Relovutionary: Philosophy for True Human Flourishing

By Jonathon William King

“RELOVUTIONARY’ clearly demonstrates that Jonny King has something of value to say to the church in these days. I commend his book to you.” —Jeff Crosby, Publisher, InterVarsity Press/USA

 

PHILOSOPHY FOR TRUE HUMAN FLOURISHING

Each person without exception is desperate for flourishing. Every individual hungers and aches to live an expression of the good life. This compulsion inside is as automatic as it is intuitive. This general human longing reflects a common drive for meaning, and not just for the Christian.

Still, most intimately know they can't entirely do life their way. Whilst the majority readily confess, they haven't the sufficient means, or even the necessary power. After all, look at what happens when a global pandemic shuts down life?! The fact we rarely arrive at contented satisfaction becomes life's own rolling stone.

Do you have a present vision? Are you confident of the process? What about any worthwhile or ultimate goal?

This living challenge becomes even more practically specific for the Christian.

What if someone asked you for the content of a faithful and fruitful life for Christ? What would you say? Now factor in these challenging and confronting cultural times. How would you reply? After all, you sincerely love Jesus, and passionately want to live for Him, which means you're entirely motivated to offer something not only realistic, but true.

But can you?

The good news is that in your hands contain the opening lines, where RELOVUTIONARY intends to be your own personal guide. Volume One introduces this idea, setting the coordinates for the reader's unfolding navigation. The context is huge, only increasing any anticipation on this series' comprehensive value.

This Is Your Life has been genuinely engineered for any curious reader wanting an answer to the absurdity of existence, and for every genuine follower of Jesus Christ, determined to live a life worthy of His calling.

There is no greater promise or purpose than living for Jesus-no matter age, stage, time, or place-which means there should be no further reading delay.

WELCOME TO THE LIFE: RELOVUXIONARY

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781973690030

Jonathon William King

JONATHON WILLIAM KING is a writer, planter and pastor. His journey, like personality, has been eccentrically diverse, consistently distressed with profound weakness through long-term illness changing everything. He’s pioneered diverse media content; written representatively of a world-leading sporting team and brand; launched-and-led a Missional retro clothing start-up within the local fashion sector; also studying for the ministry in another location from his own. He daily plods-the-hustle in his special New Zealand homeland, with beautiful wife, and spirited children.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Jonathon William King.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-9004-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-9005-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-9003-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020906893

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/17/2020

CONTENTS

PreScript: The ‘You Must Read This Section’ Section

Quotational Inspiration for Volume One

I. Introductory Zoom-Frame

1. Elephant in the Room that is Your Life

II. Living Breathing Collective Reading Scene

2. Christianity Is Not Conservative, But Relovutionary

3. You? For the Flight Path of Youth

4. You? For When Life is Middling-to-Muddling

5. You? For the Never-Too-Old and Always-Too-Young to Retire-or-Retreat

6. Time for an Intermission

III. Main Body of Conceptual Integration

7. Big Idea of this Series

8. Life’s Breathless Reality Check Test

9. Extent of this Vision

10. Genius as a Creative Minority

11. Mode for the Mundane of Days

12. Means like a Faithful Presence

13. Rugby-Less Union with Christ

14. Emphasis Not a Formula to Behold

15. But Why, Relovutionary?

16. Challenging the Quo of Status No

17. Practice Validating Theory

18. Your Final Frontier

19. Real Witness of the Rest of the West

20. Understanding Your Cultural Moment Positively Embracing Exposure

21. How Now Should We Live?

22. Our Definition of a Relovutionary

23. Writing as My Modern Art

24. Readeeming the Time

IV. Final Projection About Future Destinations

25. Mark This!

Quotational Inspiration for Volume One

PostScript: A RELOVUTIONARY Benediction Beginning

PastScript: While We Stop, You Go!

LastScript: An Open Letter to Close Volume One

Staying Connected

About the Author

EndNotes

These volumes are dedicated to:

My Shannon, and our Jordan, Jesse-Israel, Malachi-Joeb, and Isabella-Hope

May you always be consumed with His wonder.

Now live into flourishing life or the forever resurrect.

Love always, from your Husband, and your Dad! ¹

PRESCRIPT: THE ‘YOU MUST READ THIS SECTION’ SECTION

The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.

—Francis A. Schaeffer

A poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they

normally do, to make them work on more than one level.

—Jay-Z

It’s easy to churn out orthodox theology; it’s not easy

to say old things in new and creative ways.

—D. A. Carson

Art Masquerading As Media.

—iamjonnyking

Must read section? Seriously? Yes, even if there is little present propensity in your person!

And, no, the following words should not be construed as the collected works of the bard of Aotearoa, New Zealand. You’re in a safe place, Christian. Settle in.

Nevertheless, I do think I have a little more funk to my reverb. You will play judge if this communication is less pretension and more in motion. I hope these words, and this series, keep you like a calling, even when in another reading zone from my own.

Did he just write, series? Well, good England! ¹

To really get that line, you have to end with series on a high note. I will explain more in the main text, but let me say, this book before you has a double function. It has a definite purpose in itself. But in the fullness of time, it is the inaugural material of a many-volumed Philosophy for Christian Living, especially, but not exclusively, in the post-Christian West. Or to take an even better next step, a many-volumed Philosophy for True Human Flourishing, especially, but not exclusively, in the post-Christian West. ² Now we’re spit-roasting with gas. You see, faithful and fruitful Christian living just happens to provide the required content and only present context for true human flourishing in a world befuddled with sin and brokenness. While this flourishing categorization entreats with broader, bolder, and more comprehensive applicational lines into all of life.

I’ll leave that definitional piece of conceptual dynamite to privately explode—right there—in your mind, as we move on.

