ASBURY – A lesson from the butterfly

If we see the events in Asbury as the ultimate spiritual destination of faith and an authentic move of God, we are in danger of embracing a caterpillar theology.  And even though it is a glorious departure point of worship and renewal, revival is ultimately about transformation and not about worship.  Let’s take a lesson from the humble butterfly!

As beautiful and desirable as the Asbury movement is, it should not be confused with revival.  There is a difference between a move FOR God, with an admirable desire to worship and praise, and a move OF God, with a trademark of repentance and transformation.  Having a heart FOR  God is key in our faith but simply not enough – that personal desire to be with God and exalt him should translate into a transformed character.  We need to have the heart OF God – that Christ-consciousness and desire to see Him lifted high in our communities through repentance, love, hope, forgiveness, and kindness.  Both are beautiful but they are not the same.  Revival is ultimately about transformation and not about worship.  Don’t get me wrong, seeing this move FOR God is beautiful and divine, but unless people are transformed, not only moved, and stirred into worship, it remains an inspiration and not a transformation.

God’s ultimate desire for man is not repentance but transformation.  The latter cannot happen without the first but the first can stagnate before reaching the latter.  Think about this:  when God wanted to create a butterfly, He designed a caterpillar.

Let that sink in for a moment.

The mind-blowing journey of the humble butterfly is probably one of the most tangible expressions of anyone who desires to be transformed into a Christ-consciousness, in more than one way.  There is so much more than simply meets the eye when a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly.  The staggering resemblance for a follower of Christ is that a caterpillar evolves not once but twice.

REEMIT describes it as follows:

And so, the transformation begins, taking roughly two weeks to turn from a furry slug into a beautiful, winged insect.

But if you were able to see inside the pupa whilst this is taking place, you might be rather horrified. The transformation begins with the caterpillar releasing digestive enzymes to eat itself alive; effectively turning itself into a soup.

If you were to cut open a pupa at the right time during metamorphosis, a goo would ooze out. But this magic goo contains everything needed to create a butterfly, and that is rather Incredible.

But not every cell liquefies. Certain groups of highly organized cells remain as solids within the soup. Over the course of two weeks this caterpillar curry slowly turns into a butterfly broth and then into an actual butterfly,  all from a gooey liquid.

It’s such an incredible phenomenon that scientists still aren’t quite sure how this liquid organizes itself into a butterfly.  What’s so amazing about all of this is that everything about the creature changes during the transformation, its shape, its taste, how it eats, how it moves and how it senses, yet the butterfly is still able to remember its life as a caterpillar.

You would think that your brain being turned into a soup then reshaped into an entirely new brain would erase all of your memories. But a recent study showed that butterflies were able to remember the solution to a puzzle that they were taught how to solve, when they were a caterpillar. Meaning some of the synaptic connections in the caterpillar’s brain survive the soupification, making the humble caterpillar one of the true wonders of the natural world.”

The lesson from the caterpillar is simple.  Transformation does not happen during the joy of praise and worship, but in the cocoon of suffering.  And in this regard, equal attention should be given to the Persecuted Church, where the cocoons of suffering produce an unseen, unspoken and often undesired revival and a move of God.  Think about the move OF God in countries like Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and China.  No Facebook posts, no visitors, not a word mentioned in Church media.

But, revival also doesn’t happen the day we submit to Christ.  It happens when we surrender to Christ.

The full extent of God’s creative objective does not happen at birth, when we are ‘born-again’, nor immediately after birth; it happens during the process of growth from infant into adulthood.  We do not despise the days of infancy, we value the age of discovery, creativity, and exploration.  However, we are never content to stay there.  Asbury is not the destination, it’s the departure point.

There is something majestic in creation recreating its own, evolving within, and then, transforming into beauty.  In the cocoon, the caterpillar doesn’t simply grow a new pair of legs, a set of wings, and an exoskeleton. Recreating itself, the caterpillar uses its own enzymes to soupify itself.  It evolves by growing new eyes, then transforms by losing its leaf-eating mouth and replaces it with nectar-sucking proboscises.  It finally gains its mature reproductive organs so that the full benefit of metamorphosis may be achieved:  multiplication and reproduction.

The Asbury movement should seek to explore the Christian process of transformation and how we change from infancy, being ‘regenerated’ born-again believers, into a ‘soupified’ mature Christ imitators.  If it is a real revival, it will explore how to evolve from ‘caterpillar Christianity’ into a ‘butterfly belief-system’.

Transforming from mature disciples into a Christ-conscious community is God’s design for a reproducing faith.  Not sharing the Gospel in words only but filling every space we occupy with beauty and grace, reflecting Christ in His fullness.

As we grow and mature as Christians, we naturally go through stages of spiritual transformation. Many believers are content to remain ‘born again’ followers of Christ, sadly becoming “fat” caterpillars and getting stuck there for life.  Some progress to the second phase of maturity by becoming disciples – not just believers but followers.  Mistakenly many see this as the ultimate objective and final stage of ‘followship’.  Few manage to advance to the third stage of spiritual adulthood by being completely transformed.   It is however only in the third and final transformation that we can grasp our full potential and apply a Christ consciousness to our Christian confession.  This happens less frequently because the cocoon of soupification is a non-voluntary place of pain, self-denial, and purification.

Being transformed is found in the being, not the doing.  Transformation is not what we do, it’s who we are.  It’s not about obtaining new truths; it’s becoming a new creature.  It’s not only about how we “do” Church inside but how we “are” Church outside.

During the next few months the community of Asbury will bear testimony, not the church:  Was it a movement, a revival or a transformation?