Analog vs. Digital: The Soren Hypothesis

Life is 'Analog'--not 'Digital'. Surviving and Thriving Depends on Coping With, Defending Against, and Gaining Victory Over--'Digitalization' by inappropriate Religiosity, Idealism, Institutionalism, Socialism, Culturalism, and Totalitarianinsm.

"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live."

Christ is perfection. "...in Him I live and move and have my being" ...in my human messiness and frailty.

In this hypothesis, Human Living--with its problems-of-living and problems-of-loving--is 'analog'--not 'digital'--in that life is 'messy'. Even though digitalized things are fun to read (a novel) or to watch (movies, TV sitcoms, anything with a beginning, middle, and end) one does not live in a novel, a film, a TV show, or a piece of fine art.

Yet, again, we enjoy a painstakingly-crafted sculpture, neatly-worded choral music, or a sermon (from behind a pulpit with three points and a poem), because prepared presentations are 'digital', and really must be so to be logically followed--whether or not in the Western European cultural tradition.

Yet ministry always emerges from life and from community. Folks would rather "see a sermon (analogously) rather than hear one (digitally)."

Christian ideals are 'digital' but the challenge a human seeker of God has in reaching toward these ideals (the daily grind, the lonely apartment, the dead-end job, the reality of aging and loss of function) is 'analog'.

A man tries this door, tries that one. One attempt is analogous to another--analogous-to-some-frame-of reference--or to a past attempt. And, perhaps a pattern is developed. A totem is set up. A taboo is legislated.

Or perhaps a well-intended-yet logical fallacy is inferred from a correllation ("Let's not take Henrietta to the party with us because every time we take her we have car trouble"). Ask any scientist or researcher, correlations and causes are not always neatly paired up.

But the fallable, "researching and developing" analogous human being sweats and struggles in relation to a standard or placement of the bar by biblical plumblines. political pontificators, or pulpit preachments--hoping to 'improve his engineering' some day, to better his 'batting average', or to make par.

Christ's exhortation "Be ye perfect" is analogous to serious 'research and development'--like not freaking out but just relaxing in the bottom of the boat with Jesus next time on the Sea of Galilee when the storm hits--like not denying Him next time. Like casting the recalcitrant devil out this time. Wholehearted devotion. Obediently following Him, taking up His cross--yet, so messily, in such frailness, even in times of human craziness--definitely not in the 'digitalized perfection' that only God can possess.

Analog: the Spirit vs. the Letter of the Law. The righteous person in Christ may well know not to 'touch the Ark'--yet Christ will liberate the 'analogous' human seeker of God and His truth from neurotic anxiety about eating the 'temple shewbread' or pulling his ox out of the ditch on the Sabbath.

The First Century Sadducean/Pharisaical obsessive-compulsive distortions of godliness were an impossible 'yoke', an iron grip of digitalization that neither they nor their religious-systemite 'frustrated-satisfier' victims could bear. Jesus, the Anointed One, the Second Person of the Godhead, Himself divinely perfect, broke into a fascist (Roman ruled) world, and Pharisee-bound world in which the cure's totalitarian (a toxic kind of digitalization to be sure) grid was worse than the disease. Both the paranoid and the obsessive-compulsive--attempts angrily (in a human and social-engineering sense) to digitalize people and digitalize life.

Attempts to (politically or religiously) 'digitalize' human beings minus the Messiah (even trying to moralize minus-the-Messiah) will always backfire, and produce iatrogenic (treatment-caused) problems. Study Judas' moralizing-minus-the-Messiah in his bleeding-heart-liberal-fretting over "the poor" in John chapter 12.

The disciples, for a while, had 'frozen expectations' wanting Jesus to be the Conquering King in their 'now' rather than the Suffering Servant which had to come first in prophecy. They frustrated themselves by pressing the wrong 'prophetic template' over their Savior's mission. He had to go to the Cross first.

"How have the mighty fallen." Perhaps a more proactive approach could be taken to prevent Christian leaders from falling from grace and/or to prevent their messy misconduct from terminally disillusioning their constituents.

This would be to teach the redeemed community the humble realities of human frailty, while cautioning pulpiteers and televangelists regarding excesses of Triumphalism, Entire (instantaneous) Sanctification, and the touting of grandious idealizations, pedestalizations, and an obsessive legalism that belongs only to paranoid psyches and social systems.

Was the Apostle Paul demonstrating this 'analog truth' to us when he confronted Peter or fussed about taking a fellow missionary along after the man had messed up?

What about when he struck out (Acts) initially toward Asia and 'hit the wall?' Paul thought he was supposed to go to Asia but was blocked.

His R&D continued with more dedicated lab work in the Spirit as he then headed toward Bithynia--again only to find his goal frustrated and his 'spiritual engineering' perhaps only slightly improved.

Then God upgraded his 'spiritual sonar and radar' (and included the vision of the man from Madedonia), giving Paul a very clear, graphic visual schematic--better mission-mapping.

Paul's 'analog faithfulness' (I Corinthians 4: "...It is required that a man be found faithful") resulted in improved 'spiritual engineering' and successful goal-attainment as he walked more and more sensitively "in the Spirit" (Romans 8:1).

The Analog Nature of Christian Realism. First Lydia was led to Christ, then on to Philippi to be hosted by being beaten up (an 'analog reception' to be sure) and then thrown in jail (another 'messy' illustration of what it can be like to be smack-dab in the middle of God's will, led by the Spirit's finely-tuned engineering--and with the Pneumatic copability of the Spirit to sing the 'song of the Lord' in a messy (analogous, ordered-chaos) place.

Would not an analog-like faithfulness in serving God function better as the Christian's modus operandi--than trying to find (as one writer puts it) "the mystical dot" of God's perfect will, or the "dot" of perfect, self-consciious and introspective holiness..?

Might the 'digital dot' (as too often may be preached) only exist in the mind of the obsessive or the legalist..?
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Copyright 2007 by Soren et al.