Fractals - part 2: it means brokenness

Fractal - from Latin fractus "interrupted, irregular," literally "Broken". 

I hope you all enjoyed my last post about Fractals.

People tend to glaze over as soon as I mention them, but they really are beautiful.

I talked a lot last time about how the symmetry of fractals might relate to the body of Christ. 

In this post, I would like to talk about their asymmetry. Here is that picture of a fractal I showed you last time:

Last time, I banged on for a while about how each little piece is repeated at a smaller scale. Those of you who looked closely will have spotted that that's not exactly true. The shapes are repeated, but there is some variation at the different scales. This is an example of broken symmetry. 

Symmetry breaking is something that happens a lot in nature. The study of the very fundamentals of science is driven by it. A good example is your own body. Your body didn't always exist. It started out as an egg, and a sperm. The egg exists in storage, waiting until it is released, and until it is fertilised. A sperm carries with it a sense of identity: the X or Y chromosome that says "you will be a man", or "you will be a woman." They merge into a single cell, dividing evenly, and exactly into a ball of cells, and then an actual body. At some point, the very symmetrical sphere of identical cells started to differentiate, and became a human body. Some cells became skin, some became muscle, some became toes, and eyes and lips.

This process reminds me a bit of the foundations of the Church. Jesus put his trust in a small group of men: the 12 apostles, and the men and women who accompanied them: an egg. Right at the start, the men were all of one mind. They had all spent time in the close company of Jesus, and had received their teaching directly from him. They all knew the same man, and the same God, and waited for the same Spirit to come and fill them - to fertilise the movement. As soon as the Holy Spirit descended on them, the group - the embryonic church - went out, and started to grow. The Holy Spirit gave them identity as the sons of the Most High God, and all the authority that goes with that. The Apostles came out, and began preaching the gospel, and the church exploded!

It didn't take long, though, for the apostles to start differentiating themselves: Paul became the voice to the gentiles, Peter became the voice to the Jews. They sent out new branches to the world: Paul, Silas, Barnabas, Apollos, and countless others which weren't recorded in the Bible. Each of these branches had its own character, but all placed Christ at the centre of their make up. All sought to make Christ known, and to lift Him high among the nations.

I think this is something we have lost in the church today. Some elements of the Church at large think that there is only one way to interpret the Gospel, or only one way to apply it. They seem to believe that all Christians should look the same - we should all join in the parade protesting the latest sin that is gripping society because it is taking the world further from God, or we should all stay out of the affairs of the government because we are called first to love people. 

I think that the Church is meant to be a lot more than that. A church that looks the same throughout, a Church that is symmetrical - is nothing more than an embryo. It is overly simple, powerless, and unable to achieve anything outside itself. Just as in the human body, the embryo can only really make its presence known by a regular sense of "feeling a bit off". 

The church needs to be allowed to differentiate. So how does this look in the Fractal world?

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

1 Cor 12:4-11

The passage above is a prelude to Paul's well known musings on the body of Christ, which is itself a prelude to one of the best known passages in the entire bible: 1 Cor 13 - "love is patient, love is kind..." etc. 

It talks to individuals - "to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good". As I mentioned in the last post, I believe this can be scaled up to teach us about the larger cells which make up the body of Christ. To one cell is given through the spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, etc..

I should say at this point that this doesn't give a group licence to say "our group has the gift of healing, so if you want to be part of it, that is what you must seek above all else." The teaching of Paul makes it clear that all of the gifts are going to be present in a healthy church. Indeed, the bible teaches that all of the gifts are available to all of us as individuals. Rather, I think that when we scale this teaching up to groups, it shows us that each group will have a key gift which is its main strength: hospitality, teaching, intercession, prophecy, etc; but also that because of the variety of its members, it has access to all of the other giftings. 

The other key thing about this teaching is that the gifts are not bestowed upon the church by Paul. They are given by the Spirit. Some churches have put together cell groups based on a desired ministry. They say, "we are going to put together an evangelists' cell," or, " this cell group will be the healing cell group." I believe this can be counterproductive, as this then becomes the identity of the group. This identity will rub off on its members, but if the identity is not given by the Spirit of God, then the members of the group will be striving for a gift which was never designed to be theirs, and they become homogeneous again - embryos. It is better, I think, that groups form first based on relationship, and on Christ, and that once they are formed, we ask them what their identity is. When we meet a new person, we don't say "You're Pete." We say "hello, what's your name?"

The Body of Christ is not the same throughout. It is wonderfully varied. It is made up of limbs, and organs, and tissues, and cells, and each one has a job to do. A hand has nerve cells, and muscle cells, and sweat cells - all part of the hand, but all types of cell that are also part of the foot, and the eye, and the neck, and the back. 

We are wonderfully diverse. Let's celebrate that.