Penrose-Carter Diagram of the Finite Observer Looks A Lot Like Einstein

Einstein didn't know the guy, but he loved his work.

Great little sidebar: A mother brought her son to the rabbi, and the rabbi said to the boy; “I will give you a guilder if you can tell me where God lives.” The boy thought for only a moment and then said, “And I will give you two guilders if you can tell me where he doesn’t live.”

The Kinks in Christ's Kingdom

The Kingdom of Heaven doesn't always seem that great.

If Jesus ushered it in, drew it near to us with his very life, sometimes it is difficult to grasp why it is so unspectacular.

I account for this in a lot of ways:

a) God is humble. It is this very unseemly part of his character that rubs me the wrong way. I like blasting my way through, showing off my superior marksmanship and dazzling feats of cultural bravado. His humility makes me look downright stupid. His kingdom is humble, too. Apparently, keeping me entertained isn't one of its house rules.

b) Kingdoms are expansive, not personal. The Kingdom of Heaven demands more in contribution than it pays out in benefit. Thats what a Kingdom does: stretching out authority over a large community of people. The bad news is that there are no idols to the individual in a Kingdom. The good news is that spreading the authority over everyone means that every one matters.

c) I am the Kink.* Because the Kingdom is contributive as well as experiential, present as well as future, I matter to it, at least as far as I view it. There is a part of me that I try to withhold from God. There is treasure I won't store here, words I won't put here, hope I won't place here.** If it could be done, I rob heaven of its potential.

*And not in the rockin' good Davies brothers kind of Kink.

**Please note that I write "here" and not "there" because that is what we mean when we talk about the Kingdom of God. It isn't some cloud fairyland on a far distant shore in outer space. It is, at least in portion, here. Now. Look it up.

Yes!

John met Yoko through one of her art shows. He recalled one of her exhibits. It was a step ladder with something very tiny on the ceiling.

John climbed the ladder and got really close to the tiny thing. It was a word. It said, "Yes."

Now, I'm not saying that one word was what caused John to fall in love with her, but I do think it was an incredible moment in his life, by his own account. Yes is an extremely powerful, emotional word.

We crave the "yes." While only one well-placed no can cast a net of disappointment, one yes can launch a rocket, and a million yesses will not overstuff you.

I wonder why we skip the yesses of Scripture so readily. I could list 70 pretty easily, I think given a decent concordance, from "Yes, and the Lord has forgiven your sin. You are not going to die." (2 Sa 12:13) to "Yes! God is great beyond our knowledge" (Job 36:26) to the "Yes! His loyal love endures" repeated in Psalm 118.

There are tons of yesses, but my favorite yes comes from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians:

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ...was not "Yes" and "No," but in him it has always been "Yes."

Can the Damned Be Redeemed?

Tosca Lee points out a really fascinating complexity about the state of demonic salvation.

She quotes Augustine quoting the philosopher Plotinus* (and I quote Lee quoting them!):

"…that the very fact of man’s corporal mortality is due to the compassion of God, who would not have us kept for ever in the misery of this life. The wickedness of demons was not judged worthy of this compassion, and in the misery of their condition, with a soul subject to passions, they have not been granted the mortal body, which man had received, but an eternal body."

Plotinus is right. By association, so are St. Augustine and St. Tosca.

"Damned" isn't soft terminology. I think it is easier for those who have not faced a direct confrontation with evil to believe that it can be redeemed or reformed. It doesn't work like that. You don't purify Tianenman Square by celebrating the Olympics there: you only spoil the torch.

Keep in mind that demons, before demonhood, had been granted the one thing we really wish we had: immortal bodies. How many times have we thought that everything would be just fine if we only didn't have to deal with death in all its forms (breakdowns, breakups, breakouts, brokenness).

Well, so did the angels. But immortality turned out to be insufficient for a huge number of them.

So the demons are blessed with the one thing we covet: eternal existence. But it still isn't enough for them. They were built for community with God, but they used their immortality as a wedge against their own design!

Theoretically, physically, God could redeem a demon, but His just and righteous -- and loving -- character dictates that he not redeem a demon.

I know you humans think you are smarter than He is. You think you are more loving than He is. You, given the omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence of the Lord, would devise a delightful means by which the whisperers of Auschwitz might find redemption, even if they don't want the redemption you offer.

