I applied my heart to what is revealed and learned to understand

the reality of the inconvenient truth.

 

Proverbs 24:32

 

Like cold water to a weary person is good news from a distant land.

 

Proverbs 25:25

 

 

 

            What is revealed in the A,B,C& Ds of our human condition now calls for our conviction.  We are challenged ongoingly by reductionism’s algorithm determining human life to clearly do the math about what this algorithm assumes to solve for humanity.  If we don’t keep calculating the results from this algorithm, we are susceptible  to assuming these results in our own life by default.  Furthermore, if we lack the conviction to act in order to change this reductionist condition, then we are complicit with it in its nature.  Therefore, we are accountable to define “Where are you?” in our person and our relationships, as well as to determine “What are you doing here?”—for which God holds us accountable in reciprocal relationship together.

 

 

Distinguishing the Uncommon from the Common

 

 

            Reductionism’s algorithm has generated equations that appear to simplify human life in ways embraced by human collectives and persons, to compose their common way of life.  What is common becomes their culture, which directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly becomes the defining and determining basis for their everyday life.  When the math is not calculated for this algorithm, the common prevails in its reductionist nature simply by default, whereby even Christian identity becomes defined and function is determined.  Thus, doing the math is not optional but essential to give account of the common surrounding us and in us.

            The importance of mathematics is irreducible  for the theories composed by science and for their outcomes to be valid and reliable.  When scientists don’t adequately do the math, they face the dilemma of how to support their work for others to accept and even agree with to build on.  Christians face a similar dilemma of how to support their way of life for others to accept, that is, agree with as belonging to what they all have in common.  The dilemma for Christians, however, goes much deeper than the common to distinguish the uncommon.  The human condition is differentiated in and by the common.  That which distinguishes the uncommon from the common emerges from the math properly done.

            What and who distinguish the uncommon are not easy calculations to make in the presence of the common’s influence and shaping; even scientists have struggled with this influence in order to remain objective.  The math must include not only what’s revealed in the A,B,C&Ds of our human condition, but also needs to incorporate what God reveals in the human context. 

            Early in human life, God revealed his nature as holy (i.e. uncommon, Lev 10:3), therefore God’s people are to “be uncommon because I am uncommon” (Lev 11:44-45).  To be holy/uncommon necessitates being set apart from the nature of the common, in order to be unequivocally distinguished in the uncommon nature of God’s image and likeness.  This makes it imperative: “You must distinguish between the uncommon and the common” (Lev 10:10).

            In order to unequivocally be uncommon and be clearly distinguished from the common, the uncommon God revealed the math necessary for this inconvenient distinction to be the experiential truth and relational reality.  The calculations of what God revealed are basic for the education essential to be unequivocally distinguished as uncommon from the common (Eze 44:23).  Without doing this math, the uncommon gets polluted by the common to render it indistinguishable (Eze 22:26).  Thus, this education must not be misplaced, misinterpreted or misinformed.

            Math is a critical process for God’s revealed Word in order to understand how the composition of God’s Word in relational language needs to be calculated for theology and practice.  The most basic calculation of God’s relational terms is simply stated by the words from God: “You must diligently be involved in all the terms that I communicate to you; do not add to it or subtract from it” (Dt 12:32).  The invariable measure of the Word’s calculation was established earlier (Dt 4:2) and here reinforced to directly counter and neutralize the normative calculation from the common: “You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever they calculate is right [yashar, level, straight] in his own eyes” (Dt 12:8, ESV, cf. Jdg 17:6; 21:25).  The common’s norm could calculate God’s terms not only with addition or subtraction but also with division and multiplication—the math of God’s Word calculated by variable and relative intervening qualifiers that reduce the wholeness of God’s terms and/or paraphrase or conflate God’s terms without their relational significance.  The reductionist product of this math contradicts God’s irreducible and nonnegotiable terms and thereby widen the path “to the right or to the left” (Dt 5:32-33; 28:14; Josh 1:7, cf. 2 Kgs 22:2).

