Perspective Warp

Perspective control is a procedure for composing or editing photographs to better conform with the commonly accepted distortions in constructed perspective. The control would:

• make all lines that are vertical in reality vertical in the image. This includes columns, vertical edges of walls and lampposts. This is a commonly accepted distortion in constructed perspective; perspective is based on the notion that more distant objects are represented as smaller on the page; however, even though the top of the cathedral tower is in reality further from the viewer than base of the tower (due to the vertical distance), constructed perspective considers only the horizontal distance and considers the top and bottom to be the same distance away;
• make all parallel lines (such as four horizontal edges of a cubic room) cross in one point.

The Western Church’s perspective regarding our worldview is not the only thing that needs an adjustment. As the definition above states, “Perspective control is a procedure for composing or editing photographs to better conform with the commonly accepted distortions…”  Here lies the Western Church’s problem. Rather than adjusting our vertical interaction with the Spirit and the Word we have allowed the “commonly accepted distortions” to determine our perspective. Last Thursday I posted that a worldview will define and determine – origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. Without a Biblical worldview your interaction with the Vertical and horizontal will be warped and distorted at best. Consider the popular misconceptions of eternal life. Ask your average church goer their definition of eternal life and they will define it in terms of the after life. Jesus readjusted that understanding making His focus, or perspective, be about living – not dying. For example John 3:13 states: And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. Interestingly enough when comparing this verse to other translations this passage has been distorted to match the commonly accepted distortions. But when you read it you can see that Jesus’ life lived on the horizontal plane of earth was actually lived from a much higher vertical perspective. One more example: John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. Here again Jesus reiterates that our focus isn’t to be on dying but living in knowing the Father and Jesus the Son. Jesus echoes this in Matthew 22:29-32 Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”  In the Gospel of Luke the angel rebukes the women coming to Jesus tomb asking, “Why do you look for the Living among the dead?” I capitalized the “Living” to make the point that we serve the One who conquered death and is not dead but alive forevermore and gives this victory to all who would place their trust in Him.

What the western church needs more than ever is a perspective warp like the Star Trek Enterprise that will launch us in to seeing Jesus’ life – in us – from a much higher Vertical perspective. You and I were made for much more than looking at the back of someones’ head calling it worship. Can you imagine aliens visiting our planet, observing our worship, and noting how uniformly we worship the back of someone’s skull? This is why Jesus was crucified at Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, sending His cross and blood to penetrate and permeate that globular sphere of rancid fruit we call knowledge. The fruit of this tree only leaves us barren, and naked, hungering for something more that really satisfies. But those who have truly met the conditions of a Jesus-centered, Salvation, will know so much more for they have received the Mind of Christ. (1 Cor. 2:16) Now that is an alien concept to a western church that has fallen so far away from New Testament Christianity.