Interstellar and the Incarnation

(Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.)

2014: A Space Odyssey

When Interstellar came out last November, the hoopla surrounding it was matched only by the film itself. It was, in a word, spectacular. It was a true space epic on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey in its scope and profundity, and it arguably outdid 2001 with its more humane depiction of mankind's future (i.e., no disturbing acid-trip tran- scendence into who-knows- whatzit). Add to it moments of thrills and suspense, plus outstanding special effects that afforded scientifically accurate space phenomena, and it is as I said: spectacular.

It is not unfair to say the film espouses humanism, but it's not entirely fair either. True, there is a great deal of emphasis on humanity's ability to save ourselves with our pluck, ingenuity, and (above all) science and technology, but there is something more than these that the film acknowledges, something outside of science and technology and pure reason but not wholly outside of us: love.

Kickin' it old school.

This is a new kind of hu- manism. Old school human- ism (from the Enlightenment to Modernism) saw Reason as the supreme attribute of humanity, and thus its advancement was our pri- mary motive power: we are built to know, so let us unlock and understand and manipulate and control the very fabric of existence. Love, being primarily emotional, was unreasonable, and therefore of limited use outside of coercion and manipulation. (See The Abolition of Man.) Such an older humanism is present in Interstellar, mainly embodied in Matt Damon's character, the interestingly named Dr. Mann, who talks a big game about his duty to preserve the human species at all cost. Such costs included betraying his own teammates (killing one of them) and nearly wrecking the entire interstellar mission in a foolhardy move that only killed himself and jeopardized everyone else. All the while, he excuses himself as doing what is necessary, and how one day the human race will recognize him as a hero.

Dr. Mann: the failure of the old.

He's an interesting character, mainly because you know he doesn't believe a word of what he's saying. The brilliance in Matt Damon's performance is the anguish and struggle you see come over Dr. Mann as he does his nefarious deeds in his well-meaning attempt to save humanity. There's more that could be said about him, but the movie makes the basic point quite clear: Dr. Mann's way is not the right way. His attempts to be purely detached from his decisions fail miserably (in more ways than one), and Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) rightly dubs him a "coward," someone who uses rational justification as a smokescreen for giving up hope.

But what exactly drives Cooper and the others? The answer is love. Love is their motive power. Not some abstract "love" for the human race, but specific, concrete love. Cooper goes on the mission because saving the earth means saving his daughter. Amelia (Anne Hathaway) is trying to reach a fellow explorer trapped on a distant planet because she loves him, even though getting to him is not an option, and the scene where she argues for going there anyway ends up with her admitting that she's wants to go there simply out of love, but what's wrong with that? Maybe love is something scientifically understandable, some force or power or substance in the universe existing dimensionally in ways we don't yet understand but know it's real because we experience it nonetheless.

Cooper and Amelia: the near miss of the new.

That scene is fascinating to watch, because as Amelia goes on, her argument breaks down and sounds utterly absurd, and the movie lets it sound absurd because it is utterly absurd to try and scientifically quantify love. It is (as she puts it) "transcendent," something existing beyond the scope of pure scientific inquiry, and yet it is knowable because we just know. Our experience and intuition rise to defy (and convince) our reason. It was this sequence, listening to Amelia speak of love this way, that made me later realize how amazingly, frustratingly close to the truth this movie got.

Listen again to what was being said: Love is a transcendent something existing and acting within our universe and yet is greater than it, filling it, and driving us in our deepest being to move beyond ourselves towards something other than ourselves. That sounds suspiciously like God.

Think about the basic plot: Cooper agrees to go on an interstellar journey across space and time to save humanity from an inevitable doom, and he does this all out of love. That sounds suspiciously similar to the Gospel.

Somewhere in time....

And think of the climax: When Cooper is swept up into a tesseract of Time, he attempts to communicate with his daughter out of frantic, desperate love for her by interacting with the physical world from his transcendent position. During this scene, he at times literally had his finger on the Incarnation: his transcendence touched the very dust.

