truth itself.

I never want to dismiss logic because my emotions are telling me something different, and I never what to reject the Truth simply because my intellect cannot get it's mind around the Truth.

I never want to fear when there is no reason to fear. I never want to despair or be overly optimistic either. I want to know the Truth. Only the truth has the ability to set one free from the tyranny of emotions and the restrictions of the mind.

I hope, as I grow, that I can correct the excesses of my emotions and bring them into useful service to my mind, and I pray I can bring my mind into conformity to the Truth itself.

Here is a curious scripture in the New Testament. It relates to the issue of Truth, and the importance of loving the Truth.

2 Thess 2:8-13 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.
9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders,
10 and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie
12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
13 But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. NIV

It is interesting to consider that Jesus said, "I AM THE TRUTH." In one of his prayers he said to God, "Your word is truth." I wonder what he meant by that, and I wonder if anyone ponders those words very deeply. The apostle Paul said, "The truth is in Jesus." (Eph 4) Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." John 5:24 NIV

WE WILL ALL PASS THROUGH THE FIRE

Dante, we often forget, was just a Medieval Italian author, a good one, to be sure, but just human. His ideas of heaven and hell are not the Bible, they are just Dante's ideas that made it convenient for him to tell his entertaining, and often instructive tales. Still, most images and ideas of hell we see depicted in art or discussed in conversation are quite Dante-esque. I am not sure at all that Dante's ideas are Biblical ideas, though his are quite profound and often amusing. I often have remarked how convenient it is to believe in hell, especially when one has enemies.

I have noticed how people seem strangely comforted to imagine their enemies roasting in hell. What a bizarre thing this is to me.

Theologically, I am not a universalist; believing that all people will be ultimately saved. No, I think some people's destiny will shape up badly. I don't see universalism in scripture, but I also think we will all be surprised on "that day," when we see who gets in and who does not get it. Oh, I think there is going to be a great deal of surprise on judgment day, to say nothing of shock and awe. One thing for sure is that the first will be last and the last will be first. The powerful will find themselves cast down and the weak will find themselves exalted. I do believe that justice will prevail in the end, and that every mountain and hill will be made low, and every valley and ditch raised up. There will come a reckoning, I do believe that.

The fact is, the Bible, although it frankly speaks about hell (there is no getting around that), does not really give us that much to go on, and I am glad. I think we should be talking about the "Good News" a lot more than we talk about the bad news, and thank God, the Bible actually does that.

The biggest idea about hell we get from the Bible is that we REALLY don't want to go there. Hell is a state of existence we want to avoid at all costs. Sometimes the Bible describes the nether world as a burning place, and sometimes as a sterile place, such as outer darkness. There is not one single word that describes hell in the New Testament, but several. Much has been written by religious folks about this place, but, every description leaves me cold. :-) Whatever it is, I do NOT want to go there. I have my own ideas about it, but I hate thinking about it.

But, as for the subject of fire, a much more important subject in the Bible, we would definitely do well to ponder it. The Bible teaches that we will ALL pass through one kind of fire or another. Fire, can be a metaphor for suffering, or it can be referring to fire as a purifying agent; as punishment, or as judgment. It can be "good" or "bad." It can be many things. The end of the world will be with fire. Fire is God's cleansing agent. When Christ appears, he will appear, "in fire," and so forth.

This morning I was listening to Handel's Messiah, which by the way is about the entire gospel story, Christmas, Easter, and the world to come. I listen to Handel's Messiah all the time. There is hardly a week goes by but that I listen to some portion of it. This morning the section I was listening to was taken from Malachi chapter three, and it really caught my attention - and my imagination. Here it is.

Malachi 3:1-6 "See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. 5 "So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me," says the LORD Almighty. Robbing God 6 "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7 Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty.

It would be great to unpack everything here, but suffice it to say, this is a place in scriptures that speaks of God's people as going through the fire of judgment, and that is more important than the fact that some will go through that "OTHER" kind of fire.

Malachi talks about the fire that will purify the sons of Levi; that they may offer righteous sacrifices. John the Baptist talks about one who will come after him who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. Fire is always associated with God, and God with fire. "Our God," the writer to the Hebrews says, "is a consuming fire." This is a strong theme in the scriptures.

Yet, there is a principle here that bears consideration. It is that God's fire, though it purges away impurity, does not consume the believer, just the impurity.

6 "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. In the King James version it says, "so you sons of Jacob are not consumed."

