Neil Cole (Organic Church) Alex McManus (M Network)

and You.

Who is the Human Event for? Forward thinking, missional activists, thinkers, and leaders. If you think that may be you, [...]]]>

Join us at Kensington Community Church (Troy, Michigan) on October 13-14 for a 2-day conversation on the future of the church in the post-Christian and Trans-human 21st century west.

Neil Cole (Organic Church)
Alex McManus (M Network)

and You.

Who is the Human Event for? Forward thinking, missional activists, thinkers, and leaders. If you think that may be you, it’s you.

What Now? Click on one of the links below.

REGISTER Immediately and Save
The Fancy Website for more info

The title of today’s post is the same as the title of the latest edition of the magazine, The Economist. Their full title is: And Man Made Life: the first artificial organism and its consequences. A new world emerged recently and many of us missed it. On Thursday, May 20, 2010 the [...]]]>

And Man Made Life

The title of today’s post is the same as the title of the latest edition of the magazine, The Economist. Their full title is: And Man Made Life: the first artificial organism and its consequences.

A new world emerged recently and many of us missed it. On Thursday, May 20, 2010 the journal Science published an important announcement. For the first time since Genesis chapter 1, life has been created.

Before that date, to the best of our understanding, all life on earth emerged through natural processes. According to this announcement, a new type of life form is now on earth, a synthetic life form. This new life has no ancestors, only a creator, genetic entrepreneur, Craig Venter, whose team designed it in a computer and assembled it in a lab.
(This happened relatively quickly. In 2008, the New York Times reported on the breakthrough that led to this staggering result.) Here is the line from this announcement that I find most provocative:

“The new cells…are capable of continuous self-replication.”

Ladies and gentleman, it’s alive.

If the 20th century was marked by the space race (who will be the first into space?), the 21st century will be marked by a race for genetic enhancements (who will be the first to patent and market designer genes?). The field of biology will define the 21st century.

You Pastors out there, think about this. If a young person today feels a call to the ministry, one of the first questions you should ask is, do you have a passion for biology? The cross disciplinary conversation between biology/ genetics and faith/ theology will be the edge of chaos in the decades to come. This is one reason why the defining question of the 21st century will be, what does it mean to be human?

You’ll notice that I refer to Venter as a genetic entrepreneur. I’m following the Guardian (UK) on this. Here’s a quote of interest:

“Dr Venter became a controversial figure in the 1990s when he pitted his former company, Celera Genomics, against the publicly funded effort to sequence the human genome, the Human Genome Project. Venter had already applied for patents on more than 300 genes, raising concerns that the company might claim intellectual rights to the building blocks of life.”

These concerns about entrepreneurship raise interesting issues. Besides the typical, “are we playing God” question, think about these for starters:

• Will future companies own and sell back to us the building blocks of life?
• Will the codes to a longer life be withheld from those can’t afford it?
• Will future children be designed in computers and put together in the lab?
• What new perspectives on the nuclear family will prevail when neither mothers or fathers are needed to generate the next generation?

On the popular culture side, I’ll be interested to see how the ethical issues may be raised in the upcoming movie, Splice, this summer. In Splice, Genetic engineers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) successfully splice together the DNA of different animals, to create incredible new hybrids. This leads to the next level–using human DNA in a hybrid that could revolutionize science and medicine.

I often say that God may be speaking to the world as much or more through film than through church. Save the hate mail. I’ve heard it before. But if you’re interested in these things, you may enjoy an informal chat sponsored by the iMn. The movie comes out on June 4. Watch it then join us for an informal 1-hour ichat –sometime in early July– about the future of humanity. Group size is limited so to participate email me at alex@theimn.com asap.

See You in the Mystic,

Alex

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Join me, Neil Cole, and others in the Detroit area this October at the Human Event. Enroll now and get that “early adopter” discount.

Sometimes I’m asked, What does “M” stand for? I usually answer, “Exactly.” The question is understandable. I use M a lot.

