Global Religion

The map above depicts the way Christianity is presently dispersed across the globe.

The highest density is seen in South America. In part, that was begun by Catholic missions in past centuries and, more recently, the explosive growth of Pentecostalism among Hispanic peoples.

North America is less densely Christian but still has a healthy believing population as does Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. It is interesting that in Europe, though, in many places, only about 2% still attend church. Also, note the Phillipines, with a high Christian saturation.

Smack dab in the middle of Asia (Russia) is a big dab of green that is probably mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians. The believers, globally, make up about a third of the earth's population at present, with about half of those professing Catholicism.

The vast desert stretches of orange denote a dearth of Christians in these areas dominated by Muslims. Monotheists, then, make up half of the world's population, combining Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

Israel is notably centered right in the Middle of this belt of non-Christianity. For Evangelicals, then, this is the final goal of the "Great Commission", the "go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to all nations, then shall the end come" command. How shall this orange belt of unbelief be breached?

We live in a globalist, shrinking world, and an "electronic village." Some have said that the real thing that brought down the former Soviet Union was the Internet. The Internet is presently a vast networking of free information blanketing the globe, and, yes, even the Middle East.

Much of Islam is under theocratic government, not democracy. Theocracies try to screen out all information coming to their peoples that criticize or question these regimes. That is because people tend to follow what they know, and it is a means of control. Once you open up democracy, people then have to sift through information that contradicts what they believe or have been taught to believe. Of course, Muslim leaders don't want to encourage the Western poisons of gambling, pornography, and materialism that would come through the Internet either. But surely one of the biggest problems would be Christian propaganda.

Christianity is Islam's biggest competitor. No matter what denominational form the message comes in, the message of Christ is world-shattering. One of Islam's central tenets is that Islam will win in the end. Allah will triumph. And Christ will return as an Islamist.

Christianity, though, holds that "the meek shall inherit the earth," and interprets the "meek" as those who follow Christ, not Mohammed. We must assume that truth and justice will overtake the earth some day. Will it come from one or the other of the two predominant religious framing narratives of mankind?

The message of Christ actually penetrated the whole earth in the days of the apostles. It began in "Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." But the "uttermost parts" in those days was not what it is now. We are literally standing at the threshold of the moment that the whole earth might hear the good news.

Seven-fold Patterns In Scripture

"Let us begin our textual comparison with the seven-fold pattern of the creation days. This pattern is repeated seemingly endlessly throughout the book of Revelation. All the apocalyptic events in Revelation are categorized in this same seven-fold structure and what’s more, they mirror the creation order. It is necessary to quote Milton Terry at length here:

"The seven days of the cosmogony are no more to be interpreted literally than are the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the repetitions of "God said" in Genesis suggest some analogies to be found in the sounding of the seven trumpets. At the sounding of the first trumpet the earth was smitten; at the second, the sea; at the third, the rivers and fountains; at the fourth, the sun; at the fifth, the abyss; at the sixth, the armies of Euphrates were set loose, and, at the seventh, "great voices in heaven" announced the advent and reign of the Lord and his Anointed. The days of Genesis are as symbolical as the trumpets of the Apocalypse, and can no more successfully be identified (or shown to correspond) with ascertained aeons of geology and cosmical evolution than can the trumpets with successive historical events.

"Augustine viewed the days of Genesis in much the same way, and modern advocates of the Framework View draw the same parallel Terry does. Lee Irons writes in response to the idea that numbered days must mean literal, chronological 24-hour days:

" 'The fact that the days are numbered need not be taken as evidence of chronological sequence any more than the numbering of the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls in Revelation. The days are numbered to call the reader’s attention to the theological significance of the sabbatical structure of the creation account.' "

from: http://www.truthinliving.org/

The above comes from a Preterist viewpoint. Preterist means that eschatology is defined as the "last days" already took place: they culminated in the 70AD destruction of the temple.