I must face it right at the beginning. I am a no-name from a no-place name. Now who wouldn’t want to keep reading after that? Trust me. It gets better. A little anyway.

"Can any good thing come out of New Zealand? you ask. What state is that in now? Not in Canada?! Huh?"

Considering we will be there at the end, it seems reasonable to be reading some Kiwi at this time in the history of the Church. We absolutely may be able to help. As we do reside on the globe, these words of John Stott can assist: "We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God." ³ We should each have our local vision informed by Christianity’s worldwide ⁴ and worldview ⁵ expedition. As I am—relative from the larger world markets—an outsider, ⁶ I may genuinely have a more unique angle on your reality, through my reality. ⁷

Let me encourage this peculiar world-widening global appeal as you read words from way down south.

I essentially do reside in the middle of Middle Earth! Capital M.

For all those with the boxed set of Lord of the Rings, welcome to another slightly surreal world out of the land of the long white cloud. This is likely your second-best experience out of our special little nation. We are a bit more cost effective in this production, and slightly taller than a hobbit—slightly.

How does one begin the opening before the opening has really begun? Shall we each just look at our ceiling above while one of us hums? Probably not. I do have what can be described as a jovial personality. I am sometimes ebullient. Effusive. Even emotional. And I do like words. I trust this is coming through. ⁸ I do hope there is an appropriate sense of candor and seriousness by way of mirth in the following, which reflects both spectrums in this world, where our completed redemption in Christ still operates in an environment of implicit and explicit betrayal.

May these words live this tension, but on the eternally bright side.

For all those reading from places other than the U.S. of A, I thank you for joining this reading re:turn of another King (Think LOTR).

I actually sincerely believe God can use someone from my location to speak to the world. You know why? God! Not a trick statement. We do have the internet. Our media has plenty of mass. We have some idea of what is taking place on planet earth. And God is more than able to use a geographical outsider’s foolishness to distinctively communicate to a reading world.

Just because it hasn’t been done before, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t.

In fact, let it be. Feel free to strike a note:

We have a tendency to think that for something or someone to be significant, the idea, the business, or the person must be born and raised in a major city or a well-known place and must be from a well-known or well-off family. When God sent Jesus, he turned upside down every expectation of what people thought would make him great. Jesus came as a baby instead of a grown man. He was born to ordinary parents, not people of prominence or power. He came as a humble teacher rather than a conquering king. And he was born in an obscure little town rather than one of the great cities of the day. ⁹

And maybe the Spirit of God could use such words to do something existentially ¹⁰ righteous as a result. Change you, even you—yes you—hiding at the back. Through this conduit from the place of a flightless bird. How uninspiring. Shaming the wise. Yes, I still believe in miracles. Read every word and you’ll be a living breathing example. I tell no lie. It is just so readiculous a concept that it may just work. I’m literally putting my words down that it will, as you’ll read—at least to a count. Describe this as my own insanity. Let me continue and prove this in substance—writ, maybe even in verse.

Again, I realize this is the PreScript section, that is—the no one is reading part before entering the main event ¹¹—but I have some things to say demanding this space. So please, settle back, my prrrecious. I also have more hair (Yes, Sméagol, ¹² and more LOTR).

Just a tad.

As the details, to what I hope, will be more block-than-buster began to organically form inside, I was initially motivated by saying something truly salvifically-substantive about the Total Package who defines all the sum of my person and parts. The Savior. There is only One. I have written much in another context, in particular. But inside, slowly, but ever surer, the wheels of godly desire and heavenly ambition turned, and a moment started to arise.

And here we are.

I wanted a tangible witness of the very Person who completes me, who is my world. Words—normally in copious supply would further reflect on what it means to live for Jesus in the two thousands and some—since His redemption sonnet forever rocked this planet. This is where the fomenting started. It continues. It was only a matter of time before I realized my desires for self, my hope for offspring to live this Philosophy-communicated way in Christ, should be reflective and representative of every lover of Jesus the Messiah—at this time and for any future generation.

Then I saw it. This was the book, no, series, I had been dreaming about since I was more of a boy. I realize this could be overstating its worth. This is my first of many. If I am to write a number, which I hope is part of my future, others may reach greater literary heights. There is plenty of space, after all. However, I am not as persuaded any will be more comprehensively definitive, nor practically important, as this collection of titles.

I am hoping and praying, as I type these words, that this somewhat "Systematic Impactology" ¹³ will be the grace-given means to start a God-glorifying relovution into your world. I am hoping it will circle the planet like the olympic rings. You noticed? This somewhat "Systematic Impactology!" You haven’t read one of these before? Me neither. But, I am keen like your grandmother’s homemade mustard.

Therefore, with some further qualification, welcome to this RELOVUTIONARY documentation binding us together in the unbreakable, unshakable, indefatigable, insurmountable, and irrefutable truth of the Son. He shines. Jesus Christ.

My PreScript confessional.

I can sometimes get a writing flow-on where words almost run like in a rap. I think I nearly got caught up in that trap. I’ll do my best to keep this creation’s elaboration safe out of harm’s way—whoever that is.

Some outliers.

I definitely speak out of the many godly communicators who have infused living and mighty words into my world over the years. But, I also wanted to say it with the cadence firmly set in my place. ¹⁴

These words reflect this sense from Spurgeon:

Be yourself, dear brother, for, if you are not yourself, you cannot be anybody else; and so, you see, you must be nobody… Do not be a mere copyist, a borrower, a spoiler of other men’s notes. Say what God has said to you, and say it in your own way; and when it is said so, plead personally for the Lord’s blessing upon it. ¹⁵

While most that will be communicated should smell very old, I hope the taste is somewhat new—even if only for you. "Christianity is both always old and always new, and that hybrid identity naturally resonates in today’s restless spiritual landscape." ¹⁶ This series can, therefore, be a bonus section double-whammy. And may the Lord bless this work. After all, Spurgeon just counseled this suggestion.

