The Importance of Context

A guy goes to work, sits down at his computer, stares at the screen. Takes a sip of coffee, opens his Outlook, checks his mail. Stares at the screen. Checks his planner for the day.

And feels absurd.

Feels no bigger than the information on his screen.

Drinks more coffee. Thinks about the job opening he put in for last week, and feels a tiny pang of hope. Something different for a change.

Then his phone rings, and the light fades. Back to the screen.

He has lost all sense of the context of his life. If we could help him feel the connectedness of his little screen within the context of his department within the context of his company within the context of his industry within the context of his society--then he might feel a sense of relevance, of role.

Having a sense of identity is never enough. There must be a sense of role as well. The feeling that what I do matters because it is part of this greater thing.

Jesus has given us a chance to feel like our identity is right for our role.

The deceiver takes great pains to undo us in both ways. If he can't get the one, he'll go after the other.

I have spent a lot of time in the last few years trying to understand how crucial identity is and how the New Covenant signed by God with red ink makes everything new again.

But role is something entirely different, I think.

Find a bored man, and you will find a man who has no sense of his role within the greater story. He may have a very clear sense of what he can do, but if he doesn't understand why his efforts matter, then motivation is absent.

A role can only be played within a pretty well-defined context of some sort. A player on a team knows his role clearly, because he has been trained in the context of his sport.

Today's believers have very limited sense of role, in part because we have lost nearly all sense of the context of the body of Christ in this world. And we've bought into all sorts of false Christian contexts in the name of "going to church."

Egads.

More on this later...

Spam Wisdom V

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.

Anyone who profits from the experience of others probably writes biographies.

He that bringeth a present findeth the door open.

What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.

Most of us die with much of our beautiful music still in us, un-sung, un-played.

When you fall, don't get up empty handed.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.