Church Life

While on vacation in the Sierras a couple of weeks ago we connected with old friends we used to camp with in that area. The wife shared with us some pictures (one of which you can see above, and another further below) that she had taken on a trail we used to hike together. In fact, it was this trail over Potter’s Pass east of Huntington Lake that inspired the theme illustration I use in Finding Church. 

What if the church of Jesus Christ is more like wildflowers strewn across an alpine meadow than a walled garden with manicured hedges? Wouldn’t that change everything?

Maybe that’s why people get so frustrated trying to find his church, but they are looking at institutions, or home groups of like-minded people instead of simply loving the people God is bringing into their lives. The church Jesus is building is everywhere!  She is not a place or an institution; she is a real, living creation, and if we look for the people who express his reality around us, we’ll find his fingerprints at work.  The following is an adaptation from Finding Church. 

I realize such a seemingly amorphous view of the church will make many nervous, especially those who think it their God-given duty to manage a group of people on his behalf. The church takes her expression in relationships we have with others who are also following him—local friendships as well as international connections that he knits together.

We’ll first see it reflected in conversations where Jesus makes himself known. Some of those conversations will grow into more enduring friendships that become part of the fabric of our lives as we serve, encourage, and grow together. These friendships will lead to others, and out of that network of friends and friends of friends, God will have all the resources he needs to invite us to agreement in prayer and collaborative actions to fulfill his purposes around us.

Can it really be that simple? This is perhaps the greatest stumbling block to people seeing the church for who she really is. It’s too simple, they think, or too easy. So, they put their trust in the vast array of discordant institutions instead of the present work of Jesus. As we’ll see, finding those connections is difficult only because it is far easier than we dare to believe. In fact, you probably have those growing connections with people, even in the congregation you attend or have attended. I’m only suggesting that your interaction with them expresses more freely the life of the church than sitting in a pew watching the staged activity up front.

Admittedly this discussion about church is not easy to have. Most people want simple, clear answers to heavily nuanced realities. It would be easier to say that all religious institutions are bad, and smaller, more informal groups are good, except that it isn’t true. If we just had an organization that represented the one, true church led by the right people then we would know who is in and who is out, except that every group who has ever tried it has ended up arrogant and abusive in trying to keep it pure.

So, we are going to have to make a distinction in our minds between the church that humanity has attempted to build for two thousand years, and the community of the new creation that Jesus is building. They are not the same, though they can gloriously overlap on occasion. It’s just that our conformity-based structures cannot produce the internal transformation necessary for his church to take shape among us.

And as much as we have to see how our congregational doctrines, rituals, and structures can fail us, I’m not saying they are evil. This isn’t a matter of whether these are good or bad, but how we use them. If they enhance our growing relationship with God, great! It’s when they become a substitute for the relationship we lack that they are problematic.

I agree with the theology of the historic creeds and reading them inspires me. It is not our mental assent that’s important, however, but living inside the truth they espouse. Likewise, ritual can open our hearts into a wider world and help us reflect on him, or it can become meaningless repetition that only makes us feel more distant from the Living God. I’m not against structure, which is incredibly valuable whenever it gives shape to what Jesus is doing among a group of people. Everything I do has structure, from the books I publish, to the travel I arrange, to our work in Africa with orphans and widows. Structure is essential to coordinate people to accomplish specific tasks, but history shows us that no group structure can successfully reflect the life of Jesus’ church for very long. It happens subtly but, over time, people end up serving the structure. They become dependent on it, instead of following him.

In the end, however, no creed, ritual, or structure can contain the church Jesus is building. And strangely enough, neither do any of those things exclude the possibility of his church taking shape among them. Because the church finds expression wherever people are learning to live alongside Jesus in the new creation, it can appear almost anywhere at any moment.

The church isn’t something we can plant or build; we can only recognize it and make room in our hearts when she appears.

