As mesmerizing as it may seem to some of us in the twenty-first century, the God of the Hebrew Testament is an ancient Near Eastern God. That is, God reveals into a human historical context that is far different and more mysterious than our own. It seems to me that it couldn’t have been otherwise if Israel and others were to have any knowledge of him. This ANE God is portrayed as a Warrior, King of the earth, and the Lord mighty in Battle, to mention just a few metaphors, or anthropomorphic―theologically packed expressions. After all, it appears that God is dealing with barbarians, thugs, and louts, which requires severe, yet contextual measures. He represents himself, therefore, as a powerful Egyptian Pharaoh or Mesopotamian King entering into Holy war and he is out to bring about redemption and justice.
The progressive unfolding of the revelation of God in Scripture adds many new metaphors that apply to an understanding of his mission for the whole world. Keeping these in mind will help us to not play off one image against another, as we seek to come to grips with the God of love, truth, justice, and mercy.
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Since what is real has many dimensions, it needs to be approached from a diversity of angles. Try this direction. Symbols, metaphors, and stories are major pathways for uncovering the real. Don’t leave them out and assume that only what you ‘see’ is real. Each of these paths has the capacity to give more to us than we can give to them. There is a depth and richness in this type of saturated phenomena that surpasses what we see and therefore turns us into the ‘seen by.’ I would wager one of the keys for producing and interacting with these paths is imagination, as it gives us access to and a vision for ‘seeing anew.’ Thus, in discovering the real, we have to be open to the significant role that imagination plays in making what is, what is.
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God makes space. Let’s see if I can formulate what I’m trying to get at here. Through the created God gives us a space to be. The natural world and relational environment are gifts from God that allow us to dependent on him and independent from him. That is, I think God invites into community with himself, while desiring that we be free and responsible within the context of what has been made. This suggests that God is not offended or rejected when we take care of the earth and each other or when we’re creative and productive. These are some of the reasons that God created a world and that there is more than one human in the first place. God wants us to thrive, make beauty, and have appropriate relationships, and he provides the space for that to happen, since he created a world and persons outside of himself. I don’t believe that this creational space changes over time, but what we do with it is crucial. When it is used for idolatry or self-centeredness, we have a space abuse issue that falsifies who we are and denigrates God. In what then becomes broken space, redemption of space is necessary. Such a redeeming of space will re-frame what God originally gave and renew it, so that we can learn how to live in what has been given, without demanding to be who and what we are not. As followers of Christ, we are not self-determining selves, but neither are we robots. This means we’re tethered to God, yet because of this God chooses to let us go and to see what we will now make of the privilege of space.
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God’s creational diffusion in humanity is a labor of love, which offers us at least three dimensions of who we are. We have been given the capacity to trust, desire, and imagine. These remarkable traits are all embedded in us. That is, we are trusting, desiring, and imagining beings at the outset, and each dimension is a complex part of our hard wiring. If this is the case, we cannot not choose whether to trust, desire, and imagine, since they are already there within us, yet we can choose who and what to trust, desire, and imagine. Sometimes our choices will get it right, though just as often we’ll get it wrong. When the latter takes place through being a self-determining or self-deceived self, we’re faced with the problem of brokenness and damaging ourselves or others. Thankfully, God’s salvfic transmission in Christ offers us, where need be, a new way of choosing that leads to healing and redemption.
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It seems to me our culture is increasingly one of dislocation and fragmentation. Modernist notions of stability and permanence are rightly being shattered, as they were rooted in deception. In its place postmodern nomads now wander from here to there - to nowhere, but this is not merely a physical or geographical phenomenon, it pertains to the way folks live. False certainty has been replaced by false uncertainty. Flitting from this to that and back again is so common today. Many attempt to re-invent themselves by the hour. No home, no boundaries, no commitments – wandering. These powerful, persuasive, and misleading images are often peddled by our culture and embraced by the crowd. They leave us destitute and floundering. Such forms of the postmodern turn now need to be replaced by a God turn, where true images of what’s creationally and redemptively real abound and offer a safe space to be.
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To hear and read the gospel of Mark is to enter a world. This story is one of conflict and drama, possession and dispossession, subversive reversals of perspective, intrigue, mystery, and strange riddles, with Jesus as its central protagonist. As we enter the story world, we hear and read of struggles over life and death, issues of God and Satan, activities of angels and demons. It is far from a simple or nice story, filled with easy answers or a basic list of rules to follow. Readers, in contrast, are challenged to participate in the story and to lose their lives for Jesus’ sake in order to find them. Mark’s story is presented as a contentful drama to be acted upon. As the world of self serving power, greed, and the addiction to material possessions is shattered, readers are invited to embrace another world that will lead them towards a transformation of being and doing.
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No narrative is fully explanatory and totally complete. In this sense, metanarratives do not exist. Be they scientific, theological, or philosophical – all fall short of being able to give us that much sought after “meta” that constantly escapes our grasp. And it’s a good thing it does. To live spiritual lives in this regard means to embrace the “sufficient” given, and to let go of the dreams and illusions of that which tempts us towards the more than has been made available for right now.