What strikes me here is how this dovetails with my analysis of these things in my book 7K: The Millennial Week. And I am not exactly a Preterist or a Futurist. In my thinking, the two can be blended. There doesn't have to be an endless "we-they" argument going on here.

What all of us are searching for is an understanding of how biblical prophecy applies to us. How do we process these enigmatic, ancient sayings? We know a great many prophecies were fulfilled with Jesus; it seems much harder to conclusively demonstrate that all of them were fulfilled in 70AD. There are some glaring loose ends that seem to escape the sight of devoted Preterists. Likewise, Futurists pooh-pooh everything Preteristic, which is sad. The Preterist view is revealing great truths.

One thing that emerges is mentioned in the writings of Milton Terry above, and it comes from a sensitivity to a kind of mystical Bible code that is right there in scripture itself (but not confined to Genesis and Revelation alone). There are patterns of 7 all over the Bible, some concealed in the text itself.

When we pull these patterns out and lay them over one another, we can begin to see connections revealing the greater plan of God. A literal reading of these things suggest that Jesus' future finishing of the Gentile Age is possibly just ahead of us. Preterists don't seem to give a nod to such an age even existing.

It is interesting that ancient sages ~ both Jewish and Christian ~ subscribed to an idea that has been called the septimillennial theory. This simply meant that the Bible suggested there would be seven millennial (thousand-year) periods before the complete fulfillment of all prophecy. Some of the Jewish scholars divided six of these millennia into three ages of 2,000-years apiece.

The first biblical age, from Adam to Abraham, was called the "age of chaos." The second age was "the age of Law" or of the Jew. The third age was to be "the age of Messiah." Indeed, in 30AD that "age" began, according to both Preterists and Futurists.

I tend to think that what is called the "times of the Gentiles" in the Book of Acts is referring to this third age. And I tend to think that age is near its close, but hesitate to say how soon, though dating would suggest it occurs within the next 23 or so years. However, Preterists help us to take caution with such information lest we encourage people to abandon their responsibilities thinking the Messiah is coming soon.

There is another way to consider the 7,000-year theory so that we don't have to take it literally. It can be thought of as a symbolic picture of the entire plan of God. In scripture, 7 is the perfect number. It is a connective and prophetic number as well. Both Genesis and Revelation reveal the whole plan of God, which is too much to discuss here. But in days to come I hope to go further, and to occasionally pull out some of these amazing connections.

Weak Faith

1 Corinthians 8:
7 But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled.

8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.

10 For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols?

11 So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.

We don't have the problem today of eating food sacrificed to idols; but we do have the problem of "weak faith" and "weak conscience." I want to explore this briefly.

What is "faith?" Is it a means to an end? Some Christian teachers teach that it is. They see faith as something you accumulate and, when you have sufficient faith, then it becomes usable. There is a reason for this idea, since there are numerous verses in the Bible that might suggest this. Some even take this so far as to believe that our words have a creative ability to change things. You speak faith to something and, if your faith is big enough, that thing will obey you. The problem is, it usually doesn't work. The truth is, faith is a small thing, like a mustard seed, that can accomplish big things. Faith is just faith. It is static by itself. But God is dynamic and will respond to faith ~ but not always. Why? Because our motives can be misdirected: greedy, envious, vengeful, proud, to name a few. Or, God does not respond for other reasons: it is not necessary, it is not in his plan, it is not his will.

The real meaning of faith is confidence. Faith does not have any goal, of itself, other than trust. Mature faith is like that of Job who said, "Though God slay me, yet I will trust him." That helps us to understand the testing of faith or "trials of faith." All of us experience this. Our faith really matures more when God isn't answering prayer than when he is.

Results are only one dimension of prayer, and not the most significant. The main goal of prayer is communion and relationship. And it is in this area that faith grows and becomes strong, not weak. Our journey should develop our faith.

