Spiritual cartography

He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do. And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons."

Mark 1:38-39

Spiritual formation is not an option. We are all being formed every minute of every day, whether we know it or not. A lot of us run on autopilot. We’re formed by those around us: our authority figures, friend groups, co-workers, etc. Our brains create mental maps of reality to keep things simple. Just like I know exactly how to drive from my house to my office without having to even think about it, our mental maps are like worn grooves that move us through our day. Unless we take a serious assessment of ourselves, we won’t know why we vote for who we do, why we eat what we do, why we react to people the way we do, etc. We just… Do. Our mental maps are taking us along the greased slide from one event to the next. 

Needless to say, a lot of our mental maps were inherited from well-intentioned people who only wanted to keep us ‘safe’ but ended up not serving us very well later in life. Then fear and trauma came along and wrote their own pathways onto our maps. Love (hopefully) entered the picture to smooth some things over. But then heartbreak came and rewrote a lot of our routes. 

Jesus was a healer, no doubt. If the need for physical healing was in front of him, he’d drop everything and do it, no questions asked. But his big thing was proclaiming. He had a message he needed to proclaim and a very short time to do it in his fleshly body.  

Jesus came as a teacher, truth-teller, and spiritual cartographer
to give people new mental maps of reality. 

This message, this good news that Jesus came to proclaim isn’t just some clever advice or an exhortation to eat your veggies and stop swearing so much. This message - this eternal Word embodied in Jesus - is one that ontologically changes us. It is the same Word that created the cosmos out of chaos and sent unfathomable quantities of quarks dancing into materiality. 

This Gospel Word rewires and reorients us with reality itself. 

In Joy,
Jonas+