Discovering Where We Really Are
Among the many tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic, one
recently stands out that draws attention to our deeper condition facing
humanity today. This involved Dr. Lorna M. Breen, an ER physician in New
York, who treated countless COVID-19 patients until she contracted the
disease herself. After appearing to recover, she then committed
suicide—killing herself with no explanation or history of mental
illness. Her sister said that Dr. Breen was in an untenable situation,
which broke her down in spite of all the medical care she provided.
Implicit in this tragedy is the depth of our human condition
that is routinely overlooked, commonly ignored, and rarely diagnosed. A
poll taken in late April this year by NORC at the University of Chicago
found that roughly two-thirds of those in the U.S. say they felt
anxious, depressed, lonely or hopeless during the past seven days in
this pandemic. These feelings are understandable, given the prevailing
uncertainty of our condition and the despair generated about our
future—all evolving regardless of the means provided by modern science.
And this existing condition consumes us even without taking into account
the devastating effects on us economically from COVID-19.
Humanity in general and Christians in particular need to
have our attention acutely focused to a depth beyond a coronavirus. The
psychological workings indicated above are not mere situational symptoms
that point to only a transient condition. Beyond the limits of science,
they point to a deeper dynamic that infects our minds and hearts. A
related poll finds that for the population in the U.S. having religious
belief, nearly two-thirds believe COVID-19 is a sign from God for
humanity to change its ways. Whether or not this belief is valid,
analogous to the COVID-19 pandemic, overlapping with it and ongoingly
interacting with it, this deeper dynamic is the permeating infection
creating the pandemic of the human condition. Regardless of our current
belief, we are urgently challenged to examine this more pervasive
condition inescapably prevailing over all human life today, encompassing
all human contexts at the exclusion of no one.
Just as current measures (such as masks and social
distancing) taken to fight the coronavirus have amplified the human
condition, its unmistakable symptoms pervade our lives (collectively) in
relational disconnection and prevail in our life (individually) by
breaking down any wholeness of persons. While beyond the limits of
science but not incompatible with it, this inescapable infection is the
pandemic of sin—a term certain to evoke strong reactionary response,
yet, when tempered, invokes the prevailing human condition neither
distorted by human bias nor misled by misinformation.
To get to the depth of our human condition and not merely
treat symptoms, we need to be able to diagnose what constitutes the
infection of sin. The pandemic of our human condition ironically goes
beyond ethical deficiencies and penetrates deeper than moral failure,
the common parameters of sin. These certainly are included in sin’s
infection; and the COVID-19 pandemic has brought out many examples of
these disconcerting symptoms, even by Christians pursuing their rights
to be free in these socially isolating days. Distinctly further and
deeper, however, sin is the virus of reductionism: whose
undeniable workings pervading human life at its core, infects both
persons and their relationships by (1) overtly or covertly reducing
their wholeness, and (2) explicitly or implicitly fragmenting them into
secondary parts, and/or to function with less, little or no
significance.
In other words, the all-pervasive infection of reductionism
renders persons and relationships to what is common to humanity,
and thus to what is normal in the human condition. And it is a
sad irony yet revealing paradox that so, so many persons experiencing
the COVID-19 pandemic are impatiently yearning to get back to this
normal and simply resume what’s common. I would include many
of those believing in God’s sign for us to change, because the change
considered necessary does not encompass reductionism, and thus include
all that is common if not normal.
Getting the Correct Diagnosis
Given the scope of these two analogous, overlapping and
interacting pandemics, our diagnosis is essential in order to expose,
fight and be cured of any infection. The medical community has become
more and more aware that the accuracy of testing for the coronavirus has
been very inconsistent, with frequent false negatives rendering
diagnosis problematic at best. Moreover, the latest science on the
coronavirus is revealing that the original virus infecting the world has
mutated. This mutation likely has now become the dominant source of
infection spreading in most sectors of the global community. That makes
any vaccine based on the original virus insignificant to prevent any
further infection. Of course, any further mutations only compound the
problem.
Similarly, the virus of reductionism has mutated into
multiple forms; and its evolution keeps adapting to human contexts such
that its workings have become even more common and thus normal
to our human condition. On the one hand, this makes the correct
diagnosis critical for all of us, because no one is immune to the human
condition pandemic and can escape from its prevailing consequences.
Furthermore, we can make ourselves more vulnerable to infection by
compromising any viable immune system available for our well-being. On
the other hand, as with the coronavirus, we can also develop the growth
of antibodies to fight the infection of reductionism. Here again, our
diagnosis is critical to having the right antibodies. The growth process
of antibodies is viable only when distinguished integrally as both
incompatible with what’s common and incongruent with the
normal of the human condition. And for human identity and function
to be so distinguished from the common and the normal in
human life has been the defining problem for God’s people since the
emergence of the human condition.
Having the correct diagnosis is essential to any pandemic,
and thus irreplaceable for fighting it. That makes the source of our
diagnosis critical in order to contain and eventually cure the
infection. Science has emerged as the definitive source for the current
pandemic, but this has not stopped dubious sources from espousing
misinformed claims and misleading diagnoses, which not surprisingly are
misguiding many persons in what to practice. When diagnosing the human
condition pandemic is at stake, even science can be a misinformed source
and thereby make misleading diagnosis of the depth of our total
condition. We need to be aware of our biases and not allow them to skew
our perspective. For example, evolutionary science and its related
neuroscience has been informative in quantifying human function and
adaptations; but this descriptive source has limited value because the
scope of its epistemic field is constrained to the limits of the person
narrowed down to outer in. Given its limitations, science cannot define
the inner-out ontology and function of the human person. Therefore,
science should not be our primary source for determining who, what and
how we are, and thus for defining the depth of our human condition. Any
misinformed diagnosis becomes the basis for misleading conclusions about
the infection, which result in misguided efforts to stop it.
Contrary to our approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is
common misinformation to think that we can self-isolate from
reductionism’s pandemic and avoid it. Historically, Christians
consistently have professed half-truths about it and have been
misleading by effectively reducing sin of its constituting
reductionism—the genius of reductionism. Such misinformed diagnoses only
have reinforced and sustained the human condition pandemic; and, in
effect, Christians have even idealized forms of reductionism that have
rendered their identity and function to the constraints of the common
and normal. It is imperative, however, and thus nonnegotiable,
that any infection of reductionism be diagnosed thoroughly and thereby
quarantined rightly in order to treat it completely—imperative and
nonnegotiable so that recovery to wholeness becomes a reality in this
fragmentary life. Any compromise of this process will not result in
restoration; even if changes are made in our normal, and new
normal will not get to the depth required to change the common
in our condition.
Causative and Amplifying Agents
The mutation of the coronavirus corresponds to evolving
mutations of sin composed as reductionism. Changes in reductionism’s
infection have become increasingly subtle, making diagnosis more
difficult and thus increasingly problematic to identify the human
condition both in what’s common for human life and in what’s
normal in our everyday function. From the beginning of the human
condition pandemic, its history has devolved with misinformation—with
even disinformation from ranking governments entrusted with the public
welfare—fake news, and prominently including illusions and simulations
of non-infected alternatives. The agency of these usually subtle
alternatives has been either causal or amplifying for the human
condition by directly or indirectly reflecting, reinforcing and
sustaining the reduction of the human person and the fragmenting of
human relationships. And the subtle workings of all this also has
emerged from and/or unfolded in our theology and practice, notably our
theological anthropology (formalized, assumed or implied) as the basis
for how the person is defined and their function is determined.
How much social distance have you maintained in order to
contain the COVID-19 pandemic? How many of you have worn masks in order
to prevent the spread of the coronavirus? These measures have been
instrumental agents in minimizing the infection of public health. Yet,
it is critical for us to understand that such measures are applicable
only to our condition from outer in, thus limited to the quantitative
dimension of human life—often at the expense of the qualitative.
When the human person and human relationships are assessed
on the basis of inner out rather than outer in, the qualitative becomes
the primary agent and the quantitative is relegated to the secondary
(though still important). When our focus makes this qualitative shift to
the inner out, we start to develop a qualitative sensitivity and
relational awareness that takes us beyond the COVID-19 pandemic and into
the depth of the human condition pandemic. As we venture into the human
condition, two definitive agents emerge to help us truly recognize and
fully address our condition infected by reductionism. One agent is
causal and the other is amplifying, and both agents contradict the
instrumental agents used in COVID-19:
1.
Contrary to the use of masks for COVID-19, the use of a mask or its
functional equivalent is a causal agent for the human condition. In the
beginning, God created the human person to be whole from inner
out in the qualitative image and relational likeness of God’s wholeness,
whereby human persons vulnerably embraced the whole of who, what and how
they were from inner out (Gen 1:26-27; 2:7,18,25). Then, reductionism
intervened on human persons and their relationship both with God and
each other, the consequence of which reduced their persons and
relationships from wholeness as they used masks to hide themselves from
inner out—thereby presenting themselves only from outer in (Gen 3:1-10).
This infection of reductionism has mutated since the primal garden, such
that the wearing of masks became the new normal, even for God’s
people in the practice of faith. Jesus exposed the causal agent of masks
with the word hypokrites (as in Mt 6:2-16; 23:13-29). All
hypocrites didn’t necessarily try to deceive, but they did project an
illusion or simulation about their true identity, which magnified a
reduced identity functioning accordingly. As illustrated in ancient
Greek theatre, hypokrisis defined wearing a mask to play a role,
which shrouded their real identity. In other words, masks (literal or
symbolic) have become the causal agent of reductionism that reduces our
real identity as a person and fragments us from the wholeness created by
God from inner out, distinguished only by the qualitative image and
relational likeness of the whole of God, the Trinity. Paul exposed this
subtle hypokrisis in Peter and other church leaders, the subtlety
of which misinformed the gospel and was misleading in their witness and
misguiding in their ministry (Gal 2:11-14).