This is not a Christian movie. Christopher Nolan was not deliberately trying to symbolize the Gospel or Incarnation. I believe that it just happened that way, because the Gospel and the Incarnation are true (not just factually and historically but also ontologically and ultimately), and you can't talk about "love" in any serious or profound way without them. It just isn't possible. (It's vital to note that the very strength of the "love" in this film is made possible because we see it incarnated in Cooper's relationship with his daughter. In this way, it avoids becoming merely sappy and sentimental.) This is the film's true power and what makes it so moving: not just its incredible composition as a work of art but also that it was so incredibly close to the truth. It brushed up against it multiple times, literally (as I said) placing its finger on it.

In the end, brushing up was all it managed to do. Since the film contained no concept at all of Christ or God (either for or against), it couldn't make the final step to connect it all together. Just as old school humanism emptied Reason of any higher meaning and thus left it bankrupt whenever it came up short (as it did in the 20th century), so Love in the new humanism points to nothing beyond itself and thus must ultimately remain mysterious and unknowable, a transcendent something that we experience but don't really understand. We experience it, but are ultimately shut out from it. It is there, but it is silent.

Thus, the film feels like a near, near miss.

But, good grief, what a spectacular near miss.

Seriously: you need to see it.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2015

 

Built to Behold (Pornography and the Beatific Vision)

"Whatever you want me to be..."

"One thing have I desired of the Lord, [and] that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in His temple." Ps. 27:4

We all know why pornography in any form is wrong. The arguments have been made again and again. It is the objectification of human beings that reduces and degrades an individual person's unique Image-bearing self down to a mere sexual object. It is also inherently selfish, a one-way street of desire, where everything is taken in by the voyeur but nothing given in return, and thus reduces and degrades the voyeur to a mere appetite, an animalistic maw, a black hole, an empty void and abyss. Pornography is the hell of the users and the used.

There is, however, another reason why it is wrong, evil, diabolic. There is a reason that strikes at the very essence of what pornography is and therefore its essential perversion. To put it another way, if evil is merely the corruption and perversion of some good, then pornography, being evil, is essential a perverted good, and it is the perversion of that good that reveals the true tragedy. And guess what? It isn't about sex. We assume this, and understandably so (for pornography speaks to sexual desire), but it is not the true core, the most basic good it corrupts and destroys. Peel back the sexual, and you find a more fundamental drive, one that speaks to a unique element of our humanness.

We are built to behold.

Eye to eye

When David says there is "one thing" that he desires above all else, we need to listen careful to his answer. What he desires is intense intimacy and comm- union with God (which is the true sense of the word "dwell" in Hebrew), and that intimacy comes in two forms. One is the pursuit of true knowledge ("to inquire in His temple"). The other is aesthetic appreciation: "behold" in Hebrew means to contemplate with pleasure. This is no small thing. It is similar to the experience one may get when considering a work of art (such as a painting or sculpture or building), but is also similar to the experience everyone has when they look at their beloved, especially eye to eye. Indeed, looking upon beautiful things does something to us that we can't quite understand. We feel drawn in and locked out, called forth and ignored, embraced and left behind. And all this merely in the act of seeing that is also somehow experiencing. To see is, in some way, to experience; and the more intense or profound the sight, then the more intense or profound the experience.

This was not lost on philosophy, and certainly not Christian philosophy. Plato and Aristotle both saw the contemplation of the "Good" as the highest end to human pleasure and happiness (though they disagreed on how to reach such contemplation), and later Christian thinkers like Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, and Aquinas would work off of them and conclude that since God is "the Good" and God is love, then the only way to truly contemplate Him was to love what we contemplated, to behold Him with pleasure. It is from this logic that Dante's Divine Comedy concludes with the Beatific Vision, the pure beholding of God that is also communion with God.

Dante approaches home

This Vision is no mere fancy of mystics. On the contrary, it is exactly what Christ prayed for in reference to all believers. During His prayer in John 17, Jesus refers to "the glory" that He enjoyed with God "before the world was" (vs. 5), and that that same glory would pass on through Him to all who believe in Him (vs. 20-23). What exactly is this "glory" that Christ shared with God before the world was made and that He now shares with all believers? The communal love found in the Trinity itself: "that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us.... And the glory which Thou gave Me I give to them, that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them and Thou in Me.... That the love with which Thou has loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (vs. 20-26).

