Subcultural and countercultural forms of denominationalism effectively say yes to Hades and to hell with the Church. Kingdomculture dares to say yes to the Church and to hell with hell.
Last week, my friend, Gary, asked me a three-part question.
First, how did the Western Church become captive to the “Babylonian” condition much of it is in today?
Second, why are Millennials running from most forms of the institutional Church and what are they looking for as an alternative?
Third, what is the message and process of delivering the message to fix this and is there hope that it can be fixed?
I’ve cooked these questions on the stove for a week, came up with a stew of thoughts and wrote Gary back yesterday. I mentioned I’d like to extend our conversation here and he thought that would be great. So here it goes.
How did the Western Church become captive to the “Babylonian” condition much of it is in today?
The Icon of the Resurrection is an image of the Church, not in captivity, but triumphant. This image shows the application and fulfillment of Jesus’ declaration, “I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail.”
Denominationalism is an expression of the gates of Hades (temporarily) prevailing. Denominations are not the problem because Israel had tribes composed of clans, which were in turn composed of families. The problem is the “ism” in denominationalism, which points to a system––a Babylonian system.
The belief that, in various forms and fashions, Hades prevails is the basis of the Babylonian system. This enthronement of evil to the level of it being a permanent fixture in the universe undermines and destroys any conception of what Jesus talks about as His Church. In the Babylonian system, Hades (a warehouse of evil, and thus a warehouse of evil’s supreme manifestation––death) prevails in two ways: subculturally and counterculturally.
First, if evil becomes a permanent fixture in your universe, you can choose to run from it and hide. Expressions of the Church that run from evil become subcultural. Thus, doing a “Christian School” in Babylon, for example, is subcultural. Hades is a prison. A “Christian School” in Babylon is a prison. Christian institutions in Babylon are self-imposed prisons where we volunteer as captives to fund and furnish prison cells of our own making––i.e., Christian businesses, Christian schools, Christian churches, etc. Prisons all.
A second Babylonian way of dealing with evil is to attempt to rule over it. Ruling over evil gives rise to countercultural expressions of the Church. These expressions of the Church attempt to use various forms of political power (i.e., compulsive authority) to carve out a place for Christians in Babylonian society. Practically, this means creating prisons for others who don’t believe as “we” do. We impose prison on others, isolating them from us, banishing them to prison in a political hell of our own design.
The subcultural and countercultural expressions of the Church are two sides of the same coin. Both are captive in Babylon. Both regard Babylon as the “real world” where evil is a permanent fixture and must, therefore, either be run from or ruled over. They both hold evil to be the supreme, permanent and controlling factor in life. Both create prisons (of which denominations are one form among many) in order to deal with evil. But as Tolkien masterfully tells in The Lord of the Rings, if we don’t destroy evil, then it will destroy with us.
Subcultural and countercultural forms of the Church are the problem for which kingdomcultural expressions of the Church are the solution. Kingdomculture replaces evil with good; it does not regard evil as something to run from or to rule over. Evil is 1) to be separated from what it has ruined so that 2) the evil can be destroyed and 3) all that evil has ruined can to be restored. For example, Jesus dealt with demon possessed individuals by 1) separating the demon from the person so that 2) the demon can be cast out and 3) the person ruined by the demon can be restored. On the macrocosmic scale, 1) the Scripture separates the creation (which is good) from the evil, Fallen World System so that 2) the Fallen World System can be destroyed and 3) all that this System has ruined in the creation can be restored.
Thus, kingdomculture dares to imagine replacing the Fallen World System with the Kingdom of God. Kingdomculture dares to imagine leaving a life of exile in Babylon to build and live in our own city, New Jerusalem. A kingdomcultural Church is a communion not divided by the evil of denominationalism.
Subcultural and countercultural forms of denominationalism effectively say yes to Hades and to hell with the Church. Kingdomculture dares to say yes to the Church and to hell with hell.
There are and always have been expressions of the Church characterized by denominationalism. And there are and always have been expressions of the Church that operate more consistently as a communion that is one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
Whereas denominations define themselves according to their distinctives, a communion defines itself by what it has in common with the whole Church.
I would like to note two communion expressions of the Church in the first 1,000 years of this New Covenant era. First, during the first 300 years, there were those churches of the Church within the Roman Empire who finally brought Caesar to his knees before Christ by their faithful practice of Eucharistic Worship. Second, there is the Celtic Church whose great centuries were from the 400’s to the 800’s. As the Roman Empire collapsed, the Celtic Churches “saved civilization,” as Thomas Cahill puts it.