Therefore while wearing a mask makes us less vulnerable to
the coronavirus, the reality of our common and normal
masks makes us inescapably susceptible to reductionism’s infection by
conversely preventing our person from being vulnerable in our wholeness
from inner out. This paradox of vulnerableness is an essential dynamic
for our identity and function to be the who, what and how God first
created and later transformed with the new creation (2 Cor 5:17; Eph
4:24; Gal 6:15); any lack of vulnerableness by our person in our
relationships infects us with reductionism. Accordingly, anything less
and any substitutes for this wholeness from inner out unmistakably are
infected by reductionism, and all their common and normal
mutations arguably reflect and reinforce the human condition and sustain
its pandemic.
2.
The second definitive agent, which ironically helps us truly recognize
and fully address our prevailing condition infected by sin as
reductionism, is distinct as an amplifying agent over a causal agent
like masks. Social distance has been unequivocally the instrumental
agent that has contained the spread of the coronavirus and its
mutations—in spite of misinformed and misguided protests. What has been
the most significant agent to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, however, also
delineates what is the key amplifying agent for the human condition
pandemic. As the prescription for the coronavirus, social
distance (intensified by social isolation) exposes what is the critical
proscription against reductionism: the deeper workings of
relational distance (intensified by relational isolation), in all its
variations and mutations, that construct the common and the
normal of human life. For advocates of evolutionary biology,
relational distance became a necessary (perhaps natural) adaptation in
life for “the survival of the fittest”—analogous to surviving the
coronavirus today. Yet, the prescription to reduce the spread of the
COVID-19 pandemic ironically makes more and more distinct what in the
reality of human life amplifies the human condition pandemic of
reductionism systematically diminishing our identity and function. Human
adaptations of relational distance in order to “survive” have only
entrenched us further and deeper into the human condition, such that
even in the condition for Christians and churches relational distance is
our ‘new normal’. Any and all relational distance must—not out of
obligation but by the nature of persons and relationships created by
God—be proscribed, so that the new in Christ becomes clearly
distinguished from the normal.
God created human persons to be in likeness of the who, what
and how God is, that is, the uncommon triune God. Therefore, God
created persons for relationships together in the intimate relational
likeness of the Trinity. When the human condition emerged in the
primordial garden, God inquired of those persons: “Where are you?”—that
is to say, “Where are your persons from inner out and what are you doing
in your relationships?” (Gen 3:9) Their persons had made the
consequential shift from ‘inner out’ to ‘outer in’, which required masks
in order to hide their true identity and function from inner out, so
that they would not be vulnerable with their person in their created
wholeness of relationship together in their Creator’s likeness.
Consequently, to “survive” in their reduced identity and function they
adapted in relational distance, which set into motion the key amplifying
agent for the human condition pandemic.
What has also emerged from this defining reality of human
life is the cryptic process of infection by reductionism. This process
of reductionism is constituted by its workings designed specifically to
counter both the whole of God and God’s created wholeness. Because God
created human persons in the qualitative image and relational likeness
of the trinitarian persons constituted in ontology and function together
as One in the Trinity, reductionism’s solitary purpose and function
revolve around its counter-relational workings.
The genius of reductionism in its counter-relational
workings is to subtly influence human persons (1) to shift our persons
from inner out to outer in (e.g. by defining ourselves by what we do and
have, including its basis physically, culturally, socially, economically
and politically), and (2) to shape our mindset with the need, the
justification, or simply the innocence to adapt with relational distance
for the sake of survival or the benefit of so-called success. Even
Jesus’ person was subjected to the subtle counter-relational workings of
reductionism, when he was pressured to make primary the outer in and
thereby allow himself to be manipulated to create relational distance
with the Father (Mt 4:1-11). He never compromised his identity and
function and always presented his person in the integrity of wholeness
intrinsic to his nature. Contrary to any relational distance, our
relational involvement in following the whole identity and function of
Jesus’ person is essential for us to fight against reductionism in our
own identity and function, whereby our person and relationships will
grow in the wholeness of his image and likeness (Col 1:15-20; 2 Cor 4:4;
then 3:16-18).
Consequential of the genius of reductionism and the subtlety
of its counter-relational workings is that our identity and function
have become shaped by what’s common in human life and what’s
normal in our human contexts. This has predisposed us with limits in
our thinking and formed biases constraining our perceptions. For
example, to define ourselves by what we do and/or have in possession, on
the one hand, is limiting ourselves solely to the common, with no
basis of hope beyond the common except false hopes; meanwhile, on
the other hand, such self-definition also constrains us to the normal’s
comparative process of assessing what we both do and have on the
relative basis of more-less, better-worse. This unavoidable comparison
relegates us to a hierarchical structure that constrains (even enslaves)
us in systems of inequality—that which is inherent in the human
condition. When our everyday life becomes occupied primarily by what we
do and have, and then preoccupied with their comparative valued, our
innate human condition is operating.
As our qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness
become elusive or lost in any shift to the outer in, we fall into
tendencies, practices and patterns that effectively reflect, reinforce
and/or sustain the human condition, which becomes inseparable from our
condition in our everyday life. Even unknowingly or routinely, we can
easily engage amplifying agents for reductionism (cf. the early
disciples, Jn 14:9), whereby we take no recourse against reductionism’s
infection (cf. Peter and other church leaders). Under these prevalent
conditions, it is no surprise that the human condition pandemic
flourishes among Christians and churches—predisposing us to its limits
in our theology and biasing us to its constraints in our practice.
