Lenses
© Randy Heffner
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Remember old-school 3D glasses? The ones with red cellophane for one eye and blue for the other? If you watch an old 3D movie without them, an excellent thing happens: You immediately know something's wrong. The image is doubled, the colors are off, and it looks all wonky. But this is much better than something being be wrong and you don't know it. Else you might sail along in 2D, never knowing you're missing a whole other dimension of richness and joy. So quick: grab those old-style glasses so you can properly see Buzz Lightyear fly off beyond infinity.
Whether physically or spiritually, seeing clearly requires using the right lens at the right time. Different lenses — or frames of reference or worldviews (see my earlier post) — bring different things into focus. They prioritize what's important and where to spend our energy. When it comes to spiritual things, you are always seeing through a lens, whether you know it or not. We always have assumptions and purposes, which like 3D red and blue lenses, will filter and focus how we see reality.
The Rule-Giving-God Lens
When I first learned about God and Jesus, it ran something like this: God is big and powerful. God sets the rules and demands that you follow them — all of them. So you'd better — or else you go to hell when you die. But guess what? You can't follow all the rules. You're a rebel and a failure like all of us. Don't worry though, God loves you, so Jesus came and died so God could forgive you. Follow Jesus and you're okay — God gives you a free ticket to heaven. But even then, God is still focused on making sure you follow the rules, only now you can do it from gratitude rather than fear. Ready? Go. That was the lens I was given for my journey down the road with Jesus. I didn't know I had a new lens, I just absorbed this way of seeing things from the world of Christians around me.I didn't know I had a new lens, I just absorbed this way of seeing things from the world of Christians around me. Key features of the Rule-Giving-God Lens include that:
- It centers on the behaviors that God demands of us, focusing major attention on sin and righteousness and obedience.
- It emphasizes God's authority and power as rule-maker.
- It emphasizes the truth of God's rules and thus the rightness of God's judgment based on them.
- It points to faith in Jesus as the key to God's love and the undoing of God's judgment (but not of God's primary focus on sin and righteousness).
- It encourages viewing society and the world from the perspective of God's truth and judgment — and the failure to follow the rules.
I figure this view of the Christian life has origins in The Fall — that is, when the first humans (Adam & Eve) disobeyed God. When most Christians tell the story, the focus is on God giving just one little command (not to eat from one particular tree), almost like it was a test to see if we would respect and obey God's command or do our own thing and receive God's punishment. Indeed, with some encouragement from the serpent, we do in fact do our own thing. And God does his thing and kicks us out of The Garden, where life gets hard. We are subjected to divine judgment, toil, weeds, pain, fire from heaven, global flooding, exile into slavery — all that sort of thing. All because we broke one rule. Then God expands it to a short list of ten rules, and away we go focused on the ten (when we couldn't do one). Then there's the double down with the 613 laws recounted in the book of Leviticus. And we get so concerned to follow the rules that we add on our own framework of “reasonably inferred” rules based on all that.
And always hanging over our heads is the foundational worry that if we step the wrong way or touch the wrong thing, God's omniscient eye is there to catch us. To burn us. Unless we have Jesus.
I thoroughly internalized the Rule-Giving-God Lens. It would tell me I failed, and it helped me be much more aware of (and offended by) other peoples' failures, especially those of my enemies. But there were rules for that case, too. So, enemy or not, I would try to love them — or force myself to behave like it whether I actually did love them or not. I would forgive (or force-forgive) them 490 times if necessary (Matt 5:44, Matt 18:21-22). I punished all my disobedience (2 Cor 10:5-6).
Scratches on My Lens
After many years, I began to notice things in the Bible that this lens couldn't bring into focus. Even though it embodies God's view of what is right and just, the Rule-Giving-God Lens was missing something. Even though God's rule book ("the Law") is “holy and righteous and good” (Rom 7:12), my lens seemed to be getting chinks and scratches.My lens seemed to be getting chinks and scratches. Here are some of them:
- 1 Corinthians 4:3-4 :: Paul says that he doesn't examine himself and is conscious of nothing against himself. But wait a minute. If you're centered on following the rules, you must examine your behavior and know where you fall short so you can fix it. Something doesn't line up.
- Psalm 89:14 :: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.” Hmmm. This emphasizes how, when God comes out to meet us, the first thing we encounter is God's faithful love. Rules and righteousness are there as a foundation, but foundations are static and unmoving; they stay at home, so to speak. God's love and faithfulness are active and they are given the prime position; they are the main thing. This is opposite to the Rule-Giving-God Lens, where God meets us first with the rules — and our failures. Something's wonky.
- Romans 7 and 8 :: In Romans 7, Paul paints a woeful picture of himself as a God-loving Law-/rule-follower — and that entanglement between the Law and his flesh was killing him (he says he "died"). In Romans 8, he corrects his Romans 7 self by setting a spiritual center point in Jesus and turning away from entangled Law-flesh rule-following. This doesn't fit the lens.
- Galatians 3:1-5 :: Using the language of Romans 7 and 8, Paul strongly chides the people of Galatia for falling back into being rule-followers, having made a start as Spirit-led and focused on Jesus. Rule-following does not have a position of primacy.
- Jeremiah 31:33 :: Describing the new covenant that will come with Jesus, God says, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” This puts a changed heart at the center of relationship with God. And rule-following doesn't require a changed heart. Something's gotta give.
As the chinks grew in number, I felt more and more like I was watching a 3D movie in 2D. I had the wrong lens. There was a richness and joy I was missing.
The Garden Lens
Gradually, I became more aware how worldview lenses play within Christian thought (versus simply Christian versus non-Christian lenses, as I was being taught). I began to think the chinks and scratches were on a lens I didn't know I was looking through. Then, reading one day in Genesis, I paused at the end of chapter 2. I wondered: How would Adam and Eve have thought about their world at that moment? Just before The Fall, what would have been their lens for thinking about God, life, the universe, and everything?