            This math of God’s Word is critical to understand. In mathematics, the accuracy of any calculations depends on accounting for intervening variables by the calculus of variations and finite differences, which determine their effect on the dependent variable being calculated.  The resulting dependent variable then is inseparable from the independent variable in the equation, but it is not necessarily determined by it.  The independent variable of God’s Word is the invariable state of God’s uncommon terms.  The dependent variable in this equation is our calculation of God’s terms.  Our calculation is always subject to intervening variables from the influence in our surrounding contexts.  Since such intervening variables subject God’s uncommon terms to our common terms, they must always be accounted for in our calculations or else God’s terms become relative in a wider path of our common terms.

            In the calculus of God’s terms for covenant relationship together, two sub-issues are inescapable to calculate: (1) clarifying what holy is, and (2) correctly accounting for the difference between the holy and the common, which is essential to calculate to distinguish God’s terms from anything less and any substitutes calculated by our terms (as Eze corrected in 44:23).

            Given the calculations needed in the math for God’s Word, consider your own calculations of what God revealed for this pedagogical process.  Do you consider the Book of Deuteronomy to be the Book of Law required to obey, or to be in its primacy the Book of Love essential to respond to in reciprocal relationship?  Likewise, in what framework do your calculations put Leviticus?  Contrary to common calculations, the book of Leviticus  is not a detailed enumeration of a behavioral code, but rather it communicates in relational language the following: the consummate contextual process that distinguishes the whole-ly (whole and uncommon) God from the common in the human context, in order to define the identity and determine the function of God’s whole-ly people in covenant relationship together (Lev 10:10, cf. Eze 44:23).  This widens our math challenge today to examine the existing calculations for what is uncommon or holy, because many past calculations “have made no distinction between the holy and the common” (Eze 22:26).

            The education of what God revealed for covenant relationship together cannot be overemphasized.  Two integral issues need to be correctly calculated:  (1) unequivocal clarity of what holy/uncommon is, and on this basis (2) fully accounting for the difference between the uncommon and the common.  These are imperative to calculate in order to distinguish the qualitative-relational terms of God’s language from anything less and any substitutes calculated by our common terms (as Eze corrected in 44:23).

 

First Integral Issue:

 

            The first calculation of what is holy is clarified by who is holy (as noted in Lev 11:44-45; 19:2; 20:26).  Most thoughts about holy center on being clean, pure, which usually don’t include being clearly set apart from what is the common surrounding being clean, pure.  Holy (qadesh) is to be clean, pure and thus set apart from what is the common constituting the human context to distinguish the independent variable who.  Therefore, holy equates to what is the uncommon, which is distinguished only by who is uncommon (as the Lord revealed, Lev 10:3).  Calculating holy is incomplete as purity or perfection and must incorporate who is uncommon to embody what is holy that is clearly distinguished as uncommon by being distinctly set apart from the common.  A calculation of anything less results from intervening variables.

            God declared, not to inform us but to clarify, correct and challenge us: “You thought that I was one just like yourself” (Ps 50:21).  God exposed this alternative reality intervening among his people, which continues to exist today, not typically explicit in our theology but implicitly in our practice.  The essential reality is that “I am holy” (qādôsh, Lev 11:44), who is independently separate from what is common and thus distinctly set apart from the common.  Therefore, God is vulnerably present only as uncommon and is relationally involved only by God’s wholeness, which are both nonnegotiable and irreducible by common terms.  Anything less and any substitutes from human shaping intervene to make the whole-ly (contraction of whole & holy) God’s presence and involvement indistinguishable.   Forming God’s identity in our common images has unavoidable relational consequences, notably forming a barrier to experience the relational reality and outcome of God’s definitive blessing for only God’s covenant family (Num 6:24-26).