Moses saw the burning bush, but it was NOT being consumed. This was strange, and it drew him aside. The "consuming fire" spoken about in Hebrews 12:28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29 for our "God is a consuming fire, is not the kind that devours God's people. The irony, if it be that, is that Hebrews 12 discusses God and fire before verse 29 and says, 18 You have not come to a mountain . . . that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; 19to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, 20because they could not bear what was commanded: "If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned." 21The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, "I am trembling with fear."

He then comforts us by telling us the kind of wonderful place we now inhabit with God - read it for yourself. It is awesome -- then comes back around to the issue of God as fire . . . and not just any kind of fire, but a "consuming fire." Do a study on the subject of fire. You will be amazed at what you discover.

So, this fire of God is different than other kinds of fire. This fire is a safe fire. Safe does not mean it does not burn. Safe does not imply it does not hurt. Safe does not imply that it is all sweetness and light. Nope. This fire is a raging burning, churning, furious, vigorous burning that consumes the dross, the impurities, the wood/hay/stubble of our lives, and leaves only purified substance in its wake.

Make no mistake. We shall all pass through the fire; some to destruction and others to a purified life, by which we will be able to make acceptable sacrifices to God . . . in righteousness. God deserves the best, and he is determined to get it. Fire is the means. Purification is the desired effect. The revelation of God's splendor is the end.

From the beginning of the Bible to the end, fire is God's agent of transformation. If you have ever prayed for God to change you, then you can expect the fire of God to purge you. If you have never prayed for God to change you, you can still expect to encounter the fire of God, but you won't like it. As for me, I prefer one over the other. I trust the one kind of fire to do for me (and for my God) the best things imaginable. I want to offer my life as an acceptable sacrifice, and though I tremble and struggle at times with the implications of God's fire in my life, I will not refuse him. I will welcome that burning which transforms me from what I am to what he desires for me to be. Without such a blaze, there would be no hope for me. A fate worse than purging is the fate of being reserved for a different kind of fire. Our choices are never fire or no fire, but ever and only, which fire will I embrace.

John the Baptist said it best when he said, "There is one coming after me, whose shoes I am unworthy to untie, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." Yes, Jesus. Baptize me with that Holy Spirit and that fire.

BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS

There are realities beyond sight, beyond measurement, even beyond belief.

It is that fact that keeps me enthralled with life and this wonderful world in which we live.

If you like biology or astronomy, physics or art, you don't have to go far before you discover a vast world of wonder. The universe is so full of amazement. It is overflowing with things we cannot comprehend, and would never have imagined on our own. Praise to the Creator for having made such a rich and abundant cosmos. "Open our eyes, Lord, that we might see what yet lies beyond our meager perceptions."

May God grant us the grace of seeing that which reaches beyond our wildest dreams of wonder.

