old cartoon revisited: visionary veggies
This is a cartoon I posted here last year. It’s one of my favorites. I liken visionary thinking as pretty useless and sometimes even violent. I consider vision-casting as mostly a group exercise in futility. It is like putting the carrot in front of the horse to get it to go in your desired direction. I’ve been the one holding the stick. I relinquish that now. I’ve also been the one trying to attain that elusive carrot. It’s plastic. And once you’ve achieved it, if you ever do, you have to start all over again. Okay okay okay… for those of you who insist one cannot live without vision and that I do have a vision and won’t admit it… here’s my vision: my vision is to have no vision.
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I think you’re right David. Visionary thinking is, really, just corporate language nonsense that church leaderships use to feel like they’re going somewhere. Probably…
However, I also think it’s more complicated than that. Really, it’s a semantics issue I suppose. But having “vision” is different to “visionary thinking”. Seeing possibilities that are not currently being realised is a very helpful way of living (and of “leading” – if you see leading as “enabling”).
Seeing that there are problems that need solving, and not ignoring them is quite visionary. We need people like that in this world. So, I agree. Ditch the carrot, open your eyes and look around you – there’s more going on.
(thanks for the blog by the way. It is always a pleasure to read/view)
“But Moses, where are we going?”
“Well…nowhere, really.”
You seem to me to be “a person of unusually keen foresight”…hmmm..a visionary…. without a vision?
P.S Love the blog! (and the cartoons)
That is an accurate picture of much of Evangelicalism.
You just never seem to ‘arrive’ (get the carrot).
There is always something more for you to do. Another book to read, another program to sign up for, more tips to greater “spirituality”.
The forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus is just never enough.
God I so hate the religious cliches – that’s the biggest turnoff when it comes to going to a church or even mixing with Evangelical Christians.
In a letter from my pastor today,
‘We are particularly feeling that we need to press in for “breakthrough”.
‘pressing in’ is a term used a lot. I’m not at all sure what it means. There is this constant pressure though to strive which must wear out pastors if not the congregation.
All I think of when I read this post is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s statement “God hates visionary dreaming” and the odd silence that follows whenever someone says something to that effect…
I think people know that visions only frustrate people. In place of the vision, though, what should there be? In my humble opinion, a joy in the community you HAVE been blessed with should be there, along with discontent over those who are not part of Christ’s eternal kingdom yet and your desire to introduce them to Him.
Not a vision to get 500 people, but a DESIRE to further the kingdom.
Ramble over.
The church seems to be full of people looking for the next high. They get all excited about something happening thousands of miles away, like the ‘Toronto Blessing’ or the ‘Lakeland whatever’ (well they’re thousands of miles away from where I live) and some even fly out there as though god can’t be found where we are. Then you get peope ‘prophesying’ revival in whatever godforsaken backwater they happen to live in and it’s all just wishful thinking that diverts our attention from actually being the hands and heart of God in those places.
The law says, “do”
The gospel says “done”
It’s no wonder that so many in the church burn out. They are living on a steady diet of the law…what we should, ought, and must be doing.
The gospel says, He has done it all…FOR YOU.
Rest in Him, and live.
Hear, hear!
It’s all been done, but Jesus says, “Go!”
Fred,
Good point! That is really the one job that must be done!
But even then, He is the one doing the hard part. When He says “go, baptize and teach”, He will be the one that does the real baptizing, and He will be the one that enlightens.
i think the ability to just be is much harder than striving to or for some goal. you’re forced to deal with who you are, not who you want to be or percieved to be. goals or visions aren’t bad, just often used to mask…
does that make sense?
I’ve always found just being much easier, but other people don’t like me just being – they always want to be doing.
I think people want the excitement of thinking something amazing is going to happen. At my church they are all very excitable – especially the older women. I thought they were all on HRT.
So does anyone know what ‘pressing in’ means?
Tiggy, I Googled “‘pressing in’ define” and got some interesting results…a list of definitions for pressing, a website that speaks of “execution by crushing,” a blog seemingly created by Scott Adams, a blogpost entitled “What God cannot do?” and many more.
Try it; maybe you’ll find a definition of the term. At the very least, you’ll find some interesting things to read… ;^)
Tiggy…like in basketball,they say…’full court press’…I think?
FIF I have no idea what that means in basketball! Isn’t the ball in God’s court? Are we supposed to put pressure on Him?
Good idea TTM – though reading evangelical stuff makes me want to vomit.
Tiggy…”put pressure on Him” ….as in, pray harder you dummies
Like sports,the religious metaphors are often military ones…if the ‘pressing’ brings reward, then you might hear, ‘rest in the spoils of the battle’
That seems a bit confused – are we battling with God then? Why are they using basketball metaphors in Bath, UK where nobody could be expected to understand them? We don’t tend to use sporting metaphors here at all except for ‘It’s not cricket’ for it’s not fair behaviour.