In both the Old and New Testament, the "glory" of God is shorthand for his essential nature, who and what He really is at His core. What Christ revealed about God's "glory" was the mystery of communal love found in the Trinity, and it is that "glory" we are called to and swept up into so that we may behold: "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou has given Me, be with Me where I am, that they may behold my glory which Thou has given Me, for Thou loved Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). This is eternal life: to know God and Christ in a deep, intimate way (John 17:3), the intimacy of seeing that is also experiencing, for we were built to behold.

"We shall behold Him...."

It is that good that pornography fundamentally perverts. We are built to behold the Good, whether in its substance found in the triune love of the Godhead, or in its beautiful shadows found in sunsets, in paintings and sculptures, and (yes) in the naked, freely given body of the beloved to whom you also freely give yourself. Our eyes were made to see God, and thus experience God, now and forever, and this is what makes pornography so perverse and yet so powerful: it is tapping into our fundamental drive to behold the Good, to behold God, to have the door open and the clouds part and the gray rain curtain of this world rise up and away and reveal the home our hearts ache to have, our real home, our real Lover and Friend.

We are built to behold, and porn is the perversion of beholding.

What do we do with this? There is no simple answer. For those struggling to escape pornography's powerful grasp, the remedy will be complex, a multifaceted administration of grace through hard knocks and strong friends. However, let this truth also be a part of the remedy. Let it provide some clarity, some solid ground to stand on: it is the fair beauty of the Lord that you really seek to see, that you are meant to see, and it is that desire that pornography has sunk its tentacles into and corrupted towards lesser, perverted substitutes. But you are not a hopeless case, because you have this hope: you were not built for unreal images on a page or screen (or stage); you were built for God, to behold Him who no eye can yet bear, nor any mind yet conceive. Draw near to this God, to His beauty, and He will draw near to you (James 4:8), and you will find help in time of need.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2015

In Our Midst (Christmas Homily)

"...eyes to see..."

"O taste and see that the Lord is good." Ps. 34:8

The goodness of God is not an abstraction, not a mere dog- matic assertion requiring no more than intellectual assent. Rather, the goodness of God is to be a sensory experience (and not the only one). It is meant to be tactile and fragrant, audible and visible and flavorful. This does not mean that you will suddenly receive complete comprehension of the incom- prehensible God. What it does mean is that His goodness is meant to be experienced in the actual moments of your life. It is to be a point of contact between you and the Divine, a moment of Incarnation, a moment where God leaves the ivory tower of your mind and becomes real in the midst of your experience.

As close as the house you're standing in.

If our God is hidden, it is because He is too immense and not because He is too obscure, like the house you're living in, which is the only one you don't see when you look out your window. It is too close for perception, and so is God. The incomprehensibly im- mense God is in your midst always, and though the limits of our mind cannot grasp Him fully, He is meant to be experienced. He is meant to be met in the moment. In ancient days, though veils and walls kept Him separate from His people, He still had a place amongst them, an actual dwelling in the Holiest of Holies. Today, though time and space and perception seem to separate us, He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:26-28). Furthermore, He has made His people His dwelling place (John 14:23; II Cor. 6:16), a body fitly joined together (Eph. 4:15-16), so that He may be experienced by us as well as through us to the world (Matt. 5:14-16).

Our God believes in making Himself known, believes in revelation and incarnation, believes in proving Himself to be real. If he had not spoken through His word, if He had not come in the likeness of men, then we would have cause to call Him an obscurantist. But He did, so we do not. He has proven His presence (Is. 45:18-19; Heb. 1:1-2), he has proven His love (Rom. 5:8; I John 4:9-10), and He continually proves His goodness. Therefore, ask for eyes to see Him, to see His goodness, and to let that goodness build a monument to His presence in your life.

