11.1 Safety and Protection
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
I have walked in a bubble of the grace of God all my life, as has my wife – and now we see our own children inside that same incredible place of safety and protection.
I have never known or seen evil. All difficulty I knew in 18 years of living in Christian community, (except for one 45-minute occurrence) came from the normal bumbling of good and godly believers in Jesus. Yet I was not protected from false Nicene thinking, which itself is very cruel in practice. And I am fully aware that not everyone experienced such grace as I did; I am thinking of two, most precious to me, who, growing up in the same community life, found neither safety nor protection.
Not Safe. One place, which I never visited, believed that people needed to be confronted publicly regarding their sinfulness. And so, during the gathering together, an individual would be singled out and the leaders of the community would rebuke them before the family regarding their need to stop being ungodly. I can think of few things better designed to shatter a person, heart and mind, than such wicked practice. (And in defense of the whole fellowship, most would have agreed with me on the awfulness of such doings.)
In spite of the goodness and grace of God which always surrounded me, however, the bulk of my life in the communities in that fellowship was not anything I could call “safe.”
Bullies. A religious bully is one who, convinced of his or her own superiority and wisdom, practices religious manipulation of others to satisfy a twisted theology of superiority. There are few places that can provide a better “feeding ground” for bullies than Christian community.
Yet an even greater problem is Nicene theology itself, a theology coming out from the worst bully of all, a theology that, in itself, ferments endless assault against individual believers. Consider carefully the following diagram – a false theology of a split-apart God – hatred of being human; contempt for other humans – and the whispering accusation of the evil one.
A "Den of Thieves."
Look in the Mirror. I lived inside of this horror for decades, a horror that is entirely imagination, a thinking that has no connection with the reality in which we all actually live.
Part of what I am doing in this session is placing ministry in the Church. The role of ministry is to lay down one’s life to ensure that each member of the Church is connecting with Christ the only life they are in faith and honor. And yet, into every gathering together, even where Christ is known as He is, bullies must come, as Jesus said. The best way I know of to identify a bully is to look in the mirror. I share from a life of walking daily with bullies over years; yet I must face the reality that there are living individuals right now who could say, “It was Daniel Yordy who bullied me.”
Sheltering Roof. This session is “Sheltering Roof.” A roof speaks of safety and protection. The Tabernacle of Moses was mostly a sheltering roof, the coverings of the tent. The Covenant is found, that is, our hearts are found, inside the protection of God.
My people will dwell in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places (Isaiah 32:18). – And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’” (Matthew 21:13).
Let’s redo the diagram to see how it should read.
A House of Prayer.
Protection from Assault. It was in reading John Eldridge, from the fall of 2001 on, that I slowly gained the understanding that the gospel was intended by God for my protection. I had lived in a gospel that became only an increased assault against me, requiring of me something I could never produce and leaving me “fallen short” of God as a result. I slowly learned that my heart is good and filled with Christ.
John Eldridge pointed out that we live in a world at war, that we are under assault from our conception. God intended for Church to be the place of safety and protection from that assault, but we have turned Church into an amplification of the horror, of truth, a den of thieves.
A Place of Shelter. Here is what the authors of Patterns of Home have to say about the role of the sheltering roof in creating a home.
Whatever else it is, a home is fundamentally a place of shelter. Primitive homes were simply roofs on the ground… The form of the roof, the way it contains and offers shelter to all the parts of the house, establishes the archetypal sense of the building as home. If a house does not use its roof to help form its exterior and does not let its roof give shape to any interior spaces, whatever other qualities it might possess, it never quite becomes a home.
Sheltering roof suggests that, from its inception, we imagine a home as an inhabited roof, a roof whose form we experience both inside and out. …one of the distinct comforts of home—the feel of being enveloped by a simple slope-roofed form.
Working with the Pattern.
Whether the house is large or small, with simple or complex roof shapes, the roof should be visible and sloped, cascading down from high to low.
- Fit the most important social spaces of the plan—for example, entry, eating, bedrooms—to the roof. Let the form of the roof center these spaces, so that living in the house you feel as though, in some fashion, you are living in the roof.
