Vision vs Structure

This has been the greatest dichotomy within our leadership circles, at least the ones that I'm aware of and have any decent contact with. It take many different forms depending on where you drop the pin on the spectrum between Philosophy and Context. Veering up into fluffy idealism, it takes the form of Spirit vs. Flesh, Transcendent vs. Imminent. Bring it down to earth, it's the classic tension of the Architect vs. the Engineer, the Designer vs. the Programmer.

To be clear, structure is neutral, like the ideal amplifier. It only makes more apparent the good or evil of the original signal that is coming through. Also, all structures have an expiry date - the day it is built, it is destined to be torn down; though its temporal nature is solely attributed to the common short-sightedness of its builder.

Vision on the other hand is understood to be eternal, transcendent, overarching. The things you see but are slightly out of reach. It is where we are headed - a glimpse of the endgame

Sparks fly at any attempt to integrate the two. Structures tend to be more elusive simply because they are tangible, present, easy to grasp and are simply a delight manipulate. In the presence of such practical pressure, vision, for most people, is reduced to a contrived idealistic sentences that just needs to be penned down and gotten over with. Structures invite you to a cushy sense of pseudo-security in an inanimate construct, while a vision requires intimate trust in another person or being.

That's where the dichotomy falls into a binary mess - and that's as far as it'll ever take us to world peace.

Here's where it gets interesting, because according to the Christian world view as I've come to understand it, such a dichotomy does not exist - since there is a vision that spans eternity, and the presence of a builder who has the ultimate long-term plan to see the vision come to pass. You see, it's dawn upon me that the vision is the structure.

This demands a drastic shift in the way we live on two accounts. Firstly, the Vision along with its recapitulating micro-structure has already been revealed - the former, the full glory of the Creator covering the earth; the latter, a life laid down as demonstrated by Jesus, justified in His Resurrection. Secondly, Any attempts to reinvent or re-engineer either results in time lost for either capturing the vision or incarnating the structure - two admittedly monumental tasks in themselves.

Obviously, this revelation has very little value to the ventures who cash in on the very existence of such an escapist duality, but if the Hebrew Scriptures and the waning bellows of Creation all around us are anything to go by, the groom is on his way to claim his bride, and the five lamp-bearing virgins who hadn't brought extra oil will be in for a rude shock.