"I have not spoken in secret...."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

On Goodness (Homily 58)

"...men of the world who have their portion in this life, and whose belly You fill with Your hidden treasure. They are full of children and leave their substance to them. As for me, I will behold Your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied, when I awake, with Your likeness." Ps. 17:14-15

Scandalous!

Every good thing come from God (James 1:17), and He gives good things even to those who do not love Him (Matt. 5:44-45). He gives them passions to pursue and talents to realize those passions. He gives them minds to think and reason to arrive (in part) at the truth. He gives them hearts to love and the ability to find love, to see and appreciate beauty and desire its presence, to long for and attempt to deliver goodness to others. He gives them strength to accomplish things as well as various comforts to succor their weaknesses. He gives rain for their harvests and opportunities for their enterprises. He delivers their enemies into their hands and delivers them from their enemies. He gives them peaceful sleep and happy days, and all this without asking. It is and has been scandalous how good God is to those who do not love Him (Job 21:7-13; Ps. 73:2-5; Jer. 12:1-2). But there is one good thing He does not give them, for they do not, will not ask for it: Himself.

"I am restless for You."

God gives all good things because He is all good things. They find their source and being in Him and are meant to draw us to Him (Rom. 2:4) like rivers flowing to the ocean. The goodness of God belongs to all (Acts 14:17), but God Himself belongs only to His people, His children, His beloved and bride, to those who are satisfied with Him alone. One can never be satisfied with the goodness of God alone. You will always want more, reducing God to a blessing machine for your own avarice. But to have God Himself, to seek God and be found by God, is to find the Good behind the goodness and the goodness thrown in. Then His goodness is no longer a blessing but a bonus, for God is the blessing, the satisfaction of our souls (Ps. 42:1-2) when we taste and see that He is good (Ps. 34:8). Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

One Question (Homily 56)

Priorities, son.

"...who is lord over us?" Ps. 12:4b

The question of lordship is still the most practical question you can ask anyone. For every person, the buck ultimately stops somewhere, and wherever it stops can tell you a lot about that person: what they believe, what they care about, and what they're willing to put up with.

Now, Psalm 12 mentions two kinds of people: the godly and the proud (vs. 1-4). The former are failing and fading while the latter are flourishing. The dichotomy is simple enough---there are those to whom God is their ultimate authority and those who are their own ultimate authority. That dichotomy is pretty well maintained throughout Scripture. There are those who "fear the Lord" and those who say "there is no God." Every human being can be boiled down to one of those two categories.

This is not merely a matter of God's existence. There are plenty of people who believe in God's existence that still live like atheists in day-to-day practical life. Rather, it is a matter of relevance, i.e., what is His relation to you and your life? Is he everything or nothing? That sounds like a false choice fallacy, but remember the dichotomy: if God is not everything to you, then He really is nothing to you, no matter how much you patronize Him. The greatest commandment is to love God with all that you are and got (Matt. 22:36-38), and he who transgresses one law is guilty of them all (James 2:10), and we all have transgressed the greatest law: we have not loved God (Ps. 14:2-3; Rom. 1:21-25, 3:10-11).

All sin and righteousness comes down to the one question Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?" (Matt. 16:13-16; c.f. Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20). The answer to that means everything, affects everything: what you live for and are willing to die for. Where the buck stops. Where the final line in the sand is drawn. Christian living, the life of faith, is the fight to recognize the lordship of God both in Christ and over your life. "You are not your own. You are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God" (I Cor. 6:19-20)---that is the way of life, and life more abundant.

The center is still the center.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Further Up, Further In (Homily 55)

What hath God wrought?

"I have trusted in Thy mercy. My heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me." Ps. 13:5-6

The foundations of the past are hope and strength for today; light and guidance come from what has already been established. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Ps. 119:105), a word written long before I was born and spoken long before the foundations of the earth were laid. In fact, the Christian life is all about foundations, about seeing them laid thick and solid. It is all about God setting precedent, of watching Him build His case in your life like a man builds a tower, or better yet, a cathedral. Watch each brick be laid and ornamentation carved, and slowly but surely the monstrous edifice takes shape before your eyes, and what was once an amorphous rubble becomes a sublime work of art.

