The Tectonic School Philosophy - Part 6

A series of posts outlining the background and purpose behind Tectonic School

This series of posts come out of the draft document that, combined with a sizable number of devotionals, will eventually comprise a book to help launch Tectonic School programs.

It outlines particular problems that are present in our society, our local churches, and in the lives of individuals and families. The solution offered is a plan to integrate a severely disenfranchised and undervalued group - young men - into meaningful involvement in local communities through training and employment in trade jobs and the life of the local church. This will be accomplished through cooperation in mutually beneficial relationships with local businesses, local churches, and local families. 

This is the fourth post in a series. The first post is available here: 

Going Back To The Roots of Creation

The instinct to correct what is wrong today leads us to look back at the successes of the past. This is the impulse behind the movement to embrace traditional forms of Christian community. We look back and notice that those communities have not suffered the same ill consequences of modernity as seen in our typical evangelical churches, and therefore we seek to live in such a way to escape the fate we wish to avoid. 

But this is nearsighted. We need to look back farther; not only to the successful communities and movements of the past, but to their founding, to the principles remembered or discovered that led to their success. If we continue searching backwards, we can look back all the way to the founding of the church. 

There have been many communities and movements designed around the desire to emulate the church in the first century. But this is also not a sufficient starting place. If we do our research, we will discover that the flourishing of the church in the few decades after the resurrection was due to a very particular set of circumstances that were actually centuries in the making. 

The circumstances at the time were “global”, at least affecting all of the known world. God was of course active and moving in other areas of the world unknown and undiscovered at the time of Christ, preparing them to encounter a church that still needed to grow and develop.

But prior to these events, God had worked through the nation of Israel, His chosen people; He used both their success and their failure to His purpose. Through the events of the diaspora, Jewish communities developed all over the nations and empires of the Mediterranean world. They were alike in their identity as servants of the Most High, yet very different, as they integrated and morphed the culture of the nations in which they lived to express their faith in a variety of ways that both complemented and contrasted the lifestyles of their immediate neighbors. 

Perhaps the greatest invention of the Hebrew people was the creation of alphabetic language, a huge improvement over the previous types of written language, and this invention was spread primarily through the fastidious keeping of their written scripture. This scripture is the inheritance not only of the Jewish people, but of Christians as well. The Hebrew Bible, its commentaries, pseudepigraphical books, and other texts included within certain manuscripts contain an unbroken narrative connecting it from the time of Christ, all the way back the first man created in the image of God. 

While historians will debate the accuracy of this text in comparison to other sources, and others will question the story of all humanity descending from a single man and woman, there is enough evidence of undesigned coincidences to be found in comparative mythologies the world over to commend the validity of these stories. 

Those who have experienced God through the words found in the newer parts of scripture, through a conversion experience, should at least give serious and careful consideration to the reliability of those older parts of scripture.

For the purpose of the plan at hand, we will consider these stories to be correct, whether we view them symbolically, archetypical, or historically, these stories were meaningful and important enough for our ancient ancestors to preserve, and similar enough to the tales of other cultures that we should consider what they can teach us. 

The Purpose of Man in the Garden of Eden

Since we have a means by which we can examine the history of human culture all the way back to the beginning, we should comb through the text to derive as much knowledge and information about how our culture and community should be formed. 

In Genesis 2:5, it says that prior to the creation of man, there was no one to till the ground. From this we can deduce that this work of tilling the earth was an important part of the purpose for which we were created. This purpose to till the ground is not connected to the sinful nature of mankind, but is part of the very good nature of Man, part of the Imago Dei, the image of God imprinted into our very being. 

In verse 18, God reveals that it is not good for man to be alone. This is revealed to the man through his attempt to find companionship by identifying and naming the various beasts of the field, and after it is apparent that none are suitable, God reveals the woman. This too is prior to any corruption of sin on the part of the man, so the need for community between man and woman is revealed to be a part of the very good design that God had for mankind. 

From this we can gather that God always intended man to work, to expand the territory of the garden, and that he should do so in a reproductive relationship with the woman, to improve the quality and direction of their work, and to fulfill the command to multiply, so that the population of humans could grow. 

He instituted a day of rest, so that there were rhythms to the work, time to reflect on our accomplishments, and time to enjoy the fruits of our labor. All of this was part of God’s plan for humans from the beginning, and a return to this path has always been part of God’s redemptive plan to rescue us from our own mistakes.

The next post in this series is available here: