Catacomb Resident Blog

Formation versus Transformation

09 February 2024

In Chapter 36 of The Language of Creation, Pageau says something very important for us to catch.

The modern western world is fundamentally utilitarian and materialistic. Our instinct is to inject that into everything we think, do and say. It infests our struggle to understand God's Word the way He intended. This mental frame of reference is a foreign element of impurity, as we shall see in reviewing this chapter.

For westerners, "change" means any kind of difference. In the Bible, not all change is equal; there is a difference between formation and transformation. Formation is building something, propagating and making more of what we truly are in God's eyes. Transformation introduces a foreign element that spoils the purity. Formation is an extension of building, of stability and space. Transformation into something else is part of time and change and the chaos flood.

If you allow a bit of foreign element to come into your space, it is utterly natural and consistent with our fallen reality that you introduce instability. It corrupts and destroys, whereas forming more based on our true nature, generates purity.

Thus, formation is the opposite of transformation. You can live by the law of space or by the law of time, but you cannot have both in the same context. On the other hand, it is critical to note that one man's formation is another man's transformation, in the sense that building is producing more of the self that God made for us to be. There is no logic here, not as western minds define it. Rather, we should understand that conviction is the writing of God on your heart.

We are designed to fellowship and build community with those who are relatively similar in various ways. It's in our wiring; we will keep our radar engaged in seeking those whom God intended we should work with, not just any random individual. We are supposed to cluster in more or less homogeneous groups. A cosmopolitan mix is an abomination. This is why Pageau emphasizes formation as making more of what we are, while letting excessive variation slip in is a threat.

There are no practical guidelines; people who seek to obey by conviction will always find the window of safety. You can be too inbred and clannish, of course, and you will have nothing that works. The Body is not all one thing, said Paul in the Corinthian letters. We need some differences. It takes prayer, experience and divine wisdom to recognize how much variation is disruptive versus how much is necessary to keep building. Most of the time, the people involved will know when they don't feel at home.

Our difficulty is that western thinking tends to be legalistic and presents false dichotomies. It expects uniformity where God does not, and lets thing loose that God wants restricted.


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