Let my people go

We would all like to believe that God orders everything that happens and is completely in control of every button and lever that sustains this universe, yet it is evidently not so.

It is as evident that He delegates authority and gives life and meaning to everything He makes.

The universe was formed from an expansive moment, called the Big Bang. As that happened all the basic laws of matter were defined, well within the first second of that event. So from the outset God set the framework or ground rules, wound up the mechanism and then let it run on its own. Thus Jesus said, "The wind blows where it wants to", for even the weather is driven by the checks and balances He wrote into the software". All of life comprises autonomous systems, as in the body, the tree, the planets and so on.

When the church was birthed, He showed again that His way is to give life and impetus to things. After an initial consolidation period the church was scattered. Then it settled again before initiating the missionary expansionism that brought the gospel to the gentiles. Persecution scattered it all again to sow the church into the nations. As He did that He articulated a model through Paul to ensure the autonomy of the local church, so He could provide for us through a mutually self-supportive, free-standing organism (Ephesians 4).

He similarly sets us in families, a divine provision for our many needs, but one that has its own dynamic and works without His daily intervention - it works out okay in spite of the inadequacies of the home and the imperfection of parents and, as such, children from not-so-good homes often work out fine.

When He carried Israel into the promised land, He established the constitutional framework that enabled them to get on with what had to be done, without regular intervention.

The point - God's nature is a catalyst for empowering, giving life to and developing all He does into systems that stand on their own without being overly dependent on Him. It means that the arrows point away from Him, instilling things to grow, be, develop and mature. The arrows do not point back to Him, for He does not want to create a nation of dependents, He wants to raise us as sons. 

Why then do we lead with a style that dis-empowers individuals and forces the arrows back inwards to perpetuate a dependence on whatever is at the center - leaders, models, corporate-ness, contrived unity, etc? The role of leadership in the church as in business, is to liberate and empower. The clergy-laity model presupposed that the clergy had it all and the laity could not make it without them, but God's way is to establish individuals as priests in their own right and to transform believers into the likeness of His son (1 Peter 2: 9).

I am committed to short posts, so will later show that although He liberalises whatever He establishes, He also invests relevant internal constraints or checks and balances, else nothing would be sustainable.

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.groundwon.blogspot.com