Vanilla flavored Gospel and SandCastles

Vanilla is a complicated and wondrous spice. The process to cultivate this flavor is extremely complex and requires excellent precision and timing. The processes that are used to cultivate the vanilla properly are largely un-related to any other cultivation process. The uniqueness of Vanilla cultivation sets it apart from the rest of the spices and plants. On a recent visit to a spice plantation in India, the process was explained, while we stared down at this simple looking plant. Each procedure to procure the spice was almost totally unrelated to the process that preceded it until finally the vanilla plant produced its yield. Interestingly, the process seemed to involve steps that would have required thousands and thousands of experiments to discover. I have no idea how that was done, nonetheless all the steps are necessary.

In reflection upon this, I was brought to the eras of the Bible and how we transitioned from era to the next. From our perspective, the process of God's revelation in the Old Testament seems to have little to do with the culture or our time today. For example, when was the last time, an angel visited you to inform you that your neighboring city was going to be destroyed or when was the last time a prophet in your midst was told to lay on his side for months on end to communicate a message from God. Take the sacrificial system for instance. When was the last time that you sacrificed a goat as an offering to the Lord or brought a grain offering in and had it offered by a priest to God to show your love and devotion to God.

Theologians talk about continuity and discontinuity, but if we are honest, there is little continuity in the structure and rituals of the Old Testament with our faith expressions today. Yet, there is overarching narrative that ties our chapter to theirs, but it seems so unrelated in so many ways.

Vanilla theology is theology that recognizes that what we begin with is going to go through so many different phases, that require the same vigilance and timing and radical transitioning that is required for this process to actually yield the final goal. The movement from era to era, though so different culturally, is telling the same story and projecting the same narrative. What I think isn't so sure, is the claim of continuity. C'mon - the process of salvation and revelation is bizarre and at points seemingly unrelated to what came before.

There is continuity - that is obvious but the foundation for this post is to provoke us to also realize how much discontinuity is required between eras in order for the next era to come to fruition. The ability for the core values of our faith to transition from era to era, generation to generation or culture to culture may require less continuity (though some is necessary) than we think and a lot more discontinuity.

The success of a core value is not the maintenance of the edifices that are built around it, but the ability of those who build those edifices to transition the essentials of the core values from edifice to edifice without without transitioning the actual edifices.

In short, we are all building sand castles - but it is not the castle that matters, it is what we do, gain and learn each time we build a sand castle - anticipating that what we have learned will be transferred to tomorrow's day on the beach after the evening's tide has washed away our castle.

To yield the vanilla that we want from the plant that we begin with, we need to be okay with transitioning to completely different yielding methods. These methods maintain the core essence of vanilla while at the same time shedding the unnecessary elements that keep us from reaching the goal. What is the goal? - pure vanilla flavor, a flavor and fragrance that can only be released at its full potential once the plant has transitioned through these increasingly unrelated but absolutely necessary steps of procurement.

Our Gospel is growing and transitioning in much the same way and it is doing so through the ongoing study and evolution of Scriptural interpretation, through the maturing transitions of the Church - Christ's body and bride, and through God's common grace revelation and work in history.

So the need then is to be a lot more comfortable with discontinuity and less comfortable with continuity. Human nature does the opposite, but if we want the true essence of the Gospel, both as it is as well as what it is continually unveiling about itself over time, we will need to embrace discontinuity more than we lean on continuity. This does not eject what is supported in the Gospel by continuity, but it does communicate to us that our default setting - our conventional thinking towards how this works - may not be as valuable as we "conventionally" and naturally think it to be.  To produce the purest and most potent yield may require passionately avant-garde methods of transition, methods that not only challenge status quo but transform it into a new status quo, that also anticipates the need for future methods of transition.  What we need are more builders, not protectors, of our sand castles.