This book contains everything I believe about the church Jesus is building. I hope it is helping people get their eyes off the failed attempts of humanity’s doing, and see how Jesus is marvelously putting his church together through the interconnected friendships of people who are growing to know him. Whether or not that ever coalesces into a weekly meeting isn’t what’s important. It’s learning to be loved and to love others the same way. He has everything he needs to bring that family into fullness and life. It’s always been his job, not ours. And, I don’t have to participate in anything that is morally broken, condemning, or bound to obligation just because others call it “a church.”

I love being able to celebrate her reality wherever she takes shape around me, and I find her more breathtaking than any wildflower vista, whether it be in a conversation, a growing friendship, or a weekly gathering of people wanting to follow him.  Our task is only to recognize her when she’s there, and cooperate with his working however he may ask us to do so. There we will find community enough, mission enough, and discipleship enough!

You can get Finding Church in print, e-book or audio. For those who want the printed version for yourself or to give away to others, we are selling them from now through the month of September at a 25% discount ($7.99 per book, plus shipping).  For international destinations, please email our office for a price quote, since the online calculator is often wrong.

This weekend I get to wander in his meadow in western Canada (Calgary, AB and Kelowna, BC) to  see how his church is taking shape among people there.  I’m looking forward to it.

Sometimes, somewhere beyond the cosmos, our Father must look over at Jesus and with a big smile on his face say, “Watch this…”

This might be one of those times.

I’ve had an email correspondence over the last few days with a woman in Australia that has brought more than a few smiles to my heart. I love how the Spirit works, especially when we’re a bit clueless to what he is doing. This is the story she shared with me, pieced together from a few emails.  I love how the Spirit just keeps knitting his family together even in very unexpected ways.

I first bought your book So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore for my eldest son of six children when he was not wanting to go to church as a late teenager. I gave it to him to encourage him back into the fold, without actually even looking through the book to see what it was about.

He read it and said “Mum, did you even read this book? I don’t think it says what you thought it might say.”

So, I read it for myself, and laughed, and thought you were a bit misled. Fast forward a few years and I was in a totally different place in my relationship with God and re-read it after some friends had just read it and loved it. Then I “got” it. My youngest three (by now teenagers) were not wanting to go to church anymore as well.

For a whole bunch of reasons, including considering my children – we left the institution ourselves. I said to the pastor at the time “I fear for my children if I stay and I fear for my children if I go” My fear was that if I stayed, they would just think this is what Christianity looked like and eventually reject it altogether as too boring.  I knew there was so much more. My fear in leaving was the unknown, and the worry that we were making a big mistake that would have consequences in my children’s lives. They were being homeschooled and church was a source of socialisation. But it was a lonely place for them even in the midst of church  and for me too) as there were really no other young people there for friendship anyway. It certainly has been an interesting journey and this is by far the short version. It has not been a mistake.

In May last year, my husband and I were taking a trip with some friends to the centre of Australia and had to take a huge detour because of floods. This meant we called in on some acquaintances who run an art gallery and they sent us on our way with CDs of your Transitions teaching. My, the lengths God goes to sometimes! My husband doesn’t normally listen to CD’s but because we were travelling long distances, he had nothing better to do. The teaching really spoke to him in a life changing way. I keep listening to them over and over – so much good stuff in there and I just want to absorb it all into my spirit. I have since passed them on to someone else.

I would never have imagined myself in the place I am in now. I have grown up going to church every week and we have always been very involved and busy with the various programs. But that was another aspect of  us leaving – in many ways I felt like I had hidden myself from the world in the church. I was so busy with the church, I didn’t have time or energy to invest anywhere else. I gradually got myself out of all the rosters and then joined the local soccer club committee as my children have all played over the last 20 years, and my youngest son still plays. I considered that I had spent so many years serving God in the church, now I was serving Him outside of the church and it gave me an opportunity to get to know and  love some other people in the community. A friend once asked me, who gets to benefit from your gifting if you are in church?  Interestingly, I feel like I’m actually using my spiritual gifts as the secretary there.