So, as we see in Paul's statements above, in our relationships with other believers we have those who have "strong" faith and those who have "weak" faith. There are certain earmarks of weak faith: a legalistic attitude, a lack of understanding and knowledge, and a predisposition to being offended by someone else's actions. Thus, we can see that, in the church today, there is a lot of weak faith, and often in people who have been following Christ a long time. But experiences, even negative ones, should make us stronger.

Strong faith has developed like the muscles of a weight lifter, through exercise. Our faith experiences the pain of development and ultimately gets stronger. Thus, we gain in "knowledge"; that is, we understand God more clearly than our weaker fellow believers. We understand, in the instance above, that food sacrificed to idols is nothing. We don't have a superstition about it. We can eat anything, really, without polluting our spirit.

But, as I said, those with weak faith are easily offended. They compare themselves with those with stronger faith than they and conclude that the stronger person is weaker. Thus they are more easily offended by the stronger person's understanding of his liberty in Christ. So Paul remarks that the stronger person should be careful not to offend the weaker person, possibly derailing their undeveloped conscience and diverting them off the path of faith. This, Paul says, is not the path of love.

Those who lead in the church have to, by virtue of their responsibility, walk more circumspectly than those who don't lead. They may have to not take advantage of certain freedoms they have in order to be patient with those in their care that are developing slowly. But this is also simply a principle. Overly cautious leaders then can fall into the trap of weak faith themselves.

The best mode for all of us, weak or strong, is to develop a transparency and humility that says "we do not yet know what we ought to know." Strong faith is characterized by these things, actually. The person develops to the point they no longer take themselves too seriously. That doesn't mean they don't take God seriously. But they identify with the struggle of life more closely: they understand that no matter how well we develop, we are all in the same boat together. We are all desparately in need of the grace that comes through Christ only.

I think the Body of Christ, the "church", is going through a hard maturing process in these days. There are forces in the world we may not be aware of that are growing us. We have what the world needs and yet the world is rejecting what we exhibit that it doesn't need. The greatest gift we can give anybody is faith in Christ: nothing else can do what that one thing does. Nothing else is so precious. That alone separates us from all other religion, and that alone makes us "holy" or separate. We belong to Christ and he is our new identity.

But we should be aware that faith grows or matures. We should not remain in a static babyhood of legalism and negativity. And we who attain maturity should realize that we have a responsibility to model a mature Christian faith for those who are mired in weak faith yet think of themselves as strong, like a teenager that knows more than his or her parents. Good stuff to think about. But what is Paul's message? "Grow up, Corinthians."

Deep To Deep

Romans 8: 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

Prayer is talking to God. We cultivate prayer by doing it.

When you have faith in Christ, Christ is in you by His Spirit, and you can access God the Father through the Son. You enjoy a unique audience with God.

Our will and God's will go in two opposing directions. So how do we know God's will in any given situation? By the Spirit.

Psalm 42: 7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

The context of Psalm 42 is prayer. The "deep" is spirit-to-spirit communication. God's Spirit in us connects with God in this interface. In a sense, the Spirit prays through us to the Spirit. It is a mystical communion.

As we delve deeper in this, the informational exchange in prayer divulges information about God's will. The journey of prayer teaches us the way of the Spirit. We learn to "hear" God as well as speak to Him. We graduate from the one-way conversation. We learn to listen to what the Spirit is saying.

There is no more satisfying relationship. And it isn't about how skilled we get at praying. When we talk to each other we give and take information. So those exercised in prayer can learn God's voice through familiarity and listening.

Many, when they first discover God's voice, can easily abuse it. They think everything they hear in their head is God and they say, "God told me." But with continual use, we learn that God is more subtle. We begin to hear Him in others, and even in those who don't know Him. His voice pervades our consciousness and we are more "in touch." We begin to walk in that consciousness and it informs all that we do and say.

Some call this phenomenon "the prophetic" because it is the "Spirit of prophecy" that leads us. That is, the all-knowing God is laying out His will through our lives. One does not have to be sensitive to the prophetic, though, for this to happen. One does not have to have all the right doctrine and go to the right church and have the right politics. But it is divulged when we pray. Prayer is how we walk with God. And it goes on, after awhile, even when we are not speaking words. It becomes fellowship.