My website is theimn. My social network is myimn. My internet radio show is All Things M.

So while I usually answer in such a [...]]]>

Into the “Beautiful Unknown”: thoughts on what it means to be human

Sometimes I’m asked, What does “M” stand for? I usually answer, “Exactly.” The question is understandable. I use M a lot.

My website is theimn.
My social network is myimn.
My internet radio show is All Things M.

So while I usually answer in such a way as to increase curiosity, today, I’ll answer a different way. M stands for huMan.

This past Easter, one of the beautiful word images used at Kensington Community Church in Troy, Michigan
about the human experience with the resurrected Christ was the phrase the “beautiful unknown”.

I’ve organized some thoughts of the Human Journey into the beautiful unknown in three sections: something human, something normal, and something questionable. This is a journey of the imagination. Enjoy.

SOMETHING HUMAN
Something so “human” happened in the first century, that I have turned to calling the events around the life of Jesus, the Human Event. Here’s the key idea. Jesus Christ did not come to teach Christianity. He came to make the world human.

If you get this, you may know more about Jesus than most Christians. Of course, this begs the question, “what does it mean to be human?” And, this question, I think, is the defining question of the 21st century.

Rather than studying Jesus’ life and teaching with reference to the question, “what does it mean to be a Christian?” read about Jesus through the human question. The answers (and questions) that emerge will be far more human than religious, and far more interesting than the things we normally talk about in the Christian ghetto. Here’s the question: has the depth of our common humanity been disguised by our religiosity. What is your experience?

SOMETHING NORMAL
Something “normal” happened one Thursday (Sept 25, 2008) around 2 PM. My son, Lucas Daniel (14), was sitting on a bench looking at a pond near our home. He’d been having a tough day. We both had. He stood and began to walk home when, for some unexplainable reason, he stopped to meditate and pray. When he opened his eyes a bird flew towards him and landed on his head. He reached up and grabbed a tiny zebra finch from the top of his head.

Those of you who know Lucas are aware that he has a unique interest in and relationship with animals. Genesis tells us that humankind was created on the same day as all the other animals that move along the ground. We have a connection at the point of our genesis as a species. The New Testament describes how some who believe would not die from the venom of snake bites. Jesus was identified by the descent of a dove. St Patrick and St Francis are said to have had unique relationships to nature and to animals. Humans are a part of the natural world. Here’s the question: has the depth of our connection to nature become a forgotten way? What are your stories?

SOMETHING QUESTIONABLE
In a sense, asking the question, “What does it mean to be human?,” is partly the answer. No other species on earth asks this, or is capable of asking this, of its own kind, or of any kind.

Only humankind is questionable, that is, question-able.

Humankind is driven by questions — i.e. insatiable curiosity combined with the capacity for symbolic thought and made possible by the capacity for the social act of speech. Driven by these questions, humankind will explore the deepest seas, the human genome, the mind, and the darkest jungles, but not for just facts about the universe. We explore because we are on a search for the meaning of life in the universe.

Many of you know that one of my favorite places on earth is NASA. I’ve always suspected that we are destined to travel to and eventually inhabit the stars. Our questions are big enough to fuel that quest. Interestingly enough, the one question that drives it all, I think, is not one that we are directly asking.

We will leave Earth, and eventually the solar system, in search of the answer to our deepest questions. But all along we will be looking for the one thing we didn’t need to leave Earth to find. We will be looking for ourselves. We will be asking, What is the meaning of us? Who and why and what are we?

This is more than a Christian question. It is more than a religious question. It is a human one. This question is the end of the rainbow on the way to which we will discover God.

That’s what M means.

A young and influential emerging leader decries the evils of religion. Religion is condemned as a work of man. Christianity, on the other hand, is not about religion. It is about relationship. Sure.