We attended a wedding last weekend and a friend of the bride was asked to share a short address during the wedding. As I listened to him speak about the most important thing the bride and groom, and all of us, need is to know how loved we are by our Father God and to then just love others. I recognised a fellow pilgrim on the journey. I had never met this man before but my husband and I were able to sit with him and his wife during the reception. I began to sus him out and when he confessed that he”actually doesn’t attend church anymore”, I said ‘welcome to the club”. When I asked him for his story, he just said “Well, you know Jake don’t you?”  Indeed I do!

My husband said later, “We just keep running into these people…”  God is definitely up to something!

The journey continues but thank you so much for allowing God to take you on the journey and then share it with others.

Do you hear the click of his knitting needles as the Spirit brings Jesus’ church together in the world?

The quote below was written by a Jewish rabbi and theologian in 1955—thats two years after I was born.  And yet, this process has continued, not just for Judaism, but also for Western Christianity.

I hear complaints all the time about the decline of Christian influence in the societies of western culture. by Christians who blame it on increased secularism, the agenda of cultural elites, and the distortion of media for its losses, but we really need look no further than a mirror that reflects how we’ve taken the wonder of the Gospel and reduced it to another human-engineered religion.

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.

Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

The Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be consigned to a creed, a discipline, or a habit; it is a real relationship with the Living God and when it loses that, it has nothing left to offer those around it.  As G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1910, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” (What’s Wrong with the World)

When I read voices from the past challenging the irrelevance of our faith so clearly, I am amazed they had no impact. These are not obscure quotes. They are very well known, but nonetheless ignored, and the wonder of the Gospel is even more obscured in our culture today, far more by the emptiness of our religious structures than anything the world has done.

What the world needs to see is not more religion, but a people won into the love of a gracious Father, learning to walk alongside him in the unfolding circumstances of life, and being so transformed over time that in word and character they are gracious and compassionate to all, with no need to manipulate those around them, forgiving when wronged, aware of the needs of others and willing to lay down their lives for the good of another.

That’s the kingdom Jesus foresaw and its one most of the people in our day have yet to see.

Brad Cummings, a co-writer on the book and producer on the film just put out this information:

THE SHACK MOVIE crossed the $50M mark on Tuesday and it continues in wide release, so that’s fantastic. And it’s set to be released in BRAZIL April 6th–where the has sold some 5+ Million copies. Octavia Spencer is down there on a press tour and is being incredibly well received. Pray for the impact it can have on that nation, and many others!

It’s already been released in: ISRAEL, JORDAN, IRAQ, LEBANON, EGYPT, VIETNAM, The PHILIPPINES, LATVIA, POLAND, ARUBA, CURACAO, the WEST INDIES, and SURINAME.

This next week begins some of the global roll-out:

3/30/17 in GREECE
4/6/17 BRAZIL, GERMANY, SWITZERLAND, ARGENTINA, CHILE, COLUMBIA, COSTA RICA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, HONDURAS, NICARAGUA, PANAMA, PERU, SINGAPORE
4/7/17 AUSTRIA, TURKEY, MEXICO,
4/13/17 URUGUAY, SLOVAK REPUBLIC
4/14/17 ECUADOR, VENEZUELA
4/20/17 PORTUGAL, THAILAND, BOLIVIA
4/26/17 SOUTH AFRICA
4/28/17 BULGARIA
5/13/17 JAPAN
6/9/17 UK
6/16/17 SPAIN

If your country isn’t on this list, I don’t not have more information at this point. Be patient. It will get to you eventually. I have no idea how these decisions are made or why it gets to one country before another.

But I do hope you all get to see it at some point, and multiple times, too. I’ve seen it 13 times and continue to pick up new insights as familiar as I am with the story.

Sara and I are just winding up a beautiful vacation in the Sierras, and that included an extended weekend where our family was able to join us, as well as a few others who often hang out with us when we get together. Our last meal was pizza on the deck and looking around at those who sat around my table that night and listening to the laughter and expressions of love for each other, I was overwhelmed with gratefulness for the people God has surrounded my life with in these days. I love them all so much and am blessed by any time we get to share life together.