This is not about "accuracy." Some in the prophetic circles seek accuracy. But even accuracy exalts self, and causes us to depart from the real function of the Spirit. God isn't trying to impress anybody ~ He can do that easily. He is indwelling us and leading us, step by step. Then the "prophetic" consumes us.

Prayer then advances in stages. We walk into the room. We do our howdies. We ask for some things that concern us and our situation. But, if we persist, the conversation expands and the communion increases. Then we move into relationship and discovery. We become intimate with our Creator.

The Holy Spirit is the mind of Christ in us. He knows the mind of God and the will of God and taps into that through us. We enter into the vast spiritual ocean that is God. As we do, we are being consumed by His fire and subsumed into Him. "Learn of me, " He says. It isn't a competition among believers. It is God with you, in your world, where you are right now.

Losing My Religion

Life is bigger

It's bigger than you

And you are not me

The lengths that I will go to

The distance in your eyes

Oh no I've said too much

I set it up

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it

Oh no I've said too much

I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

Every whisperOf every waking hour

I'mChoosing my confessions

Trying to keep an eye on you

Like a hurt lost and blinded fool

Oh no I've said too much

I set it up

Consider this

The hint of the century

Consider this

The slip that brought me

To my knees failed

What if all these fantasies

Come flailing around

Now I've said too much

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream

That was just a dream


Lyrics for: Losing My Religion
From the album: Out Of Time
Songwriters: Buck, Peter, Stipe, Michael, Mills, Mike, Berry, William
Label: Warner Bros.
Genres: 1990s Alternative, 1990s Soft Rock, Adult Alternative, Soft Rock, The Coffeehouse

"Losing my religion" was something people said when they slipped up and cussed publicly. But, think about it. There was an old song that said, "Gimme that ol' time religion." A catchy song, but what did it really mean? Do we want a solid case of religion or not?

Did Jesus come to establish a religion? Obviously he did establish one: we call it "Christianity." And Christendom is known for good, but it is also remembered for many evils perpetrated by religionists in the name of Christ. Could we learn to avoid the bad stuff? Maybe we need to lose our religion, but keep our faith. Maybe if we lost our religion we would love one another.

Attitude Dancing

In his book Intuitive Leadership, Tim Keel, pastor of a growing Emergent community in Kansas City, presents nine possibilities for transitions to emergence in the church. He speaks of them as changes in posture, meaning "bearing or attitude." That is, these are attitude adjustments. Below, I will touch on these in brief, from page 228-252:

The transitions mentioned are ~

Learning: From Answers to Questions ~ In the Modern Era, the focus was on finding the answers; but the new frontier is asking questions. This shift of focus is from leadership to community. The attitude change is from trying to mold and control the environment we are in to responding to it.

Vulnerability: From the Head to the Heart ~ This is a shift away from an emphasis on being "right." Being right puts us in danger of our knowledge not only filling us with pride, but blinding us to opportunities or placing us in jails of our own making. We learn to listen with the heart as well as the head, and move into the scary seas of a more intuitive approach to God and those around us.

Availability: From Spoken Words to Living Words ~ Our emphasis has been on what we say, how we say it, meanings, and the propaganda power of words. This transition is moving us toward becoming "living epistles, known and read of all men." Our emphasis is on living out God's words more than explaining them, where a picture becomes worth a thousand words.

Stillness: From Preparation to Meditation ~ We have learned to research and present our message. In doing so, we seek to comprehend God. The shift will be to apprehending God, since he is always beyond our comprehension. This creates a needed humility and a heightened awe of God. But it also increases the connectivity between people, and our desperate need of stillness and listening instead of just speaking and activity.

