In 2 Kings 5 (also referred to in Luke 4), we have the example of Naaman. His flesh would have generated symbols perhaps against the idea of being spontaneously healed of this hideous disease. But he is to learn that if he trusts God he has a preferred relationship to the world situation. That world situation was leprosy. It takes more energy to do what is asked of him, than to set at home. He goes to visit the prophet. Initially, he has a little trouble digesting what the Lord instructs him through the prophet, but he is healed because those who trust God have a preferred relationship to the world situation. This must be true. But it is temporally extravagant to believe this.

We do not reach conclusions built on temporal conservatism because that is derived within the world situation itself. It is a property we might say of the world situation. It’s a property of human rationality. But this is not the way we want to think. We are not crazy when we are extravagant about this. We cannot take faith and connect it or conjugate it to temporal conservatism. This is clear. But this is what we have in fact attempted to do. It is destructive. Faith has got to be connected and is a natural outflow and connection to temporal extravagance. The generation of symbols on our part must be extravagant about the circumstance. For instance, in Matthew 8, in the example of the centurion, we see the spontaneous relationship between the servant’s body and the power of God. The centurion believed this. The centurion was extravagant linguistically and representationally. It is much more difficult to believe that God (manifested in the Jesus standing before him) can spontaneously raise up his servant without ever decreasing the physical distance to the servant. He does not believe that there is the need for time or natural or physical causation. It is much more difficult to believe that. God calls this faith. Jesus says of this man who is a Gentile that "I have never found greater faith anywhere in Israel."

This is quite a thing because in the same way we generate symbols in a spontaneous way relative to the world situation. It is extravagant. It has to be extravagant or it wouldn’t be faith. This is something we don’t like to do in congregational life. Theological liberalism has opted for temporal conservatism. Perhaps because it is politically correct, or perhaps it is because it appeals to common sense or human rationality. That would be a great reductionist statement. So here we are. We want to be moving out of linguistic conservatism to linguistic extravagance. Isn’t that what we are trying to say to our brethren, "No you are not talking about this correctly; you are not representing this right." We want to be representationally extravagant about our jobs, about the world we live in, about what we think determines things, about skills, about talents, about opportunities, about causation plus time. We want to operate on spontaneity with the Lord. Spontaneity has a "handmaiden"—this linguistic and representational extravagance.

There is a transition from one to the other and it is not evolutionary in any sense. It requires a death and a rebirth. We are talking about a faith transition. You have to die to linguistic conservatism, representational conservatism. You have to die to the thing that is easiest to believe and you have to be reborn into that which requires much more effort. The world hears this and says this is odd. This is eccentric. This is even unstable. It might even be considered irresponsible. Maybe uncaring. Sometimes people might think this is testing God. To some it seems pathological. People have said it’s dangerous. This is because it’s extravagant. It’s too much to believe. Well revelation pushes a result. If we amassed all of the results, including non-situational meanings and non-situational outcomes and anything else that the Lord pushes on us, it amounts to extravagance. But representational extravagance, he says is stronger than the world situation.

Well that’s a whopper of a concept that representational extravagance, as we have described it to this point, is stronger than the world situation. But isn’t that exactly the truth that is depicted in the scripture. In the case of David, representational extravagance was stronger than the world situation. Goliath represents all that is accepted in the world situation (his strength, his power, and his might). It is easy to believe that he will be victorious over anyone and so they never go to battle. But David’s representational extravagance to believe he could defeat Goliath wasn’t pride or arrogance or stupidity or ignorance. It was understanding pushed by the power of God into his mind. Elijah confronts the false prophets of Baal and then later he opts for linguistic conservatism when he gets the death threat from Jezebel and he runs to the wilderness; and the Lord tracks him down out there in that cave. The Lord basically asks, "What are you doing here? You should be extravagant. You are faithless out here in this hole in the wall. This is not what I brought you to do."