“Where are you?”
The Depth of Its Shape and Configuration
Grasping the configuration of COVID-19 has been a challenge
for science and continues to be elusive as the infection keeps evolving.
Even though children were initially considered at the lowest risk of
infection and the most able to fight its effects, now doctors are
discovering how endangered they are to the coronavirus causing
multi-system inflammatory syndrome similar (if not related) to
Kawasaki’s disease. No configuration in this pandemic has been
definitive. It seems like the best shape we can give the COVID-19
pandemic is ‘the curve’ and trying to flatten the curve. Yet, with all
the unknowns the present is still dissettled in uncertainty, while the
future remains shrouded in mystery.
The shape of the COVID-19 pandemic also has encompassed
strains of the human condition pandemic. Various episodes have taken
place throughout the global community (notably in the U.S.) that have
exposed the infection of reductionism inherent to the human condition.
Diagnosing this pervasive condition has been minimal at best and the
symptoms likely ignored or discounted. In spite (or because) of the fact
that the human condition pandemic prevails over the COVID-19 pandemic,
its prevalence is even more shrouded in mystery because the reality of
its shape and configuration is not grasped. This is true notably of
Christians whose identity and function have not been distinguished from
reductionism, since they have not been tested for and cleared of its
infection—leaving us limited to our predisposition and constrained in
our biases shaped by reductionism.
From the beginning of the human condition pandemic, human
identity and function have been reduced based on shifting the person to
outer in, thereby rendering the inner-out person secondary if not
unimportant. This outer-in person is who and what is
presented to others (including God) without making vulnerable the truth
of the inner-out person. Consequently, this “masked” person is how
relationships are engaged in the normality of relational
distance; these counter-relational workings subtly though unmistakably
shape what configures our human condition. “Where are you?” then also
leads to God asking us “What are you doing here?” (as in 1 Kgs 19:9,13)
The shape and configuration of the human condition pandemic
has evolved; and like the human transition from gatherers to hunters,
the dynamic constructing human identity and function has searched for
satisfying (temporarily if not virtually) a relative hunger for the
validation ascribed to achievement or success, rather than gathering
together what fulfills their wholeness in the breadth and depth of human
life. Furthermore, in this transition much of our related theology and
practice has become domesticated in the surrounding contexts of the
world. What has evolved and continues to evolve is critical to grasp,
namely in how we have become predisposed and biased. On the one hand,
mutations have taken place, which have confused the presence of
reductionism’s infection with misinformed symptoms and misguided
diagnoses. On the other hand, however, any mutations have not evolved
distinctly away from what is basic and thus always inherent to the human
condition: reductionism and its counter-relational workings, which
permeate, pervade and prevail at all levels of human life.
Any and all sin constituting the human condition are
innately the working of reductionism, whose genius always generates
illusions and simulations of what appear to be significant but lack what
is essential to the integrity of wholeness. Therefore, the shape and
configuration of the human condition emerge only when delineated as
reductionism. Understanding the intricacies of reductionism’s workings
in its nuances is irreplaceable in order to recognize its presence and
then be able to address its infection in our persons and relationships,
our theology and practice.
Since the emergence of the human condition, human function
has gotten increasingly enslaved by simulations of freedom. Moreover,
human aspirations have become mesmerized by illusions of hope such as
“the American dream”—illusions and simulations amplified from the
beginning (cf. Gen 3:1-6). The human context (both macro and micro)
evolves with seduction, and human life (both individual and collective)
adapts in a seductive process, both of which are constructed by the
ascribed and vested subtleties of reductionism that misinform, mislead
and misguide how we defined ourselves and determine our function. A
major consequence of this history is not only how human history keeps
repeating the human condition pandemic, but that the critical reality of
the human condition itself has become widely reduced to a notion—a
notion of depleting significance for our attention, much less our
concern. Of course, there are still moments of disappointment or
displeasure, perhaps shame or anger, but such moments are fleeting
without resulting in any change to the condition itself. And while the
subject of sin remains a major topic for most Christians, sin has
commonly been renegotiated by human terms whereby it is also rendered to
a notion without its constitution of reductionism.
It is critical and thus essential for us to understand the
adaptive process underlying what characterizes the human condition in
general and our human condition in particular. What is specific in our
adaptations revolves around human terms shaping the human condition, our
particular terms (identified as Christian or not) shaping our specific
condition, rather than God’s own terms defining the human condition. For
Christians, the shift from God’s terms to our terms is very subtle in
our theology and practice, normally misled by simulations of freedom and
misguided by illusions of hope: for example, as duplicated from the
primordial garden, persons shifted to their terms when the resource
availed to them was perceived as “good for personal growth in a
delightful way,” and further ascribed to be the primary pursuit “to make
one wise much like God” (Gen 3:6).
This shift is ironic because it appears to be vested in a
well-meaning purpose with good intentions—after all, what Christian
shouldn’t know “good and evil?” But appearances are the critical issue.
