The Golden Thread
The Golden Thread explores the inevitability of tragedy in a world under the sun, and the entrance of agency in the paradigm that steps beyond space and time.
The Thread of Fate: the inevitable nature of the ancient myths
The Thread of Fate explores the forces of inevitability in the lives of men, the universality of tragedy, and the tendency to personalize the suffering that befalls us.
The Greeks gods and the Modern Titans
In the Classic world, inevitability worked through the whim of the gods. In the modern era, the perpetrator is the system, the precursors to our character and the powers that subvert our will.
The Greeks and the dramatized examples
From Sophocles to Aeschylus, the Greeks knew how to express the horror of the inevitable.
The Modern Monolith, or how systems replaced the gods
In the ancient days, supernatural forces compelled us to the inevitable. Today, everything from our genetics to our family history to the nature of our governments rob us of agency and set us on what seems an irrevocable track.
Rulers and Authorities: how the inevitability of systems replaced the gods
The great fantasy of the modern world involves an insignificant actor wielding outsized force against the systems that oppress or exploit them, thus freeing the world from the tyranny of Fate. In reality, power feeds power, and those who try to tear down the systems too often evoke massive destruction and collateral damage.
"Born this way" - The new myth
Fatalist materialism and tabula rasa as two sides of the same coin, offering relief from moral responsibility.
"Validate me, baby." - The new tradition
Unrestrained wealth, unrestrained mobs.
The entropy-inertia complex
Power feeds power, and chaos - rather than disrupting the current social structures - stumbles forward, reinforcing existing success.
Bureaucracy as the faceless god of modern society
Bureaucracy was supposed to humanize scale. Instead, it all too often atomizes efficiency and fractures toward the impersonal.
Tradition and myth within systems
How bureaucratic policies and narratives replaced the traditions and myths of empires.
Good Evil and Evil Good: the system of the modern institutional church
The modern church has in many ways become just another system, and this is not the first time the Grand Narrative has been appropriated in service of influence.
Sales is not a spiritual gift,
The modern church has become as much a slave of power, money, and influence as it is a slave of Christ. It has too often replaced integrity with optics. Instead of being a force against the rulers and authorities, it has become one them, and in so doing has turned the Bride into a concubine of modern institutions.
Conversion rate is not a fruit of the Spirit.
Evangelism is not about numbers. It's about contrast. When a church tries to compete on the world's term, it becomes irrelevnt.
Church leaders are not sales managers.
Every good Baptist knows that the term "pastor" means shepherd. The good shepherd will leave the 99 to pursue the one, and where he can't, he will build a team that can. Optimize, but don't abdicate.
The Revenant Body
While the modern church wears the right appearance, the parts are too often performative rather than alive.
The Unwitting Puppet of Fate
Cosplaying Christianity within the institution inflicts much of the same damage as the corrupted world.
Subject to Futility: every system under the sun degrades
Fate only exists under the sun. As long as we are limited to the tools we have at hand, we will inevitably be climbing up a sandy pit where the shifting sands renders our efforts futile.
We're not wrong about fate
In Greek mythology, the fates are blind. They are arbitrary. Under the sun, there can be mitigation of difficulty, but as Boethius learned, we are all at the whim of fate.
The system is rigged
From the day God banished us from the garden, His intention was to protect us from living forever being tossed by our fallen nature in a fallen world.
The system under the sun is subject to pain and destruction
Whether it be our heredity, the forces of nature, or the winds of chance, we cannot escape pain and suffering. Even much of what seems inevitable - including natural disasters - can be traced to man's failure or corruption. Still, not everything can be explained by human choice. Much suffering seems irrespective of choice - as Jesus made clear when he divested sickness and suffering from personal sins.
Systems cause suffering
Those "systems" that replaced the powerful gods that direct our fate do have an outsized effect on individuals. Does this mean systems are evil?
Individuals cause suffering
Any study of suffering finds that domestic and community issues are much more likely to be the source of personal suffering than monolithic forces. Does it mean we should eradicate relationship to minimize abuse? How do we eradicate ourselves? - because we cause our own suffering, too.
Reap What You Sow: the agent within the system and the tragedy of trajectory
In the face of immovable monoliths of fate, human will seems impotent. In reality, we hold agency even in the harshest of circumstances. In fact, there will come a time when every human will feel justified - what they choose defines them.