"I support which candidate?"

It is all art with God. All beauty. All true beauty and beautiful truth. It is not about machinery or efficiency. God is not reducible to a system. We are not here to deduce and define some divine algebra. We are not here to "figure it out," not because there is nothing to figure out but because the figure is too great for us, a figure shaped in the Person of God. We do not comprehend Him; we stand in awe, in overwhelming humility and wonder. We stand still and know that He is God and that we will never reach the end of Him. We can never reduce Him to our myriad manias, to our legalistic claptrap or liberal corrosion, to our efforts to explain or obscure Him. Thank God that He is greater than all our rabid reductionism, or innate and insane desire to make everything smaller than us.

God has revealed Himself, not that we may "figure" Him "out," but that we may begin to know Him (John 17:3), not as a principle or some cosmic machinery, but as a person, as a friend would a friend or a lover a lover. To this end He is building His presence into your life, brick by brick, moment by moment, until He is the most real thing you know, the one true thing, the Fact above all other facts. The point of Christian living, of the life of faith, is to know that God is real: vividly, intimately, personally real. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something: an ideology, a gimmick, or another reductionism. They cannot give you God, the reality of God spreading over and through every inch of your life like waves to the sand of the shore.

Nope. Still haven't arrived.

Like a good marriage, God is known over time, not grasped in an instant. You must never fall into the snare that says, "I have arrived" when it comes to your relationship with God, that you have discovered all there is to know about Him and now the adventure is over. That can only lead to boredom and despair (and perhaps an abandoning of God for something more "exciting"). The truth is that we never arrive, even throughout eternity, not because there is nothing to arrive at, but because God is incomprehensible, beyond our full comprehension, which means it will take all eternity to know Him fully, and therein lies hope and peace and joy.

Further up. Further in.

Hope because even if we cannot see far ahead, we can see for miles behind us, and all of God's bountiful goodness and love trumps our doubts. Peace because all things are working together for our good (Rom. 8:28), working towards are knowing of God, until we finally see what life was meant for: all knowing, all intimacy, all a drawing further up and in to divine love. And joy because identity and purpose and meaning are found at last, not by an arbitrary fiat of our own but by the God who created us for Himself. So see your life for the divine art that it is. Look and see God building His presence into your days, becoming more and more real. See all that you've been through, even the hard and horrible (II Cor. 4:16-18), as the foundations of a yet greater structure, one that will stretch on into eternity, deeper and deeper into the heart of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Proof for God (is not a syllogism)

"The Lord has made Himself known by the judgments He executes." Ps. 9:16a

Actions speak louder than words, and it is no small thing that we have an active God, a God desirous of activity. "Come unto Me and I will show you great and mighty things," He says (Jer. 33:3), almost like a dare, as if it were a matter of personal pride and honor. Of course, God can have no pride. His honor is absolute and His person perfect, so he has no need to prove Himself, and yet He calls on us to prove Him. "Prove Me now, and see" if I will not do and be all that I said I would and am (Mal. 3:10). It can almost be said (with careful reverence) that although God has no need to prove Himself, He still desires to do so, even to the point of sarcasm (Num. 11:23).

Still playing fair.

The real wonder, however, is not that God is active, or even that He desires to act. The real wonder is that He always acts rightly. "I will praise Thee, O Lord," says David. "I will be glad and rejoice in Thee." Why? Because: "You sit on Your throne judging right" (Ps. 9:1-4). If the fact that God actively reveals Himself is a great marvel, then here is one greater still: "He has prepared His throne for justice" (Ps. 9:7), justice in every way we can imagine---salvation for His people (vs. 4, 10, 13-14), deliverance for the poor and weak (vs. 9, 12, 18), and destruction for the wicked and oppressive (vs. 3, 5-6, 15-16, 17). Today, many rise to condemn Him, but one day none will rise to condemn, for all will see the justice and the righteousness of His judgments. One day we will see that whatever "game" God is playing, He has always played fair.

"Yea hath God said?"

