Bob Hamp

I have been thinking about beginning a long series re-telling THE STORY.  You know, the story of all time.  The “In the beginning God…” story.  I am captivated by how unlikely we are to really get it. 

So as I thought about it, and why it is that we are so unlikely to get it, a thought occurred to me. 

Imagine with me, if you will, a civilization four hundred years in the future.  Post apocalyptic, for my purposes.  Not the Biblical apocalyse, but some kind of world disaster.  You know, a “Mad Max”, “I am Legend” kind of world.  Our modern buildings and culture have long since been overgrown and disintegrated.  Man again lives off the land, with no electricity, no internet, no power at all other than fire, and human will.

Now in that world, imagine what it is like to discover signs of our civilization.   Ruins of our modern buildings, or underground cables….rows of telephone poles that no one has had a use for in the last several hundred years.  Over the centuries, stories have passed down, and been distorted of what it was like to live in the “great civilization” but no one really remebers.  It is too far in the past. 

Now in this world, imagine trying to explain to someone how a turbine works.  Imagine trying to explain how to load a profile picture on Facebook.  Imagine trying to tell someone how to set up a computer network or log on to the World Wide Web (that’s what www stands for in case you have forgotten.) 

Trying to explain to someone how to do something, or how something works is difficult even in the existence of our culture. Imagine if these processes have been non-existent for a few centuries and you now try to explain to someone how they work.  People in such a world would have no framework with which to understand such conversation. 

Consider now these words from Jesus to Nicodemus:

 I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.  I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

John 3:11-12

How then will you believe…?  It is not necessarily a rebuke.  It’s a legitimate question.  If you have no experience and no framework from which to understand Jesus words, HOW will you believe?

It would be like digging up a four hundred year old Mac Book Pro from the ruins and trying to conceptualize a video chat, when you have never even seen video of any sort…what faculties and framework must we open up in order to really hear the story of a place we have never been?  Not just a place…a kind of place unlike anything we know…a realm…a…kingdom.

How we would believe may be the most important part of telling the story. 

Several ways to believe exist.  And the WAY you choose to believe filters what happens to you when you believe.  The way you believe determines what you believe.

We can believe by agreeing intellectually, but having no internal image of the thing with which we agree.  We can believe by not disagreeing. We can believe by thinking the story teller must be right, so why argue?

Or how about this?  We can believe by assuming our faculties, and experiences are incomplete, and by allowing our whole self, our mind, our emotions, our heart,  our deepest self to receive something that is clearly bigger than us. 

Let’s try.