The copout of fatalism
If it is beyond our control, we can let go of our responsibility. There comes a time when we feel justified. What we choose reveals what we believe.
The copout of systems
How grievance culture deflects responsibility in an attempt at exoneration and instead excuses evil.
The copout of circumstances
How God's treatment of Israel exposed the lie.
The copout of excuse
Reasons can explain how something happened. They do not often offer absolution. Our excuses don't help the people we harm.
The copout of scale
People like to point to the effect of things outside their control while ignoring things within their control
What Can Be Known: the nature of things points toward an answer
Job went from hearing about God to seeing God. That's because, contrary to popular belief, God does not require blind faith.
Who is this God? Are we allowed to ask?
God shuts down Job's questions, but somehow Job doesn't mind. Why?
Fate is chaotic; God is not
Order is everywhere.
The tools of knowledge
From data input, to data processors, to data organizers, to data interpreters, the human mind is an unbelievably advanced evidence-reading mechanism.
God shows - and tells - us that he is evidentiary.
Between the historical record, the direct proclamations about Himself and creation, and the way He treats evidence and knowledge, God hardly seems as determinedly inscrutable as people claim. He is not hiding.
Jesus is the final declaration.
I looked around me, and I saw the sins of man and the evil that they do, and I asked God, “Where is your wrath?“ And he said to me, “I poured it out on my Son.“ So I shut my mouth and let Him be God.
Follow Me: the redemption of tradition and myth
The Word: perfect, human, God, visible. The embodied image of a holy, loving God. The Golden Thread that tethers us to hope.
The word: imperfect, fallen, struggling, relatable. The invisible Church that expresses what it looks like to struggle through the dark with only a penlight and a promise.
The Author is not dead.
Jesus is the Word. The effective force of creation. In Him, we live and move and exist.
Every human reflects a portion of God's creative mind
According to Oswald Chambers, "We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring."
Extraordinary in the ordinary
Humanity spends itself in the darkness. Christians are not immune. Instead Christians have access to the Golden Thread that lights the nearby path and tethers them to hope (tikvah).
The narrative of history speaks God's character
Humanity has not evolved to a higher plane - we have found new ways to manipulate the narrative. Christians have to keep the counternarrative going.
The myth of the lone voice shouting against the storm.
We love renegades. We love heroes. In reality, there is only One. All the rest of us are derivative or ineffectual unless we tether ourselves to the Author of Truth.
Things Above: distorted perception in suffering
Job was held up as a righteous man, yet any reading of his book makes two things clear: his fate seemed even more rigged than other people, and he did not refrain from complaining about it to God. So what makes him righteous?
Does God test Job's fate?
At the beginning of Job, God resembles the arbitrary and cruel Greek gods, literally tempting Satan to toy with Job's fate.
The friends make fate transactional
Under the sun, the friends are right. Actions bring consequences.
God knows Job
Far from the Greek gods who toy with the lives of men for their own pleasure, God takes a personal interest in the growth and redemption of his children.
Job knows God
The friends knew the rules. Job knew the person, and perfect love casts out fear.
Seeing with new eyes
When Job finds himself feeling under threat, God doesn't try to reason with pain - he reminds Job that the life of God's child is not limited to what he sees under the sun.
My Lord and My God: the Voice in the dark and the Face of Fate
God too often seems arbitrary, but He is not. The futility of creation is a faceless, capricious storm that casts us into chaos. In contrast, God stands as a fortress and a Father.
Letting go of idealism
Some people lose it as children. Some much later. But at some point in every human existence, it becomes clear that under the sun, we can either eat and be merry for tomorrow we die or find something that stands outside the insanity.
Cynicism is at least honest
Without an anchor outside the chaos, it is almost irrational to hold onto optimism.
The Face beyond Fate
This evidentiary Being, this Person who stands outside the chaos, the One Job trusted in the end just by remembering Who He was - this is why we have hope.
Why compassion doesn't mean endless leniency
Anyone who has endured true injustice - from abuse as a child to mistreatment by power to negligence of authority - can on some level understand why unrepentant disregard for the good deserves clear consequences.