If there were ever two truths that a Christian must believe, it is that God acts and acts rightly. And if there were ever two truths most often disparaged, it is the same two. Whether it is the "black box" conundrum or the "problem of evil," every skeptical attack or doubt comes along these lines: God has not done anything or God has not done anything right. Even Satan Himself comes this way. In Genesis, his attack on humanity was two-pronged: question what God said (Gen. 3:1), which is to question His actions; and call God a liar (Gen. 3:4-5), which is to question His goodness. Either God has not actually acted, through either non-existence or passivity, and we are all alone in our little world with our little lives; or God acts wrongly, being either evil or incompetent or both, and thus we are stuck with an all-powerful savage or idiot or both. Every accusation against God follows the logic of the Accuser himself: either God has not acted, or He has not acted right.

Seeing different.

I will not say it is a simple task to answer either attack (though many in and outside the Faith have done so). What I will say is this: God has revealed Himself to all in universal, inexcusable ways (Ps. 19:1-4; Is. 45:18-19; Rom.1:19-20; Heb. 1:1-2), but the deeper and deepest knowing of God is less general and far more intimate, i.e., God applying His truths and reality to the specifics of your individual life. There is a knowledge of God for those on the outside, but there is additional knowledge (or knowing) for those on the inside. This is not the "secret knowledge" of gnosticism but the intimate knowledge/knowing of love. Outside, your knowledge can be factual, logical, and reasonable (if not believable). Inside, your knowledge/knowing has included but also moved beyond those things to the experiential. Inside, you are no longer dealing with mere facts but rather the presence of a Person, a dynamic that is much harder to articulate in a syllogism. Those on the outside say, "We will hear thee again on this matter" (Acts 17:32). Those on the inside say, "We have seen God's glory" (John 1:14).

Again, this distinction is not meant to cast aspersions at those who are "outside." Rather, it is meant to create an understanding: you can know something by either facts or experience, or by facts leading to experience. I am simply saying that Christianity claims to be the latter. We have been told an incredible truth, and we believed the truth; but we have also moved beyond mere comprehension and belief into love and life. We found the truth to be a living truth, a living Person whose Life we experience in our own life. That is not easy to either explain or defend, but neither is love, and we are in love. God is known because He does, not because He argues, and He has done unto us and for us.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

"...boldly to the throne of grace..." (The Lord's Prayer, Part IV)

"Abba, Father, all things are possible for Thee. Take away this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou will." Mark 14:36

"GUIDELINES! Not rules!"

One final thought on this subject: what I said in the beginning still holds now. There is no single "right way" to pray, no formula or checklist to follow, and even the best guidelines are not actual rules. Prayer is a living thing, because it is happening between two living persons, and what happens between two living persons is a paradox. On the one hand, it ought not to change. If it is a truly loving relationship, strong and deep, then it ought to last, ought to remain steady and sure like a rock. On the other hand, nothing will remain forever if it's not made new again, so it should strengthen and deepen, like a tree whose branches grow higher up and roots grow deeper down and yet the whole thing remains solidly immobile.

"I don't get fishing metaphors."

Make no mistake: regardless of your strategy, talking to God will be hard and feel clunky and frustrating at times, like any good relationship. It will last, however, and it will grow as long as there is love, and never forget: there is always love between you and God, whether you "feel" it or not. Of course, He has proven it grandly in Christ (Rom. 5:8), but He also proves it in the specific details of our lives, even in prayer where He has given us His Spirit to intercede for us (Rom. 8:26-27), saying what we cannot, finding the words we cannot. It's like that strange device that Flint Lockwood had that finally allowed his dad to articulate what he really wanted to say to his son. That is the Spirit in all our prayers. That is the love of God in all our prayers: we cannot lose, and we do not fail, no matter what or how we "feel" about it. So we strive in hope and struggle with joy, knowing that our good and great "Abba" God hears us, even and especially when we feel like we have nothing to say.

Amen.

Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Sex and the Trinity (an exercise in practical theology)

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.... So God created man in His own image. In His image He created him; male and female He created them." Gen. 1:26-27

Q: How did God create man?