In the same way that the Bible is human literature, Christianity is human religion. But this does not mean that [...]]]>

The Cave Drawings of Lascaux

A young and influential emerging leader decries the evils of religion.
Religion is condemned as a work of man. Christianity, on the other hand, is not about religion. It is about relationship.

Sure.

In the same way that the Bible is human literature, Christianity is human religion. But this does not mean that there isn’t a relationship between God and humans behind it.

Think of Abraham.
God speaks to him. That’s a relational faith encounter between God and man.
Abraham constructs an altar to commemorate his encounter with God.
That’s religion…human religion.

TWO SIDES OF ONE COIN

Think of a coin.
We call one side of the coin “heads” and the other side “tails”. In a limited way, religion and revelation are like the two sides of the coin. Religion is the human side of the coin. It is the young preacher, standing up at the scheduled moment of a regularly scheduled worship service, addressing the audience of Christians, and saying that what “they” are doing is not religion. Amen, they all say in unison.

Roman Coin

Like a coin, you cannot see through these human religious practices to the other side of the coin. This young preacher’s very religious existence, however, is a witness to a moment when the coin became translucent and the other side came across to the human side.

This is a limited analogy because it suggests a hard divide between that world that the “eyes of faith” see and this world that the rest of us see. But it is not so much an issue of a hard divide between two worlds as much as it is an issue of seeing. “That” world and “this” world are one. Religion is the human product, the tangible residue or social manifestation, to a “this world” faith encounter with the sacred.

THE NATURALNESS OF RELIGION

Humans are by nature religious. Even the humans that preach against religion are doing so religiously. They normally do so at prearranged gatherings they call worship services or celebrations. Dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people rise at the same time, travel to the same place, and participate in the same practices each week. Then the young preacher rises and preaches against religion, by which he means empty ritual.

But religion is not evil or good, empty ritual or full devotion, as a first consideration. As a first consideration, it is natural. It is a hallmark of our species. We are the animal that worships. Every human society of which I am aware has religion. And there are no other species with religion. Yet.

Somewhere in the mists of prehistory our species awakened to a heightened consciousness about itself, others, the world around it, and the sacred. The origins of this consciousness is a mystery. Indeed, the origins of consciousness of any sort is a mystery.

Religion is the social manifestation, at least at its point of origin, of the encounters with the sacred of those who have stepped into this mystery. It is the human side of things.

The Christian religion, like the Bible, is a human creation. (A human creation, a secondary source, inspired by primary encounters with God). Neither Christianity nor the Bible are the revelation. In the pecking order, Christianity has a lower priority in seeking to understand that pristine revelation than does the Bible, and they are both inseparable from the revelation, but neither are the revelation.

THE ONE SIDE OF THE COIN POINTS TO THE OTHER SIDE

Let’s take that thought another step. To say that Christianity and the Bible are human creations, and human creations only, does NOT mean that they were NOT inspired by an encounter with the sacred. I am convinced that God is encountering our species in the world out here outside of the church, outside of the biblical literature. Let’s reinforce this thought. Both the Bible and Christianity are responses to an external force at work in the world.

That’s revelation. Revelation is the moment that the coin becomes translucent and the other side which we cannot see appears on our side of the coin.
When God spoke, that was revelation. When man turned and wrote or created or organized in response to this revelation, that’s religion.

Almost three decades ago, I had an encounter with the sacred that made me a passionate follower of Jesus Christ. Everything I’ve done and said since then is my religion. I don’t use the term “passionate” to describe a high emotional output. I use it because, as I think over the last three decades since my own awakening, it is obvious that regardless of what I’m doing, conversation about pursuing God has been central. Still, while my encounter with God was pristine, my religion is not.

I want no one to follow my religion. That would be the first commandment of my religion: Don’t join it. However, I want everybody to experience a pristine encounter with that blazing white light that doesn’t consume what it touches.