I’m inclined to think it more likely a sexual metaphor as they are very fond of those at my church. I did ask my pastor on Facebook, but he’s a bit distracted as it’s his daughter’s wedding tomorrow.
You know….for a long time. I didn’t get this…
Now I do
Maybe Vision is not for the church….just for individuals who wish to change their world like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King or let’s give it to the business world to people like Bill Gates and Peter Dell….BUT for GOD’S sake, don’t let the Church have any. Just my Friday views…..
What dyou mean Laura? I’m not sure I get it. What’s wrong with having vision as long as one doesn’t claim it’s a dead cert. as so many people having ‘prophecies’ do.
There’s nothing wrong with having vision. I think it’s a good thing.
But…when the entire church exitists to serve one person’s vision. That’s not healthy imo.
For example, let’s say you have a guy that sees himself as a “church planter”. That’s all well and good until he decides to have a church of church planters. Then, everyone is trying to plant churches, there’s this competitive edge built into the thing and there seems to be no community because everyone is serving the vision of being a church planter.
To me the carrot on a stick then becomes…hey join us….I’lll help you start your own church too. Well that’s all well and good if you truly want to be a church planter. If not, you may be fully functioning within your God given gifts, but you’re never going to “fit in” or truly be someone that can function well within that particular group. Because the “vision” isn’t big enough. It’s too narrow and everyone is seen only as a means to an end, instead of accepted for themselves.
In many churhes there’s a great deal of pressure for everyone to be the same. A lot of places now, despite all that St. Paul said, expect everybody to speak in tongues and if you don’t then your faith is called in to question.
Someone whom I met recently asked me what level my faith was on. To which I replied, ‘I’m on Level 3 now.’ There is a constant movement at my church to get people into what they see as deeper and deeper levels of faith, but which really seems to depend on how suggestible and excitable you are. Do you fall over? Do you shake? Do you claim to have witnessed miracles? ‘Oh we saw someone’s leg grow’. NO, you saw someone straighten their spine out a little, just as it happens to me each time I have a Pilates session. How stupid is stupid and how much more stupidity can I put up with?
Hmmm, not exactly the kind of thing I was thinking really.
Yeah the Grace of God seems to require a lot of effort.
“Yeah the Grace of God seems to require a lot of effort.”
It shouldn’t.
It’s free, unmerited favor.
Too many people turn it into their personal religious project.
Very sad, indeed.
How free is free?
First you have to believe things in the way they want.
Then you have to relate to God in the way they want.
Then you have to worship in the way they want.
Then you have to behave the way they want.
Then you have to become the way they want.
“How free is free?”
Absolutely free.
Where I worship, we do not have to do anything. Grace is something that Christ gives to us. No human can put qualifications on it.
Well no one actually says anything. But if you don’t conform they soon notice and doubts are expressed, suspicions are raised. You only have to ask too many questions or admit you have trouble believing something or not show a sufficient degree of enthusiasm.
That’s too bad.
We are encouraged to question (at the pastor’s class) each Sunday. We are encouraged to be ourselves. We have lots of diversity of thought, of color, of economic status.
I feel sorry for churches that don’t do it this way.
It is a shame more people do not have the freedom that we have.
After all, it was for freedom that Christ died for us. (Gal.5:1)
We have lots of diversity of thought, of color, of economic status.
Of sexuality?
“Of sexuality?”
I’m sure of it. But, we don’t ask.
Most churches don’t, but they often talk about heterosexual relationships and marriages. Homosexual ones become taboo by the silence.
I was fostered and then adopted when I was little. This was never referred to and it came to feel like something taboo and wrong so I know what that feels like. It made ME feel taboo and wrong.
We focus on sin (to create the poverty of spirit), the lostness that we all have. The inability to live as God demands.
Everyone will (hopefully) be convicted by that Word of law…and then, when no one is left standing but Jesus. We hand Him over FREE of charge (nothing to do) to everyone.
Law/Gospel. That’s the paradigm that we use.
Everyone is treated exactly the same.
I see. Or as I prefer to call it, ‘The hope beyond our humanness’.
“Or as I prefer to call it, ‘The hope beyond our humanness’.”
That’s good!
Oh it’s not mine, the songwriter Paul Field wrote it in a song.
It is fitting.
Maybe I got more stick because I was young and female and asked too many difficult questions. Probably men are taken more seriously. Apparently I got a reputation among my university lecturers for asking difficult questions. One of them was even scared of me! I don’t think I asked DIFFICULT ones, so much as ones they’d not thought about.
When I was in my late teens to early twenties, I was quite attractive and that got me into trouble in churches and among Christians. I don’t think I even realised I was attractive then. I think it would have been okay if I’d been a pretty and mousy kind of girl, but I had opinions and wore the wrong kind of lipstick. Women didn’t like it if I spoke to their husbands. Wow, if I’d really been the temptress they thought I was, I’d have had a lot more fun in life!
People are a funny lot. An attractive, outspoken woman can be a real threat to some…and a real treat for others.
There sure are a lot of goofy people in churches!