The Church as Ecosystem III The Politics of Eden

In my last blog, I compared the church to the Garden of Eden.  The church is Eden reborn, initiated among people, but eventually spreading to all creatures. It begins the reversal of the Fall and the realization of God’s peaceful kingdom, where swords are beaten into plowshares and the lion lays down with the lamb. 

As I mentioned before, this is an impossible state for the world at this time. Lion do not lie down with lambs, the eat them.  Sheep will not flock with lambs, they avoid them.  Just so, people in their natural state do not leave the weak unmolested, neither do they trust strangers.  Strong men compete for leadership while the timid run in fear.  It is dangerous world and we are always either fighting or fleeing aggression.

We understand why we should fear aggression.  But what we often misunderstand is that fear can be more dangerous to us than human predation.  Once I was chased by a bull, even though I had done nothing to the bull. The bull had no reason to fear me or to resent my sudden appearance in his pasture, yet he came at me with those big horns, and would have gored me if he caught me.  His only motivation for his sudden attack was fear.    

People behave the same way. We hurt each other more out of fear than of a desire to conquer.  An anxious bull is more dangerous than a lion with a full stomach.  A frightened man with a gun is more likely to shoot you if you accidently wander into his yard than a robber would in a robbery. The robber has to have a reason to shoot once he has your money, but a frightened man does needs no reason but his own fear. 

Churches fights are rarely over exploitation or aggression, but the fear of it.  Old church members fear the stranger, because they think they will change everything they love.  Young people fear the old, because they think old people resent them. Innovators fear traditionalists.   Both sides fear being forced out of their comfort zones. This would not happen in Eden, where both aggression and fear were banished.   It can only happen when neither side trusts or believes that God is in control. When we believe it is our responsibility to purge the church, and that God is not capable of doing it, then we have adopted the politics of the jungle, not the politics of Eden.

In the Kingdom of God cooperation replaces force.  In a cooperative society people realize their mutual need for people who differ from themselves.  Differences are not dangerous, but exist for our mutual benefit. Diversity brings prosperity. There is a free exchange of ideas and goods and all benefit.   A sheep does not mind being food for a lion, provided the lion can wait until the sheep is dead of natural causes.  It is only when we view differences as a threat to our own entitlement that we turn on each other. In a truly cooperative society, people with differing views and interests can live together for our mutual benefit. 

This cooperative state it not natural to us.  It can only exist where God through Christ is acknowledged as the true Ruler and Head. 

Over the years, people have tried many ideologies and schemes to bring about a peaceable society.  The Tower of Babel was such a scheme.  Roman Empire was another.  The Romans established their world over much of the world by force of arms, but they never were anything but the biggest bullies on the block.  Islam was another such scheme. The word “Islam” means “peace,” yet of all religions today it is the least peaceful. Another scheme is socialism, where the leaders enforce cooperation by restricting private ownership.  The result of this was not the Marxist utopia, but Fascism and the Soviet Union.  Their combined attempts at restoring the Garden without God resulted in more death and destruction than all the previous empires of humanity put together. The reason for the failure is obvious.  Eden did not happen because of Adam and Eve, but because God made it work. It was His idea and His direct leadership that made the lion lie down with the lamb.  Only in Christ can Eden be restored, and peace reign on the earth.

Whenever people get organized and try to enforce the politics of cooperation, thy only make matters worse. They become infected with either aggression or fear or both. It’s not a change in governmental structure that makes a restored Eden possible, but a change in the structure of the human heart.  Only in a world where Christ has satisfied our hunger and where His protection has set us free from fear, can lions and the lambs get together again. 

People must change for the world to change.  Our natural greed and desire to rule must be curbed.  Even more, our fear of losing what we have has to be curbed as well, and we must become secure in the love of God.  We must grant each other the right to their own human dignity, and freedom to behave as themselves, and not take ownership of others, even for what we regard as their own benefit. 