Instead of casting them to outer darkness, you'd be better than our father Abraham, who would not even send a dead man to witness to five lost brothers. Instead of separating yourself from the absence of good, you people, in your infinite justice, would marry yourselves to it.

Oh, wait, you** already have.

Why do we have such compassion for the devil? Isn't a demon a sort of tarbaby for misplaced sympathy?

Sincerely,


St. Grumpy



*Plotinus' efforts, by the way, should rightly be seen as an attempt to clarify Plato. His philosophical influence stretched from neopagans of the day to Christians. It is also worth noting that his philosophy is as overtly hostile to gnosticism at the intellectual level as Christianity is at the spiritual.

**(we)

Green Light Believer

I'm not one to sizzle about sermons. A good sermon should speak, specifically, to the people being addressed. A good sermon will, primarily, give the listeners something to do, not something to talk about.

I've heard "good" sermons that gave me something to talk about, but I can't remember any of those. I've also heard sermons that taught me to pray, to fast, to witness, to serve, to be baptized, to change. I remember each one of those, because I'm still trying to live them today.

I have to say that the sermon on Sunday was both "good" and purposeful.*

To (brutally) sum up what was a work of beauty - the sermon demonstrated that if you've been waiting on direction from God, just recognize that He's already told you what you've asked Him for. When Gideon laid out the second fleece, he'd already received two convincing signs before that...and before that, had been told explicitly by God what to do. What we often use as a model (laying out a fleece, asking for a miracle/sign) for our relationship with God's will in our life is actually a model of what not to do!

God speaks in his Word. He speaks to his followers. Speaks, not "will speak," not "might speak."

Why do we ask for signs while God is talking to us? When my boss tells me to do something, I don't then ask for a sign!

That's the "thinky" part, the "good" sermon that tickles my ears, but what makes it great is that it changed me, too. That Sunday morning, I came to church something of a "Red Light" follower, waiting for clear direction from God to do anything. I left a "Green Light" Believer, and started doing things (witnessing, praying, writing), without signs or clarity, and figuring that IF what I do eventually becomes something that places me in opposition to God's will that...

...he'll give me a sign.

Until then, I'm going to approach the mission field sort of like the Monkees approach pirates. (It probably doesn't help if you change the lyrics slightly in your head, to "Green Light Believer." But now you are going to try, anyway.)



Poor mission field. Poor, poor mission field.

I hope this doesn't encourage my pastor to attempt less effective sermons on my account.

*At last check, the sermon wasn't yet up and available online. It will be soon here. Until then, you can catch up on a few previous lessons. Or not. What am I, your mother? (I'm not your mother, am I? Send paperwork if you think this might be the case, because I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that.)

Whose Image Do You See?

I got a whacky "prayer rug" in the mail from a cult the other day. I was supposed to stare at the face of Jesus emblazoned on the purplish 11x17 paper until his closed eyes opened, pray about something, and then open a sealed prophecy. After that, I was supposed to send the "rug" back to the church/cult/business venture for someone else to benefit from. It was an elaborate, though obvious religious shell game of some sort.

The mailer was impressive in several ways. First, that it found me at all: the mailman apparently would almost rather die than get close enough to my cave to toss mail in my general direction. Second, the envelope was stuffed with various and sundry materials, seemingly printed with no regard for standard typographics. Every other word was capitalized. Every third word was underlined. It was a full-fontal assault.* Third, by way of building confidence in the reader, the cult emphasized that it was a "57-year old church" in no less than four places throughout the cover letter. Because, apparently, once a church passes the 56-year mark, it carries an air of legitimacy that is above reproach.

It goes without saying that I have a begrudging alliance with other trolls. We are rarer than you might think. Internet trolls (you know, the kind who post to message boards and blogs with completely off-topic, irrelevant and always annoying materials or sales pitches) are beloved here. I "feed the trolls" because I understand that it isn't "humane" to starve them of the attention they desire.

I respond to spam, because I know that the criminals who perpetuate it on the world are really, at heart, just lonely people in need of, not just my mailing address, social security number and bank accounts, but my unconditional love, too. Real humans get short shrift around here, but autoreply devices? Those trolls are gold in my book.