Surrender: From Control to Chaos ~ Ours has been a controlling age in the church, seeking formulas that work and trying to rein in the beast of unpredictability around us. But in Genesis, the Spirit hovers over the chaos of the waters, and out of it comes life. What seems like chaos to us is the creation of new patterns in the bigger picture. The question becomes "how do I respond to what God is doing?" more than "how do I bring the world to order?"

Cultivation: From Programmer to Environmentalist ~ Programming is an emphasis on efficiency, an industrial approach to Christian-making that is an assembly line. The "environmentalist", on the other hand, is sensitive to the ecology around him. The emphasis shifts from producing a product to being open and hospitable.

Trust: From Defensiveness to Creativity ~ This is a shift from independence to dependence on God. The defensive Christian stance has trained us to always be attacking, not just those outside who are different, but each other as well. It is faith as war. And it breeds suspicion. We are constantly worried about what will happen instead of trusting and resting confidently in the midst of the turmoil of change. Our military precision undermines the possibilities of creative change.

Joy: From Work to Play ~ We take ourselves too seriously. We are grim and utilitarian about the Father's business. Like the bumper sticker: "Jesus is coming back: look busy!" But Jesus is the Sabbath. We aren't resting in him. And it shows.

Dependence: From Resolution to Tension ~ We are constantly seeking to resolve controversies and tensions. And we never do. In fact, they seem to breed like rats around us. Depending on God is like being adrift in the sea. There is tension, uncertainty, even overwhelming circumstances everywhere, all the time. Like we hear people say: "Get over it!" Surrender is not just obeying precepts: it is letting go of the need to control everything. Again, in that brooding sea of turmoil, God is orchestrating something. Get used to the rubber-band resolution and tension of life. Be a friend of flux.

I think Pastor Keel is nailing it here, in practical ways. "Behold, I do a new thing," says God. Will we let him? Even more, will we be along for the ride when he does?

Swarm Logic

swarm logic (SWOHRM law.jik) n. The process by which a large number of unintelligent entities can, by working together without central direction, produce intelligent action.

There is a phenomenon we know as "emergence." It has a potential for amazing creativity. If we look at the world of insects, we see it in a swarm. Tens of thousands of initially dislocated little intelligences suddenly come together in a cloud and begin to move in concert. The otherwise chaotic individuals combine into a force that determines a single outcome.

Presently, the Internet is proving to be a swarming mechanism. Potentially billions of people are becoming interconnected in an unprecedented way. And it has no discernible ultimate direction. It is not known to the participants what will emerge from this massive interactivity, but out of the chaos we have already seen the emergence of creative new possibilities.

In fact, it is the biggest revolution in global thinking since the printing press was unleashed. It will utterly change the way everything is done. But is there a logic to it? Can any of the emergent behavior be predictable? Scientists are looking at these possibilities. Because what if we could control outcomes? What if we could steer toward beneficial new realities?

There is, in the Bible, the always interesting story of the Tower of Babel. It was an early example of human swarming. For some reason, the minds of the people became fused in one unified creative effort. It is also interesting that God decided to crash the party.

Genesis 11:
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

We see here that the swarming had a potential that made nothing impossible. We can only speculate as to why God busted this swarm: perhaps it was a timing issue. Yet it is interesting we have this same emergent potential in the world today. A kind of global mind-meld that makes us wonder: "What will be the outcome?"

But how will this phenomenon of swarming emergence affect the church? Or better, where will it propel the church? It is certain that the times they are a-changing....fast.

In the past, swarms tended to grow around leaders, and I'm not saying that tendency will go away. Consider Pentecostalism that did not arise around strong leadership but around a communal discovery of a long-ignored feature of the original Christian faith: charisma. It developed into a swarm that literally blanketed the earth.

In a way, a swarm is a bit like a baby developing in the womb. Its structure emerges. The church is in pain. Something is in the womb, developing. But we don't see its full shape yet. It is only an embryo.

When this swarm comes together it will be unprecedented in its creativity and impact. But it isn't going to look anything like the structure we are used to. That structure is ready to be demolished, and it will happen before the inexorable path of the coming swarm.