There are no shortcuts to the kingdom, no magic formula or governmental structure that will bring about the new Eden. Only God can do it. In the meantime, all we can do is to try to keep the principles of the Kingdom in our own hearts, without imposing them on others.  We must tell others about Christ, but we must not present ourselves to others as if we were Christ, with authority to tell them what to do with their lives.  Only then can we hope to contribute to restoring an Edenic world. 

The Church as Ecosystem, Part II Dawn in Eden

In my last blog, I used the concept of an ecosystem—such as a forest or a jungle--as a metaphor for the church.  An ecosystem is a collection of living creatures living together, each pursuing its own agenda but together creating a whole society that fulfills the greater purpose God intended for them. 

This metaphor is not specifically used in the Bible in regard to the church.  There is an example of it, however, which provides a glimpse into what it ought to be like.  It is the Garden of Eden.  Our culture began in the Garden, under the guidance God, and we existed in peace ther along with the other creatures until we sinned and the ecosystem of Eden was destroyed.

The Edenic ecosystem was unlike any that ever existed.  The Bible does not call it a forest or jungle, but as a garden—a managed community organized and directed by God.  Adam and Eve were caretakers there, but they did not plant the garden, or design it. It took someone much smarter and wiser than they to plan a zoological garden where lions and lambs could lay peaceably together.  All we were supposed to do was to manage it.  In time, Adam and Eve may have learned the secrets of the place, and may have achieved the capability of having true dominion over it, but at first, they were simply called to dress and keep it.  They were simply the servants, not true managers. God alone knew the secrets to make Eden work.

Eden was an amazing place! The most amazing thing about it was the lack of predation.  No ecosystem on earth can exist without a balance predators and prey.  Reindeer need wolves, lions need lambs, sharks need minnows, otherwise the predators would starve or the plant eaters would overpopulate. A lion was designed to be a hunter.  Its teeth and fangs were created for no other purpose.  Likewise, a deer was designed to run from other dangerous animals. There is no real purpose for the camouflage of a deer’s back or the swiftness of its hooves except to run and hide.  How can animal who are bred to kill and other animals who were born to be afraid live side by side? Our minds cannot conceive of a place where the lions and the lambs can lie down together in the same field.  In our world, such a place would soon be an ecological disaster.

Yet in Eden, God managed to pull it off. No one knows how.  God created an environment so perfectly balanced and harmonious that predation and self defense were not necessary, making it possible for peace to reign.

But the Fall destroyed Eden.  People ceased to be servants of the Manager, and started looking out for their own affairs.  Almost immediately, the rest of Eden followed, and creation suffered.  People became both predator and prey, just like the rest of the created order.  We went quickly back to a world where lions ate lambs and deer hide in the woods from wolves.  In this fallen order, a civilization developed where people preyed not only upon other animals, but on each other.  Aggression and fear became the driving forces behind human culture.

It was into this wild ecosystem, where the law of the jungle held dominance that Jesus came.   When He entered the world His first order of business was to begin a new kingdom of God, like the one that once existed in Eden, where there would be neither predators nor prey.  He did not do it with all creation, but He started rebuilding the world among people first. 

This new version of Eden, this ecosystem that existed without fear or dominance, was His church.

The church is a place where people do not have to dominate each other, because God dominates us all.  It a place where people do not have to be afraid, where there is mutual acceptance and cooperation.  No one has to be afraid to be in the company of Christ’s people. We do not compete for attention or respect, because God has already given it to every one of us.  We do not have to fight for love, because love is freely given by Christ. The Kingdom of God—the Church—is the new Eden.  We know we belong in this new Eden when we love those who are here, are willing to forget old wounds, and give preference to the weakest and powerless.

At least that is what the Church is supposed to be. But we should be under no illusions that that is what it is.  It is no more natural for us to love and trust each other and to live non-competitively than for a lion to lie down with a lamb. We still the retain the emotionally aggressive and fearful natures of our ancestors, glorying in our own supremacy and paranoid of everyone else.  In our hearts, human beings are as bloodthirsty as the lion or the jackal, and we carry that bloodlust with us into church.  No, we still hurting and fearing each other.