What underlies shifting to our terms is the seductive influence of
reductionism that shifts our person from inner out to outer in, thereby
countering God’s terms essential for our person and relationships to be
whole and not reduced. The subtlety of reductionism’s workings keeps us
from understanding the truth of how we have shaped the human condition
by our terms. The fact of this reality continues to evolve as Christians
conflate God’s terms with our terms, whereby God’s terms become
secondary (even in our theology) and our terms assume primacy—again, all
subtly evolving with the seductive adaptations we engage even in the
name of God and serving Christ. Many churches and its leaders, notably
esteemed in their common reputation, need to be alerted by Jesus’
wake-up call, because “on God’s terms I have not found your theology and
practice to be whole” (Rev 3:1-2).
The COVID-19 pandemic, with its measures of social distance
and isolation, also provides a pivotal alert for us to discern our
shaping of our human condition. How would you assess the social distance
already existing in your relationships with others in general and at
church specifically? Perhaps you never thought about the common’s
social distance in most relationships, nor examined the normal
social distance existing in your church. While social isolation is not
the norm in congregations, many occupy the pews with the experience of
relational distance, in the reality of being relationally apart, as if
to be in social isolation, participating in effect in simply a virtual
gathering. When God asks “where are you in such a condition?” we have to
be accountable for any masks making our person less than vulnerable in
relationships together; and we need to wake up to the fact that we shape
our relationships according to our reduced terms defining our identity
and determining our function, terms contrary to God’s terms of
wholeness.
The shape and configuration of our human condition will not
be unknown to us if and when we own up to the common and
normal adaptations composing our terms—namely by the illusions and
simulations incorporated into our identity and function—from their
surrounding contexts. When we use God’s Word as the definitive source to
diagnose our condition, the significance ascribed to our terms emerge
from and converge in what, who and where we put our trust. In a subtle
if not seductive process, the object of our trust influenced by the
workings of reductionism condenses distinctly into what become
unmistakable idols, to which we defer even as God is worshipped.
The consequence of putting our trust in these ambiguous idols by a
commonly considered innocuous shift, which in truth shifts from trusting
God and God’s terms, is unequivocal and inescapable: “Those who make
these idols and all who trust them shall become like them—that is,
reduced from the wholeness in who, what and how God created those
persons to be based only on the qualitative relational terms of God” (Ps
135:18).
When we acknowledge our idols garnering our trust, the
illusions and simulations shaping our condition in reduced identity and
function then no longer will shroud our condition in mystery. At that
vulnerable point, we are faced with the pivotal juncture: either (a) to
maintain our terms, which undeniably reflects the infection of
reductionism in our condition whereby our adaptations conjointly shape
the reinforcement and configure the sustainment of the human condition;
or (b) to return to God’s nonnegotiable terms in order to address our
condition of reductionism, treat its infection in order to be turned
around, so that our condition can be restored by God’s irreducible terms
for our transformation to wholeness. Even though God’s terms are
nonnegotiable and irreducible, God does not impose those qualitative
relational terms upon us to control us as objects in unilateral
relationship. Contrary tf misconceptions of God’s reign, God created
persons as subjects to be whole in reciprocal relationship
together, therefore, we are all given free will to make this pivotal
choice. And any lack of decisiveness indicates the choice we’ve made.
Transforming Our Endemic Condition
There has been much speculation about how life will change
after the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and that our condition will adapt
in a new normal and never be the same. Though this may become a reality,
such thinking needs to be awakened to the underlying reality of the
ongoing presence of the human condition. The prevailing human condition
pandemic constantly dominates by generating the composition of adaptive
changes (even by the fittest), such that any so-called change merely
extends the configuration of the human condition with variable shaping
by our human condition. What evolves is inevitable from how it evolves.
What is inseparably innate to the human condition is
reductionism. So, its infection of our identity and function is
inescapable and its pandemic is unequivocally immutable. What may appear
to be changes in our condition in reality are variable mutations of the
infection, which simply reflect our oft-subtle shaping that further
configures our infection of reductionism. In other words, our particular
shape and configuration to our condition are endemic to the human
condition in general. Therefore, the pandemic of our condition also
remains immutable—unchangeable, that is, unless all the reductionist
shaping that configure our identity and function are made vulnerable
according to God’s terms, in order to be transformed from inner out. We
will not change and really don’t change until constituted by the
redemptive change, in which the old in us distinctly dies so
that the new can rise in our identity and function with
wholeness.
This turn-around process is contingent on deep understanding
of our endemic condition, so that the pandemic of our human condition
can be truthfully and thus thoroughly addressed. This understanding has
been elusive even for Christians, many of whom assume being born again
has made them new together. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a statement
has been repeatedly echoed in our surrounding contexts: “We are all in
this together.” Certainly we are all affected by the pandemic, so it is
valid to say that we are all in this situation. However, there is no
valid basis to state that we all share in this together. Such a
claim can only be made when sharing in whatever together is a function
only of relationship; and no mere statement (even identified with love)
makes that relational involvement a reality. Anything less and any
substitutes for this relational involvement may associate us in
something together, but this associating should never be confused with
sharing in that together. The reality for most churches is a condition
operating in associating together rather than sharing in together—an
endemic condition magnified by wearing functional masks and amplified by
relational distancing.
