This post is a very rough sketch of ideas and may include unfinished, incomplete, or erroneous ideas that will later be corrected. This post will be part of a series that will form the basis of a new book I’m writing following on the themes of my last book, Thoughts From Reconstruction. All of these themes center around the New Covenant. You can find everything published so far in this series on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section.

Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven

It took much uncomfortable rumination and discussion for the Church in Jerusalem to settle on the requirements for the new Gentile Churches. For the Christian Jews, it must have been extremely disconcerting to agree to a belief which would no longer follow the Old Covenant Law, which they had known from childhood, and which was “preached in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations” (Acts 15:21).

To the mind of the zealous Jew, it must have seemed impossible not to be held to the requirements of the Law and the Prophets, the same Law that specified ‘No other gods. No idols. No misuse of God’s Name. Keep the Sabbath Day. Honour your parents. No murder. No adultery. No stealing. No perjury. No coveting.‘ These things would have all made perfect sense to them, were clear, and were easy to follow. They must have thought, how could the Gentiles know how to act without the Law?

We are in such a place now. We are in the place of the Christian Jews of that meeting. We stand in confusion and disbelief of a moral order apart from the law we know, which, in theory, is Love God and Neighbour, but, in reality, is really mostly just Old Covenant Law. We are going to go to places we haven’t wanted to go for millennia. But now, as surely as we are in a season of deconstruction, a season of reconstruction must follow lest we risk ruinous collapse.

To Everything There Is a Season

One of the important parts of the wisdom literature in the Bible is in Ecclesiastes 3 and here we find that the Bible encourages us that everything has its time and, yes, there is even a time for breaking down and building, casting away stones and gathering stones, searching and losing, keeping and discarding, tearing and mending, and a time, even, for war and peace.

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to count as lost, a time to keep and a time to discard,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
– Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

In the poetic sense of this passage, we understand that “a time to break down and a time build” would be for good reason, “a time for every purpose“. Just as a condemned house is torn down and rebuilt, so too do we tear down intangible houses, that is, ideas, concepts, plans, and dreams, and we rebuild them better, wiser, more robust, more encompassing, with greater accuracy, and with more fortitude against life’s challenges. The season of deconstruction has come and the season of reconstruction is now.

The Season of Reconstruction

We will begin, from here, to look at moral choices that are not precisely considered acceptable in polite conversation. This is how it should be, of course, rarely broaching ideas that have as much possibility of being held by as taking hold of us. But this is the season we find ourselves in. We have entered a moral collapse. What else is there to do but rebuild?

When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? -Psalm 11:3

Rebuild. Rebuild the foundations. That’s what we can do. In this light, let us enter a season of reconstruction. We are not equal to it without the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us but as the Apostles worked out the moral law for the Christian Jews and Gentiles, so can we ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling‘. Moral laws will be reopened and we fall at the mercy of Christ as we seek to rebuild right, straight, and true.

This series will continue. Please check back from time to time, if you’re interested in reading new parts as they become available. The entire series will be made available on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section as each part is published.