Thinking Inside the Box

At our group the term “thinking outside the box” comes up on a fairly regular basis. Now when we use this term we generally mean thinking outside the traditional evangelical mindset. Now this box is a very small one that overlaps portions of the bigger box of God.

 Much bigger.

 Contrary to popular opinion, and in true Christ-like fashion, to think outside the box doesn’t include wild abandon where everything goes. In fact to be a true Christian is to stay inside the bigger box. God is very much about the box. It’s why he had to send Jesus. People had gotten themselves so far out of the box they didn’t even know it. And much like our evangelical contemporaries they thought their box was God’s box.

 Now some people who find themselves in the traditional evangelical box after living outside of any kind of box, find it very comforting - life has borders and rules, as well as all kinds of well meaning people that are only too happy to tell them how to live. This gives their lives a structure it didn’t have previously, which is something that, at this time, they need.

 But we can’t leave them there.

 To move from that small evangelical box to the expanse of God’s box is true freedom. God’s box is not wild abandon either. It still has rules and boundaries that address peoples previous lives outside of either box. But it’s not the restrictive, artificial, arbitrary, manmade rules of the evangelical box. The evangelical box will eventually suck the life out of your Christian existence, rendering you useless to the true mandate of Christianity. Whereas God’s box will breath life into you and those around you. I sometimes wonder if this isn’t the picture that God is trying to give us in the Genesis story where God takes dirt - absolute nothingness – and breathes life into Adam.