A: God created man male and female, after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

(Question 10, Westminster Shorter Catechism)

There is consistency and diversity in God, and humanity bears the same double-stamp. We are one creature, a human being made in God's image. Yet we are also two separate creatures, male and female, both in God's image. When we read this in Genesis, it is so quickly stated and then left behind that it feels like an absent-minded contradiction: "In His image He created him; male and female He created them." The switch from "him" to "them" is instantaneous, almost nonchalant, as if it should be obvious that what God makes as singular cannot help but also be plural. And why not? When the Holy "Us" makes after His own image, should we expect less rather than more?

We should not glaze over how nitty-gritty the trinitarian implications of our creation are. The basic idea of the Trinity (as if this will explain it) is that God as a Being is a diversity that is so absolutely harmonious in their unity that "they" are "He". The "three" are "One". Even that shallow sketch seems to skirt heresy, but here's one ting that doesn't: the "image of God" is the image of the Trinity, and it is in that likeness we are made. Thus, we are "him" and "them," one and two, two becoming one when they "cleave" to each other and become "one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). This is a great mystery, one easily misunderstood. The point for now is that the Trinity, far from being a theological abstraction, is in fact a divine reality whose image is revealed in us, even (and especially) in our moments of the most intimate physical contact.

Again, why not? Only love creates real unity, and the name of the Trinity is "love" (I John 4:7-8). Thus, the love between friends and "like minds," the love between a man and a woman, the love of Christ for His Church---all these things are reflections and refractions of the One Great Love, the Trinitarian Dance. The Trinity is the higher reality infusing all of existence. It is the watermark of creation, the touchstone of all that is, and therefore it is practical theology, for without it we cannot even begin to understand God, or the world, or ourselves.

All other ground is sinking sand.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Why We Can't Make Friends and Influence People

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." Deut. 6:5

"The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any who did understand and seek God. They have all turned aside; they have all become filthy. There is none that does good; no, not one." Ps. 14:2-3

"Jesus said unto him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.'" Matt. 22:37-38 (c.f. Mark 12:30)

"There is none righteous; no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seek after God." Rom. 3:10-11

Our "best" is dull anarchy.

To love God, to seek Him with all that you are, to desire Him above all others, saving yourself only for Him, obsessing yourself only over Him---that is the pinnacle and peak of all morality. If we are to be perfect (Matt. 5:48) and holy (I Peter 1:15-16), then that is the road we must take. And yet Scripture declares that "none do good," an absurd statement from our point of view. We see good deeds all the time. We may even have done a few ourselves. That, however, is our problem. We define "good" as doing "good things," any and every good thing, as many as we can as often as we can. Our view of morality is scattered and fragmented, with "good deeds" being a cobbled together collection of equally-sized stones that we pile upon the ground. Maybe if our pile is big enough, we'll be all right in the end.

God has a very different view of morality, however. It is not fragmented and scattered but hierarchical and structured. It is not like equally-sized stones piled upon the ground, but rather like unequally-sized stones built fitly together into a solid structure, like an arch. And just like an arch, there is a keystone, a singular prime good atop the hierarchy that holds the whole edifice together: love God, with all that you are and all that you've got.

Morality as hierarchical art.

This is one of the most offensive (and thus most easily forgotten) truths of Christianity: the "golden rule" is actually the silver rule. What we thought and have taught to be the first and greatest commandment is actually the derivative of another one greater still. And why shouldn't we have made such a mistake? To "love others as yourself" is easy enough to believe. It makes sense and has a certain emotional satisfaction about it. It is also easy to identify and easier to appreciate because it is very practical: it produces results that can be measured, and so we can quantify its success.

Thus, the so-called "golden rule" has become a cliche, an idol, a golden calf and sacred cow all across the world. And as with all idolatry, the truth brings the sword to it and leaves everybody outraged, for what is more outrageous than loving God first, above all others? Above your neighbors, above your guests (Luke 10:38-42), above the poor (Matt. 26:6-13), above your parents (Matt. 8:21-22) and all your family (Mark 3:32-35) including your spouse and children and all other relations (Matt. 10:34-38; Luke 14:26-27), above all your possessions (Luke 14:33, 18:22-25), and even above yourself and all your realization and fulfillment and discovery and aggrandizement (Matt. 10:39; Mark 8:34-35; John 12:25)? In any and every case, we are left with only one conclusion: God first, God only, and God always.