We are getting closer now.

But first, I want to honor three men of mortal renown, if I may describe them as such into my journey. There is ecclesiastical diversity-with-influence, which I believe is practically helpful, in this unfolding written search.

First, the Firebrand—Leonard Ravenhill. ¹⁷

Even the sound of his name elicits this feeling of fire in my bones. In my early twenties, I would consume and be consumed by his library from my father’s shelves. His passion for God; his own cadence; the turn of phrase in his candor, and the unrelenting pursuit of God into a generation, started a young man on that journey, ever more zealous for His climb.

Next, the Rabbi—Arnold Fruchtenbaum. ¹⁸

The Frucht would be the providential answer to my prayers as these twenties were elevating, and my desire to know the Word of God began to seriously bloom. He would prove an oasis. With a modicum of emotion, I joined Arnie’s Army. ¹⁹ He gave me meat for men, to coin a previous work—encouraging a love of Scripture, a passion for theology, and a heart for the people and place of the Book.

Then, the Cardiologist—Timothy Keller. ²⁰

As my years would reach their toughest to-date, I would see the gospel like never before through the grace-distilling words of this man. The author of the God trilogy ([now +1 with, Making Sense of God, a more recent arrival] Reason for God, Prodigal God, and Counterfeit Gods), as I’ve described these, Keller has a manner that will delight the mind, and then go in for the will, grabbing the heart. ²¹ He mentored me without ever knowing. That can be the power of words. As mere mortals go, it is Keller’s words God has used to move me most as we move on. ²²

There are many others, to be sure. Some will receive more of a future mention, where consistent repetition should send a message about their personal impact and life integration.

Now, I wouldn’t want to put the blame on any of these, in particular, for what you will read. But, in significant epochs of my life, they have been means for encouraging my pursuit of the Most High. And, I would like to think, a little of the following will be reflective throughout this Philosophy: "In the end, merely imitating your heroes is not flattering them. Transforming their work into something of your own is how you flatter them. Adding something to the world that only you can add." ²³ With hopefully more than a thimble of humility, of course. There is good reason for this expectation. "Lewis… said… there is no creativity de novo in us… we are all sub-creators pirating and rearranging portions of reality. ²⁴ There is also a practical element. It’s much easier to improve on someone else’s ideas than it is to create something new from scratch. ²⁵ You can say these words express Carson’s intention from this PreScript’s beginning: It’s easy to churn out orthodox theology; it’s not easy to say old things in new and creative ways. Even if I don’t have one old-sounding-new thing to say under the sun, I believe I have a unique way of saying it. ²⁶ While these next words declare the implications for our living process: It wasn’t all on me to create. It was on me to find." ²⁷ I aspire to be consuming on this search. The life coursing through my nostrils on a righteous rabbit trail—entirely invigorated. Always on the hunt like a faithful bloodhound.

This is the part where the rest of the credits roll. ²⁸

You now enter the final ascent before we begin for real.

The words you will read I hope and believe glorify God—magnify and honor Jesus—through the work of the Spirit. I also know they’re written through my own weakness. This means there will be occasions when I’ve said too much or not said enough—where my perspective is lacking enough proper introspection or fails to nail it upon reflection. For these and any other misses, this mark is mine alone to bear.

I didn’t write this book and won’t finish this series so you will easily put it down. If it stretches your soul and so expands your living for God, it will be a job well done. There is an urgency within as I write these words for you, the saint, and we the Body of the beautiful Christ, to rise to the occasion that is this time of our lives.

I realize my own cadence can be a little different. My turn of expression a bit on its own. My style of vernacular a little more conceptual. But I do believe I was called to write this series at such a cultural time as this. I don’t offer this previous line lightly or without reflection on the overwhelming personal witness and providence, announcing these days, in this now extended season of my life. Of course, this says nothing about the future impact or quality of this work, but much about my own personal perspective. This is my offspring, so I do have big hopes for this communicative-kid.

I have brooded over the waters of these words. This is the closest experience I will have to birthing a child. This has developed my feminine side. Some humor—again. Or not. It was 2013, and life was simpler then. These are the words I wanted to write when I was twenty-two. But unfortunately, not enough terms (Insert: depth). I needed more years, wounds, tears, and prayers.

I know my own machinations. I know I could have expired still deliberating on the combination of syllables or shades of grammatical fine-print, but here I land. I would like to think a slice of the reality in the Apostle’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:10 also prove reflective in this unfolding work:

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

If all else fails, I will take solace in Gru’s words to Dr. Nefarious about the quality of his jelly in Despicable Me 2: "Just because everybody hates it doesn’t mean it’s not good."

Without further delay, the pleasure is all mine. Make yourself at home. You were reborn to be something like a non-conformist (Romans 12:2)!

Not at all cliché.

Let us begin, begin.

For real, this time.

QUOTATIONAL INSPIRATION FOR VOLUME ONE

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them

to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary.

FRANCIS A. SCHAEFFER

*******

*******

The people who love, because they are freed through the truth

of God, are the most revolutionary people on earth. They

are the ones who upset all values; they are the explosives in

human society. Such persons are the most dangerous.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

*******

*******

No man can be a Christian without being a controversialist.

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

*******

*******

Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution

of Western civilization… there has been only one—the triumph of Christianity—that can be called in the fullest sense a ‘revolution’: a

truly massive and epochal revision of humanity’s prevailing vision of

reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences

as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of

history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good.

