The Alter of the Future
“God is about to do incredible things!” “God is about to do a new thing!”
These quoted phrases, or ones like them, are proclaimed week after week, year after year by Charismatic pastors, preachers and prophets.
As a Charismatic Christian, I’ve been hearing proclamations of an impending incredible “thing” for twenty years. In fact, we seem to have heard it, and repeated it ourselves, for so long that we live in a continual state of anticipation of an event (outpouring, revival, etc.) that is always just around the corner – just over the horizon.
Often these statements of what God is about to do are linked to exhortations for the church to do something: Get a hold of a particular truth, have faith, pray, give money, follow the leader; all because “God is about to do a new thing! Something big is about to happen and you don’t want to miss it!”
My question about this is what about the old thing? What about the thing that occurred with a cross and an empty tomb? What about the ongoing, day-to-day, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, work of being a disciple? What about being ekklesia (church)? What about abiding? Attending to the task at hand? Here. Now.
In his epistles, I see Paul exhorting the churches to grasp a hold of truth, to have faith, to pray, to give, to follow Christ, not because of the new thing He’s about to do, but because of what He has done. Not because of what we’re about to become, but because of who we are, right now, in Him.
That God can, and does, do new things is irrefutable. That’s His prerogative and an aspect of His wondrous creativity. But how much of our hope and excitement is in the “thing” we believe God is about to do, and not in God Himself?
In “The Screwtape Letters”, C.S. Lewis devotes Chapter 15 to the folly of living in the future. Lewis puts forth that man lives in time, but is destined for eternity, and that therefore, God wants us to be concerned primarily with two things: Eternity and the Present. “For the Present is the point at which time touches Eternity.”
Lewis goes on, through the devilish character of Screwtape, to point out the futility of living not in the Present, but in the Future: “…thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it (the Future) is unknown to them (mankind), so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the future is, of all things, the thing least like Eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we (‘we’ being the demonic antagonists of Lewis’ book) have given to all those schemes of thought…which fix men’s affections on the future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the Future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.”
The demonic advisor Screwtape then gives this insight into how the forces of darkness would like to see men and women occupied: “But we want a man hagridden by the Future – haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon Earth…dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the alter of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”
God’s very name, “I Am”, speaks of the Present. What is He doing right here and right now? What can we do in order to join into that? Here. Now.
These quoted phrases, or ones like them, are proclaimed week after week, year after year by Charismatic pastors, preachers and prophets.
As a Charismatic Christian, I’ve been hearing proclamations of an impending incredible “thing” for twenty years. In fact, we seem to have heard it, and repeated it ourselves, for so long that we live in a continual state of anticipation of an event (outpouring, revival, etc.) that is always just around the corner – just over the horizon.
Often these statements of what God is about to do are linked to exhortations for the church to do something: Get a hold of a particular truth, have faith, pray, give money, follow the leader; all because “God is about to do a new thing! Something big is about to happen and you don’t want to miss it!”
My question about this is what about the old thing? What about the thing that occurred with a cross and an empty tomb? What about the ongoing, day-to-day, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, work of being a disciple? What about being ekklesia (church)? What about abiding? Attending to the task at hand? Here. Now.
In his epistles, I see Paul exhorting the churches to grasp a hold of truth, to have faith, to pray, to give, to follow Christ, not because of the new thing He’s about to do, but because of what He has done. Not because of what we’re about to become, but because of who we are, right now, in Him.
That God can, and does, do new things is irrefutable. That’s His prerogative and an aspect of His wondrous creativity. But how much of our hope and excitement is in the “thing” we believe God is about to do, and not in God Himself?
In “The Screwtape Letters”, C.S. Lewis devotes Chapter 15 to the folly of living in the future. Lewis puts forth that man lives in time, but is destined for eternity, and that therefore, God wants us to be concerned primarily with two things: Eternity and the Present. “For the Present is the point at which time touches Eternity.”
Lewis goes on, through the devilish character of Screwtape, to point out the futility of living not in the Present, but in the Future: “…thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it (the Future) is unknown to them (mankind), so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the future is, of all things, the thing least like Eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we (‘we’ being the demonic antagonists of Lewis’ book) have given to all those schemes of thought…which fix men’s affections on the future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the Future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.”
The demonic advisor Screwtape then gives this insight into how the forces of darkness would like to see men and women occupied: “But we want a man hagridden by the Future – haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon Earth…dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the alter of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”
God’s very name, “I Am”, speaks of the Present. What is He doing right here and right now? What can we do in order to join into that? Here. Now.
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