But cults who figure out ways to get an actual, postage-paid, semi-personal letter in the form of a veiled test of my devotion to our Lord have evolved to a new plane of existence. They are King Trolls, OgreLords, the Ghasts of Hopetown.

I acknowledged their literature fondly as it found its way to my garbage heap of honor.

But I'll give them this credit: the spooky "prayer rug" caused me to consider not only an image of Christ, but the "image of God."

I considered this more later when reading Matthew 22. When the pharisees ask Jesus about paying taxes, He asks them to identify a coin.

Jesus said to them, “Whose image is this, and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” He said to them, “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22...something. Sorry. I'm doing my standard rush. Go read it for yourself. You do have a bible, don't you?)

I've always read this to mean, simply: pay your taxes, but don't withhold from God, and I don't think that is a wrong lesson to draw.

But this time, the term "image" stuck in my head.

The image of Caesar is on the coin, denoting Caesar's authority over the coin. But the way Jesus worded his response, it also begs the question: where is the image of God?

On us.

God's image, like Soylent Green, is people. God's image is not on a coin, but on human beings. I may be misreading this, but is Jesus accusing the pharisees of blocking people from receiving God's love and authority? Is it possible that Jesus says to us "Render unto Caesar this stupid coin, but render unto God His precious people?"

I'm going to think about this more.

Do you think I need to ask forgiveness for comparing His children to Soylent Green?

*No, I didn't not spell "full-frontal" wrong. I meant what I spelled.

From Malachi to Matthew

I can't recreate the sensation of living through the entire history of the world through the Old Testament and the subsequent "familiar shock" that arrives in the God-man Jesus portrayed in the book of St. Matthew.

I can only recommend that you attempt it. God is real and alien; strange and family; omnipotent and weak; omniscient and humble. There are only two thing stranger than the idea that God was born a man in order to save some humans: the first is that he told us, in great detail, for millenia, that he was going to do it (and we still didn't get it) and the second is that there are so, so many humans who don't believe it now even though it has already happened.

Poor, stupid humans. I've seen tar that reflects more light.

The God Virus

Stay with me here.

As I understand it, God walked, in glory, with man and woman in the Garden. As sin came in, so did the separation of the holy from the unholy. So God's tangible presence was separated from mankind's existence. Through history, however, God continued to exploit ways in which his holy presence might be able (without breaking his own character traits of holiness and humility) to dwell once again among men.

Whether it was appearing to Moses, guiding the Israelite ex-slaves by fire and cloud, by dwelling in the consecrated temple, or any number of ways in which God physically drew near to us, God, throughout our history, has seemed a tad obsessed about not only being our God, but about engaging our muddy little selves. In fact, the muddier and more lowly we are, the closer he draws to us.

But the problem is that our sin is persistent. We drive the Living God away, not through strength or will, but because His holiness will not tolerate our sin, while His humility and love is slow to destroy us for that sin. To put it another way, God has three physical options in dealing with our sin: to draw close and disregard evil, to crush the evil out of us and purify us through destruction, or to withdraw.

So, when we cling to sin and don't repent, God, in His mercy, withdraws his physical presence.

This is what happened at some point before the destruction of the 2nd Temple by the Romans. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that both Jews and Christians acknowledge that God must have abandoned the temple as His dwelling place at some point before the Romans laid a hand upon it (for had he remained, the destroyers would most certainly have been destroyed, yes?) The dispute is when God's glory departed. Honestly, I don't know my history well enough to know when Jews believe the glory departed (presumably sometime after the death of Jesus of Nazareth, as I believe - again, could be totally wrong here - that Christians and Jews are in agreement that the glory was present up through the life of Jesus.)

But the fact is that the glory did depart, and sometime after that, the temple came down, and God's chosen people were scattered throughout the earth for a time.

So, God, in our history, has, in humility and love, drawn close, and then, in holiness, withdrawn when our sin was not atoned for. No building could house him, because we would desecrate it. We could meet in no garden, because our sin would drive us from it. Even a flooded earth and a righteous man and his family were not immune to our power to stain any and all meet-points for God.

I wonder if that is why He decided to infect us with His virus? Instead of abandoning us to our devices, or forgetting the Jew, God took a very strange route indeed.

He made it possible for our very selves to be consecrated as a dwelling place of God.