DAVID BENTLEY HART

I

INTRODUCTORY ZOOM-FRAME

The purposeful RELOVUTIONARY Philosophy

end goal condensed into a single short chapter.

1

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM THAT IS YOUR LIFE

You feel the force as you’re motionless in feet. A charging regalia of enormous monstrosity. The sound of intimidation charging to a thousand drumbeats. As your heart skips one, a battalion of singularity moves with one majestic and thunderous noise. Then with another, the trumpeter sounds the war cry as the trunk is unfurled. This is a mighty elephant on the move in full resplendence. This African beauty is alive with chorus.

If size really does matter, it should matter most for the largest terrestrial animal on God’s green earth. An African male elephant can reach a height of thirteen feet (four meters), while weighing some 15,000 pounds (7,000 kgs). ¹ This is prodigious in the physical as a prodigal in the spiritual. They are a sight to behold. They are made to roam. Their size and capacity should mean they cannot otherwise be controlled. They should have freedom to thrive. This is an ideal picture of a grand beast in the wilds of their native home. Yet, we know this hasn’t always been the case. There have been elephants who do not see themselves truly, who haven’t grasped all that has been graced in their capacity. They have believed a deception, which they now live as real. They have been admitted into the Circus—the Circus of Lie-f.

It is said that if an elephant is tethered when young, while they will grow physically, their perception of these nascent restrictions will likewise define and confine their future. One small pitiful peg in the ground, attached to one leg by a chain, may as well be a prison cell encasing their world.

How can this be? ²

I do not think it is beyond belief to suggest that any elephant was providentially created for more than this performance. If they could see themselves truly, they wouldn’t accept these limitations. They would break free. The elephant wasn’t made for this type of servitude, domination, or control. This lifestyle misses the immensity of their creative potential and point.

In Christ, you the reader, have been graced with more capacity to now live than the mighty elephant ever was. Yet, tragically, you can live this life—in Christ—like you are still tethered to a peg in the Enemy’s present world system and circus (Galatians 1:4; 1 Corinthians 7:31; 1 John 5:19).

It is time to break free.

This volume, and those following, are about assisting you to live as the person Christ has redeemed, remade, and is progressively remaking you to be. ³

Be who you are! ⁴

This is your life! ⁵

"Your life is worth living, precisely because it is not your life at all." ⁶

And this is your calling into life’s ever-approaching now—to live more practically set free.

To live like Jesus.

This is Relovutionary.

This is True ⁷ Human Flourishing!

This is Your Life!

II

LIVING BREATHING COLLECTIVE

READING SCENE

This section details the larger building blocks for this written

superstructure, providing foundational definition and primary

concreteness toward this RELOVUTIONARY concept—with an

increasingly subtle particularity into the substance of this Philosophy.

2

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT CONSERVATIVE, BUT RELOVUTIONARY

Occasionally—like the unexpected unveiled into another routine day—as I made my turn down our hallway, I happened upon the gentle fluttering vibrations of femininity, emanating from our end bedroom.

What a delightful surprise!

As a one-time father of only boys, the Queen and I, in this earthbound kingdom, decided we would give it one last shot—we would take the plunge—on this quest for a girl. Oh the adventure. It could be the Sir Edmund Hillary in us Kiwis. Probably not. But with the help of my wife’s pseudo-science, or not-so-old wives’ tale, we were blessed-beyond to eventually welcome, daddy’s little girl, into our mortal realm.

Every graced-in-this-way father knows in the pit of their person exactly what I mean when I use that description. You will know the expression I am referencing. This unfolding experience also confirms what we all know when reading our Bibles. There is a divine difference on either side of the engendered fence.

A daughter brings out the prospective and protective knight we each privately seek, even if covered within, conceptually deep. You instinctively swear an oath on the day of her birth that you will guard this precious offering in a particularly demonstrative manner, but not with quite the same inherent specifics, as the sons. These masculine heirs now automatically enlisting as willing co-protectors. And as my daughter’s grown, I’ve had no need for any additional argumentation to intimately understand God’s image as substantively real, but with differing appeal.

I have witnessed this distinctive imprint through life’s elaboration of my princess.

In real-time, as I furtively made my way along the corridor—now native as our family shape, distressing old floorboards below, and doing my best not to blow cover—I became exposed to her imaginations of youth, thriving inside a creatively personal vista, reflective of a world that operates beneath, and too often, beyond. Such an occasion confirms the line from Albert Einstein that the true sign of intelligence arises through imagination, not knowledge.

To be sure, imagination is a gift from God!

As dew resting on our youth, before the cynicism of mortal development steals this world away, like the scorching summer’s rise on land, in desperate need of drinking in, overnight rain. We can describe this physical location as the present post-Christian West. And, after all, "change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but by feeding the imagination new beauties." ¹ This is important in our sanctification. Of course, to operate inside this space today, we need knowledge of the facts on the ground. We need to think deeply about this life and times. We will inside this Philosophy. Yet, we need something more: imagination—to connect what is presently and mostly beyond.

Maybe the words in this volume and work will require you to see what’s been almost entirely residing in your God-glorifying redemptive dreams. Some may want to negatively condition this posture as some false escape, but to imagine is not to live in denial of reality, but to invade possible worlds, and see God throughout. If, as Alister McGrath has claimed, "imagination is the gatekeeper of the human soul, and if words from Francis integratively ring true that the Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars," then what does your present anticipation communicate about this daily flight path?

Let me suggest this too-often described, living exception, must become more like our well-practiced routine.

Reading words of N. D. Wilson, in his pulsating with true vigor for the fight for life, Death by Living: Life is Meant to be Spent, I became another witness and willing supplicant to this most virtuous requirement for every Christian—no matter what period they call today. This is because with little ability to imagine, we have little opportunity to vision, and so we become more vision-less—like those with cataracts. Our lack of incarnation underscoring the blinding poverty of our virtue-less pursuit.

