The Period of High Creativity that Followed, 2000-2006

He wants to talk us through doing his will, instructing us every step of the way, as we learn to trust him. He is the one with the whole picture. Learning to hear his voice and trust him is the whole point of our friendship (the word "relationship" is entirely too sterile) with him on the present earth. This is what restores his image in us. Accomplishing his work is only a by-product.

But God’s course with my naive request for prophecy was, and is, not yet finished. After the trio of predictions in October 2001, God started in earnest to change my concept of prophecy. In fact, in prophecy, God is speaking forth his Word, applying it to his people exactly where they are. Prediction of the future is only a minor aspect of this work of God, despite the popular focus on prediction as “prophecy.” The essence of prophecy isn’t foretelling but forthtelling, providing an understanding of what God is doing, and this understanding will generally come from the Scriptures, his written Word, and will involve being able to understand–and sometimes, in a sense, visualize–the pattern of what he is doing in the world.

It was also in this 2000-2001 period that I started seeing one of the major patterns in my own life. I had known for some years that I often “saw” things differently than those around me. This was first brought fully to my attention during my sophomore year in college, through my lab partner in Organic Chemistry. Debbie was very intelligent–the last time I had any knowledge of what she was doing, she was a medical school professor. But, like most students in Organic Chemistry, she had trouble with the stereochemistry (i.e., how compounds and reaction processes are oriented in space) of some orientation-specific types of reactions. I had no trouble with this, because I could “see” the reactions occurring in my mind’s eye. However, when I tried to explain these reactions to Debbie using the pictures I was “seeing,” she was totally baffled, and I then came to realize that I was “seeing” things others couldn’t even imagine.

In general, I have always “seen” such broad pictures–whether they are pictures of chemical processes, pictures of the shape of the universe (it’s a truncated section of a fluted four-dimensional hypercone with a real time axis), or the shape of history. It was in 2001 that a psychiatrist gave me a name for this unusual way of seeing–it is an aspect of Asperger’s Disorder. That led to a period of questioning whether God had made a mistake with me. The answer to that question is “no,” God made no mistake. (In fact, he never does). He gave me a natural developmental “disorder” (by the world’s standards) that precisely fitted me for the work he had for me. All I needed to do was to submit to his control–this is his most consistent message to me. It has also been consistently my most difficult problem!

In describing prophecy, above, I qualified visualization as only “sometimes” and “in a sense” being a part of forthtelling God’s word, because of the common misconception that “visions” are at the center of the process. In fact, God’s contact with us always leads to conversation, not mental imagery, even when imagery is involved. God wants us to talk with him, to communicate with him as friends. That is actually his will for all of us. He doesn’t want to give us a “vision,” which we must then figure out (probably wrongly) how to bring into fruition. Instead, he is all around us–remember, the kingdom of the heavens, where he is king, is all around us–and inside us through his Holy Spirit. He wants to talk us through doing his will, instructing us every step of the way, as we learn to trust him. He is the one with the whole picture. Learning to hear his voice and trust him is the whole point of our friendship (the word “relationship” is entirely too sterile) with him on the present earth. This is what restores his image in us. Accomplishing his work is only a by-product.

I will discuss all of this much more, with plenty of citations, in future posts.

During the years 2001 to 2006, I wrote a great deal. I will now briefly summarize some of the more important pieces. Chronologically, one of the first articles was “A Call to Worship,” which is a reminder that worship is something we do with our lives at all times, not just an activity we do once a week or a musical genre. It is now included in the collection “Worship”, which includes articles on such topics as the nature of reality (it is what God says) and the true Sabbath (it is always Today), as well as articles by other writers. I also completed sets of articles I had previously started on the miraculous (including the gifts of the Holy Spirit) and on Christian outreach, which are indexed at the links just given (which also now include some articles by other contributors).

During this period I also completed my set of articles on politics, starting with “The Radical Rejection of Politics,” articles which are now, along with some contributions by others, now fully indexed at “The Politics of the World and God.” I should here clarify that, although one of my favorite authors, Jacques Ellul, called himself a “Christian anarchist,” I am not an anarchist. I believe governments have a very limited legitimate function, but that carrying out God’s redemptive work in the lives of individuals is never a part of that function. I work as a paralegal in a firm that does complex civil litigation, so the temptation is always present to look to politicians or the government to solve problems. As I work, I have to remember (and often forget!) that our role is to help maintain order by giving people and collective institutions an alternative to violent self-help; it is not to make people live like “Good Christians” (whatever that means) so that God will be pleased with us collectively. Though governments and our corporate institutions try to replace God, they cannot do so, a concept most thoroughly discussed in “The Towers of Babel Today.”

The elements of forthtelling and of seeing patterns in scripture and in the world became completely dominant when Lauston Stephens and I published a book, Our Oneness in Christ, in December 2006. The portions of Our Oneness in Christ that I wrote, except for my last chapter (Chapter 14), strictly draw two conclusions from Scripture (1) that all believers in Christ are in fact one Body, despite the divisions we create, and that our divisions only harm us and rob us of our effectiveness–they do not actually divide us into many separate bodies, because it is Christ who has made us one–and (2) that we will demonstrate this real unity to the world only as we, individually, submit to our true head, Jesus Christ. Chapter 14 then made some historical observations supporting the thesis, based on a broad view of secular and Church history (again, a matter of visualization of broad patterns), that all of the lasting visible divisions in the Body of Christ have arisen from neglecting the true Head of the Church to indulge in politics–though sometimes through internal Church politics, more often the through the interactions of church organizations with secular politics.

This period abruptly ended in 2006, due to interference from selfish ambition in another part of my life. For details, read the PDF attachment to this letter on Regulations.gov. Stated very briefly, I ignored what I had learned about government, and about trusting God, and went on an unsuccessful four-year crusade to use governmental mechanisms to solve a lingering financial problem and wound to my pride. The only good that came out of this attempt was a referral to Celebrate Recovery near the beginning of my crusade to start dealing with the problems generated by my untamed pride and anger at the “system.” That referral alone was worth the pain of those years.

I will discuss the slow resumption of my calling, after beginning to deal with pride, anger, and their consequences, in the next post.