Daniel is extravagant in just this way. Paul is extravagant in just this way when he stands before those who would accuse him. Rahab is a wonderful woman of extravagance. This brought me to the recognition of an "educational model." I don’t like this term, but for lack of a better one, we need to address the question, "How do we teach people? Let’s push students to a confrontation with linguistic and representational extravagance. Let’s push them to temporal extravagance. Now we can’t force it because only the individual must decide whether to be representationally conservative or extravagant in this sense. But we can encourage. Just like revelation "pushes" us, we have to "push" the hearers with whom we work. They won’t like it a lot of the time. We can be wise about this and foolish of course. But we have to "push" students. We need to push our listeners to a confrontation with this fact. I would suggest that the failure of much scripture teaching is that it fails to push hearers to temporal extravagance. This is a major failure. Most of us will allow for linguistic extravagance only at very few points. The rest of it is temporal conservatism. I would say if we are going to teach people that we have to find a way to "push" them in the same way that the revelation, and the non-situational intelligence of the Lord pushes us into this confrontation. Let’s be that. Are we pathological when we do that? We don’t think so. We are not crazy and we are not in the denial of reality. We are extravagant. And that is how we can talk about it. Linguistic conservatism has been allowed, unfortunately, to define the spiritual and to define meaning and concepts and even to try to define truth. But it is linguistic extravagance that should be doing that.

There is a great variation in the way that this bifurcation is appreciated. Paul would say, "To some we are the smell of death." Well he is talking about the linguistically conservative mind saying what they think they need to say about truth or what is not true. But he says, "To others we are the aroma of Christ." Well that’s very different. Temporal conservatism is inert. We are going to get trapped in it and it is very time specific. But temporal extravagance is different because it is a channel. It is a window. It is not too much to say that it is a liberation and it is not time-specific whatsoever. God is doing everything he can in the Bible, in all of the cases that we know anything about, to shape us in terms of being temporally extravagant. This is a wonderful and penetrating truth that the Lord has allowed us to achieve.

We can see why Paul would say in 2 Corinthians 2:15 about the difference between the way that we are looked at. In verse 14 he says, "But thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphant procession in Christ...(Well this is extravagant to say. I seldom feel like a Roman conqueror.) and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?" (Well the answer is obvious, no one is.)

This idea of extravagance is very much associated with wealth, a kind of spiritual wealth. The Lord talks about treasures. Now here is a guy who stumbles upon something in a field and he wants to go sell everything that he has to buy the field. He wants to hock everything. How is he going to do this? It requires much more energy to believe, "I am going to have to sell everything I have to get that one thing." He sells everything. He gives up all natural wealth to get this spiritual reward. He gives up physical life to gain spiritual life. That doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. The move from temporal extravagance to the non-situational outcome and understanding is clearly stated in all of these cases--in the life of Gideon, Elijah, Paul, Peter and what he wants us to see demonstrated in the life of the church addressed in 1^st Peter. It doesn’t make sense from the world’s point of view because they are temporally conservative. Credibility, adaptation, incorporating, social and cultural elaboration—all of this lies within temporal conservatism. Credibility lies with linguistic and representational conservatism. Some people would say, "What you are introducing here is needless conflict with the world. You are introducing needless complexity here. (To them representational extravagance is needless complexity.) Couldn’t you just give us something that is simple?"

Often temporal extravagance is seen as an encumbrance. Perhaps there is a confusion. Perhaps what is thought of as "simple" really will turn out to be temporal conservatism. What is called "complexity" really turns out to be temporal extravagance. One does not have the stomach for the change. In the world of art, what starts out sometimes as marginal often seems as extravagant—Picasso, Matisse. In the world of music, in the world of politics, in the rebellion of the sixties, in modern dance as opposed to traditional dance, it somewhat appeals to our understanding as being extravagant. However, because they are rebellious does not mean they are extravagant. What they are really seeking is another situational pattern. In classical ballet or other forms of traditional dance, there was a system of training that required a great deal of discipline, a great deal of rigor, in the way in which the body was commanded to perform. These disciplines were passed on generation after generation until modern dance comes along and allows the traditional lines, symmetry and patterns to be challenged. One can have the freedom to move as they desire. Because these movements involved change, it could be perceived as extravagance, but actually such as the case of modern dance, it required much less discipline, much less conformity, much less rigor, much less energy than classical ballet.