Everyone wants to be the leader.  People get offended over little things. We lie, cheat, and steal for honors that would seem pathetically small to others. We will fight for dominance over a Sunday school class or a prayer group as if we were tigers in the jungle fight over the carcass of an antelope.  We do this because we were bred to do it. We are by nature an aggressive species.

Even more dangerous than our aggression are our tendency to fear.  We react with hostility to those who look, think, or act differently from ourselves.  We just want them out of our church, out of God’s church, because we think we own the church, not God.   We feel justified in driving away anyone who feels the least bit threatening, because we think that fear comes with the outside, not from within our own fallen hearts.  If we really trusted God, we would not be afraid, but because we are afraid, we assume it must be the fault of others. 

Given our aggressive and fearful nature, it’s amazing that the church still exists at all—but it does. It doesn’t always fail—sometimes it works. That is for the same reason it worked in Eden, because God is there.  He is the only One wise enough and strong enough to make us get along. 

What has gone wrong with the Church is the same thing that went wrong with Eden--we leave God out.  In Genesis, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden. But were not the first to be banished—before God banished Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve banished God by their indifference to His leadership.  Without Him Eden became a jungle.

By our rejection of His ways, we banish God form he church, assuming instead that we can lead ourselves without Him. We think we understand what He wants, and that we have no need for His presence or direction.  We even resent it when people point out the need for prayer and divine guidance.

If it sometimes seems unnatural to have to stop and pray, or to seek His wisdom, there is a very simple reason for it.  It is unnatural to us. We grew up in a different world where all we have to depend upon is ourselves.  The garden would never be a garden without the Gardener.  It’s only His presence that makes a garden work. 

I have no idea how to get the church to behave like the Garden of Eden—but then, I’m not supposed to.  Managing the church is above my pay grade. But then God didn’t make me responsible.  Whether it succeeds or fails is not up to me, but to God’s overarching control.  I can only enjoy my part of Eden while I last.  It’s all I can do to banish aggression and fear from my own heart. 

The Church as Ecosystem

In seminary we used to ask the question if the church was an organization or an organism.  It has always seemed obvious that although it has characteristics of both, it is definitely an organism. The Biblical metaphor of the church as the Body of Christ seems to make that point clearly.  Christ is the head and we are the parts, submissive to His guidance.  The Spirit of God, which binds us together, is like the blood of the Body, giving life to every member. Without the Christ and the Spirit, we are dead.   

But this is just a metaphor, and like all metaphors, should not be taken as the whole truth.  It is a model of the truth, not the truth itself. Other metaphors are also necessary to fully understand the church.  That is why the Bible uses a variety of pictures to describe the church—kingdom, tribe, chosen race, a royal priesthood and a temple, to name just a few. 

In thinking about the church as a Body, I have more and more become convinced that it is inadequate to think of the church as just a single organism.  I would like to supplement (but not substitute) that metaphor for another.  Let me suggest that the church is not a single organism but an ecosystem, like the Garden of Eden.  The church is a gathering of organisms, not one living thing, but many, living together harmoniously, independent yet interdependent with each other. Each member of the ecosystem functions according to their nature, without any purpose but their own.  Yet each part of the system has its unique niche, and provides its own contribution to the health of the whole. 

A body moves together, fulfilling a single vision or purpose, focused on a common purpose and fulfilling a common goal. An ecosystem does not.  It remains healthy through the balance of individual creatures living in balance, fulfilling their own destiny, and producing health in all. 

The church is a Body, of sorts.  We share together the “seven unities”  Paul describes in Ephesians 4:3-6  “There is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to one hope when you were called-  one Lord, one faith, one baptism;  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”  But after that, the similarity ends.  We may be one Body overall, but we are still Protestants, Catholics,  Orthodox,  Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians,  Lutherans, Pentecostals,  and a thousand other sects and divisions, each seeing themselves as the whole, rather than the part, of God’s creation called the church. Within our unity there is great diversity, even contradiction.  How can we call ourselves one Body when we are so different?

We cannot recognize our true nature.  Only God can.  The creatures in an ecosystem have no concept of being an ecosystem. It takes a larger mind, standing on the outside, to identify a “forest” or “prairie”.  To the squirrel in a tree, that tree is the whole world--there is nothing beyond it.  Only God can look at the ecosystem that is the Kingdom and call it a single Body. 