            The whole profile of God’s holy face is distinguished by nothing less and no substitutes to constitute the independence of who.  The advocated alternative reality reconstructs this essential reality with what is common, thereby reversing the basis for the reality of God and his people, in effect, with intervening alternative facts (as in Ps 50:9-13).  That is, the issue in this effort is not necessarily to “be like God” (as in the primordial garden, Gen 3:5) but rather this two-fold dynamic: (1) Shape God and relationship together subtly on our terms (perhaps in our image), and (2) determine our person as Jesus’ disciples and our life in discipleship indirectly through the bias of our terms.  The insurmountable difference that God independently magnifies is that God is whole and uncommon (whole-ly) in ontology and function, while the terms of our ontology and function are fragmentary and common—reduced terms that also are projected back on “God composed in our likeness.”

 

Second Integral Issue:

 

            When holy is clarified unequivocally by the uncommon, then the second integral issue challenges us to fully account for the difference between the uncommon and the common.  God unmistakably distinguished the uncommon as incompatible with the common and thus as incongruent in the common’s lens.  On this basis, it is imperative that we “be uncommon for I am uncommon” (Lev 11:44)—set apart from the common by being distinguished directly  with-in the Uncommon as the relational outcome of reciprocal relationship together.  This clarification and fullness critically composes the distinguishing teaching with and in the Uncommon, who challenges the identity of who, what and how we are in order to be incompatible with the common and incongruent in the common—rather than an identity “just like yourself.”

            To be integrally compatible with the Uncommon and congruent in the uncommon of God is determined only by the whole relational terms of God’s relational process.  This means that to be uncommon (or holy) is not about perfection—as in spiritually, morally, ethically, and thereby to misunderstand sanctification—but connection, that is, relational connection that is integrally compatible with the Uncommon because it is congruent in the uncommon of God.  When perfection is integrated with being sanctified (as Jesus embodied and prayed, Jn 17:19), it then has a place in our practice to be holy and also whole inseparably, thus integrally whole-ly.  But its theology must not be composed with a commonized bias of idealized notions that intervene to conflate this critical calculation.  

            The book of Hebrews discipleship manifesto clarifies that the relational progression of Jesus’ relational work has sanctified us in the uncommon (Heb 10:10); and the relational outcome of this relational progression is to “make perfect” (teleioo) “those who are being made uncommon” (Heb 10:14, NIV).  Teleioo means to complete the relational purpose of Jesus’ relational work, which is fulfilled by only wholeness in relationship together (as God’s blessing initiated, Num 6:26, and the Word embodied, Jn 14:27).  The whole-ly relational process is the only way, truth and means to this relational outcome of teleioo, which for many became the inconvenient truth for their way of life.  

            In his manifesto for discipleship (the Sermon on the Mount, Mt 5-7), Jesus made imperative for our practice the relational work to “be complete, mature [teleios]” in likeness of how our whole-ly Father is present and involved in uncommon love (Mt 5:45-48).  His relational imperative, then, for all his disciples is to be whole and uncommon in our relational involvement of family love just as our Father is, in order to distinguish our identity as his daughters and sons in family together.  Therefore, perfection is always secondary to the primacy of relational connection with the Uncommon.  Yet, this relational connection only happens with-in the Uncommon, whose independent constitution composes the primacy of relationship together distinguished only by the integral relational terms, language, context and process of the whole-ly God—all of which we must account for to have relational connection.

 

            The calculations for our Christian way of life will define and determine whether our faith is shaped by the common or distinguished from its intervention by the uncommon’s independence..  Since holy for most Christians is not directly calculated from who is holy, there is a wide conclusion of Christian practice assumed to be holy and thus pleasing to God.  This dependent variable reflects the optimism many Christians have about their views and practices prevailing in surrounding contexts.  Perhaps this is demonstrated emphatically by Christians advocating and building for Christian nationalism, whose calculations persist to make them (in their eyes) effectively the fittest to rule over this nation—even with good intentions in the name of God.  The critical questions for them are: What part of Christian nationalism is holy; and on what basis is it holy; thus, how is it distinguished from the common to constitute its nature in contrast to the human condition?

