Ok so your back in the garden. You wake up in this amazing garden with this big dude standing over you, in his eye you see another dude and surrounding both of you is a spiritual presence that you both know feel and see, whilst you couldn’t describe it. You don’t know any different so you couldn’t describe it all as perfect. The temperature is irrelevant. The sun on your face isn’t great. But its also not a bad thing. Everything around you is luscious and life giving to the senses. Out of the corner of your eye stands a nude chick. You’ve never seen clothes so… nude isn’t a thing. Shes fun to look at but you have nothing to compare her too so there isn’t anything more beautiful or less beautiful she just is.

The big trinity dude talks to you a lot, you would describe it as perfect unity but you don’t know what that word is. Everything is just complete. Perfect. Like it is supposed to be.

There was no self interest, no offence, no rudeness, no impatience, no sarcasm, no theft or jealousy. Because there was no knowledge of any alternative. There was no knowledge of how faux liberating it is to get away with theft, or feeling the drug of superiority flash through your veins when you insult of cajole or belittle someone. There was no where to get quickly because there was no knowledge of time or a needed grasp of the concept of time is money.

Ignorance was bliss. There was no boredom because they didn’t know what that was. There was no death or disease of malnutrition or sleep depravation – because there was no need of convenience.

Fast forward almost 10,000 years and ignorance has changed its tune – it now sings a song of ridicule. If you know less, if you aren’t “in the know”, if you aren’t aware of current affairs you are ignorant. Or if you only hold to one world view, you are ignorant. This ignorance is one of mental weakness or laziness. The lead singer of Rage Against the Machine spits out “If ignorance is bliss then knock the smile off my face” – Possibly a reference to how his Marxism flavoured bands rhetoric had figured out capitalisms evil hold on the masses to be a fruit of ignorance. That they were not the torch bearers for the people to march on capital hill and demand to know everything.

Its an echo of something.

“You can eat anything…. Just not that”

I’m definitely not equating capitalist systems to God. I’m more highlighting humanities mistrust and penchant for wanting to know and hold things in our hands – which is where we derive a whole lot of our security.

But is ignorance suddenly in dirty clothes pile. Something we need to throw out or at least clean heavily?

Ignorance can be equated with naivety or innocence. What else is innocent?

CHILDREN.

What else is innocent? – THINGS THAT ARE NOT GUILTY.

But can one become ignorant after they are well versed in knowing?

How do we become like children?

B) OBEY

In the anti ignorant sentiment of Zach De La Rocha and his fellow revolutionaries they rebel against obeying a system they don’t agree with. A rebellion that permeates human history, from Eden to 2011 we refuse to obey anyone.

Ignorance in this manner is a belief that only I should make decisions, only I am built for the job only I am worthy. We distrust all others because they are inferior and we would have to humble ourselves to trust them.

Another dirty word – HUMBLE.

If we were created to be humble – the honest knowledge of who we are and what we have been made for, then humility is a part of our completion. If we have to be humbled to trust that God knows what we are doing we should celebrate.

AND – if obedience is a part of our celebration wouldn’t if be easier to obey if we were ignorant to any other way?

If there were no other option. If we grew up in paradise, only knowing paradise?

So how do we claw our way back to that?

Do we home school our children in weird cult-like complexes out in the dessert?

Do we stop going to school and let God teach us what he wants, when he wants?

And what of those of us who have already learned a lot. Do we need to unlearn things?

How easy is it for God to direct us to certain places when we know more?

How easy is it for God when we don’t second guess his voice?

And when our brain doesn’t give us four different options of how WE could fix everything?

How do we get more humble, more ignorant of the devils voice and more obedient?

C) LEARN

90 per cent of the reason we go to church is to learn from the preacher. There are a couple of books written recently on the history of the church that set out a history of where the sermon came from. Which has been fascinating to learn.

BUT

The community of God is a community that moves and breathes and sweats. Yet we spend most of our time together corporately listening to one guy up the front. Many of us don’t take anything in, deep enough to change any bits of our lives. Yet we keep doing the same thing week in week out – listen, not learn, not grow.

I once sat in a room with 7 relative strangers. Four of us told our story. Where we had come from up to that point, our victories, our failures. Each of us reported different themes in the 40 minutes we each took. My report took on the theme of problem with authority. I struggled with a lot of things but I felt that the day needed me to go deep into that aspect of my life. After I had finished the fatherly figure in the room took me into his arms and began to pray. The rest of the group surrounded me and began to pray.

The things that God started in me in that day have been some of the biggest change in my life to date. I never knew how deep my issues with authority went. It opened my eyes to the possibility of change but it also softened my heart, refreshed my spirit and began an amazing friendship with everyone in the room.

It was a hands on day, there were tears, and laughter and God was present in spades.

If ignorance is bliss could church be more a tangible time of prayer, healing, forgiveness and friendship making?

Outside of a speech for my Dad and probably an asthma attack when I was young I don’t remember ever being so passionate in church that I cried. I have learned more in books and conversation then 26 years of spending times in church.

This isn’t a comment on church communicators at all. My father was pastor of the church I grew up in for 19 years and I find him to be one of the greatest communicators I’ve ever met.

It is a comment on the whole shape of church. The big Why’s. Most of the time I feel like the whu of the sermon is because we have always done it or we are to uncreative to think up better ways or because even our secular education system is imprisoned in a similar one size fits all mass production type shape or could it be because we were never designed to be people of knowledge.

Did God try to keep us away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for a reason and now that we ate from it is he still calling us away from it?

We were designed for the tree of LIFE.

Where do you find life?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://wp.me/p1utPe-dy – gays but not the corrupt