Penduli (that’s the plural for pendulums) have fascinated Physicists for centuries. Apart from their particular usage for keeping time, their motion can help us understand the more complicated motion of things like universes…wierd huh. But recently I’ve found myself fascinated by penduli for another reason. That reason is the Church. See, just as a pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth, it seems that the Church is swinging from one extreme to the other throughout it’s history. Of course the issues change, the heresy develops and indeed the Church is constantly thinking up new things to do for a short time, only to then decide it’s abominable and swing completely the other way.
What am I talking about? Well can you think of a time in Church history that can’t be described in terms of what they were reacting against or what indeed they were doing that would lead others to soon react against them? A pendulum is almost always accelerating (no it doesn’t keep swinging faster until it reaches the speed of light, it’s just that deceleration doesn’t really exist. Buy me a white board and I’ll explain). There’s a force, called gravity which is almost always trying to pull it back to the centre. Only thing is by the time it’s swung to the centre from the crazy place that is the edge, all it’s momentum is pushing it away from the centre to another place that is equally as crazy, equally an edge.
Clear? Thought not. But let’s talk about the Church. There is always ’some big thing’ we have to react against and when we do, we never seem to settle in the middle, we always seem to lose it, pass through the middle for a short time and end up as far from centre as we started.
My question is this, “What is it that draws us back towards the centre, back to the truth?” “What is it that boots us out of the centre and back out to the cold, scary recesses of the ‘edge’?” “Is it important to realise that when we react we will most likely swing to far?” “How do we stop ourselves from merely waving at the centre as whiz on by?”
That’s a lot of questions and so far not very many answers. Your turn!
April 15, 2008 at 12:22 pm
are you sure the plural isn’t pendula?
anyway, it’s true that it does feel like we’re often just reacting to something else.
what brings us back to the centre? ask a sunday school kid – they’ll know the right answer – it’s the same one they always give.
what boots us out? probably people forgetting what brought them to the centre in the first place and generally forgetting to be reasonable and moderate.
is it important to realise we might swing too far? yes – and that might be the first step to not doing it?
i think a good example of how it could be done is new word alive which i was at last week – so it split from spring harvest mainly as a reaction of mr.chalke’s writings and that issue wasn’t hidden, the speakers were all open about that – piper, for example, made it really clear that he came to support the reaction and when he got to speaking about penal substitution, he made it clear that “this is why this conference exists” – but it certainly didn’t feel like a week of anti-chalke stuff with everyone quoting that infamous paragraph from his book (in fact i didn’t hear anyone quote it) or with every talk just about penal substitution. so that might be a good example of a sensible reaction.
April 15, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I dont have any answers probably, just an anecdote. My pastor at church has a big study bible in his office, on it is a small wooden cross (a page marker) and above is a pendulum which hangs dead centre over the Bible…it is there, he says, to remind him to be biblically balanced and not to go off on one extreme or the other….
December 28, 2008 at 9:03 am
[...] with us (actually we had more readers instantly some how), The most noticeable post was “Cursed Pendulum and the Ticking Clock” which wasn’t particularly interesting but is still ensnaring poor souls who search for [...]
March 13, 2009 at 6:16 pm
HEy,
Although this discussion is very dated, I like your observation. It’s a general principle that can be found anywhere. I have analysed the World Banks policy history and found that the Bank is constantly shifting its policies around a certain set of values, of which I have defined freedom, rightousness and care. Actually what we are talking about are reactionary movements. In the end I think that these shouldn’t be seen as movements around some equilibrium or centre, it are merely movements that express the idea of such a centre. This idea functions as the foundation for the reactionary movements that can be seen as expressions of peoples concerns with ‘the good’ as can be expressed in certain values. There is an extreme side to each movement but the movements in general can, i think, not be characterized as extreme or around the centre. The core of the movement is always close to the centre. As long as this is the case we can reasonably speak of ‘the church’ rather than a sect.
July 10, 2009 at 1:45 pm
[...] highest search term leading to theprognosis.org). No doubt searching for the band, instead finding my blog about how Church History is defined by our ’swing’ away from something. Were they impressed? Who [...]