MIND-FREAKING PARANORMAL GHOST HUNTING SUPERNATURALISM ON TV

Our society boasts about how thoroughly we have been freed from the superstitions of religion by science and technology, but the presence of paranormal subjects in the movies and in the programming on TV continues to haunt the realm of entertainment. What is up with that? How, in such a technological and savvy global culture, can interest in the paranormal remain so strong?
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This is not unusual; we have seen resurgence in interest in the realm of "the mysterious" numerous times in the last two hundred years. It was very strong in the Victorian Age, it was very strong during the Great Depression, it was very strong in the later in the 1960s, and it is very strong right now. In the Victorian age it produced a spiritual awakening, not only in the world in the area of spiritualism, but in the church as well, and so these two strains of spiritual pursuits have often walked hand in hand.
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The interest in the paranormal is almost normal for our culture. I have heard many people make fun of cultures in less "developed" countries for allowing superstitions to influence and guide their lives, but are we any less superstitious than they? It is a question worth asking, especially when politicians and powerful leaders in our nation consult astrologers and mediums before they make decisions or act on important matters of state. How are we any different than the Roman leaders when they sacrificed animals to pagan deities and then examined their entrails to determine when and how to go to war? It begs the question whether there are any "developed" nations at all.
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Before the Enlightenment, during the Reformation and Renaissance, the Catholic Church had been dealt heavy blows to its credibility and authority. From the challenges of Martin Luther all the way to discoveries of Galileo, the Catholic Church lost its exclusive hold on the culture. They rallied with a Counter Reformation and an Inquisition, but nothing could stop the slide of European societies away from the authoritarian stranglehold of the Church. This was good in some senses but it also opened up gnarly questions about issues of truth and spiritual guidance.
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After the Enlightenment, when all forms of religion and supernaturalism were nearly banned from France, it affected the rest of Europe and America as well. In that process a spiritual vacuum was created. Where once churches filled the place of truth and spiritual guidance, now no institution could seriously claim that place of privilege with any final authority. Those days faded the moment the Protestant Reformation began.
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Religion, that is Christianity, was nearly swept out of France altogether, but that did not mean (as some foolishly thought) that people would cease to be interested in spirituality; quite the contrary. A thirst for the supernatural, much to the chagrin of the intelligencia, remained deeply imbedded in the general population. Not everyone was as "liberated" and as "enlightened" as the intellectual fathers of the French Enlightenment. The result of the loss of spiritual leadership and its resultant cultural vacuum in the public sector eventually produced a movement called Spiritualism, which took many forms, not just in France, but particularly in England. A look at this phenomenon produces curious discoveries. Not only did this vacuum reveal an interest in the supernatural, but that vacuum was filled up with all sorts of teachings and experimentation with spirits, specters, ghosts, and the ability to communicate with the dead. It produced a fascination about witches, magic, and fairies too. One famous example of this is the beloved Dickens story, A Christmas Carol.
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Here we have Dickens showing the shallowness of the Enlightenment ideals through Mr. Scrooge. He typifies result of those horrific effects on humanity, via the Industrial Revolution, within the context of English society.
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Scrooge talks to ghosts, and is thereby brought to his senses (interesting in itself), and ultimately to a very Christian kind of redemption. Not all "supernaturalism" led directly to the devil, as some might fear. Some of it, especially in this case with Charles Dickens, led back to church, to Christ and to salvation.
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In this, the Englishman's (Dickens) spirituality differs from the French forms of his era. In England it is still possible to believe in the Christian ideal, but not so much in France. This is a very curious phenomenon, and I would love to comment more on this point, and I may do that in a later blog if there is interest by readers for me to do that.
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I would only give you a hint that the same possibility of turning a populist interest in supernaturalism toward Christ rather than toward the devil can work in the context of New Age ideas too. It may be possible to turn the general postmodern openness to the spiritual and paranormal "realities" toward Christ in a redeeming way. I think it is not only possible, but it may be the only truly beneficial direction it can be turned. Ministers, rather than fearing and denouncing postmodern spirituality, might do well to reconsider the benefits such interests create for the possibility of dialogue. Of course, dogmatists won't get this, they never do. But those who are alive with the Spirit will quickly understand this concept.
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The interest in fairies and spirits of the earth has been around since the dawn of pagan mythology, but these ideas surged up again during the Victorian age. As noted, I believe that happened because it was a "safe" non-dogmatic kind of generic happy spirituality that became available to the masses at a time when they were spiritually curious. It satisfied the masses' thirst for something spiritual without the heavy moral baggage of religion. In a video link to YouTube (below) I have given you access to a painting by Richard Dadd, called the Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, which has been updated with a song by Queen. It is entirely entertaining, profound and humorous. This is a kind of proof that the fascination with fairies and such things is with us for some time to come.
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We all know that the Age of Enlightenment produced the Industrial Revolution, and in the midst of those revolutionary movements, we have a corresponding deluge of interest in the occult and in spiritual subjects. These two things are linked together. But here is a very interesting thing to consider, there was also a spiritual awakening within the Protestant churches at the same time.
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At the end of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, there was a spiritual-earthquake that shook the Western world. Its ripples continue out to us today - but instead of those ripples growing weaker and farther apart as they move outward from the epicenter (the French Enlightenment), it appears like they are growing larger, as does a tsunami when it reaches the shore.