            The existential reality facing all Christians is that the true meaning of holy is an inconvenient truth, which those influenced by the common would rather avoid than face.  What’s common is always more convenient, which is subtle to calculate in the virtual reality masking the existential reality. 

            Therefore, for any and all of our calculations, it is imperative to learn and thereby understand if God’s feedback for our education centers on the heart of “you thought that I was one just like yourself” (Ps 50:21).  For the Christians and churches who calculate the convicting conclusion, “they applied their heart to what is revealed and learned to understand the relational reality of the inconvenient truth” (Prov 24:32).  Only such educated Christians and churches can extend the convicting conclusion in the uncommon qualitative-relational process, “Like cold water to a weary person is good news from a distant land” (Prov 25:25).

 

 

Uncommon Conclusions

 

 

            A typical Christian response to the human condition is to proclaim the gospel, which becomes a complacent proclamation in the face of collateral consequences.  Jesus embodied, however, “good news from a distant land,” that is, from the uncommon source constituting his gospel.  His uncommon gospel is the good news distinguished from the common’s bad news, which brings new life to a weary person like cold water.  For calculating his gospel, Jesus makes it imperative to integrate the bad news into the good news, so that the bad news is transposed into the good news.  As he declared unequivocally when challenged about his involvement with the bad news: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick.  Go and learn what this means” (Mt 9:12-13).

            The uncommon good news of Jesus’ gospel integrally acts on the common’s bad news with uncommon conclusions—that is, when we “learn what this means.”  Jesus’ pedagogical process makes imperative the uncommon conclusions necessary to transpose the bad news into the good news.

            Contrary to prevailing perceptual-interpretive lenses, the commonization of human collectives and persons is neither a neutral condition nor a dormant period of the human condition.  As its A,B,C&Ds have been contextualized in the common, this encompassing context is the playground for reductionism’s subtle counter-balancing exercises that reduce, fragment and break down collectives, persons and their relationships.  Thus, the consequences of being common necessitates nothing less than uncommon conclusions enacting no substitutes for Jesus’ uncommon gospel.

            Jesus’ gospel becomes an inconvenient truth for Christians and churches whose good news is not integrated with the common’s bad news, thereby rendering their good news common as well.  Jesus established interrelated imperatives for his followers that integrally (1) counter any of their default condition in the common, and (2) distinguish their identity and function from the common.

            First, he declared:

 

“Just as I have vulnerably loved you from inner out in the primacy of relationship, so you in relational likeness need to vulnerably love one another.  By the quality of your relational involvement of uncommon love in my likeness, all others in the common will know that you are my disciples” (Jn 13:34-35).

 

The key to this imperative is how “I have loved you.”  The common perception and interpretation of love centers on doing something for others, notably in a sacrificial way like Jesus.  But, Jesus’ love first and foremost is not about his sacrifice, as important as that was; rather it is constituted by the vulnerable relational involvement of his whole person that he shares from inner out for intimate connection heart to heart.  It is only in his qualitative and relational likeness that the relational involvement of our whole person will distinguish the uncommon presence of his disciples in the common—not in taking up our cross.  Therefore, Jesus makes this relational imperative essential for the uncommon conclusion of Christians to belong to him while living in the common’s context.  Anything less, even with good intentions in his name, in essence belongs to the common. 

            On the imperative basis of the primacy of the whole person vulnerably involved in the relational connection of love, Jesus declares a related imperative for a further uncommon conclusion.  In unmistakably distinguishing his uncommon person from the common’s context (Lk 11:17-20), he declares:

 

“The person who does not gather with me, scatters” (Lk 11:23).

 

His either-or declaration limits the options available for Christians, options which clearly distinguish the uncommon from the common in their respective conclusions. 