That is why we can't make friends and influence people, why we can never be respectable or fashionable. It is also why "none do good." Loving God is the perfection of all morality, the solid and sure foundation of all goodness and decency. To try and "be good" by "doing good" without this prime good is like trying to build an arch without a keystone, or trying to win a spelling bee without even knowing the alphabet. You may accomplish an impressive scattering of stones or string of gibberish, but it all falls short of the glory of God. You have forgotten the vital piece, the glue that holds the whole structure together and erect. You have forgotten God, and that  is what reduces your morality to rubble, and your righteousness to filthy rags.

 

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Love (Isaiah's Doxology, Part IV)

"He has clothed me...He has covered me...like a bridegroom...like a bride...." Is. 61:10-11

Love is the key. (Get it?)

Isaiah's metaphor for our new identity and function point us to something in addition to that purpose and function: our purpose and function are not simply a matter of duty. Remember, he could have used any metaphor he wanted. His word choices prove that: "decks" means "to meditate" and carries the image of church service as well as a wedding, and "jewels" means any prearranged thing, even the garb and tools of a worker going to work. Yet he did not use those images, images of duty and work. He chose instead the images of a bride and groom, images of love.

You missed a spot.

Now, it is true that a bride and groom have a duty to give, both in the wedding and in the marriage. But that exception only proves the rule: we expect them to fulfill their duty because we assume that they love each other and will gladly give their best to each other. If they failed or deliberately faltered in their duty towards each other, we would feel a sense of disappointment. However, if they did their duty only out of duty and nothing more, then we would feel the same thing. We would feel as if something had been missed, left out. The situation suggested and called for more than mere dutifulness or efficiency. It called for love, a much deeper and solid thing. Love is the only sure foundation for dutiful action, because it alone can keep the fires burning for years to come.

As we adore...

Just as a bride and groom have an identity and function out of love, so too do those whom God has redeemed. Their purpose and function is done out of love, because it came from love. It was Love that redeemed totally and absolutely (John 3:16; Rom. 5:6-11; I John 4:7-10). He wrapped His people in salvation and righteousness just like a groom is decked out for his bride (and vice versa). The groom decks himself (or is decked) out of love for the bride, and because of that love he is decked in his finest, in all that makes the bride happy. Likewise the bride adorns (or is adorned) out of love for the groom, and because of that love she adorns herself with beauty, with all that makes the groom happy. Every action belongs to love. It is a mutual reception of joy, each giving to and receiving from each other out of love for each other. That is the image Isaiah is going for, that God is going for through him. God has decked His people out in the best that He has: a salvation and righteousness all-encompassing and overwhelming. And as He has given His best out of love, so too His people give back their best out of love. To do it for any lesser or other reason would be a corruption of the whole relationship.

...so too we adore.

This is where all the "relational" language comes from in Christianity. Having a "relationship" with God may be an overused and abused idea, but it is still the closest to the truth. We were made to love God, saved to love God, and we can only love Him the same way we come to love anyone else: we must begin to know Him. Such knowledge is only possible through His self-disclosed revelations: Nature (Ps. 19:1-4; Rom. 1:19-20) and Natural Law (Rom. 2:12-15), as well as His word (II Tim. 3:16; Heb. 4:12) and Word (Heb. 1:1-4). We must learn who He is and what He loves. We must learn to listen to Him, talk to Him, and spend time with Him. If we are to love God, then we must know God, and if we are to know God, then we must immerse ourselves in His revelations. Spend your time amongst Nature and its beauty. Spend your time studying virtue and truth. Above all, spend your time in His word, learning from His Spirit (I Cor. 2:6-12) and His Son. From that soil your knowledge will grow, and from that your love will grow, and from that and that alone will your activity grow, for truth is the foundation of love, and love is the foundation of life.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013