I know this is a little old, but Paul Tripp comments on what hinders community in today’s American culture. I think he hits the nail on the head when he says:

“You can’t fit God’s dream (if I can use that language) for his church inside of the American dream and have it work. It’s a radically different lifestyle. It just won’t squeeze into the available spaces of the time and energy that’s left over.”

If the church wants to be a community that stands out in this increasingly individualistic society, then we need to fight for that selfless, sacrificing community. Otherwise, we will be swept along to create our individual kingdoms with everyone else.

Origen, a church father of the 5th century, was the king of allegory. He believed in three levels of meaning: literal, moral, and spiritual, which was the most important. One example is his interpretation of the parable of Good Samaritan, which he assigns new meanings to the various people, places, and objects of the parable.

The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord’s body, the [inn], which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church. … The manager of the [inn] is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior’s second coming.

But he did not stop here. He used this hermeneutic in the Old Testament as well. He took the exodus of the children of Israel and saw it as an allegory of the Christian life. Thus leaving Egypt is the initial salvation of the believer and then crossing over the Jordan river into the promise land as going into heaven.

I find it interesting that many of the spirituals seem to come from this interpretation of Scripture. In the midst of the slavery of early America, the slaves passed on their theology through song and they seemed to view their lives as traveling through the wilderness and they lived with the hope that one day they would “cross over Jordan” and enter the Promised Land (heaven). Note some of the song titles:

• Wings over Jordan
• Roll Jordan Roll
• Get Away Jordan
• On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand

I find it interesting to see the allegorical interpretation of Origen in the 2nd century so embedded into Christianity through the centuries. We even talk about going through the wilderness in some of our language today.

This idea is not too far off track as the wilderness or desert is typically viewed as symbolically representing a time of testing. For Israel was tested in the wilderness (Deut. 8:2) and Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1) and Jeremiah uses the analogy of the dry desert verses the lush land as a portrayal of a wicked life verses a righteous life.

Anyway, the more I study the history of the church, the more I see many seeds of modern Christianity planted in prior centuries. It’s really fascinating.

I found an interesting paradox in Joel Beeke’s commentary on The Epistles of John. He is speaking about God’s character:

“His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. He sees every wicked way in us.”

How can He not look at sin and yet see the wickedness in us? How would you explain this?

I will often ask God to reveal my sin to me. I want to see my pride so that I can repent of it and walk in humility. In my desire to be a humble man, I know that I must turn from my prideful ways, but I cannot do that until I see where the pride is to turn from it. So I pray that God, the One who see everything in my heart, would reveal the pride.

Then He does this. He allows me to completely fall on my face and pride is totally revealed and I don’t like it. It is painful. It reflects poorly on me. I have to apologize to people. It is just ugly and I don’t like it.

But did not God give me what I asked for?

It is strange to me that I am so eager to ask for my sin to be revealed, and then think that when God does that, it will be easy. But I think this true-ism could rightly be said of the process of turning from pride to humility:

Humility cannot come without the revelation of sin.

Sin must be exposed if we want humility to be cultivated in our lives. There are no shortcuts. It would be nice if I was humble simply by choosing to walk obediently, but the reality is that I don’t. I naturally choose my own wicked, deceitful, self-serving ways.

So, I am learning (again) that being a godly, humble man does not mean that I simply live that without ever doing the opposite. It means that I see the opposite ways more often and I turn back to the cross and there gain the correct perspective.

When tragedies occur, such as some one dying from a heart attack or a serious injury from a car crash or we hear of a huge weather phenomenon that wipes out thousands of people, we often turn our attention to death. We think about eternity and what will happen when we die. We are reminded of the fragility of human life and thus are thankful that we are still alive. Many deep feelings and thoughts that we do not often have, overtake us. I even recently have such thoughts when a dear 17-year-old friend went into cardiac arrest.

Calvin speaks of these type of thoughts. He says that God has made things on this earth to teach us that “human life is nothing but a vapor or shadow.” But then he says:

“But there is scarcely anything which we more carelessly consider or sooner banish from our memory; for we go about everything as if we want to make ourselves immortal.

If we watch a funeral or walk among the graves (or see a friend laying lifeless in a hospital bed), and thus clearly see the image of death before our eyes, we philosophize, I confess, about the vanity of life.

And even that does not happen every day, for often we are not moved at all.

But when we are, our philosophy is only short-lived; it vanishes as soon as we go away and does not leave the smallest trace behind.

It passes out of existence like the applause for an entertaining program.

We not only forget death, but the fact that we are mortals, as if no word concerning this has ever reached us, and we continue our foolish dream that we are to live forever.

If any man in the meantime reminds us of the proverb that man is only a creature of the day, we are willing to acknowledge this truth, but with such lack of attention that the idea of perpetual life keeps on lingering in our minds.

Who, then, can deny that we need to be warned not only by words, but that we should be convinced by every possible evidence that the present life is full of miseries!

For even if after we have become convinced of this, we hardly know how to stop our perverse and foolish admiration of it, as if life were nothing but one great accumulation of blessings.

But if it is necessary for us to be taught by God, it certainly is also our duty to listen to him when he speaks and arouses us from our sluggishness, that we may turn our backs upon this world and and try to meditate with all our heart on the life to come.

Calvin’s comments are incredibly insightful. He is basically saying that we may think about the brevity of life during certain situations, but as a whole we live as if we will live forever. I daily need to be reminded and taught about the empty, passing world that I live in because I am far too fascinated with it. May God continue to pull His bride’s affections heavenward.