            The calculation for “gather” (synago) is a critical issue, because this term is commonly reduced by Christians, for example, to the limited and constrained gatherings witnessed in many churches.  These gatherings include coming together in official membership and frequent fellowship.  Jesus didn’t declare to merely gather but distinctly to “gather with me.”  This goes beyond merely gathering in his name and connects to the depth of being vulnerably involved with Jesus’ whole person in reciprocal relationship together just as he loved us.  Only on this uncommon basis, and thus in his relational likeness, does gathering become the uncommon conclusion of bringing persons together for the relational connections that Jesus embodied, enacted and fulfilled with his whole person in the relational involvement of uncommon love.  Therefore, the imperative of gathering with Jesus necessitates his relational process of bringing persons together to be reconciled in the uncommon relationships distinguished from what’s common—even from what commonly gathers in churches.

            Reconciliation, however, is not a simple education.  Paul educated Christians and churches on the basis of what Jesus revealed to him in direct relational connection, which turned his life around and reconciled him with Jesus (2 Cor 5:16-18).  From his own relational experience, Paul taught that reconciliation is not merely coming together but necessarily involves redemptive reconciliation: that is, the old (or common) in us dying so that the new (uncommon) can rise to constitute the new creation person from inner out.  Only the experiential truth and relational reality of redeemed persons reconciled with Jesus can fulfill the relational work of reconciliation.  In his calculation, reconciling brings persons together without assuming that the old is neutral or dormant and thus doesn’t need to be redeemed first before reconciliation can be the relational outcome.  In inconvenient words, gathering persons together to be reconciled can only become a relational reality as the uncommon conclusion.  Anything less and any substitutes, therefore, “scatters” unavoidably in Jesus’ imperative.

            Scatter is usually not adequately calculated by Christians to clearly define it as the only option available to “gather with me.”  Jesus is definitive about his uncommon conclusion of gathering, which he then unmistakably constitutes as the only viable alternative for the human condition.  The existential reality of the human condition is its common conclusion of scattering.  That is, the human condition, which determines the common’s composition and context, enacts the counter-relational workings of reductionism to scatter as follows:

 

1.     It reduces persons and their relationships from inner out to outer in, with the consequence of lacking the qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness to know what is invariably important in life.
 

2.     Whereby these persons and relationships are fragmented into secondary parts at the expense of the primacy of their wholeness, which results in breaking down the integrity of persons and the qualitative connections in relationships.

 

The reducing, fragmenting and breaking converge together in the scattering normative of the human condition.  That’s the nature of reductionism composing what’s common for human collectives and persons to define their identity and determine their function.  And Christians and church who don’t enact the only viable alternative integral to “gather with me, then by default inescapably scatter.”

            Because the common conclusion scatters, it is imperative for the uncommon conclusion to heal, not just mend or repair.  What is your conviction at this juncture?

 

 

The Triage Purpose of Healing

 

 

            Learning the A,B,C&Ds of the human condition is an incomplete education until it is intensified by the irreplaceable conviction to resolve the human condition.  Resolving humanity’s underlying condition includes its situations and circumstances, but the most significant resolution involves its persons and their relationships composing its collectives—the resolve that goes further than just empathy for their condition.  This resolution remains incomplete when the conviction concludes merely with mending and repairing humanity’s intractable condition.  Like cancer, the human condition may even seem to be in a period of remission after treatment, but it always recurs to sustain a terminal prognosis until healed completely from inner out.  Therefore, this irremediable purpose of healing becomes the life purpose for those who “gather with me,” which subordinates all other life purposes for Christians to a secondary function.

            The conviction of this life purpose  differs from the persistence of activists seeking change, just as the uncommon is distinguished from the common.  This conviction is made definitive by the triage purpose of healing:

 

The life-giving purpose Christians embody and enact with their whole person in reciprocal relationship with Jesus in order to heal those gathered, so that all the scattering is redeemed and reconciled.   