For those of us living inside the Body, we are unaware of the overall purpose. Every Christian group has its own agenda. Inevitably, whenever we try to interpret what God wants His church to do, we wind up missing some important parts.  We must rely on human intellect or intuition to discern God’s will—humans who are flawed and fallible, full of vanity and pride, convinced that they alone have correctly interpreted the Will of God.  As soon as we think we have it all sorted out, we know we are wrong somewhere. Even when we work together in large groups of scholars and theologians such as in councils and synods, we really not all that bright compared to God. It is as if all the trees in the garden got together and determined that the only purpose for the garden was to grow trees, and the flowers and shrubbery were unnecessary parasites.  We forget the lesson of the Tower of Babel—that people working together for a common purpose, can mess things up so badly that God has to break them up into disharmonious communities again to accomplish what He really wants.  Disagreement is our only corrective to our tendency to think we know it all.

There is nothing more dangerous than the church united around the human perception of God’s Truth. I believe this is what Bonhoeffer meant when he wrote in Life Together that “God hates visionaries.” The church does not exist for our perceived vision but God’s.  Whatever our own personal vision of God may be, it is at best incomplete. Every time we organize the church to achieve God’s will, some part of God’s will get left out. Limited knowledge produces limited vision. No matter how much we think we understand about God’s purposes, we always fall short.

That’s why I suggest that we think of the church as an ecosystem. An ecosystem is composes of a multitude of living creatures, each with their own agenda and perspective, but who ultimately depend on each other. An ecosystem has no purpose but the flourishing of all.  Each part of the ecosystem, Predators and prey, symbiotes and parasites, scavengers and vegetation, exist for no other reason than to do what they were born to do. No one plans an ecosystem except God. An ecosystem simply grows. 

The quickest way to destroy an ecosystem is to organize it. In many parts of the world, we have tried to do this, usually with disastrous results.  We eliminate predators, and the deer overfeed.  We replace prairie grass with corn and wheat fields, and there is no room for the buffalo. Then in a few generations farmers have to spend a fortune of artificial nutrients.  We introduce kudzu into the South, and it grows too well, killing off the native trees.

Something like this happens in the church periodically. Some bright people get together and define the “true nature” of the church. It may be the transformation of society, evangelism, spiritual worship, ecclesiastical unity, or whatever.  Then they start a movement to “restore the church to its real purpose.”  At first the church--or at least their part of the church--prospers as it fills a niche that has often been left unfilled.  But then the movement sputters to a stop, the leaders pass on, and their followers settle down become staid denominationalists, convinced that they alone know the true nature of things, recounting forever the glories of their past successes and wondering when God is going to restore them to their rightful place of true leadership. 

The problem isn’t with God, it’s with the church. God is simply bigger than we imagine.  God works in all believers, not stirring every heart or mind to the same action, but encouraging us all to follow in the light He gives us. We do not see the totality of the heart and passion of God, because no human brain can possibly comprehend it.  God does not entrust the whole of the Kingdom to any one pastor, movement, or denomination.

This has an important, practical ramifications for we who are church leaders. We few should not insist that we all act alike or think alike, not even in our individual churches. We need each other in ways we don’t yet understand.  Forward thinking innovators need backward thinking traditionalists to try our patience and our ideas. Cerebral intellectuals need emotional free spirits.  Contemplatives need activists.  Big churches need the small churches and vise versa.   None of us are right all the time, and so we need our polar opposites to constantly test us.

The church is often compared to an army, marching to accomplish our version of God’s vision. Maybe we should see it more as an aquarium, where fish have no idea why they are there but must depend upon God to feed us and keep us clean. We need to keep humble about our own vision, while realizing that God’s vision is much larger than our own.

We are part of God’s garden, but we aren’t the whole Garden.  We have to know Christ and understand His will, but not all of it.  To serve Him in humility, and to let others do the same, is the best way we can help accomplish His purpose on earth. 

More about the garden later.