My encounter with God happened in the context of hearing the story about Jesus, observing a community of faith, personal reading of the Bible, participation in discussions about the Bible and faith, being in the proximity of prayer, listening the proclamation of the gospel, a deliverance from evil, and a vision. In other words, the practice of the Christian religion created the context in which I had a faith encounter with God. There was no one foundation for my faith, it emerged out of the web of relationships and experiences that culminated in a moment of insight that required commitment.

My own practices — reading the Bible, telling the story of Jesus, starting small groups for Bible study and prayer, announcing the victory of Jesus, participating in communities of faith, challenging false thinking, praying for deliverance from evil, calling on others to believe — over time led others to their own encounters with God.

If our experience of God, or something like that, is what happened to our pre-historical ancestors, it is no wonder religion arose right along side our species. The ancient cave painting of southwest France may be vestiges of the first religions which were most likely shaman like experiences of connection with the spirit world. They point to something beyond themselves and participation in those experiences often allowed (and allows) others to feel close to the vibrations of God out here in the real world.

THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT

Our species was born when we adapted to some encounter in the natural world with the “fire-that-does-not-consume” somewhen in prehistory. Perhaps 21st century Homo Sapiens also move towards those encounters instinctually, like salmon finding their way back to the place of their birth to spawn. We look for answers to our deepest questions as a matter of a deep and internal scripting.

In the same way that the lizard, through evolution via the process of natural selection, has “learned” to turn colors yet doesn’t know why it turns color, we turn in our hearts on a quest for God. Biblical religion is at heart the human witness that tells us that God revealed himself to them (and potentially will again) in the turning.

The encounter in which God reveals himself to someone(s) is revelation.
Telling others about it and reorganizing our lives because of it is religion.

Christianity is the religion that reorganizes itself along the belief that God is speaking to the whole world through Jesus Christ. Christianity is not pristine. It is after all a religion. But an encounter with God through Jesus is. That is revelation.

Why is Christianity on its best day such a dynamic and revolutionary religion? Because the revelation that birthed the personal faith of the founders which gave rise to both Christianity and the Bible was dynamic and revolutionary. Christianity as religion is at its best when it is the flip side of the coin to God’s revelation in Christ.

SEEING THROUGH THE COIN: FAITH

Unlike the coin of our earlier analogy, the divide between seeing and not seeing is not opaque like a coin. It is transparent. The divide between revelation and religion is faith.

Faith is not about moving out on what we believe. It does not initiate within us. Faith is a response and as such requires something to respond to. Faith begins on the outside. It begins with a moment of reception, a moment of seeing, sensing, hearing, desiring, intuiting, believing, and then taking that first step. That first step is our religion. It is our religion that everyone else sees.

Religion, even the Christian religion, or its product like the Bible, is not revelation. There is a story in the gospel about Jesus who is trying to heal a blind man. His first attempt results in the man being able to see but not interpret what he sees. He looked at the people and they seemed to him to be walking trees. Religion is the voices of the blind arguing about what to make of the walking trees.

Religion serves the revelation and not vice versa. Religion can go off course and can be adjusted to realign itself to the pristine moment when God reveals himself. Some adjustments are clearer than others, some embodiments of the revelation may be purer than others, but in the end, they serve as signposts to an encounter with God.

This God encounter is one that humanity, from its very beginning and across time and space until this very day, has experienced out here in the natural world. Like the lizards who “learned” over eons in the wild to turn colors without knowing why, we search for God. Humans have religion because God is out here showing himself to us, and our biological scripting, our social religious constructs, as well as our personal experiences suggest this.

What do you think?
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Coming Up:
Why does the Bible have authority?
How can we trust the Bible?

I will discuss these two questions along with my thoughts on
N.T Wright’s essay on the authority of scripture.

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The Bible is only human literature.

Breathe.

I have a question I want to consider, and I have asked this question at the end of this post. But let’s begin with this lesser question:

Why does embracing the Bible as [...]]]>

Photo: Lucas, my youngest son, and I read this text on Easter while in Kenya together