When family life is good, it is very good. It encompasses people of all ages that have lifelong connections, however long that life has been. It was only five years for my grandson and so many more for my ninety-one year-old dad. Many of us spent as long as a week together without any of the drama so many families experience. We lived together, cooked together, cleaned up together, and played together with everyone pitching in to help and no hurt feelings or people pushed to do what they don’t want to do. It was free-flowing, enriching, and loads of fun. Life in a family like that is so renewing, of course the primary image used to describe the church in the New Testament is of a healthy family under the most amazing Father in the universe.

At the same time I am well aware that this isn’t every family’s experience. Sara and I have both had some challenges in our extended families over the years that made such gatherings awkward and at times even painful. In addition my email is filled with people who are suffering from the pain of dysfunctional families—with absent or uninvolved parents, manipulative siblings, and constant expectations and hurt feelings no one can satisfy. When family is good it is very good, and when it is painful it is incredibly painful.

Whatever your experience with family, painful or not, we all have a better family we belong to. Jesus is building his church out of people who are learning to live in the love of his Father, so they can share it freely with others. You’ll notice it taking shape around you when you meet people who don’t hold expectations for you or seek to manipulate you to their own ends. They love others as freely as they have been loved by God, and look to share their lives in helping care for others around them. If you don’t know people like that, let God make you a person like that. Only those extravagantly loved can love with extravagance. Learn to live in that reality and you won’t need to use others to meet your own needs. Then we can uncover the glorious treasure that other people are around us, even at their most broken, and find ourselves in a family as full of care, love and joy as the most healthy family on the planet.

And if you have family life like that, keep an eye out for others who could benefit being involved with yours and invite them to join you. There is no greater environment to discover God’s love and for people to relax into his life than a family that knows how to love, laugh, and celebrate God’a life together.

Some other notes of interest:

This coming Thursday, August 18, Sara and I will be gathering with brothers and sisters just down the mountain where we’ve been staying. We’ll meet at a private home in Clovis, CA. If you want details you can get them from our travel page. Just email Amy to RSVP and get details for location. We would love to have you join us.

Also, I was recently interviewed for The Love Cast, a podcast hosted by a friend of mine, Jamal Jivanjee, who has an interesting journey of his own paying quite a price to help encourage the church Jesus is building in the world. We talked about my journey of learning to live loved. Our conversation is Episode 8. We finish the conversation in a second part that will appear next week as Episode 9.

If there are words Jesus spoke that we have ignored more in Western Christianity than Matthew 23, I would have no idea what they would be.  Every day in almost every Christian institution we live as if he never said these words or at least didn’t mean them.

Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’

Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. 

Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.  

Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.  (Matthew 23:4-12 The Message)

Can you imagine what the church of Jesus Christ would like like in the world today if we had just followed these incredibly simple instructions? But we didn’t and instead created another religious system that exists as if Jesus was never here and if he didn’t die on a cross to change the entire relationship between shame-based humanity and the Father who loves us. Our institutions today and those who seek to lead them still violate all that Jesus warned the leaders about in his day not to do.

We still package the life of Jesus as a set of rules and expectations and demand people conform. Our so-called religious leaders still fight for celebrity, take the place of priority among the family, and encourage other people to be dependent on them rather than God himself.  We create an endless set of titles to  maintain the illusion that those who want to lead us are not simply brothers and sisters in a growing family.  And our failure to heed Jesus’s words not only horribly disfigures the bride of Christ but it also keeps people from finding the courage and freedom to find their life in him and to follow him as he leads them!

And it isn’t just the fault of those who set themselves up as experts in the life of Jesus, but those who seek out such experts to tell them what to do, rather than to learn to listen to and follow Jesus as he makes himself known to them.

And your expert doesn’t have to be a pastor, it can also be a popular speaker, author, or podcaster.  There are no experts, only brothers and sisters who serve you well only to the degree that they encourage your own relationship with the Father, rather than make you increasingly dependent on themselves. And those who seek the spotlight don’t really have a clue who he is.

Do you realize all that has been twisted in our Christian institutions would unravel if we only followed the simple things Jesus told us to do?

Why don’t we?

