Architexture A Conversation About
david V. Smith
Theodyssey Group, San Jose, California
about architexture t’s spelled like that on purpose. Architexture. It’s about design, structure, and texture, all in one. It describes the fabric of our being—what it means to be a person. What is a person? We stumble around with words like body, soul, and spirit. Theologians argue about whether we have two parts or three, as if we’re counting cow stomachs. Psychologists are constantly shuffling the deck and dealing out new possibilities. Just how much of our lives does God want to transform? While it sounds like a question theologians e-mail each other in the middle of the night, the implications are huge. When Jesus tells us that we are to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength—that is, with the entirety of our being—what does that mean? What part of us is supposed to respond to God? What part of us does he want to remake? God doesn’t leave us guessing. The Bible provides a detailed understanding of personhood. When Jesus calls us to follow him, he invites us to more than just “believe.” He has more in mind than simple conformity or obedience. Jesus invites us to become a new creation. God meets us wherever we are—even in the midst of disorder and dysfunction—and begins a dramatic remodeling process from the inside out.
Exploring personhood
Insights from modern psychology explain our life development process and the framework of our inner person, which gives us clarity about what change will mean.
excursions 1.0/ pieces of me..........................9 To what extent does God want to transform me?
2.0/ forming perceptions......25 How perceptions are influenced and formed.
3.0/ how I got to be me.............39 The influences that shaped how I do life.
4.0/ can god use me?.................53 Broken people reaching a broken world. 6
In past centuries, Irish Protestants refused to eat potatoes because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. Many starved to death. Today, some Christ-followers refuse to acknowledge the mechanics of shame, cognitive development, or the subconscious mind, because those words are not found the in the Bible. (Yet they eat sushi and listen to iPods®, which are not listed in Strong’s Concordance.) We’ll sort out the rubbish from the riches, and bring important insights to bear on how we can partner with Jesus to become all that he has designed us to be.
homo dicit haec, et misereris eius, quoniam tu fecist i eum et peccatum non fecist i in eo. qu is me commemorat peccatum infant iae meae, quoniam nemo mu ndus a peccato coram te, nec infans, cu ius est u nius diei vit
su per terram? qu is me commemorat? an qu ilibet tant illus nu nc pa
vulus, in quo video quod non memini de me qu ide go tu nc peccabam? an qu is uberibus inhiabam plorans? nam si nu nc faciam, non qu idem uberibus, sed escae cong ru ent i annis me ita inhians, deridebor atque re prehendar iust issime. tu n ergo re prehendenda faciebam, sed qu ia re prehendentem intellegere non poteram, ne mos re prehendi me nec rat io sinebat. nam ext irpamus et eicimus ista crescentes, nec vidi quemquam scientem, cum aliqu id purgat, bona proicere. an pro tempore et iam illa bona 7 erant, flendo petere et iam quod noxie
Pieces of Me
eople are complex. It took thirteen years and $3 billion to map the genetic blueprint of a human being. Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project has charted the location of the thirty thousand or more genes that combine in different ways to make us . . . us. Translation: We know how we’re wired. And we’re just beginning to understand what we can do with what we’re learning. The last page of Wired magazine typically ends with a final page feature called, “Found: Artifacts from the Future.” It captures a slice of life from decades down the road. One issue ran a picture of business types standing in a line at a glass-walled terminal marked “Transporter 3.” With briefcases slung over their shoulders, they stare at their tickets as they wait to board. In the foreground is a digital touchscreen, where someone with an electronic pen in hand is selecting option boxes. At the top is the company logo, Allsafe, with the tag line beneath it: “Your Matter . . . Matters.™” It’s a kiosk to buy Matter-Transport Insurance, to protect against the possibility that your genes get separated during dematerialization and transport. It could ruin your day if one body part ended up in Billings and the others in Baltimore. Options under “policy details” include various amounts of available coverage: Payout of $10.25 million in the event of: • Identity theft or identity duplication • Mistaken arrival point (within 1 kilometer of target site) Double payout in the event of: • Loss or incorrect positioning of limb or organ • DNA meshes with fellow traveler (human) • All forms of reversible misassemblage Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll be beaming our DNA to Maui and Mazatlan, and skipping the red-eye. I hope we still get peanuts.
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Excursion 1.0
What transformation means There’s a lot more to us than just DNA.
We have a complex mix of internal faculties and capacities that we regularly experience—which we even name—yet, we can’t see or touch. They don’t show up on an MRI or a CAT scan, yet they are what makes us distinctively us. Faculties such as our conscience, will, thoughts, and emotions. They’re the core pieces of us. Had we been created in a sin-free world, we would have rolled off the assembly line in mint condition. Perfect. Sin, of course, eliminated that possibility. However, when we begin to live in authentic relationship with God, he does more than forgive sin; he begins a process of restoring us according to the original blueprint. Not at the level of genes and chromosomes. Rather, he begins reconfiguring our inner person according to his own image. How does that happen? What does it involve? How deep does it go? What should we expect? For many, this means readjusting previous expectations.
“Isn’t being a Christian simply about having faith in Jesus?” “I stopped doing bad things, and I started doing good things. What else is there?” “I thought that following God was about believing and obeying?” Transformation is about God regenerating our inner person according to the image of Christ.
The scope of personal transformation
Just as a tree is anchored and nourished through an intricate network of tangled roots, each of us consists of a complex matrix of thoughts, feelings, impulses, motivations, memories, and more. Both the Old and New Testaments acknowledge a wide variety of these “roots”—capacities and faculties of personhood that make us who we are.
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As we come to understand these inner dimensions, we get a glimpse into how profound and pervasive the work of Christ is intended to be in our lives. Jesus had a comprehensive view of what the change process involves. When asked to interpret the meaning of the Old Testament Law, he responded with a summary of what it means to have a relationship with God: He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”1
In other words, love God with the entirety of your being—your whole person. The life of Christ is to pervade all the various faculties and capacities of our personhood. The writer of Proverbs provides us with similar wisdom about the centrality of the heart, which in the Hebrew understanding encompasses our entire inner life. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.2
Scripture seems to be inviting us beyond the arena of behavior and conformity to consider the inner dimensions of the heart.
The Bible’s understanding of personhood
Although the Bible is not a psychology handbook, it does speak authoritatively about the nonmaterial nature of human beings. The most frequent Old Testament word referring to the inner workings of a person is leb or lebab,3 meaning “heart,” which occurs at least 850 times in the Old Testament.4 In the Hebrew mind there is no distinction between the physical and the interior functions of a human being. The heart, which is a tangible, physical organ, is regarded not only as the center of a person’s body and the source of its vitality, but also the center of conscious reason and the inner life. In the New Testament, the Greek word kardia, “heart,” occurs at least 210 times. The New Testament sees the heart figuratively as the center of a person, including the emotional and spiritual life. Let’s explore what the Bible says about the “heart.” This is dimension of our lives that God wants to transform within us.
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