Approaching Infinity's Horizon
Or: Less Dramatically, Why I'm Starting a Podcast
The stirring of a new age is all around us. The vibe has already shifted. It's time for us to align our sails with the new winds.
When I first began writing here several years ago now, my life and the world were both in very different places. At that time, I was reaching what I didn't know then was the smoldering ends of an overlong sojourn in careers that I knew were not what I was put on earth to accomplish. Theofuturism as a project was often first and foremost an exhortation to myself (lots of things are like this, or should be).
I've been blessed and shocked that others have been similarly encouraged.
As I've continued to think and write, my life mission has narrowed to a sharp point. After more than a decade of gradually circling my ultimate destination, I have, by God's grace, arrived in full-time local church ministry. I find myself less and less searching for skeins of meaning among a workweek filled with confusion and drudgery. Instead, I am throwing myself deeper every day into my life’s work.
That has been a profound shift for myself and my family, and I think it's time that we make a similar shift around here as well. I was most happy with Theofuturism when I was able to write, in a sense, directly for myself, giving myself the jolt of encouragement I needed to shake off malaise and pursue what I knew to be true. But the time for theory always has to come to an end. Classroom work is only fulfilled on the field.
It's time for us to take dominion.
Over the last three years, I've been increasingly blessed to come in contact with a number of truly remarkable people. This growing faction have not waited for the vibe shift to begin their life's work. Devout believers in God, they also believe that He has specifically sent them on missions that will warp reality. I've been humbled and inspired to observe draftsmen and operators, engineers and voyagers. These are more than thinkers, theoreticians, and editorialists. They sail the tides of history.
From the back office of your local church, to the garage workshops of the future's foundries. From internet countries and unexplored territories and the suburb next door. I want to introduce you to the pioneers of the next century of God's kingdom.
(Sometimes, I’ll probably still write manifestos).
The old dichotomies and false dilemmas are falling away. We are rediscovering our mandate to preach and build simultaneously. Maybe you can already feel it. We aren't waiting for permission to hope anymore.
I want to welcome you to the event horizon.
Coming soon: The Infinite Dominion Podcast.
I am wrestling with a theological issue and would like to ask for help and perspective.
I have been talking with a friend about this for a while. We agree on that in every man, there is a fire of greatness burning. The roman empire meme proves this. We like to think of the greats of old and imagine ourselves to do the same feats. To become men like the first Duke of Wellington or George Washington.
But I had a thought that some might be called to be just that. Remember the story of the three servants with the talents. One was given 10, one 5 and the other just one. You know what happened. The master was furious when he returned, that the last servant had buried the one talent to give it back to him without increase.
But what would happen to the servant who had been given 5 or 10 talents if he’d buried them? Might I be one? Was I given 5 or even 10 talents and what I achieved so far in my life would be the equivalent to have buried the talents that I was given?
My friend said that we should aspire to live an industrious but slow and quiet life. Because only God grants success, and it is foolish to worry and haste through life like God is not in control of everything and he depended on you doing your very best.
I do agree this reasoning seems sound but felt like a gut instinct to me. He did underline it with 1. Tessalonicenses 4.11: “and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you”.
Also Lamentations 3 support it:
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live;
13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.
15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.
And in Lamentations 4.6: Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.
He said just escaping the godless upbringing and having a stable God-fearing family was already the goal line, but I am torn. Did I get this whole thing wrong and am I and many other young men suffering delusions of grandeur?
Will you keep your blog posts up? I do like going back to them from time to time.
I also have a theological question which I will post as a separate comment.