Yesterday, I published a new audio at FindingChurch.com called My Hope for His Church. (If you missed it, you might sing up for updated on that website. We are about to launch a book discussion of Finding Church and will be anchoring it there.)

It includes a twenty-three minute audio clip drawn from my opening comments to a group of people who gathered in London last month.  This is best recorded statement I have about my heart for the church Jesus is building and how I view her taking shape in the world.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the amount of response I’ve already gotten to this brief clip and want to make sure people on this blog don’t miss it.

Some of the thoughts included there:

• Let’s use the term “church” only the way God is uses it—as an endearing term for the family he is shaping in the world. He calls her a bride for his Son, prepared for his Son and his hope in her is that she will demonstrate the character and wisdom of God not only to the world, but the spiritual principalities and powers that underlie it. A people living in love will topple the powers that hold humanity captive.
• There are two churches in the world, the one that humanity is building in its own image, and the one Jesus is building in his. Sometimes those realities can overlap, but not always.
• Our institutions are often more preoccupied with their own needs and managing political power instead of helping people learn to live loved.
• The church is not something humanity can build; it is the fruit of a new creation where people learn to live in the reality of his love and share it freely with others.
• When our preoccupation is on the church instead of Jesus, we’ll see less of his church and less of him. The bride’s focus need to be on the groom, because the groom’s focus is on the bride.

During my recent trip to the UK, I was asked to join Tim Nash and Dave Ward on their Nomad Podcast, to discuss Finding Church. I had just arrived in Coventry, England only way from Scotland to Wales.  We borrowed a friend’s office as we sat down to discuss the church Jesus is building. They had some great questions and the engagement was generous and passionate as we discussed the difference between the church Jesus is building and the one humanity has been trying to build for him. I can’t imagine a better summary of how I hope Finding Church encourages and equips other followers of Christ. 

The podcast is titled, What Sort of Church Is Jesus Building?  You can click on the link at left to stream it or use this one to download. It is an hour and 15 minutes long, and the interview begins at the 6:10 mark.

It was posted yesterday and already a friend from Springfield, MO, heard it and wrote me this note:

Absolutely enjoyed your interview/podcast with Nomad. I listened today and will definitely listen again with my husband! Seriously, they asked you every question we’ve all been asked at one time or another as we’re on this journey! Your answers were heartfelt and spot on! Thank you for being such a great representative for those of us on this journey.  I loved it!

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

It’s an amazing moment when a butterfly hatches from her chrysalis, flexes her wings until they dry, and then takes flight discovering what it is like to be a butterfly instead of a caterpillar.  We get to enjoy this little miracle in Sara’s garden almost every year. But it never happens at the same place twice.

Sometime next month thousands of people are set to gather in a stadium in Southern California on the 110th Anniversary of the beginning of the Azusa Street Revival in hopes of gathering 100,000 people to   call down a great, last-day revival.  This is only the most recent of numerous attempts to get God to act, all driven by “words from the Lord” and interpretations of dreams in hopes that some day “stadium Christianity” will take over the world where gatherings of Christians will replace sports contests in our largest stadiums.

Everywhere I’ve gone on this trip I’ve been asked what I make of all this and if I’m involved.  I’m not. Honestly, I don’t find the prospect very engaging for a number of reasons. Jesus seemed to want us to make prayer a private matter not a public display. He seemed to indicate that praying with 100,000 people has no more power than two or three agreeing in his name.  I also find it strange that the 110th (really, not 100th?) anniversary of a past moment of God’s visitation would be significant to God in any way.  I also find a large crowd of people trying to “call down” revival seems more reminiscent of Baal’s prophets trying to call down their false god, rather than Elijah’s simple proclamation that God simply make himself known as the one, true God. (I Kings 18)

Jesus never indicated that praying in large gatherings would usher in a world-wide revival. He said that when we were loved enough by him to love others in the same way the whole world would come to know who he is. That’s where I want to invest my time and attention.

