In first grade, everything Mrs. Zuidema wrote on the chalkboard looked fuzzy. I’d break my pencil point so I could walk up to the sharpener, slo-o-owly passing the board to read it. Once, I squirreled my brother’s binoculars into my desk, thinking I’d sneak a peek at the board when no one was looking. (I chickened out.)
I’ll never forget the day I got glasses. Trees weren’t blobs of green; I saw leaves! Grass had blades! Tetherballs need not terrorize! I was singing “A Whole New World!” years before Aladdin because that’s how it was. My worldview changed.
This is the final editorial in this series focused on eyes. In “Lifted Eyes,” I encouraged us to raise our gaze to Jesus as a peculiar people’s banner. In “Fixed Eyes,” we riveted that gaze on him to sustain us for the long haul.
Now I ask what happens when our fixed eyes are transformed (“fixed”) by Jesus so everything comes into focus.
When Saul encountered the risen Christ, he received new sight (Acts 26:18). Paul wrote, “We now regard no one from a worldly point of view” (2 Cor. 5:16) and “in the cross of Christ I boast … I’m crucified to the world” (Gal. 6:14). Jesus gave Paul a whole new perception of reality.
We seek a Christian worldview. But, in our worldview, does our vision of Christ remain vivid? Sometimes in talk of structures and spheres, Jesus gets lost in all we intend to transform for him.
Yes, we must think big! But transformed sight is also small—within the “square inches” of my scrolling, spending, fretting, and frittering. I’ve been wondering if CRC old-timers had a worldview that more concretely pressed the gospel into their lives, in daily sacrifices and ordered hours.
I’m reading a biography about H.J. Kuiper, editor of The Banner (1929-1956). Though imperfect, Kuiper consistently asked how Jesus, and the magnitude of “sin, salvation, and service,” reshape the nitty-gritty of life.
For example, he asked if parenting circled around an “altar” of daily Scripture, prayer, and instruction. Did leisure pull hearts toward or away from Christ, and did money build Christ’s causes? Did preaching and worship sing Christ’s saving work?
From Sabbath to schools to service, Kuiper asked how these reflected CRC members’ devotion to Jesus. We may rightly evaluate Kuiper’s conclusions, but we should not miss his seriousness: no activity is exempt from Jesus’ claim. If it is, our salt loses its saltiness.
As I read this biography, a song kept echoing: “Give us one pure and holy passion, one obsession, one ambition … to know and follow hard after you.”
How does that vision, that holy passion, impact The Banner? We seek that each article would show transformed eyes. So, in this issue, our features address cultural idols of stuff and sex. With stuff, we hold possessions loosely, generously, saying, “Jesus is my all, why cling to excess?” With sex, we say, “There is a deeper story in Jesus, to which sex points. How we care for each other in sexual discipleship is shaped by him.”
May every page of The Banner reflect a Jesus-transformed view.
May our denomination also have a worldview of big structures and everyday holiness, believing that transformed lives and homes precede transformed spheres and societies.
Perhaps change in our denomination depends less on strategy and more on sight. It’s less about the five-year plan and more about lifted, fixed, and transformed eyes on our Savior, who causes us to sing, truly, “a whole new world.”
So shall no part of day or night, from sacredness be free,
But all our life, in every step, Lord, be fellowship with Thee.
—Fill Thou My Life