Awestruck Podcast

Avant-Garde Duty

January 2, 2021 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality, Uncategorized Post Comment

What the modern cultural environment has required of us is an enormous extroversion of attention and energy for the purpose of reshaping the Earth into a global industrial economy. For two centuries we have been subordinating the planet and our deepest personal needs to that project. This great act of collective alienation…lies at the root of both the environmental crisis and individual neurosis. In some way, at some point, a change of direction, a therapeutic turning inward, had to take place within a culture as maniacally driven as ours has been by the need to achieve and conquer.Theodore Roszak 

These are bold words that call not just for simple regulatory nudges to facilitate moderate societal improvement. No, these words cry out for outright revolution that begs us wholeheartedly alter the trajectory of how we think and live.

There is a word in the New Testament that captures the essence of this kind of revolutionary call for change – internal change that then leads to corresponding external change. The word in Greek is metanoia. It means, literally, go beyond the mind or, alternatively, to think differently afterward. We translate this word in English as repent, which has the unfortunate connotation today of reducing this revolutionary change in thinking to a mere adjustment away from an isolated vice.

We explored the depths of this word as used by John the Baptizer in Episode 16, Beat the System, Part 1. Today, we’re going to explore Jesus’ choice to use it as his first word to launch his message to the world. And our focus will be on the destination of the revolutionary new trajectory to which he calls us: the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom is a radical concept. It was then. It is now. That’s why it requires a radical adjustment to thinking, A transformed quality of attention – or metanoia – to see it and enter it. It defies preconceived notions.  It offers everyone a chance to enter and experience it. And it’s unlike anything that exists on earth.

What is the kingdom? Let’s seek the answer together.

Source Scripture

Matthew 4:12-17Mark 1:14-15Luke 4:14-15John 4:43-45

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)

Beat the System, Part 1

August 29, 2020 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality Post Comment

Deprived of bread or the equal benefits of the commonwealth, the person shrivels. Obviously. And that is a clear line to fight on. But when the transcendent energies waste away, then too the person shrivels–though far less obviously. Their loss is suffered in privacy and bewildered silence; it is easily submerged in affluence, entertaining diversions, and adjustive therapy. Well fed and fashionably dressed, surrounded by every manner of mechanical convenience and with our credit rating in good order, we may even be ashamed to feel we have any problem at all. — Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends

Cultural norms often lure us into a trance where, like zombies, we seek only to feast on whatever life-giving forms are in reach. 

Left unchecked, our society at large and we individually can easily devolve into spiritual dystopia, where people move about and speak and huddle together in clusters of cultural confirmation bias, but in reality they are walking dead, greedily shoving each other in competition to consume. 

This is precisely the character at large of the culture in the first century when John the Baptist first began crying out in the wilderness. And I submit your you that it is also the character at large of the culture in which we now find ourselves.

But there is a way to beat the system…

Source Scripture

Breathing Underwater: Matthew 3:1-12, Mark 1:1-8, Luke 1:80; 3:1-18

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)