When you can't undo the damage - Jesus steps in
There are so many things that Jesus showed the world: God's love, His goodness, His intolerance for cruelty from authorities, His universal compassion. Even more than that, though, He made it possible that both the injustice we commit and that we suffer can be - not erased or rendered irrelevant - but redeemed.
The Day Draws Near: it is not good for man to be alone
Lone ranger Christianity is not functional. If we want to "live such good lives...that they glorify your Father," we have to root out the corruption within the church and foster the supportive community that can encourage one another to love and good deeds in the midst of the darkest path.
Humility
According to the Scripture, there is no one righteous. Committing ourself to the community of Christ offers us support in our efforts at goodness. But it requires the vulnerability of being honest.
Accountability
Accountability is the answer to both hidden sin and unseen struggles.
Vulnerability
The problem of pain, and how the Body of Christ should be the solution.
People before programs
Programs may scale, but if the church doesn't stay in the business of its members, it is more a Christian social club than a the body of Christ.
Restoration
Where there is repentance, there should be a method to restore rather than condemn. From ministry to mentorships.
Do Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly: expanded agency through freedom
God's prescription for human proclivities
You too will die
The Tower of Siloam offers us some of the least satisfying - and most effective - advice about human responsibility.
Righteousness turned outward
A brief study of justice
Justice is not all it's cracked up to be
What exactly is the letter of the law, and why don't we want it?
Don't be too big for your britches
Christians are called to work on their own behavior and take care of their families and responsibilities first - before trying to solve the problems of the world.
Compounding effects
The effects of personal, familial, and community focus have outsized effect on society. Grievance led us to destroy good systems that needed mitigation.
Salt and Light: the source and effect of moral courage in a dark world
The Christian church at its best produces morally courageous individuals who function and exist as salt and light in a broken world. Where Christians honor God with their lives, they can interrupt the entropy and inertia in systems that too often lead to corruption and exploitation.
Christians as ministers
Where Christians follow Christ's example of love for the lost world, they preserve the dignity of others and illuminate what can feel like a sea of darkness.
Christians as purifiers
Where Christians practice personal justice and show courage in defense of truth, they alter the character of a system.
Christians as preservers
Unlike a lot of activists, the Christian's loyalty to God lets them stay steadfast in the face of injustice, unafraid of power or struggle, and supported in the aftermath.
Christians as lifeboats
The world offers values clarification and trolly problems. Christians can offer moral imagination that resists zero sum thinking.
Christians as Courage
Because Christians take their identity from Christ, they can have courage to stand in the darkest of times, and in so doing, they can redeem systems and render them most reflective of God's character of love.
The Golden Thread: beyond Icarus, or rising above the sun
The Story's Redemption
God's character is justice, mercy, and love
The counterweight to gods and institutions.
God knew we were destined to destruction
Humans are both far less and far more than we can understand. We can't fly above the sun. Unless we are carried by the One beyond it.
God revealed our own character to us
We were lost in the labyrinth, following a capricious guide, but God provided the thread that lights the way, holds us safe, and leads us home.
The Anti-Narcissus
Jesus being in very nature God, emptied Himself and became a man, suffering even death on a cross - so that through Him, the world might be saved. In God's paradigm, tragedy is not the inevitable destruction of every human. It is the trajectory that leads us away from Him.
The God who ran
The real story of The Golden Thread is not limited to this present darkness, but it is carried beyond the struggle until we see the Face of Fate - the one who stands larger than chance and promises to work all things to our good.
Appendix A: A Woman's Place, or Unchristian Assumptions in Christian Culture
The Sapphira Corrective
God clearly divests a wife's submission from culpability before Him.
A Woman Erased
Unchristian power attitudes foster sin within a family or social system.
A Man Erased
Wives are not the only victims, and husbands not the only perpetrators.
Compromised
Convenience, dependence, benefits, and shared outcomes incentivize individuals to complicity within systems.
Courageous
Standing for truth within an unhealthy powerful system can have outsized effects both on the health of the system and on the victims themselves.
Appendix B: AI is not your friend - but it may not be your enemy
"Please remit your dishwasher"
AI holds serious possibility to mitigate many of the worst weaknesses of systems and institutions. Treating it like an enemy will limit true benefits that could result in the hands of God's people.
A Delicate Balance
Christians hold the responsibility to maintain independence from any system "under the sun," but they do not need to be afraid of technological advances.