The application about imagination is comprehensive into all of life.

And to seek this indication through the substance of His Kingdom, in words of another wordSmith (James K. A. to be precise), we must first be able to see its potential, especially as it portends to seeking this Kingdom. As in the one-time flourishing of familiar places with recognizable names and titles, now more like redemptive ghost towns, we’re left longing and lingering for the arrival of what has long-since confessed, "until next time! The lines, I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him," ² or "that God does not exist, I cannot deny; that my whole being cries out for God, I cannot forget, ³ may be more reflective of the other side. A true believer can still confess with Adoniram Judson: I believe in him, but I find him not. ⁴ These each represent the type of present felt-alienation from finally arriving. It’s that dyed-into-our-life longing for the forever-irremovable fullness, effectively encapsulated in the biblical motif of exile and general temporal dislocation of these post-Christian times. ⁵ Some days, we will resolutely grope in the light. For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things" (Psalm 107:9). And resiliently, we will wait to be found.

As I discreetly reviewed my daughter’s actions in that moment, so as not to disturb the opened chapter of her mind, I was taken in by simple joys—simple joys befitting the more contented places of a lived-out life—in the spacious rhythms of the realized insides.

If seeing is believing, then experientially, believing should amount to a willingness to imagine what can still be.

As I write, you read, and you reflect on what has been through your person—can you still, maybe even again?

*******

How do you deal with potentially inspirational or aspirational words, announcing this chapter’s intent—even entire work?

I do wonder if any words on imagination, when pressed into present life, and coupled with the Quotational Inspiration for Volume One, have introduced a missional ⁶ dilemma.

Do you presumptively read and entirely interpret through the western-influenced glaze of our redemptively recent, but more inoculated past?

After all, the ideas living in this box, don’t stay outside our box:

… Most of us live in this cross-pressured space, where both our agnosticism and our devotion are mutually haunted and haunting. If our only guides were new atheists or religious fundamentalists, we would never know that this vast, contested terrain even existed, even though most of us live in this space every day. ⁷

Life just doesn’t seem so simple anymore, and most don’t feel like they have enough closet space to neatly hide and compartmentalize.

It is really a grace that only God can save!

But earnestly, despite any process frailty, do you still care for the potential gospel intentions or missional expressions? If not, why? Maybe the ecclesiastical implications increasingly bother to the point you more comprehensively want to ignore. Even a little? Is this whole context more than you care to conceptually conceive or existentially consider to handle?

Can you imagine? Do you want to imagine?

Is this all becoming too much of a cross-examination?

Then consider these imagines from Albert Mohler, even as an extension into all humanity of the initial Schaefferian soliloquy:

We long for revolution. Something within us cries out that the world is horribly broken and must be fixed… Arguably, most revolutions lead to a worse set of conditions than they replaced. And yet, we still yearn for radical change, for things to be made right. We rightly long to see righteousness and truth and justice prevail. We are actually desperate for what no earthly revolution can produce. We long for the kingdom of God and for Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. We are looking for a kingdom that will never end and a King whose rule is perfect… Are you looking for revolution? There is no clearer call to revolution than when we pray Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But this is a revolution only God can bring … and he will. ⁸

May it be. Then this still-rampant tiredness would experientially locate finality.

Today, this longing cries out emphatically into our lives, especially in these cultural times, where transcendence can only be privately unveiled—not publicly verified—and so voiced above these restraints, and liberated outside these constraints:

[Our]… constructed social space… frames our lives entirely within a natural (rather than supernatural) order. It is the circumscribed space of the modern social imaginary that precludes transcendence. ⁹

The result becomes a real battle for those truly seeking to live like they believe, but rarely experience an arrival as anything close to cultural freedom, or conceptual fullness.

This only increases the challenge, His mission, and the future goals of this RELOVUTIONARY undertaking.

*******

I have no intention to dig for personal dirt.

It is not like this interrogation comes as a confrontation-in-conversation—well, in the typical sense of these terms.

Yet, I am still on the asking incline, wanting you to talk to yourself, and obtain an honest answer. Do understand. This is for His glory. And your benefit in self-awareness. To bring forth what is below, and out onto an existential stage. As a result, there should be plenty of brutal in your honesty.

This can also provide a prop for what follows.

If any initial imagine included digressions through the prism of politics—after all, the concept of revolution tends to fit a certain political twist—you may be nurturing a Christianity too closely in conformity with a given cultural group, in contrast to the unfolding transformative destination following Jesus. This may mean my own spin on Schaeffer’s words could well have been grinding your gears.

To repeat:

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary.

Now consider as formative words from Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, senior lecturer in Modern European History at Western Sydney University in Australia, whose experience could flip your voting slip: "Christianity was also, to my surprise, radical–far more radical than the leftist ideologies with which I had previously been enamored." ¹⁰ Say what? I hope your knee-jerk is first, "Now what does she mean?" and not some partisan and emotional invective!

Irving-Stonebraker furthers understanding, elaborating and illustrating the type of diametric change Christianity enables, because of the amazing state of His art, in its otherworldly content:

The love of God was unlike anything which I expected, or of which I could make sense. In becoming fully human in Jesus, God behaved decidedly unlike a god. Why deign to walk through death’s dark valley, or hold the weeping limbs of lepers, if you are God? Why submit to humiliation and death on a cross, in order to save those who hate you? God suffered punishment in our place because of a radical love. This sacrificial love is utterly opposed to the individualism, consumerism, exploitation, and objectification, of our culture. ¹¹

Her words read considerably biblical and entirely stunning.

