Pneumanautics

The first time I heard this word was in a talk given by Len Sweet in 2006.  It’s a combination of two words, pneuma, meaning Spirit, and nautical.  A astronaut is one who rides the stars.  A Pneumanaut is one who rides the Spirit.  Over the next couple of days we will look at this term and try to relearn the necessity of the Holy Spirit.

The most unknown thing in the church today is Christianity.  We have high view of the Bible but a weak view of the Spirit.  The orthopraxy of our churches has moved the Bible into the third person of the Trinity and move the Spirit out.

The missing doctrine in the church is the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.  The language of the Spirit needs to be as appropriated in the church as the doctrine of Christ.  The Holy Spirit has been seriously underestimated and underutilized.  The hymn writers and song writers have gotten this faster than the rest of the church.  The old hymn, “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me!”  Our churches, however, are no longer inviting the Spirit into their lives.

One of the reasons that I believe that is the case is that the Spirit cannot be truly controlled.  We can control the scriptures, at least we think we can control what is the “proper” interpretation of the Bible.  But the Spirit cannot be controlled.  And the subordination of the Spirit to the Bible has weakened and killed our churches.

The fundamental heresy of the modern world is that it is the trees that move the wind; the most powerful forces in the world are the material forces.  The truth is, true orthodoxy, is the wind moves the trees.  The most powerful forces in the world are spiritual forces.  Unfortunately in our churches specifically In our preaching, there is too much hot air and not enough wind.  We are interpreting and preaching the Bible as if all the air (wind) has been sucked out of it.

Ironically, the Greek word for move means to be driven along in the wind.  Are we being moved by the spirit?  Is it the spirit that moves us?  The power is in that which is not seen.

This doesn’t denigrate the brain-shaped tree.  The wind need the trees and the trees need the wind.  We need to think of them holistically but we need to keep in mind where the power comes from.  The tree even acknowledges this as it bows to the wind in homage and worship when the wind blows.  In fact, the origin of the word flexibility refers to the movement of a tree; first the bending of the tree and then its recovery.

Also, trees generate nouns - leaves, fruit, cones, etc; winds generate verbs - blow, bend, sway, etc.  We need nouns but the truth is faith is more verb than noun; in the Greek the noun faith is actually a verbal noun, meaning that the noun originated from a verb.  God is more verb than noun; when he chose to reveal his name it was as a verb, “To Be”, not a noun.

What modern faith has done is to teach us to specialize in the visible, not the invisible; to trust the tree, not the wind.  But Christianity says “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord”.  The most power forces are spiritual.