Let's imagine life in the garden. God breathed and Adam woke up. God sets him up as caretaker of the world's first and best ever arboretum, river walk, and wildlife safari. It had every kind of good tree, the river was so big it fed four rivers downstream, and Adam gets to name the animals. It's a big job, so God makes a woman, who is dear to Adam. And then there's the tree. The amazing, wonderful, beautiful tree in the midst of the garden: The Tree of Life. Eat bountifully and live forever in beauty and peace. Take walks with God in the cool of the day.
This was the world in the status quo ante, before The Fall: relationships and love and joy in the direct presence of Creator. This was (and still is) the heart and desire of our God. Life to the full (John 10:10). Daily life in The Garden centers on God, people, horticulture, fur, and feathers. Thorns, thistles, clothing, lists of commandments — these are not things yet. And to anything Adam and Eve know, neither are sin and righteousness and judgment.Thorns, thistles, clothing, lists of commandments — these are not things yet. And to anything Adam and Eve know, neither are sin and righteousness and judgment. It was a fantastical time to live: free and joyful, with little to worry about and less to be afraid of. God is personal and charitable. Life has an easy country charm. Thank God I'm a country boy.
What an amazing lens through which to view the world. The Garden Lens.
Yeah there was that other tree, too — the one that, out of love, God made sure we knew the danger of and tried to divert us from.1 The one whose fruit looks good but is poison. Eat, and suddenly you know about good, you know about evil. You unleash the dogs of sin and righteousness and desire and shame and morality and flesh and death. All waiting for you on the other side of a bite.
When God warned us off of knowing good and evil, it was like saying, “Don't worry about the rules — there be dragons. Just enjoy the garden and take care of it.” Had we gone with God's heart and desire, the Bible would have taken a very different turn after Genesis 2, with a much different trajectory from The Garden to The City of God (Rev 3:12, 21:2). Unlike the Rule-Giving-God Lens, the Garden Lens derives from a point in time where, in our relationship with God, we were much closer to, and had much richer experience of, God's heart and desire. God's heart has not changed since then. The Garden Lens focuses our spiritual sight to see and live from God's heart for us as it has always been. This lens is much different:
- It centers on God's desire for love and relationship and for our well-being and, conversely, our love for and gratitude toward God's love and majesty and ways.
- It emphasizes the Spirit's work to grow our capacity for love and life to the full.
- It encourages heart-level transformation through living in the presence of God, and especially contentment, wonder, and gratitude in the beauty of daily life.
- It embodies respect for and attention to God's Law every bit as much as the Rule-Giving-God lens, but instead it treats “the rules” as a tutor for living richly through alignment with God's heart, trusting the Spirit's work to transform us — and this produces a deeper, richer form of righteousness than the Rule-Giving-God Lens could ever do.
- It encourages viewing and embracing society and the world and everyone around us as beloved, if wayward (like us), family members.
Living The Status Quo Ante
While the Garden Lens doesn't entirely undo The Fall — it's not time for that yet — it encourages us to pursue the richness of relationship that God originally desired with us, desires now, and will continue to desire. Paul calls Jesus “the last Adam,” hearkening back to the garden (1 Cor 15:45). Jesus restored our relationship with God (Rom 5:10). For us, the Law has died (Rom 7:1-4) and God has restored us to the Genesis 2 status quo ante. Though physically we are here and now, spiritually and in our relationship with God, we are the way it was back then.Though physically we are here and now, spiritually and in our relationship with God, we are the way it was back then.
At the core of our being, we can live that status quo ante. Through the Garden Lens, we can better see the full 3D richness and joy of living this life. With a new lens to focus the Bible and shift our perspective, we will see that the Bible repeatedly places primacy on God's love and desire for relationship over and above God as exacting rule-giver. Here are two key examples:
- Galatians 3:24-25 :: The Law is “our tutor to lead us to Christ, ...and we are no longer under a tutor.” Living spiritually in the love and relationship of the garden, the rules have no authority over us — but they may help us to focus spiritually and thereby learn how to better live and love.
- Romans 8:3-6 :: Paul turns us away from the weakness of Law and its deathly entanglement with our flesh, saying that we fulfill the Law and access life and peace by walking “according to the Spirit.” In other words, it's not about the Spirit helping us to better follow the rules, but rather, like in The Garden, focusing past the rules, merely using them to grow hearts that can better live and love.
“It was for freedom that Christ set us free.” (Gal 5:1) Not freedom as in “do whatever you want” but freedom as in “living with free-spirited, unburdened, joyous hearts.” May that reality infuse and enliven us from the heart out. Like in the status quo ante of The Garden.
Endnotes
1 In Genesis 2:16, many widely used Bibles translate the Hebrew word tsavah (tsaw VAH) as "commanded," which encourages reading "you shall not eat" as a hard rule with associated punishment. But some Hebrew scholars find the word to have softer connotations. They point to the etymology, wherein a forerunner of the word meant "pile of rocks" — as in a marker that a traveler would place to let those who came after know the correct direction to go. From this, they translate tsavah as "instructed" or "told" or the like. Reading Genesis 2 with this sense of tsavah, it is more like a father saying, "you shall not touch the hot stove." It is easier to see God's primary concern being for Adam's welfare, as opposed to God's own holiness and authority and sovereignty over human affairs. Yet with "instructed" it is no less important to "obey" since, if Adam does not, it's the same as ignoring the pile of rocks and losing one's way.
by Randy Heffner
Randy lives at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and culture — reading, watching, walking, and sometimes creating in search of our better selves. Film and photography have a lot to do with it, but anyway, art. The tie is an anomaly.