Both the victorious apostolic Church within the Roman Empire and the Celtic Church outside of the Roman Empire integrated sacrament, Scripture and Spirit into a three-stranded cord not easily broken. In contrast, subcultural and countercultural expressions of the Church tend to denominate themselves from other expressions by zeroing in on one form of revelation more than the other two, subjecting all three to human autonomy. The split between the Western and Eastern Church in 1054 is a complicated matter, as is what happened about 500 years later in the Western Church with the split between Protestants and Catholics. Nevertheless, with hindsight we see the following:
1. The liturgical-sacramental form of revelation predominantly shapes Anglican and Catholic churches.
2. The Scriptural form of revelation predominantly shapes the Evangelical and Reformed churches.
3. The Spirit form of revelation predominantly shapes the Charismatics and Eastern Orthodox churches.
Some Anglican and Catholic, Evangelical and Reformed, and Charismatic and Eastern Orthodox churches are in the grip of denominationalism to a greater degree than others. And you can also find communion expressions of the Church in all of these branches of the Church.
The degree to which the Church is in the grip of denominationalism and thus captive in Babylon, is the degree to which Christians justify the idea that Hades is a permanent fixture in the universe. I believe that this is at the root of why many people today, especially Millennials, are running from the Church. They see the Church as an institution in league with the Fallen World System instead of as a kingdomcultural alternative. Knowing that this isn’t right, people leave Babylon. What they’re looking for is New Jerusalem.
Why are Millennials running from most forms of the institutional Church and what Are they looking for as an alternative?
Today’s denominated Church needs to rediscover what it means to be a communion. Communion expressions of the Church recognize the equal value yet different functions of sacrament, Scripture, and Spirit. Giving equal place to these three forms of revelation is essential if we are to replace the traditions of men with the Apostolic Rule of Faith (i.e., apostolic tradition). Confessing what has been revealed from our Father in heaven rather than by flesh and blood transforms the Church from being subcultural and countercultural to being kingdomcultural.
Millennials are running from subcultural and countercultural expressions of the Church because they want an authentic alternative way of life outside of Babylon. They want New Jerusalem, which I also like to call the "Capital C Church."
But the price to build New Jerusalem––to build the Church that Jesus is building––requires a heroic journey of descent into Hades. We must break Hades down, tear it apart, scatter its locks and chains, smash its gates, and set the captives free. This “descent” is the journey of kenosis––the emptying of ourselves and dying to who we are in Adam. We embrace this journey so that we might experience theosis––our being filling by grace with the divine life of God in Christ.
The “journey of kenosis” is a path of discipleship that requires we recover how to live covenantally in priestly, prophetic and kingly ways.
While Millennials want this kind of spirituality, they have a hard time finding it because mentors who get kingdomculture are few. There are a number of people in the older generations that have also left Babylon in search of kingdomculture. But like Millennials, they have a better grasp on what they are against than what they are for. We need to “publish” and give vocabulary to, write music for, and tell stories of this kingdomcultural alternative. Doing so will mobilize the older generations to mentor Millennials who want discipleship in this alternative way of life.
What is the message and process of delivering the message to fix this and is there hope that it can be fixed?
Since the gates of Hades will not prevail, there is hope. Our message of hope is that God in Christ is bringing about the restoration of all things.
My paternal grandfather, Boyd, whose name I inherited, explained to me one day why he rarely attended church. It was because he couldn’t get past the stories in the Old Testament of God ordering His people to slay the wicked. It left him sick to his stomach and hopeless. Despair and inaction are where denominationalism leads. Denominationalism leads to forms of the Church with hellishly narrow views of salvation. It sees punishment as a punitive end, not as a corrective means of restoration. These views are so narrow that if you’re not a member of that part of the Church, you are effectively going to “hell,” figuratively or literally. This Babylonian mentality––this mentality about evil’s ability to permanently overcome good with evil in relation to some––is a mentality that justifies backward engineering this worldview into the entire atmosphere of the Church. This atmosphere has no oxygen and suffocates people to death.
We need new wineskins for new wine. We need to recapture the epic story of Christus Victor descending into Hades to resurrect Adam from the dead.
The five dimensions of the covenant, enacted in priestly (liturgical-sacramental), prophetic (Scriptural) and kingly (Spirit) fashion supply us with the elements of this story. But these elements, like the best of ingredients in a pantry, need the right recipe to bring them together for the guests coming to dinner.
What recipe do Millennials want? What is appetizing to them as far as how to serve up the covenant in a convergence way as the DNA of a heroic spirituality that multiplies colonies of heaven on earth?
I would suggest that there are pointers toward answers to this question in the way I framed the question. Two key words are “heroic” and “colonies.”
The Church is a colony of heaven planted by the Hero, Christus Victor. This colony is not a subculture or a counterculture, but a microcosm of the macrocosm that is the Kingdom of God, the utter and total replacement for the Fallen World System.