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Paul’s rhetoric of equality in 1 Corinthians 7 is astounding. Not only do the bodies of wives belong to their husbands, but the bodies of husbands belong to their wives. Marriage partners are not free to do what they please with their bodies. Spirituality is an earthly-bodily phenomenon. Liberty, asceticism, and idolatry are three false emblems of an overly already-focused spirituality that leads us astray. Misunderstandings abound today. Bodies are worshipped (idolatry), devalued (liberty), or seen as having nothing to do with the spiritual, which is entirely cut off from the physical world (asceticism). The body however - both what it is and what it does - are key parts of living spirituality.
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An empire in disarray?
Forging through the empty streets at midnight, I noticed that there were no lights in the windows. Everyone sleeping? Not likely. Power outage? Possibly. There was a strong odor of something dead pervading my senses. Humans? Animals? Not sure. I had no idea. My hands were tightly jammed into my pants pockets and my shoulders hunched up against the glacial cold. It was freezing. Walking more quickly now from block to block, nothing changed. I kept expecting a light, some warmth, and to escape from the stench. Same darkness, same cold, same smell. Recognizing that I was immersed in that which I didn’t choose or determine, I became even more unsettled and alarmed. Who am I? Where am I going? I used to somehow be able to pretend I was in charge. No longer. In actuality, I’m so fragile and continually affected by all that’s in and around me. I’m dust, like grass, and flowers in the field. I will all too soon disappear. But then, I realized that I’m still here on these streets, experiencing fear, feeling cold, and smelling death, as pangs of loneliness over take me, I wandered around desperately searching for life, which appeared to be gone. Terrified, I pressed on.
I trudged through loads of debris strewn all over. This scene reminded me of some of the relational contexts of my own life. What a mess. I used to think that people were hell. I detested the old superficial drabble about the weather or the hum drum of working at SB. Get a life, I thought. But now that I found myself alone, even the trite comments of another person would be cherished. I longed for human contact. A voice. A touch. A face. Frantic. Then, I realized I heard someone. There were muffled words. Hope and excitement flowed through me. My heart felt like it would explode. Even though it was still freezing, I stripped off my tattered blue coat and with my hands began to uncover some rubble. Pieces of concrete and broken glass were piled up. I removed them. It only took a few minutes to realize the voice I heard was not a breathing fleshly being as I, but a cell phone recording, repeating over and over, “the person you have called is not available - try to call again later.” Terrified, I pressed on.
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Love is not making it up as we go along. God is love and therefore God gives us direction as to what love is. Love is never less than justice, but always more. And Superabundantly more. The path of love is kind, gentle, and gracious, and doesn’t cherish keeping a list of grievances, but neither is it unchallenging. We are to love God, each other, and all human beings, as we seek to be those who demonstrate the truth that God sent Christ to redeem and restore the world.
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While there is a place for suspicion in our lives, it can often dominate and control our engagements with self, other, world, and God. When this happens, suspicion is functioning as a call to itself, and therefore one of the major idols of our times Yes, I can hear you saying, “But suspicion is what makes it all happen.” We sometimes assume that suspicion keeps us safe and provides us with a space to dwell, without having to commit or needing to participate in something that might threaten the status quo. Yet, this is far from the truth, as the beingness of trust pervades our essence and identity. Breaking through the walls of suspicion, which condemn us to be unknown and unloved, is a revolutionary orientation that marks us out for the economy of gift, where the desire to be known and loved is understood, applauded, and welcomed.
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Fiction making may not be self-deceptive. That which leads us outside ourselves is at least potentially informative about what is real and true. Taking a too direct view of who one is – gazing only at oneself – will inevitably be unhelpful. We have to be open to a long detour through signs, symbols, stories, and poems if we hope to arrive at a better understanding and explanation of who we are. But the other and nature also have to be recognized as realities that will confirm a necessary exteriority for recounting a life beyond the material, which is saturated with meaning that can often be expressed through the beauty of fiction.
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An empire in disarray?
Forging through the empty streets at midnight, I noticed that there were no lights in the windows. Everyone sleeping? Not likely. Power outage? Possibly. There was a strong odor of something dead pervading my senses. Humans? Animals? Not sure. I had no idea. My hands were tightly jammed into my pants pockets and my shoulders hunched up against the glacial cold. It was freezing. Walking more quickly now from block to block, nothing changed. I kept expecting a light, some warmth, and to escape from the stench. Same darkness, same cold, same smell. Recognizing that I was immersed in that which I didn't choose or determine, I became even more unsettled and alarmed. Who am I? Where am I going? I used to somehow be able to pretend I was in charge. No longer. In actuality, I’m so fragile and continually affected by all that’s in and around me. I’m dust, like grass, and flowers in the field. I will all too soon disappear. But then, I realized that I’m still here on these streets, experiencing fear, feeling cold, and smelling death, as pangs of loneliness over take me, I wander around desperately searching for life, which appears to be gone. Terrified, I pressed on.
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Breathing chaos at daybreak, an armor plated character stands on the horizon and releases fire into the air. Despite the remarkable complexity of dawn and the steely cold appearance of the figure, there is a masterful arrangement to the floating currents of warmth that emerge out of solid mass, and then settle into a new pattern of resilience. Forged in the mists of a winter night, a litany of movements stream out of this personal being and spiral towards a spring day in the material world; the made for love is transformed. Deftly engaged in producing life, the explosive miracle takes place yet again. And that which now flourishes, a blessing for a short time, will soon die.
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