We must have transcendence to breathe!

It is an experiential encounter with someone enveloping life through such words, which can justifiably cause another to confess: "Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God." ¹² Now that is radically conservative and completely agreeable.

What about another source, this time, from across the pond?

Solidly stiff upper lip, what! from that very scholarly Brit, John Stott, who opined: "Every Christian should be both radical and conservative: conservative in preserving the faith, and radical in applying it. But has he rightly? I think his contrast is even better. Christianity is not about coming up with new ideas. This is not NASA, space cadet. Yes, there should be new spin on old ideas, which is essentially the positive challenge D. A. Carson offered in the PreScript. Again: It’s easy to churn out orthodox theology; it’s not easy to say old things in new and creative ways." And I accept said challenge. We want to be historically orthodox in our biblical ideas, rightly anchoring in tradition with our past. But also creatively dexterous at the same time, with an ability to devastatingly connect into applications, for our own time and place, which is a demand of the Semper Reformanda (Always Reforming).

I am going to say something similar in a future chapter, but any trepidation with which you may have approached our opening quotations could also be indicative of a worst-case scenario, type of mentality, which fears any applicational excess through an explicitly domesticated external action. I’m not entirely sure if theologian, Michael Horton, speaks with glowing positive consent, but the following words demand consideration and reflection: "Evangelicals may be conservative on a few points doctrinally but they’re really radicals." ¹³ No obfuscation readily apparent. Clarion therefore calling. A growing consternation may be more about any wisdom of use in this Evangelical terminology. ¹⁴ Nevertheless, conservative in doctrinal conservation, but radical because of divine transformation. While life after Christ should most definitely crescendo through the entirety of our person, the place of initial change, flourishes out of the internal. I would suggest, focus the attention of these words here, and if they take root as they should, God will provide the practical and external substance.

Our entertainment tends to get focused on the outside.

As we are going Reformed in quotation, we shall introduce words reflective of that dramatic beginning-time divine intervention.

Speaking of that Protestant introduction, Timothy George offers the following:

Still the Reformers… were able to accomplish what they did because they were alive to the deepest struggles and hopes of their age. By tapping this profound reservoir of spiritual yearning, the reformers affected a major change in religious sensibilities. In this sense the Reformation was at once a revival and a revolution. ¹⁵

Someone please call NASA, because we just launched a boom rocket. SDG. ¹⁶

Again, I will probably say something similar, but one of the tragedies of our modern Evangelical church is not simply that we tend to habitually forget our roots, but that there seems a more prevalent negative attitude—ranging from little to no motivation to engage—and on to something more like open antipathy. "Luther fought the church not because it demanded too much, but because it demanded too little." ¹⁷ We Denomination-each and Christianity-all should love these words from Oscar Spengler. We’re communicating much the same theme in this chapter. Whatever you believe about the proper shape of Christianity, chances are, the demands are even more than your present practice.

To extend this by George, are you alive to the deepest struggles and hopes of your culture’s age? It is almost impossible to be conversant on these struggles and hopes, when you’re more intent on giving-up-that-cultural-ghost, and hiding yourself away. To quote Keller: "Lack of cultural awareness leads to distorted Christian living." Our issue isn’t just a lack of the biblical, which is huge. The demands become even more pronounced when including the cultural. Therefore, too many Christians are simultaneously lacking in two worlds.

The Roman Catholic church was a dominant controlling influence through the externalities of medieval, and into Reformation life. But when Luther was set aflame reading the Scriptures, he understood that the way of the Faith had been distorted—resulting in an assortment of heavily divested religious routines, where the plebeians must pay their dues—had been heretically wrong and existentially unconscionable.

And Luther said something like, "You stinkmouths," ¹⁸ in response. Or even, "You are a bungling magpie, croaking loudly. ¹⁹ And definitely, You know less than does a log on the ground. ²⁰ While for good measure, You are the Roman Nimrod and a teacher of sin." ²¹ Just imagine if Luther had social media?! Gospel reclaimed. Plus a good deal of one-liners. ²²

A life transformed in the gospel, wasn’t calling for any type of symbolic conformity to the power structures of the day—but more entirely—a life totally emancipated, coram Deo.

If your Latin is better on the hips as your groove armada, R. C. Sproul can beseech your vitals through the following elaboration:

The big idea of the Christian life is ‘coram Deo’… [This means] to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God… [This] is to live a life of integrity… [and a] life of wholeness that finds its unity and coherency in the majesty of God. A fragmented life is a life of disintegration. It is marked by inconsistency, disharmony, confusion, conflict, contradiction, and chaos. ²³

I read over these words on the very day of Sproul’s glorious elevation, which means the luster of his descriptions will now be more fully formed and experientially intimate. RIP, and he will be: Rejoicing in Person. The truth of the gospel-found means freedom. But, the freedom of the gospel-given behooves any receiver to give everything in grateful obeisance, which is realistically minor in comparison.

This is the place of faithful presence. It will also be the location of fruitful application.

This validates why David Bentley Hart should be read with total sobriety illustrating the impact of Christianity onto a world stage:

Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilization … there has been only one—the triumph of Christianity—that can be called in the fullest sense a revolution: a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity’s prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good. ²⁴

If Christianity is really that combustible to the dominant narratives that merely vouched unsafe in the human proposal, the demands for embracing change upon the follower of Christ should become especially significant.

This element justifies the following anticipation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

The people who love, because they are freed through the truth of God, are the most revolutionary people on earth. They are the ones who upset all values; they are the explosives in human society. Such persons are the most dangerous.

Does this mean the faithful and fruitful Christian is akin to the impact of dynamite?

By nature of its very substance, it is attuned to go off. This could result in volatility. But again, don’t get anchored on the controversial or external.

