Is it just human to behave this way? To only say what we feel when there is a lesser chance that we will hear our own words?

Does this makes its way into our worship? Or is it rather, quite the other way around? Is our ability to show ourselves, and to even know ourselves, tied up in our love for God? Are we unable to speak truly of ourselves because we unwilling to speak truly of Him?

What do you say?

The word mundane comes from the Latin word mundis, and means of the world or earthly and by implication, it has come to mean boring, banal, and unexciting. And that’s significant, because mundane has another meaning as well, one that backtracks a bit and unwinds itself, a meaning that in some ways, diminishes the borders of the word, and in other ways, sets it up as a ruler over an incredibly populous kingdom. Intrigued? The word mundane means of the world, and before you say, “you just said that”, let me explain that it means of the world in the sense that it does not mean, of heaven.

Mundane is a border word. It is half of a dichotomy. It is a line drawn through the middle of our minds. It is a firmament. It is a kingdom. And like all great kingdoms, it does not allow dual-citizenship. Nor does its counterpart, for Heaven is the other kingdom, the other country that borders the mundane, the demesne whose edges begin where mundanity leaves off. And it is concerning the nature of this border that the lie consists.

You have heard the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, and if you are like me, you have believed it. You have more than likely also believed by implication, that mundanity is in the heart of the partaker. That what one man loves, another hates; what one finds joyous, another finds dull and uninteresting; what one says is glorious, another says that it has no glory in it at all. And while this seems true to our relativistic minds, it is ultimately a lie.

Heaven is like light and the mundane, like darkness, in that just as light does not begin where darkness fails, but quite the other way around, so does Heaven draw out the borders of its kingdom and then gives to mundanity what terrain it has refused. Don’t be fooled though, this doesn’t make the borders of the mundane any less real. Or to be more specific, when we declare what we find to be mundane or heavenly, we are not, as we are tempted to think, changing the borders of those great kingdoms, but we are instead, declaring where it is we dwell.

We see this sort of thinking throughout Scripture, here for instance:

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
(1 John 1:6-10)

And the mundane deception is no different. It is about the misidentification of the earthly with the heavenly. It is calling evil, good and it is what we begin to do when we grow weary in well doing. It is what C. S. Lewis spent so much time writing about. It is, I think, worth thinking about.

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
(1 Corinthians 15:45-50)

Perhaps you’ve heard the old bon mot, imagine a world without hypothetical situations. But let me suggest something: if you believe that the world from beginning to end has been ordained by the Words of God, and that nothing happens or exists outside of this ordination, then that is exactly the type of world that you live in.

When I talk to and debate theological issues with Arminians, and we discuss the nuts and bolts of salvation and God’s goodness and the history of the world, invariably someone will propose that we examine the world through the simplified lens of a hypothetical situation. And this is where things start to break down.

You are standing at a train switch and a train is hurtling down the track. Sitting astride the right-hand track is a car containing five children. Tied to the left-hand track is your wife. The switch is currently set so that the train will go to the right. You have only seconds to act before the train is past the switch. What do you do? (Also, how could a kind and loving God ordain such a situation to occur.)

A hypothetical situation demands that the author of the situation become God. A hypothetical situation gives the illusion of total knowledge. A hypothetical situation is at best a tool for examining the world, it is at worst a tool of self-deception. I don’t know if our predilection for hypothetical situations is a modern thing. For me, they fit quite well into my science fiction fueled concept of time. The idea that contained within the nexus of every decision there are a million possible outcomes, and that a million worlds spin into existence with every choice that we make.

Scripturally, this is hogwash.

If God is the God that He says He is, then within the nexus of every decision there is one possible outcome. This doesn’t mean that I get to know what that decision is, but it does mean that I can’t game the system by proposing unscriptural outcomes. What if something happened that was so evil, that God never received any glory from it? What if someone was about to be saved and a gunman burst into the church and shot them just before they made the choice? What if…?

If God is who He claims to be, then the universe is not one million possibilities, but instead, it is one complete thing, and it is designed from beginning to end, to bring glory to God. And lately, I can’t imagine it any other way.

This is a love story. There is a girl. There is a boy. It is traditional.
I should warn you though, you have already been lied to.

She is twenty-one and she is beautiful. This is necessary.
Eighteen is no good, it’s too young, twenty-five is a bit too old.
She could be twenty-three, and things would probably end the same,
but even then, she would be less than perfectly prepared for what will happen to her.

She is unnoticed.
I said that she is beautiful, and that is true. She is fairy tale beautiful.
She is pale and thin with soft dark eyes,
and her black hair falls in what a poet could not fail to call “raven tresses”.
How could she be so beautiful and go unnoticed, you ask? A good question.
Ask the city. Ask the world. Ask yourself.
There are girls more beautiful than she in your own town.

Her apartment is tiny. Her walls are white and bare.
She lives alone – no pets, no friends. She calls her mother once a week and leaves a message on her answering machine. Her father is dead.
She has not cried since she was ten.

She has one pleasure in her life. She reads. Classics mainly, but contemporary works as well. She goes to the library every day at lunch, and most days after work.
She sits in an empty alcove and reads until closing time. She goes home. She falls asleep with a book on her chest.

Her story begins here, written in flaming letters and spoken with a tongue of fire.

What happens next. Where goes the tale?
Ask the city. Ask the world. Ask yourself.
There are girls more beautiful than she in your own town.