There always are rebellions trying to look for the essence of what is "good." That may account for paradigm shifts that we hear so much about which is not a very good or effective way to talk about the world of reality. But a search for a paradigm shift is looking for another pattern of experience. In other words, it is a lateral movement. All such rebellions would necessarily be lateral in just that precise way. We have sustained among other things a change of aesthetics in film, in dance, in art, in music where we move from more energy to less energy, from one patter of the world to another.

This shows up in a lot of different ways in things that touch our lives directly. Mechanics that don’t perform effectively expend less energy instead of more energy solving the problem. Or other such systems that will take shortcuts. Sociology moves apparently from more energy to less energy which would explain degradation of the legal system and deterioration in personalities and certainly deterioration in discipline where we move from more energy to less energy. That showed up in the sexual revolution. It shows up in medicine. It shows up in education where we move from greater energy to less energy. Fires move from more energy to less energy. Thermodynamics is another case where we move from more energy to less energy. Our society is seeking in its approach to life that which is "natural" (temporally conservative) and which requires less discipline over the flesh and avoids the great expense of energy required to seek the discipline of the Spirit and the revelation of God over our lives. This conflicts with our human nature.

In Daniel 2, when we take a look at the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw, we move from more in terms of power and energy that is exerted by these successive kingdoms to less energy. He would say of Nebuchadnezzar, "You are the head of gold. There will never be any kingdom that will surpass your greatness." Now let’s consider the role of evolution and progress. Evolution and progress have the tendency to make us think that we are moving from less to more, which seems very attractive. It holds promise, it’s somewhat hopeful that things could be better because we will have more energy available to us later. It might even provide a case for optimism, for opportunism. The Marxist’s "new man," which used to be of vogue some decades ago, was the result of attempting to move from less to more. Rhetorical triumphs, which we have addressed, is an illusion of moving from less to more—they are built on illusion.

Someone would perhaps come to the conclusion that if we are not moving from less to more, if we are not evolving in precisely that way, if we are not progressing, then that is bad and we have justifiable anger. I remember a friend of mine who was counseling a lady in a setting where she sat down and made the acquaintance of the woman, and the woman said, "My name is Anger." Something had not moved from less to more in the individual’s life. She thought that anger was a logical response. Perhaps others would say that depression is a logical response. These are all situational responses. We might even begin to study the logic of anger in just that way or the logic of depression or the logic of despair as you could see it illustrated in 2 Corinthians 1 when Paul is in Asia, from this perspective. We could talk about the logic of situational responses. We see a lot of that in Kadesh Barnea and in the case of David in his lust for Bathsheba or in the case of Abraham relative to Hagar.

In the megachurch concept, the less to more is implicit. It is very popular, it is very seductive, but really it requires less will, less energy because they exist to create for you more satisfaction and more personal fulfillment. You are going to be served. There will be daycare there, many more ministries. It is easier, although it doesn’t look like we are moving from more to less. We are not moving from less to more in terms of the exertion of will, of energy, in my opinion, to rely on non-situational explanations, non-situational responses, and non-situational outcomes to relate to human needs. Numbers are seen as a diagnostic. If you move from less to more people that’s good. But if you are not moving from less to more will, that is not good.

To be a community needs numbers. But a vine needs energy to maintain itself. More energy as there are more branches to feed, and more fruit to be produced. Temporal conservatism, I would suggest always moves inexorably from more to the lowest energy level possible. Believers, on the contrary, have to use more energy. It requires more energy also on the part of people around us to deal with us. That is one of the great provocations behind the persecution or other difficulties. Paul used maximum energy to believe what he believed and it required a lot more energy on the part of the people around him in order to deal with him. The church therefore acts as a sort of life preserver does it not. Maybe we have suffered a fault of leadership. A fault of leadership is going to be had where we are not generating this kind of effect of moving people from less (reliance on the flesh and patterns of the world) to more (reliance on the Lord and his truth) to define material reality and to determine our responses in all situations.

