MOre good stuff from Pastor John, this time on what constitiutes “happiness”.
The “Therapeutic in contemporary culture” says Pastor John, has been separated from the True God. Not seeing this , this “culturally approved therapy” is a substitiute that is utterly lacking.
Being formed by this cultural expectation puts us into continual dramas and struggles with ourselves and others for our contentment, and thus, ensures that we never genuine experience contentment, but always sustain our status as victims. Always looking for the greener grass, we live unsettled in trying to achieve settledness. In this way, we are shaped to keep in the cycles of the consumption, if not of leisure provided by wealth, consumption of experiences, “worship experiences”, “experiences of the other” whatever gives us the fleeting fix of happiness.
As many times as wwe are reminded of our utter dependence upon God for all that is true and good and “worthy”, we find ourselves without “structures” in which to “be the church” , which is neccessarily, WITH others; others who are being formed in the ways of true happiness. The life of fellowship; of discipleship, is eluding us because we seek gatherings that bring to us the culturally palatable form of “healing”; which is “feeling good about ourselves”. Deitrich Bonhoeffer hinted at his disdain for this, calling it the “thousand-fold hullo”; the “niceties” without any exopectation of the deep relatedness to which we are called as members of Christ’s body.
As liberal polity begins with the autonomous individual seeking one’s own self-fulfillment, defined in the terms of the individual, the state then takes over the regulation of the “public” sphere so that the individual can pursue “happiness”. In so doing, we are wrestled out of our proper place beginninng and ending in God, and instead, become caught in our own self-pursuits.
” caught in our own self-pursuits.” That is a troublesome description; troublesome because I see how many YEARS of this one can just “slide through”, without the kind of “life together” in which “abundant life” is found. Not “abundant” as the world sees it and in which it seeks to shape us, but in the life of the people being formed and so formed by the body of Christ. Thanks, again, John.