The Eucharistic Worship assemblies of the Church within the Roman Empire during the first three centuries were colonies of heaven. In the centuries that followed Rome’s fall, the Celtic churches outside the Roman Empire functioned as colonies of heaven. For starters, I suggest we spend some time with our brothers and sisters in these churches and let their spirit infect us. May we catch whatever bug it is that they had. Let us cultivate a thin place sense of our connection with them in the Communion of Saints through practicing the disciplines of the covenant in priestly, prophetic and kingly ways. In short, we need to cultivate the basics of “heroic spirituality” if we intend to enter into communion with the Communion of Saints. Entering into this communion is the solution to the problem of denominationalism.
Here’s a mind-blowing set of connections: there is a remarkable relationship between colonists, heroes, the gods and goddesses that comprise the pantheons of cultures down through history, and the Kingdom of God.
Noah and the seven others who departed with him from the Ark to rebuild the world and “save civilization” are the historic figures remembered as the gods and goddesses of myth and legend in the world’s cultures. The eight persons on the Ark were world colonists. There divine mission was nothing less than to “save civilization.” Though clouded by the rebellion of paganism, in Nordic culture, for example, Noah is remembered as Odin, Shem is Thor, and Ham is Loki. We’ve had a few superhero movies over the last few years that have featured these characters. Similar parallels to what I’ve noted here in Nordic myth and legend can be drawn in every pantheon of gods and goddesses the world over.
Noah and the 54 unique persons mentioned in Genesis 10 are the original pantheon of gods and goddesses that all nations have enshrined as their pantheon of heroes. These 54 people were colonists of the highest order. In the decades immediately after the Flood, the original eight began to multiply. As they did, they traveled and marked out the future cities that would be populated by their descendants in the decades and centuries to follow. These 54 people comprised the most powerful dynasty of human beings the world had ever seen. Only the sons of the Resurrection in Jesus Christ are their rivals. Noah’s family built civilization overnight from nothing and created out of their bodies and their genius the great empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Sumeria, and every other ancient civilization in the second half of the third millennium BC. Psalm 82 and Jesus in John 10 refer to them as “gods.”
You don’t have to go searching for Noah’s 54 descendants in the history of the second half of the third millennium BC. Noah and these descendants are the second half of the third millennium BC. Hollywood is still making blockbuster movies about them today, movies attended quite religiously by Millennials.
Millennials are attracted to superheroes because superheroes are colonists––when you pull the curtain back and really understand what a superhero is. Who knows if there is a Millennial out there who has said, “Yeah, I just love Thor because he’s a colonist.” My point is that civilization saving superheroes and colonists of new civilizations are just two ways of talking about the same thing. Superhero colonists transform ruined worlds into restored worlds. They dare to imagine new worlds and build them. Jesus is a colonist––the Colonist of colonists and the Superhero of superheroes. “I will build my Church,” He says, “and the gates of Hades will not prevail.” He’s building a new world. To hell with hell.
Superhuman superheroes are those who move between the heavens and the earth, and descend into Hades to create new worlds. Neo, in The Matrix, is a type of Christ who goes from Zion (the Church) into the Matrix (Hades) to free the captives. The Matrix is a modern retelling of the story told in the Icon of the Resurrection. The Matrix, is a better telling of the Gospel than anything denominationalism has or ever will publish. Denominationalism is a sideshow, not a blockbuster. Give us New Jerusalem!
We need to link the ancient story of how Noah and the “gods” of Genesis 10––the story of how they saved civilization and recolonized the world––with modern myths and legends that today are capturing the imaginations of Millennials. I believe this “link” is key to opening the heavens so that Millennials can connect the dots as to why superhero movies attract them––stories that pivot on the eternal patterns of myth and legend of world colonists. We need to build an ancient-future bridge. We need a new Bethel, where angels ascend and descend. We need a place where the heavens open, and Millennials cry out with Jacob, “How awesome is this place! This place is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven.”
The city of Babylon and the Tower of Babel at its center, which Ham and his followers built, is the great counterfeit colony. Babylon and its Babel tower were an “anti-colonial” rebellion against Noah and the designed human cosmos he was establishing after the Flood. “Babel” is the Babylonian word for “gate of god.” Thus, what Jacob experienced in Genesis 28 and what Jesus alludes to at the end of John 1––about angels ascending and descending on Him––is a battle over gateways. We must control the gateways. It is our destiny to do so.
“I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” (Gen. 22:17-28
The Church is the “gate of heaven” against which the gates of Hades shall not prevail. It’s time to control the gates. It’s time to guard them and complete the assignment that Adam failed to complete, but that Christ succeeded in finishing (Gen. 2:15; Jn. 19:30).
We need to embody this story––this story of the colonization of the earth from heaven.
This story needs to set us on fire. And when it does, then others will come to watch us burn.