The prophet Jeremiah exerted great energy. He was representationally extravagant, linguistically extravagant in what he said and what he believed. Now the leadership in Jeremiah chapter 2 failed. It says, "Nobody asked where the Lord is." Not the leaders—those who dealt with the law—and not the priests. They didn’t ask. It was a fault of leadership. They followed the easiest thing to believe. They took the course of temporal conservatism. The prophets come along and they exert this energy. It is much more difficult to believe what they are saying. Many disparaged the message that he brought. If we want to go for less energy, then people around us need to have less energy on their part to deal with us. That seems to be rather obvious in their response. But if we are going to exert greater energy in the sense that we have described that exertion, it will involve hostility, irritation on their part.

Ernst Mach, as I suggested earlier, in a book published in 1883, "The Science of Mechanics," wrote of what he called the "economy of thought." Mach is the person from whom we get the concepts of Mach 1, Mach 2, and Mach 3. He suggested that we should be economical in our thinking. That boils down to this. It involves not what is included, but what is eliminated to produce the economy of thought that he suggested. He wants to see easy and straightforward deductions. Now that involves two aspects. One is an economic organization of deductions, the easiest and simplest way to get deductions and to interrelate them in some sort of systematized way. Secondly, he says we must eliminate metaphysics. Now notice that his perception of the economy of thought involves not what is included in his thinking but what is excluded in his thinking. I would also think that that is very much what we have experienced in many ways through the years in the church. It is not what we are including—it is what we have excluded and what we think is the easiest to believe--the most conservative position, the obvious and most straightforward deduction built on human experience. Humans don’t like to take the position of extravagance. Even from our own perspective, we may consider it to be extravagant. Well that’s just too bad. We aren’t going to understand all of this—what the Lord is doing and how he is going to do it and when he’s going to do it—that is not our province. But we don’t want to be economical in thinking. This is a curse. It is a limitation in the way we see reality and in the way in which we understand God.

There are what we can identify as phenomenological laws. Anything phenomenological has to do with how we see things. It is a little more complex than that but this gets the general idea across, I think. We might call them phenomenological expectations. Now suppose you put two things in a column side by side. On one side we have phenomenological expectations—the way you think things are supposed to happen—the easiest way to conceive of them happening. We see this in James 4 when the businessmen say, "Let’s go over there, spend a year and make some money." It is easy to believe, given the system and our experience with it, that this will be the outcome. Now on the other side of the column, we have actuality—the way things actually are. We have a non-situational intelligence that violates this phenomenological set of expectations. At least we have it in the revelation that comes from God. It violates phenomenological expectations in every way, and will not permit them to stand. The phenomenological expectations of the nation of Israel when they were confronted by this superior might of Pharaoh were violated. They saw this with their own eyes. Constantly they are told this. In the book of Deuteronomy, you have these replete mentionings where they had their phenomenological expectations violated. When they got to the Red Sea, they expected they were going to be destroyed by the chariots. Then it seemed they were going to be drowned in the Red Sea. Then when they got out there in the Sinai Peninsula, they thought they were going to die of thirst and hunger. Then when they got to the land, they sent the spies to investigate it and they believed they would be destroyed by the Amorite hoards. They thought this was inevitable and there was no way out of it. Constantly and persistently their phenomenological expectations were violated. 600,000 plus soldiers of military age died because they were not representationally extravagant.

Now what is faith? I am not saying that there is only one way to describe it. I wouldn’t set limits that or say that. We must all be humble, as we don’t know exactly what the Lord is doing. But however we try to define faith, we have to come to some similar conclusion about the way in which God is operating on us and on our thought processes. We have on the one hand, phenomenological expectations. We have on the other hand, faith. Another way of coloring that is the difference between temporal conservatism and temporal extravagance.