This is the place of true human flourishing.

Therefore, and in other words, do the genesis-claims of the Christian faith demand significant personal change? No doubt. If truth be celebrated, we spend too many years adding clutter, when God wants His power to remove, so His real treasure can have pride-of-place in humble application.

At this point, there is only one remaining quotation from the collection that began Volume One, and from Charles Spurgeon, now reading more perfectly reasonable: "No man can be a Christian without being a controversialist." If Christians are fundamentally remade of supernaturally-explosive gospel-substance, this should not only positively impact into general culture with creative noise and distinctive color, but first, work this divine detail inside any local church.

And if I may close this section with a pose about the importance of resilience for this fight—whether within or without—our great tradition has offered the following: "Athanasius, the world is against you. Now what can you say or do? Weep, wail, run, or hide? No! Animation arrives through the realized tenacity of this Christian’s response: Then Athanasius is against the world." ²⁵

This is a rebellion against the rebellion, to float some Stetzer.

Now with these words setting the scene for what will follow, my hope is this RELOVUTIONARY series can further flesh out a larger frame for these quotations, and a general potential shape—wherever you are located on this planet—but especially inside the post-Christian West.

I’m becoming ever more convinced only a life lived with an intention-driven, gospel-already-given pursuit, is the life reflecting His high calling, and our desperate need for meaning and flourishing.

If not, what is the point?

And as we prepare for this pursuit, understand, life always imagines more absurd to those ostracized on the outside.

This is a call to become totally submerged in the Savior—entirely lost. But, at the same time, completely found on the living of life, inside-out.

*******

This day in our todays, we are the people of the decisions made in our yesterdays—humanly speaking, you will understand.

Some reading are on the cusp of a new dawn, ready to fire forth like a rocket. Some look at that life as an idealistic past-tense, now having a justified cultural conservatism, effectively removing themselves from the game. Some have long settled into the slow abdication of the fade.

This series is written for all those with their potential years for God still awaiting their arrival.

This series is written for every individual who has long since waved, "goodbye," to those wonder years, but still want to live like this is God’s time for them to be alive.

This series is written for all those who want to make a real difference for Christ—those who want to blaze and burn bright—like the Son.

This series is written with the full scope of humanity in view.

This series is written for the Relovutionary in you.

*******

This series is written for…

3

YOU? FOR THE FLIGHT PATH OF YOUTH

I was sitting in our family car—reflecting. Although it was a warm day, it doesn’t recall as especially memorable from a meteorological perspective.

But there we were, parked on the side of the road, windows down, awaiting.

Mother had escorted me to this side of the city. We were resting beside the river Avon, which gently charts its course through the city of Christchurch, in New Zealand’s South Island, biding our time until the arrival of my older sister from school.

As I had already been rescued, it was now her turn.

I can’t precisely define the initiating substance cajoling the next consideration, but determined thoughts turned a corner to the life I’d live as my adult-hood would become more like a borough. I became positively ecstatic like an estate. It was still a good handful of years away, but everything about life seemed ready to rule like a conqueror or flame like a comet. And I would leave a trail.

In my mind, I was like Scrappy, exclaiming, "Let me at ’em. Let me at ’em!"

It would take time to realize life could be more Scooby-don’t.

As opposed to those floundering like an edible sea dish, I was going to be a smash hit. Not literally, of course, but realistically, and most definitely. I mean, how complicated could life be?! That was something like the attitude within. I was ready to mark this world, and reap the rewards’ windfall like a perpetual Fall, which we term, Autumn.

I had little idea of the concept of whirlwind, nor even the realistic demands or shape of the challenges ahead. I was like an axe above the head of one chopping. It would be automatic what gravity would do next.

Score one for the frivolities of youth!

*******

If you are just awakening to the reality you must adult your world, or at least, give that appearance very soon, you have probably been impacted by the genius of the following man’s innovations.

Steve Jobs has assisted in transforming our expectations of technology, communication, and community, into modern culture. Now I never indicated these were all inherently good. Yet these expectations become clearly expressed when required to spend a significant portion of time without a smartphone to perpetually engage. "If I had a dollar for every time," a mature relative has potentially offered, as you’ve diverted your attention to the pocket-sized screen beneath.

My pertinent point is that Jobs understood the worth of time, conceptually recalibrated and existentially remonstrated, in light of a reverberating period of discomfort.

From his 2005 address at Stanford University, after undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancer, he offered the following perspective:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. ¹

Much like taxes, death will arrive for every person reading.

The line you should leave this quote with, therefore, is this: "things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important, which explains why Jobs would further reflect that death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." ² I know! These lines are more theologically highly-charged than Jobs may have ever potentially considered.

Because of this comprehensive applicational destination and impact, we shall spend the next chapters and change, dipping and delving into this normative circumstance, as a tactic for investigating our present caravan—illustrating our living purpose, while illuminating this written proposal.

There should be real impetus for the Christian:

When the reality of death is far from our minds, the promises of Jesus often seem detached from our lives. These promises seem abstract, belonging to another world from the one I’m living in, disconnected from the problems that dominate my field of view. ³

And our living follows this existential flat-line—not only as it relates to true human invigoration out of His finished redemption—but into a practical boredom, which treats God’s promises into the present, like a functional state of denial.

It is noteworthy that the direct context for the most recent quotation is referenced as a "pastor of young up-and-comers." ⁴ This is our chapter’s generational flight path. This phase more easily and idealistically accompanies life’s geographic altitude, and very often, not without a little attitude. Spirited, shall we say?! We should love the fresh invigoration with this phase—internals still enough-unfazed to forge and forage into the wild, instead of just folding like an old deck chair from yesteryear’s middle-age—now purposelessly weathering outside seemingly estranged.