- Let the roof plan grow from a traditional and elementary roof form, so that, by nesting, stretching, and stacking, and compressing, a large house may be understood as a combination or transformation of a simple primitive roof.
- Use a roof to mark the entry and inform a visitor about the path to the house.
- Make some spaces atticlike, with the roof shape—perhaps even the roof frame—visible.
- Make sure the roof can be experienced from inside and outside. In some places, let it be high, visible, and beyond reach; in others, low, inviting, and touchable. When possible, make spaces in and on the roof—roof gardens or terraces.
- Use the naturally high and low portions of the roof to create a variety of interior ceiling heights, with higher ceilings over larger spaces and lower ceilings over smaller spaces.
- Use overhangs to shade and protect walls and openings but also to create outdoor place and covered paths.
And suddenly, this whole concept of a sheltering roof takes on a far greater significance in the design of any Christian community than I have ever considered. Inside, outside, and in-between, that sense of “you are safe” must be built into the design. I see that as visible protection in spiritual warfare, fellowship protection of heart and soul, and physical protection in natural things. I love the point on the entry to the house – a roof that says, “You are welcome here.”
Points and Questions. Let’s reduce the list to seven action points.
1. Center the social spaces under a visible roof. 2. Extend the roof even while keeping it simple or elemental. 3. Mark the entry with a roof. 4. Give some spaces the roof slope as their ceiling. 5. Let the roof be visible and experienced inside and out. 6. Create a variety of roof/ceiling heights. 7. Use roof extensions to enhance and protect outdoor spaces.
This direction of thinking raises a number of questions. How do we make victory in spiritual warfare visible to all and protective of all? How do we protect people’s hearts and self-stories? How do we ensure physical safety? How do we make visitors feel welcome? How do we restore those who stumble?
The Verse of Victory. Next, let’s bring in the fourth most important verse in the Bible, the verse of our Victory.
Now salvation, and power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him through the blood of the Lamb and through the word of their testimony, not having loved their own self-stories until [as far as] death (Revelation 12:10-11 – JSV).
There is far less to alter from the New King James when looking at John’s words than there is when studying Paul’s. To cast down the one who accuses others is to be the sheltering roof.
A Different View. In Symmorphy I: Purpose, we used the story of Much Afraid in Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard as a way to understand our own personal protection from all accusation. Forever, we are entering into the knowledge of God, and forever, that picture will serve us personally as we walk as weak humans surrounded by all the powers of heaven.
However, we are also and equally going forth as that same knowledge of God, and in this picture, we see this same verse from a different viewpoint. You see, this verse is not just about “being protected”; it’s really about being the protection for all who believe in Jesus, and especially for those with whom we walk.
Points of Protection. Let’s list some of the points we derive from this most important verse.
- Our role as believers is to cast down all accusation for the sake of our brethren.
- We have power and authority inside the Salvation and Kingdom of God to prevail against the accuser in all things.
- We discern between the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of falseness.
- We overcome through the Blood of the Lamb, through the Blood shed for us individually as well as through the Life of that same Lamb, now flowing among us, from one to the other, as the life of the Body.
- We overcome through speaking our testimony with boldness, that Christ is our life, our psuche, our self-story.
- We have already set aside our own false story of self, our own psuche in this false cosmos of split-apart-ness, caring for self-argument not at all.
- We endure until our brethren and all creation are set free, and then, having endured, we become forever the mighty protection of God.
So Many Answers. Christian community has been in my heart since I was fifteen years old. I lived in several Christian communities for a total of eighteen years – for one real reason – because I was and am convinced it is the life of Christ God intends us to live as taught in the New Testament. Yet I left that community experience with thousands of questions and very few answers. Many of those questions were unvoiced, no matter how much I ponder things then and now.
This study, using the patterns of home to understand the ten most important verses in the Bible, that is, to apply them to our life together, is answering questions in every direction, including many questions I never knew I had.
Church, as God means Church, is the most real and wondrous thing in the universe.