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There are many similarities and some significant differences between the belief in and experience of the supernatural since the Enlightenment. Some of those are the inclusion of women in the role of spiritual guide. In séances and spiritualist meetings, women were thought to be the more sensitive mediums. In the development of Post-Industrial society, the women's movement gained greater and greater momentum, as did the inclusion of disenfranchised peoples in society and marginalized individuals, such as bohemians, transcendentalists and other "free" thinkers.
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It is an irony that in the spiritual Protestant awakening in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, women also began to enjoy greater respect and inclusion in the spiritual life of the church; the Reform church and the Baptist churches notwithstanding. It was not only the spiritualist movements like Christian Science, Theosophy, Spiritualism, and séances that sported women proponents, but so did the new Christian movements. The Evangelist Charles Finney championed not only Abolishionist Issues, but Women's Issues too.
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The newer denominations from branches of the Wesleyan line, Nazarene churches, Holiness churches and the growth of the Pentecostal churches (both black and white), all permitted women to participate in ways they had not been allowed in previous generations. Modernism produced some unexpected twists for spiritual communities, and that resulted in benefits for women within communities of faith. All of these events helped create the foundations of Postmodernism because each played its part by creating openness to new spiritual ideas. Once the central place of Catholic authority had been removed, anything was possible, in any direction.
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Once religion and spirituality had to compete on equal terms with other ideas in the marketplace, it made new spiritual commodities possible (if we can call them comodities). Now, one's spiritual wares will remain viable in the market place only if the product offered is perceived as credibly meeting personal needs in a way that other options cannot. This trend toward interest in the supernatural continues today, and is a subject worthy of our study. The Postmodern view includes all sorts of possibilities and perspectives once thought unthinkable in a modernist mindset; a mindset which was predominantly empirical.
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Postmodernism is, by contrast, existential; that is, experiential in nature. A Postmodernist might consider data and empirical information, but emotions and personal perceptions are every bit as authoritative as is empirical data. This is problematical for scientific methodology, yet even good scientists are often swayed by Postmodern sentiments.
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Another nineteenth century example is the philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, who made a tremendous case for the necessity of an existential approach to faith. Unfortunately, errors of which Kierkegaard is not guilty are sometimes laid at his feet. His approach to personal spirituality placed an emphasis on the experiential "leap of faith" from the heart rather than the intellectual assent to knowledge. It was the heart not the head, that is required for one to embrace the things of the Spirit -- or anything supernatural.
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An over-simplified Kierkegaardianism works for just about any kind of supernaturalism, which is helpful in some cases and not so much in other cases. Kierkegaard himself would not approve of the way his ideas have been kidnapped. He was a Christian through and through, but his ideas, which were intended to speak to the issues of Christian faith, have been torn from their settings and made to apply to any and every experience of life -- spiritual or not. This degrading of his ideas was an unfortunate development. Many books have been written on an existential approach to spirituality, and perhaps, one day, I will write one too, but suffice it to say that interest and belief in the supernatural, paranormal, ghosts, specters, fairies, and spirits of all kinds is here to stay. Science has not stamped it out, The Enlightenment has not quelled our hunger for spiritual experiences, and, for better or worse, these curiosities are part of our permanent cultural/spiritual landscape.
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It is, in my estimation that -- and not mine only -- that "God shaped void" within us, described by Paul Tillich, cannot be satisfied with a purely naturalistic explanation of the universe. We feel deep within our being that there must be something more to the world than can be explained by science. Never was that more obvious than it is on TV and in movies today.
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Is it the angst produced by Modernism that fuels Postmodernism? Is it the notion that matter is all that exists the force that provokes our desire for "more" than a material reality?
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Whatever it is, the desire for spiritual things is basic to our nature. We not only want to believe . . . we do believe that there is more to the universe than meets the eye. How we go about satisfying our hunger for spiritual things may be dramatically different than our neighbor's method, but the essential thing is the same, that is, we believe there is something "out there," and we want to make contact with it, even if it scars the bejeebers out of us.
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Finally, I will make a kind of BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) prediction. If it is true that a general curiosity about the supernatural can (and has in the past) produced an attraction to the gospel, and if it is true that such an interest has always been accompanied by an outpouring of God's spirit (which it can be demonstrated that it has), then it is not too much of a stretch to see that the current interest in the paranormal, and such things, will be also accompanied by the Spirit in our present time. What we can expect, without a shadow of a doubt is that a fresh outpouring of grace and power is not far off. It only requires people who will open up to it.
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Those who understand this will prepare themselves to receive that mysterious move of God that will transcend the present materialistic preoccupation of the churches. Those who don't understand this will baulk and resist that move of the Spirit, just like a certain churches resisted the work of the Spirit in previous generations. As for me, I don't want to miss this next move of God, and you can bet money on the fact that it WILL come. If not through me, then perhaps through you, but if not through us, then it will come through someone else. The one thing that is certain, though, is that it will come from somewhere, and I pray it comes soon.
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I wonder what will become of those ministers and congregations, those institutions and groups who miss it? I want to be prepared. Will it come as a rushing mighty wind or a soft and gentle breeze? Only God knows. But however it comes, it will come in a form we least expect, and it will be a form that is perfect for the age in which we live. My prayer is that I am ready to receive it. How about you?
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NOTE: Here is that cool YouTube short about Richard Dadd's "Fairy Feller's Master Stroke," a sample of non-traditional spiritual ideas in mid-nineteenth century England. Check it out. It might amuse you. Cheers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoRaXAK2RCY