Today, in fact, there are increasing rumblings evolving from
agitated persons stirred up for their personal rights—notably including
Christians protesting (even defiantly) for their right to physically
assemble in churches during social isolation—often under the assumption
of being oppressed by tyrannical policies. Clearly, these protests for
rights have been precipitated in spite (perhaps because) of our
situation together. Their emergence is not a function of relationship
together, but rather the misguided priority given to the individual at
the expense of not only public health but more deeply at the loss of the
primacy of relationship together as God created with nonnegotiable and
irreducible qualitative relational terms. What emerges from all this
instead distinctly points to what is endemic in our condition.
Freedom certainly does not function with oppression, yet the
exercise of individual rights can abuse freedom and result in one’s
tyranny for the sake of those rights. The apostle Paul chastened
Christians in their freedom in Christ: “For you were called to freedom,
brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to
exercise your human condition, but through the relational involvement of
love make primary sharing in relationship together over what would be
limited to your individual rights and thus only benefit yourself” (Gal
5:13, cf. 1 Cor 10:23-24). The individual person is not lost in
Christian freedom, but in the dynamic of this freedom’s reality the
person becomes vulnerable to be the whole of who, what and how the
person (not the individual) is in Christ—the whole of whom renders
the individual insignificant and without the value ascribed to it by
reductionism, which operates to elevate the individual to an idol.
Paul goes deeper by making definitive the process
constituting Christian freedom and its outcome for our identity and
function. The counterpart to freedom in human life is having individual
rights. Those rights, however, cannot give the individual the right to
do whatever they want, because that would result in an anarchy crumbling
freedom. Yet, the protests for rights during the COVID-19 pandemic make
the false assumption that the individual has the right to do what they
want. In this dynamic it is critical to understand: Whenever what we
want to do is defined and determined in any way by the bias from our
reduced identity and function, there are inevitable repercussions that
reverberate relationally and systemically in our surrounding contexts.
What this bias exposes ironically validates the statement
“We are all in this together.” What is validated is the endemic
condition common to the human context and normal in daily
human life: our enslavement in the human condition that controls how we
define our identity and determine our function. Indeed, like it or not,
we are all in this endemic condition together. And nothing validates
this more than reductionist ways we define our identity and determine
our function. This is demonstrated widely in the COVID-19 pandemic;
social distance and isolation have prevented most persons from engaging
in the normal function of their identity. This majority has been
constrained from operating in what they do in life, making
uncertain what they have for life, thereby relegating their
identity and function to further reductions in their value. This
constraining process mirrors the enslavement of persons constrained to
their reduced identity and function—the endemic condition preventing
their complete function in their full identity of wholeness.
Paul always discussed Christian freedom not in political,
economic, or mere social terms—although it certainly has deep
implications for them all—but rather directly in contrast to and
conflict with the endemic condition of enslavement that we are all in
together. Accordingly, the human condition in general and our human
condition specifically cannot be addressed without going to this depth.
Historically, as evidenced in recent protests, enslavement
has different connotations. Being enslaved by and thus to the human
condition has decreasingly occupied those thoughts and perceptions,
instead preoccupied by a distinct predisposition and bias of so-called
freedom. Any such freedom, however, can only be composed by falsehood or
be reported by fake news, as long as that freedom does not involve being
freed from the reductionism that defines our identity and determines our
function. Being freed, on the one hand, is not a complex process for
Paul; on the other hand, it is compounded by endemic conditions. Endemic
to all persons, peoples, tribes and nations throughout their history has
been the recurring cycle of an identity crisis. Entrenched in the
comparative process generated in human life based on an outer-in
criteria, no recourse has been achieved to resolve the depth and breadth
of consequences from its designed inequality inevitably constructed at
all levels of human life—recurring through time in one form or another.
Our human condition remains immutable without the essential
freedom distinguished in Christ, whose redemptive process by Christ was
defined by Paul for the experiential truth in our theology and the
relational reality in our practice. His integral fighting, both
against the reductionism endemic to the human condition and for
the uncommon gospel of wholeness embodied by the person of Jesus,
demonstrated the new normal for Paul’s theology and practice;
they were changed ever since his own identity and function were
transformed from reductionism to wholeness. Thus, the validity of Paul
as the definitive diagnostic source for the underlying pandemic in our
human condition is based on the experiential truth and relational
reality of his wholeness in relationship together with the uncommon
God.
Partially based on the personal experience of his previously
reduced identity and function—which distorted his theology and practice
in the common and normal of Jewish tradition (cf. Phil
3:4-7)—Paul diagnosed the functional mask (“veil”) worn by many of God’s
people, an endemic condition which prevented them from understanding the
wholeness of God’s qualitative relational terms (2 Cor 3:14-15). This
enslaved their identity and function in reduced terms from outer in,
from which God’s terms were distorted by their own terms shaping their
theology and practice; this is an endemic condition pervasive, if not
prevailing, among Christians and churches today. On the basis of this
pandemic and for the purpose of treating it, Paul then counters this
inescapable reality of enslavement with the only solution that gets to
the heart of the pandemic in order to change our human condition—the
transformation in antithesis to the fragmentary reforms shaped by our
terms:
“But [the antithetical conjunction] when one entrust one’s person from
inner out to the Lord Jesus, the functional mask of enslavement is
released. Now as the triune God, the Lord is One together with the
Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. The
significance of this freedom distinguishes the following change in our
condition: all of us who are now released from our functional masks of
enslavement to reductionism, and thus made vulnerable to reflect once
again the image of God in our person, are being transformed from inner
out back into the qualitative image and relational likeness of God,
constituted to be whole in relationship together just as Jesus and the
Spirit, along with the Father, are One” (2 Cor 3:16-18).
