Everybody’s Feeling It: "The Big Shift" On Three Levels

I’m indebted to Harderwyk’s Executive Pastor Dr. Darwin Glassford for a metaphor that has stuck with me since a recent ministry staff retreat.  It’s helped me sort through “The Big Shift” going on in our world that I’ve been sensing at every turn.  The metaphor uses the ocean to organize different and changing influences on life and ministry at this moment.  Let’s start.

Picture the ocean.  That is like life.  It is the location for work, play, relationships and ministry.

Now picture three distinct types of disruption that affect life on the ocean:

• Surface Storms
• Sub-Surface Currents that operate “below-the-surface” but affect life on the surface
• Tectonic Shifts that occur at the very “foundation” of the ocean with long-term effects on everything.

Now, let’s develop these with examples.

Surface Storms – There are all sorts of storms – rain, wind, ice.  Hurricanes, typhoons.  They are real.  They can be big.  And they can make life as a sailor or fisherman difficult, even dangerous.

But these things pass and life gets back to “normal” – that is, to the status quo life on the surface “much-as-it-was.”

We are all always navigating a number of Surface Storms in our life.  Sometimes as a culture.  Sometimes as a nation or community.  Other times as a family or individual.

For concrete examples of Surface Storms, think:  COVID, elections, death of a spouse or family member, change of job, car breaking down, getting cut from the team.  Things that are real and need to be dealt with in life.  Sometimes dealing with them can be hard or take longer than for other events.  The key here is that once the “Storm” is passed your situation is much the same as it was before the storm.  Your resources, your relationships, the institutions – all the things that you would call “part-of-life” – are mostly still there.  The characters may have changed or an item in the setting may be missing, but the stage remains.

 

Sub-Surface Currents – Think about riptides or the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean.

You can stand on the shore and perhaps not notice them.  The sun is out.  The wind is refreshing.  Everything looks “the same.”

But go out on the water and things are different.  The riptide carries you out and away, even when you swim towards the shore.  The Gulf Stream brings warm water up the Eastern coast in a way that affects the local weather.

No matter what it looks like on the surface, these Sub-Surface Currents have real affect from below on the life of a sailor or fisherman.  If you are not actively resisting the current, you are being carried along to wherever it is going.

Looking around our life, it is easy to see that American culture is becoming increasingly “post-Christian.”  Moral questions are increasingly matters of personal preference.  “You do you” is how expressive individualism works out as a world view.  And it is a riptide that will carry you along where it is going.  A storm may end, but the Gulf Stream keeps dragging things northward with it.

Life is sunny for a season, but deep inside, the focus of your life is being carried away in ways that you may at first miss.  All you have to do is float along, but your location gets changed.

 

Tectonic Shifts - These deep, undersea events cause tsunamis halfway around the world.  Sailors are capsized.  Islands appear where there was only ocean before.  Just this week there was a volcano near the Pacific Island of Tonga.  Now there is a new island and waves were high near San Francisco.

Right now, our culture is being altered by deep and often unseen shifts far below the surface of our everyday lives.  A few people note the earthquake, but nobody expects the tsunami to hit shore thousands of miles away.

Carl Trueman’s recent book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self - Amazon Link - points to a Tectonic Shift in our time.  I recommend Being the Bad Guys by Stephen McAlpine - Amazon Link - as a helpful place to start when learning about this Tectonic Shift now affecting our world.  CLICK HERE for my blog post on that book or CLICK HERE for a recent Fear & Trembling Podcast that Harderwyk’s pastors did.  These are good resources to start with.

They helped me see more clearly that the growing acceptance of life lived with the “self” as the only measure of reality and rejecting any transcendent point of reference for understanding life is like a Tectonic Shift in the history of humanity. People have been selfish before, nothing new there, but never have they determined all of reality from internal, personal experience alone.  That change dramatically affects how selfishness works out.

Greek Mythology, Christianity and Islam for example, all point to different deities.  But those different deities, and the values they reveal, are all from "outside the system" of purely physical reality and human experience.  That is what I mean by "transcendent."  Once, people viewed life with a sense of something beyond physical life.  Now, we do not.  That is a Tectonic Shift.

It seems to me that we are now navigating major changes on the Surface, at the level of unseen Currents and from deep, Tectonic Shifts.  Frankly, I am of the conviction that there are significant changes on all three levels happening and interacting at the same time.  No wonder we’re all feeling overwhelmed of late.

My friend Darwin’s metaphor has given me a new way of thinking – and praying for – all sorts of situations that I face in ministry.  For example .  .  .

• It is a Surface Storm when a friend observes that their grandchildren are not being “raised in the church.”  That may well be a reflection of the Sub-Surface Current of identifying as “spiritual, but not religious.”  Even that current, may have been set in motion by the Tectonic Shift from thinking of God and faith as being revealed to us, to the current prevailing sense that spiritual truth is determined by each individual.

• Let me try another possible example: There may be a Storm this summer in our culture when Christian denominations address the question of human sexuality and same-sex marriage.  But below the surface is the growing Current of absolute sexual freedom of expression.  That current has been strengthened by the Tectonic Shift of sexual identity and desire being self-determined.

I am realizing that I spend much time with people navigating the “Storms of life” in the many forms they take.  I will keep doing that. Increasingly though, I’m seeing the need to help people recognize, identify, respond to and prepare for these Sub-Surface Currents and the deep-sea Tectonic Shifts. 

So now, to play out the metaphor to our current cultural moment, I would say:

While we have been busy trying to survive Hurricane COVID (Surface Storm) there has been an undersea earthquake (the rise of Philip Rieff’s “third culture) that has split the continents of Europe and North America (Tectonic Shift) and caused the Gulf Stream to now flow east to west (Undersea Currents of “post-Christian culture).

So am I anxious to be done with COVID?  Of course!  Do I think that will get us “back to normal”?  Not really.

Whew! Right now is a good time to take a deep breath and be reminded that we don’t need to bear all by ourselves the burden of sorting through these shifts and their impact on everyday life.  Jesus identifies Himself as the Good Shepherd who will care for and lead His flock as we listen to His voice.  (John 10:1-10)  He will speak through His written Word – the Bible, through His community – the Church and through the Spirit as we pray.  Our calling is to be faithful.  Listen.  Discern.  Obey.  Repent.  Repeat as needed.

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As with everything I post, I am happy to listen to your questions and responses.  I learn more by engaging with others – especially those who see things differently.  You’re invited to contact me through the office of Harderwyk Ministries.  We can talk, or perhaps sit down for coffee, but let’s go the next step together.  These are challenging times to navigate.