Thus I am not looking for some great revival as just another “event” that will have it’s day in the sun then fade away like all the others. In fact, I see revival happening all over the world right now.  I see spiritual hunger emerging and tens of thousands of people that I know, opening to God in a fresh way, learning to live in his love and share it with others freely.  Something amazing is already happening that is not controlled or promoted by humanity and yet is filled with the richness of the Living Jesus. I find that much more engaging.  So, no, I’m not involved nor do I have any hope that this event just won’t be another in a long line of prayer meetings, summits, and rallies that smell more of human effort than the fresh wind of the Spirit.

Of course, I could be wrong about this. God might actually be leading them and something significant will happen that day. I’ll be the first to apologize if I’m wrong, but I’ve never seen this kind of thing fulfill the promises of its organizers. It may feel spectacular while people are there, but they will go back to their homes and wonder what it was all about. This is not the way God seems to work.  And by that I am not casting aspersions on the hopes or motives of those who feel inclined to plan or attend these events. For the most part I know them to be well-intentioned people who sincerely want God to do something in our day.  But I am not hopeful that this is the means to the end that they want, or even that the revival they are looking for is very different from what he is already doing in the world to draw people to himself without named celebrities on the stage.

I don’t chase these things around any more than I hang out beside a spent chrysalis hoping another butterfly will emerge. Life happened there once and it will not do so again. When another butterfly hatches it will come from another place, at another time.

Maybe our traditions are simply hanging around old places where God worked once, hoping he will work there again rather than following him to see what he is doing now. How much energy and effort is wasted by those who hope God will do something he did once again and again in the same way and come away disappointed and disillusioned when their efforts bear little fruit?

Maybe God has moved on and life is happening somewhere else. Because, as Jesus said, “My Father is always working.”

Maybe we’re just looking in the wrong place.

It was one of the most exruciating “worship services” I’ve ever endured. As part of the conference I attended last week we were subjected to an experience that was put together by a worship design studio, whatever the wacky thing that is. There was singing, talk of God, and even communion. It was supposed to show the conference new and innovative ways of “worship” and I’ll admit that everyone around me seemed to be enjouying it. At least they were participating, but so was I. Unfortunately it never allowed any of us sustained engaement with God. We were constantly being interrupted to do little worship activities that seemed more suited for a five-year old. No, it wasn’t childlike, it seemed childish, and incredibly tedious.  

How far out of the box have I wandered? 

They started the service with asking us to write a six-word definition of worship. I know they were meaning “worship” as a service, but I see “worship” as a lifestlye, so I wrote, “Our lives lived in loving engagement.”  It’s not what we say or sing to God it’s how we live in him and share his love with others around us.  At the end of our ninety minute experience, however, I crossed out my original definition, to write what I had just experienced:   “Groping for reality in contrived illusions.”

And I wrote it with sorrow.  There were hungry hearts all over the room, people really wanting to connect with God, and instead of being given that opportunity they were put through a host of excercies and instructions and told this was their connection to God. I thnk many of them believed it and I honestly wanted to cry. Has our engagement wiht God become so abstract that we need activities to keep us amused or an ever-shifting set of exepriences to keep us from getting board.  I find wherever God makes himself known and people are genuine and authentic, that is more than enough to keep people’s interest.  

Yes, there were moments I could lean into God and have some time with him, but it would soon be interrupted with our time to lament, or to focus on our brokenness.  It got so I hated to hear the voice in the microphone offering me yet another thing to do. 

When it was over I turned to the person next to me who used to be a worship leader before they became a “done.”  I showed them my new definition of worship and they laught heartily with a knowing nod. And then she leaned over to me and whispered, “Once you take things out of the box, it’s impossible to get them back in again.”

It was my turn to smile.  True as true can be!  

I remember groping from reality in so many contrived and artifical settings. Yes there were moments God made himself known, but many more that were repetitive,  boring, and seemed to require a high degree of pretense to make it work. It’s better to take the things out of the box and find out what is real that invites us inside his reality and which are human engineered exercises to make us only think it is happening.  

But beware. Once you take them out, you may not be able to get them back in.  But you won’t regret it!