The transformation to wholeness in our identity and function
is the only process that not only changes us from our endemic condition
of enslavement, but that also distinguishes our identity and function
from what is common and normal in its endemic shape and
configuration. The common signifies the summary configuration of
all the variable shapes representing the normal, that is, the
common and normal encompassing the world of the human
condition. The Bible simply uses ‘the world’ as shorthand for the human
condition, and the common configuring the world is in direct
contrast and conflict with the holy God and God’s holy way; ‘holy’
signifies what is not common and apart from the ordinary or
normal, thus which unmistakably distinguishes the uncommon.
Therefore, God is uncommon in ontology and function, that is, not
of this world and thereby distinguished from its endemic condition.
Furthermore, the ongoing tension and conflict generated
between the uncommon and the common/normal persists in the
world, because God’s uncommon ontology and function are
incompatible with the common’s reduced identity/ontology and
function. Accordingly, any attempts to associate, integrate or conflate
them are incongruent. If the uncommon seems paranormal, that’s
because the common-normal bias persists in your identity and
function; and this predisposition will continue to bias your theology
and practice until it is confronted.
Consequently, Paul made it imperative for our identity and
function “not to be conformed to this world”—“conformed” (syschematizo)
to the same outer-in patterns—“but in contrast and conflict, be
transformed [metamorphoo] by the turn-around changes of your
person from inner out” (Rom 12:2). In his integral fight against
reductionism and for the gospel of wholeness, such conformity was always
incompatible, therefore the distinguishing dynamic of nonconformity was
never optional but imperative. Not surprisingly, this made Paul a source
to be scorned among his Jewish detractors and a source of contention
among Christians even to this present day (e.g. 2 Cor 10:8-10, cf. 2 Pet
3:15-16). With compatibility, however, those transformed from the human
condition are now also not of this world, whereby they likewise need to
be distinguished clearly uncommon in their identity and function,
always in ongoing contrast and conflict with the common and
normal endemic condition of the world.
At the same time, we need to understand that even as
turn-around changes are being worked on, any lapses in our involvement
in this transforming process will always render us to what is our
default mode in our endemic condition: reduced identity and function
in our person and relationships. Thus, we should never assume that
transformation will unfold without an ongoing relational involvement
with him who embodies our redemptive change to wholeness. “Follow my
whole person in the primacy of relationship together, and where I am,
there must you be also in ongoing relational involvement” (Jn 12:26).
The “Just as” Antibody
The infection of reductionism is tenacious in its pervasive
workings and prevailing control in human life; and its effects are
unforgiving on all affected. Thankfully, forgiveness is available for
those affected by this condition. But this solution has been misinformed
by half-truths composing a reduced salvation that centers merely on
being saved from sin, whereby misguided and misled Christians
have been disconnected from what we are saved integrally for and
to. Those disconnected have been guided and led by a gospel
shaped in effect by fake news. These often subtle distortions emerge
from the pervading counter-relational workings of reductionism, which
don’t outright deny Jesus but constrain Jesus’ person from his wholeness
both constituted in his trinitarian relationship together and
constituting our relationship together in likeness—what he saves us
for and to.
The whole gospel was embodied by Jesus’ whole person as the
antibody that counteracts the common in our identity and
the normal in our function, and that fights off this infection in
our theology and practice. In his formative family prayer (usually
considered his high priestly prayer, Jn 17), Jesus made imperative for
all his followers what is irreducible for their identity and
nonnegotiable for their function. As persons transformed from inner out
in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity, he
makes definitive that “they do not belong to the world, just as I do not
belong to the world” (17:14,16); therefore, “I pray and support them
because they need to be made uncommon and truly distinguished
from the common and normal as they live in the world”
(17:17-19). As the uncommon in the world—no longer conforming to
the common and normal—the identity and function of his
followers must continue to be irreducible and nonnegotiable, so that
they will be distinguished “uncommon in their persons from inner
out and whole in relationship together just as I am, just as we are One”
(integrating 17:11,14,16,21-22). “Just as” constitutes the qualitative
image and relational likeness of the Trinity that is essential to
distinguish our uncommon identity and function, that is, for
those no longer enslaved to the endemic condition of the world.
Therefore, “just as” counteracts the underlying pandemic in the human
condition today in order for it to be transformed.