The Golden Compass Is A Person

I would guess the upcoming movie, to be released around Christmas and called The Golden Compass, will be a blockbuster.

Already, the Catholic League is poised to give the release a hard time. Why? Well, the organization in the story that trumps all evil is called "The Magisterium." This is an obvious reference to Medieval Roman Catholicism.

Add to that the fact that this story is written by an ardent atheist to be in competition with The Chronicles of Narnia. The author simply seems to despise religion and particularly God. Thus, he has produced some anti-God propaganda to help children to not get sucked into the great black hole of religious faith.

That said, I'll probably watch the movie, even though I might have, at my tender age of 58, become overwhelmed by labyrinthine fantasy epics. Still, it is a great opportunity for the wonderful special effects we have become accustomed to. The price tag on this whopper is higher than Waterworld was, over 200 million.

Narnia was a delight, but I haven't watched it again. For one thing, I have not the patience any more to sit through a long, droll build-up in movies, as was the style in C.S. Lewis' day, back when people valued plots and suspense. Today we know better. If you want to make a good movie, cut to the chase, I only have a 7-minute attention span. If you want my dollar, that is.

I have surely been through numerous movies written by atheists: and what about the popularity of Christian-bashing in the movies of the last three decades? You get used to it after awhile. It starts to feel good. Christians make good bad guys (no oxymoron intended).

And, just because this movie is the world's-eye-view of an atheist doesn't mean it isn't spiritual, or that it doesn't have worthwhile things to tell us. I've reached the place I think the church should lash out against its critics less and listen more. They may be trying to tell us something valuable.

It's hard to tell whether protests hinder or propel movies. I call it "negative hype". It can do wonders for one's career. So a bit of Christianized overkill may do the movie good.

I have a motto in my mind, these days, that no matter where you look, you can find substance. It may be that this is going to manifest in this movie. After all, most movies are about good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. These images are always profoundly biblical, no matter who is producing them. God's story is based in these very things.

2007 should possibly be dubbed "the year of the atheist." Numerous atheist-themed books have rocked the bestseller lists, and now we wind up the year with anti-God propaganda for children. So is the country going atheist? Or is it just a fashionable moment for atheism? I would guess the latter.

As a former atheist, I don't worry much about atheism. It has been known to do as much harm as any other religion if its adherents become too zealous and dictatorial. In fact, recently I have had Internet conversations with very dedicated atheist scientists, and they are more than amiable. In fact, some of them have jumped from the Christian train, often as a result of offenses or traumas that made them doubt God.

Jesus said to us to love our "enemies". Anybody who hates us qualifies as an enemy. I regard this as an opportunity of discovery. This is a fantastic concept! It causes us to stretch and empathize with those we are most opposite to.

I am of the opinion that the church is often, if not almost universally, adept at drowning out the voices of those it seeks to reach. We are afraid of critics. Perhaps we are so insecure about our own beliefs that we must insulate ourselves from conflicting information. What we do, then, is avoid constructive criticism. What those who are outside the church are saying is, "This is what turns me off about you." My retort: "Wow! What is it? You may be right. Maybe I can fix that."

So I will be a lonely Christian that welcomes this movie. It reminds me of the Harry Potter mania of some years back, when Christians were so livid in opposition to these cool stories.

Is our message anti-world? There is a bit of Gnosticism in that: a kind of dualistic view of the universe. Or should we really be pro-people, trying to love everybody, mingling with the sinners and scorners like Jesus did, and confessing our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, and our faults, identifying with them.

Instead, we are often obviously full of pretense and pride, only driving them away from our ultimate product, salvation. For one thing, after almost 2,000 years, we have not yet sorted out what we believe about what Christ did. Are people going to be drawn to confusion?

We have good news. It trumps anything I've heard from my atheist friends. And that good news is theirs too, whether they like it or not. It's the only good news this world really has.

Oh, by the way, here is a clue: Jesus is the golden compass.