 

Christians can fulfill their triage purpose as a full-time life’s work, or fulfill it while at other secondary work, at school, at home, or even at play—wherever in the human context.

            Integral to Jesus’ function of gathering is his ongoing involvement of healing.  In the heart of his purpose, Jesus embodied God’s triage of healing, not as a supplement to his salvific work but as the heart of why he came, how he came and what he came for (as he noted in Mt 9:12-13).  As we witness Jesus healing wherever he went, it is critical not to miscalculate the why, how and what, which many in his earthly time did.

            Jesus didn’t engage merely in repairing people’s body parts, nor was he just mending their needs from outer in.  Embodying healing as God’s triage, Jesus came for the sole purpose to restore persons and their relationships (both with God and others) to wholeness—the wholeness in which God created humanity according to the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole and uncommon God.

            God’s wholeness is not a concept or merely a characteristic of God’s attributes, but rather it constitutes the heart of God’s integral being and function.  On this irreducible  basis, humanity was created to constitute the heart of human being and being human; but subsequently persons became reduced, fragmented and broken from wholeness to inescapably encompass the human condition.  Regardless of the tension, conflict and consequences this brought to human collectives and persons, God acted in loving response to vulnerably bring the healing necessary to be restored to wholeness—restored with no illusions or simulations of anything less and any substitutes.  As just discussed, the process to wholeness involves the irreplaceable change of redemptive reconciliation; and for his followers who have and continue to die to the old and thereby rise to the new, Jesus has transferred his triage of healing to them in order to embody as their life purpose.

            These disciples and their collective gathering as his church family are now responsible to extend his healing with nothing less and no substitutes, so that “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples” (Jn 13:35).  The triage of healing, therefore, is a function that cannot be fulfilled with anything less and any substitutes for the wholeness Jesus integrally embodied and raised new in his true followers.  Even with good intentions, Christians and churches will not become triages of healing simply by performing first-aid services for their surrounding contexts, by providing merely comforting ministries in their church gatherings. 

            God’s triage of healing was enacted by the who, what and how of Jesus’ whole person, in order that those directly touched by Jesus’ wholeness vulnerably involved with them will then experience the relational outcome of their whole person raised new in wholeness.  The healing outcome emphatically illuminates the either-or juncture to wholeness, which is neither the idea nor even hope of wholeness but totally its relational reality in the very likeness of whole-ly God (as Paul made definitive in 2 Cor 3:18).

            In Jesus’ pedagogical process:

 

Learning to become God’s triage of healing involves the ongoing relational process of gathering with Jesus in likeness of his wholeness, whereby the primary life purpose of his true followers and church family becomes a vulnerably ongoing relational reality for the uncommon conclusion of restoring persons, collectives and humanity to the wholeness transforming their human condition.

 

Because of this triage’s uncommon nature and radical function, its conviction becomes an inconvenient truth for Christians and churches to embrace, submit to and partake in.

            Therefore, belonging to God’s triage of healing, not some imitation or simulation of it, is not a status, privilege or resource to highlight or boast about.  That would simply reflect and only reinforce the human condition by default rather than heal it.  Furthermore, as rigorous as triage work may seem to be, the depth of one’s conviction to be whole and thus to make whole is the quality that will distinguish one’s uncommon nature from the common.  The relational outcome will unfold ongoingly for one’s whole person to be vulnerably present and relationally accountable to fulfill God’s triage of healing both personally and together as Jesus’ church family.

 

            The heart of humanity waits impatiently on the triage of healing, because all of its collectives and persons have been reduced by the human condition and, therefore, necessitate ASAP the experiential truth and relational reality of the new creation to make it whole.  Nothing less and no substitutes will constitute God’s triage and fulfill its healing purpose for the uncommon conclusion that all Christians and churches are accountable for unavoidably, yet still arguable, conflatable and deniable.

            Our education will determine how long humanity’s wait will be, and it also will constitute the conviction of who will enact God’s triage of healing to “gather with me” and therefore not scatter by default.