The antibody constituted by Jesus’ person is not an
antiseptic substance that is not vulnerable to the human condition
pandemic, nor who does not experience the consequential effects of
reductionism’s infection. On the contrary, God the Son was embodied to
be exposed to the human condition, which he certainly experienced
consequentially even in his vulnerable involvement with his closest
disciples (Jn 14:9). God the Father didn’t spare the Son from the
consequences of the human condition but in truthful fact “sent me into
the world” (Jn 17:18) to bear the full impact of sin as reductionism, in
order to redeem enslavement to all the workings of reductionism so that
the redeemed would be transformed to wholeness. Exposure to this
infecting process wasn’t minimized by the Father, even during the Son’s
most vulnerable plea (Mt 26:36ff), consequently the Son wasn’t saved
from it or comforted during it (Mt 27:46). The incomparable relational
outcome of this paradoxical relational process is now the reality that
the embodied Word became the essential antibody to resist, fight, and
cure infection from reductionism. The Word, therefore, is the definitive
source essential for our growth and development in wholeness throughout
(not just initially) the human condition pandemic.
The path the Son experienced in the human condition is
analogous to the path that Jesus calls us to undertake in following him.
To “follow me where I am” (Jn 12:26) requires the integral relational
involvement both with Jesus’ person on his intrusive relational path
into the world (17:15-18), and also with the Father’s relational comfort
and protection during the human condition pandemic (17:11). Perhaps
you’ve wondered where God’s presence and action are during critical
situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, including in fragmenting
situations both personal and throughout the world in these divisive
times. Our focus commonly centers on situations when our person is
defined from outer in, especially revolving readily around situations of
difficulty for us. For the uncommon God, our situations may not
be unimportant, however, they are always secondary (as evidenced by the
Son’s), and thus they remain in lower priority to the primary: the
primacy of relationship together, in qualitative terms over quantitative
terms—what we are saved for and to. This unfolds for us as
a relational reality, however, only when the secondary is ongoingly
integrated into the primary; when integrated the secondary never takes
priority over the primary both for who, what and how God and we are.
In Jesus’ prayer, the relational outcome of the Father’s
comfort and protection throughout the human condition pandemic is
unmistakable: “so that they may be whole just as we are whole”
(17:11). “Just as” is the essential antibody irreplaceable to “follow
me” in the world without becoming “of the world” (17:14).
The lack of the antibody has left us susceptible to
infection. Sadly, the relational outcome of “just as” has eluded many
Christians and gatherings in churches during the human condition
pandemic. When diagnosed by the Word, our own condition readily reveals
that (1) our identity/ontology (who and what we are) has
yet to be defined clearly in the qualitative image of the uncommon
God, and that (2) our function (how we are) has yet to be
determined distinctly in the relational likeness of the Trinity—that is,
defined and determined by the qualitative relational dynamic of the
“just as” antibody.
When (perhaps if) the COVID-19 pandemic is over, masks will
come off and social distance/isolation will stop. These analogous
measures, however, are endemic in the human condition. Reductionism
shifts the person to outer in to define our identity primarily in
quantitative terms incompatible with our primary qualitative image, and
then determines our function accordingly in relational distance
incongruent to our inherent relational likeness. This reduced identity
and function of our endemic condition will not change and remain
conformed to the common and normal, that is to say, as
long as we do not change back to inner out “to let the world know that
you have sent me in qualitative relational terms and have loved my
followers just as you have loved me” (17:23).
As the Son prayed to the Father, the uncommon God’s
love is framed in the Trinity’s relational context and process, which
constitute this uncommon love in God’s whole ontology and
function. To maintain the integrity of God’s wholeness, who, what and
how God is is always irreducible; and the qualitative relational terms
composing the relational context and process of the Trinity’s love are
always nonnegotiable. When Christians think of God’s love, the most
common focus is to look at what God does for us. That’s why at times,
perhaps often, it seems like God maintains distance from us, because we
can’t see him doing anything for us. But, simply stated, this view of
God’s love is misinformed, distorted by our biases, and essentially
wrong; God’s ontology and function are reduced to the quantitative of
what God does based on common-izing who, what and how God should
be, all of which emerges when God’s qualitative relational terms for
love are renegotiated by our reduced terms.
However, the depth of significance necessary to understand
the uncommon God’s uncommon love focuses first and
foremost on the intimate depth of relational involvement God has
enacted, by which God connects with us in the primacy of relationship
together regardless of situations. Therefore, contrary to our common
shaping of God, the whole of who, what and how God is does not unfold
from ‘a situational God’ but only as ‘the relational God’.
Accordingly, this uncommon relational connection may not be
reflected in the things God does for us or gives to us, to which we
commonly give primacy based on our terms. In contrast and conflict,
Jesus constitutes his family only on God’s terms, however uncommon
they may seem to us.
With certainty for the present and confidence for the
future, Jesus’ formative family prayer is the undeniable source
definitive for his family of followers to be distinguished “in the
world” without compromising to the common. And the Word’s prayer
unfolds as the irreplaceable source prescriptive for his uncommon
family to prevent any infection by the normal “of the world.”
Therefore, the unavoidable pivotal decision keeps challenging us in our
identity and function during this pandemic. We are all in this world
together, and the decision is ours for who and what will
emerge from the effects of the human condition pandemic and for how
we will unfold from our human condition.
The uncommon God keeps pursuing us with “Where are
you?”—wanting us to know where we really are during this pandemic, not
in virtual terms but based on the experiential truth and relational
reality of the Word’s wholeness.
©2020 T. Dave Matsuo
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