Young at heart, continue to resist any urge-submission-overkill (riffing a band) from the cynicism of individual and corporate cultural claims, even as wisdom encourages a more character-resilient malleability, and clear-thinking sobriety, through death’s irreducible mortal door.

Therefore, this subject can be like the striking of flint across life’s dull blade. Our theoretical and inconsequential routine ripped apart by a spark that starts an internal blaze. And because of the enormity of this looming deathly-event throughout humanity’s comprehensive temporal existence, we become more keenly pressed by this potential. When this is greater than a conceptual bolt out of the blue, we are jolted out of our automated religious descent, which knows no age, only the vapid customary of the group:

Once we’ve learned to see the shadow [of death], we’ll be able to apply the light of Christ… The more deeply we feel death’s sting, the more consciously we will feel the gospel’s healing power. ⁵

Gospelcenteredness is a pump primed with death-to-life production.

But also, one problem, especially in the pristine days of youth, is we can still rarely feel the full strength of this soon-to-be arriving landing place—for any extended period, at least—before the anesthetizing entertainment of popular culture distracts our attention, distorts our perception, and dislocates our conceptions. This means any momentum toward enabling truth can lack the power to sufficiently grip our souls, or impress its force, into changing our world.

We each need a persistent-like blanketing of an equatorial rainy season.

Have you grasped the redemptive effect of your fast approaching mortality?

Trust the second law of thermodynamics. The more you mature, the quicker the breakdown seems to arrive. ⁶ While youth can empower a marvel type mindset, can you really use infallible lifetime charts beyond any day’s present moment?! It is amazing when my health becomes particularly insistent, I see life with an increasingly fine-tuned clarity. And now with intently-designed, peaking intensity, my person presses into making more of a day, time, or period. Sometimes, at least. What can be described as more exceptional temporal circumstances encouraging more normative eternal realities.

Scripture affirms the absolute singular mortality rate should be entirely integrated into more than our virtual reality. King David inclines: "O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!" (Psalm 39:4. See also, Philippians 1:21; James 4:13-15).

For those in Christ, this will merely be the beginning of your best life then.

We have nothing to fear now, and nothing to fear then. "The one thing we owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything." ⁷ Steve Jobs will directly grasp the eternal perspective in Jesus’s words. His recorded final utterances of "OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW" ⁸ intuitively reflect the enormity of a Christian’s already secured future. He knew in his Stanford address what we should all relearn on every today.

Each day has too much waste, if you are settling for anything less than living for the best—for your God, and I aspire to purposefully add—like a Relovutionary.

Once any cliché fades, I hope some real substance will remain.

*******

Let me press this point a little further as we extend.

Probably not through your own person if presently reading, but have you noticed how the afflicted live, once they’ve been given a death sentence? A serious illness or condition diagnosed in their world spells terminal has now transformed their long-life experience into a moment-by-moment event.

If you are a parent reading, you will understand the following impact. I recently sat in front of my TV screen. It happens. It was also turned on. As dust began to fill my eyes, I became captured by another inspiring illustration of a dying child with an enhanced vision for life. Let me be clear. This is not the way it was in the beginning. It will not be this way at the future’s never end. ⁹ Nevertheless, in the most difficult of circumstances, this young person became a living witness more motivated than ever to redeem their time (Ephesians 5:16). Time had now become a very precious resource. Scarcity of sands firmly entrenched in the hour-glass of their existence. Each moment another finite grain falling away. Their death—an explicitly imminent and living reality—had shaken-to-awaken to the full-stop in their present.

It is as if the absolute and limiting effect of their temporal end placed a spotlight on the cultural restrictions that had, until this point, overtly shaped the processes in their living. How quickly they have now grown. This has transformed their existence. What was normative for their future has now been superseded by an abnormal time—calling for abnormal decisions, responses, and actions. "Don’t waste a minute!" shines forth from their eyes. They are determined to not misuse this precious commodity—their time. At a period when parents expect children to be worrying about the smaller things in life, they show the potency of one hungry for time, desperate to live, and fearless to make their moments count.

Their tragedy—the claw displaying the precious jewel of their enlarged persona—all the while clasped on the hand of one becoming increasingly frail.

Death-to-life in a heartbreaking harmony.

*******

As we continue, if this singular example reads more fantastical, or potentially, not enough fully-lived to adequately cover the diverse expanse in this youthful category, we have more to converse.

Without seeking to be insensitive, it could be suggested that life appears too simple at this child stage, to elucidate relevant navigation. Due to a lack of complication, you may conclude this example doesn’t register with quite the same life-force of a mid-twenties-and-beyond, still-youthfully-vigorous person.

While I’m content to grant some license for dissent, let me retortingly suggest any childlike response should only become more tenacious with age.

But still, I offer three extended angles to illustrate or challenge toward greater reading integration, and throughout any age-related expansion.

|First| Assimilate the inherently objectionable message that death encodes about our graven mistake, but which, in the storied providence of God, juxtaposes with a true future frame of reference that should manifestly challenge life’s present embrace. This estimation should subvert any temporal verdict as finally exclusive or ultimately destructive.

But the storyline tension remains important.

If you’re not "rag[ing] against the dying of the light as you read this section, maybe you don’t sufficiently grasp the violation of death into our world. As hot tears ran over the basin of my sunken face reading of the long slow march toward death of another saint, I silently raised my whole person to declare, Make it stop already, God!" Maranatha!

I vividly remember the force of nature the death of my poppa introduced into my world. While I was that young stereotype, I understood a strange foreigner had arrived, and he was the shape of all wrong. The loss and separation felt like a bottomless pit, where I would forever be falling. Today, I