GOD is an Undocumented Alien

Many years ago, I sat in a small apartment with a Russian family that was new to our country. In time, they would become precious members of our church. That day however, they were just confused and disoriented. The grandparents had been in prison for many years. The father had served time as well. They had been persecuted for their Pentecostal faith. Now, at last, they were allowed to go free – to America!

But the father was upset. As it turns out, the church here was not at all like church in Russia. This particular day, the divisive issue was our communion service.

“Everyone drank the wine from those little cups – like shot glasses that unbelievers drink whisky from. Why? Why was there no chalice?”

I explained how Protestant Christianity in America had continually changed the order of traditional worship and how this had affected the way we received communion in “low church Protestantism.”

I thought this might help: “Americans get grossed out with a chalice because it requires them to drink from the same cup.”

“But the alcohol content helps with germs and all, “he replied.

“Well, yes, but we used unfermented grape juice. It wasn’t real wine.”

When my words were translated, my new Russian brother become very agitated.

“What? What? The Lord Jesus used wine. Passover used wine. All Christians in every country and in every century have used wine. Why gave you the permission to change what Jesus used into what you think it ought to be?”

I explained about the Prohibition and how many American churches had decided then to use grape juice. I tried to say it didn’t matter. But this was a man who had gone to labor camps rather than to submit to Russian officials. He paid dearly for taking a stand for the faith and here he was in a new country where Christians seemed to be changing the faith to suit ourselves.

He wasn’t going to have any of it!

My Russian friend was an alien – not undocumented; he had permission to be here – but he was an alien to our country and its ways, including the ways of his fellow believers in this county.

Of course, we were alien to him as well. That is what culture shock is about; entering into a culture’s alien aspect. It can be an utterly disorienting experience.

This is one of the most important concepts a believer has about God. That He is alien, strange, and “other.”

And yes, God is indeed undocumented. He does not recognize or honor our borders because He was here before our government came into being.

Why is it important to recognize God’s “otherness?”

Let me explain.

Ancient Hebrews and Greeks would not have understood our English word “God.”

The reason we use that word to describe the Being we worship is simple: early English-speaking Christians employed their language’s traditional word that roughly corresponded to the Hebrew concept of “Yahweh,” or “Elohim.”

Unfortunately, modern English-speakers now use that same word, “god,” to refer to any deity of any religion. The result is that our word “god” does not communicate the same thing to everyone.

Socrates insisted that the first step of any profitable discussion is to define the terms to be used.

Since we don’t want to upset Socrates, let’s stop and define the word “God.”

First, Christians believe that God has a personality. He is not a borderless mist, or some undefined, impersonal force of nature.

God has a personality.

We can communicate with Him.

We can know Him.

Once we believe that God has a personality, we naturally want to know, “What is that personality like?”

The Bible says that the essence of God’s personality is a quality, called “holiness.”

Being holy means that God doesn't lie.

He doesn't cheat.

He doesn't go back on His word.

Even more importantly though, the Hebrew word kadosh, which translates into English a “holy,” actually means “other, or “alien.”

Saying that God is “Holy,” means that He is not like us. He is not like anything we can, or could ever, know.

God is beyond our comprehension.

He is “awe-inspiring.”

All we can know about God are those things He has revealed to us. However, even those things are often difficult to grasp.

Then, beyond all that we do know about God, there is infinitely more that we do not know and cannot know. Talking about God leads us into an encounter with mystery.

Acknowledging the mystery keeps us from forming a static mental image of God. Mystery stretches us toward God rather than limiting God to our level or mental comprehension.

When we deny that God is “beyond finding out,” we make a mental or even a physical image and then call that “god.”

The Bible calls this natural inclination idolatry and strictly forbids it.

The problem with this is that we all have idols. Walking with God involves a continual process of destroying our idols. We will never come to know the real God if we keep admiring all the substitutes we have made!

This brings us to worship.

Since we cannot figure God out, we must worship Him.

We worship God “in the beauty of holiness,” as the Bible puts it.

The "beauty of holiness" is our awareness that God’s otherness has ceased being a problem for us and has actually become attractive to us.

Jesus tells us (in Matthew 6:9) that recognizing God’s otherness is the first step in real communication with Him. That’s why we begin prayer by recognizing this aspect of God’s character: “Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed (Holy) be Thy Name!”

Loving God involves first acknowledging His otherness, then delighting in it, and finally moving toward it.

OMG: Jehovah is Intolerant

We are reading in the One Year Bible about how Moses persuaded Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt. As the drama unfolds, it becomes obvious that the gods of Egypt are being humiliated. Each god is defeated in the area of his own specialty as Moses keeps on proclaiming God’s message.

At the end of the game, the score is:

Jehovah 10; Rah and Osiris 0.

Our scriptures tick off a lot of people. They don’t like the exclusivity that God demands. They think he should share the stage with Thor, Vishnu and Aphrodite.

He doesn’t care.

He demands a class by himself. He refuses to share the stage.

Why?

Because He claims that when He made everything, there was no one else around. He looked for Thor but Thor wasn’t there. So He had to make it all by Himself.

He’s the creator.

Alone, or ECHOD, as the Hebrew puts it.

When I think about how God created the world, I have a mental picture of this cosmic fountain spewing out quasars and photons, parrots and giraffes, oceans and meteorites. I think of creation as God’s nature overflowing itself, a mighty flood of being, pouring out from the Godhead to become the visible and invisible universe.

It’s a nice and inspiring picture, don’t you think?

However, before we get too carried away with my artistic imagination, we have to stop for a moment.

Christian faith teaches two vital truths about our Creator and about His creation.

First, Christians believe that the creation reveals the nature of God, much in the same way as a piece of art reveals the personality of the artist who creates it.

Secondly, Christians believe that although creation flows out from God, it is not, strictly speaking, a part of God.

These two points are extremely important for Christian theology.

“Why,” you ask?

Because these are precisely the points in which Judaism and Christianity differ from other religious and philosophical systems of the world. We define reality differently.

Some religions teach that all the pieces of creation are parts of God. This means that the created universe must be something like “God’s body.”

We call that belief pantheism.

(Greek again! The word pan means “everything.” Theos means God. Hence: Pantheism, meaning “God in everything.”)

Christians do not see reality in this way.

We believe that God has granted to each part of His creation the dignity of an independent existence.

That doesn’t mean that creation no longer needs God. It just means that God is not a great watchmaker who creates His machine, winds it up, and then leaves the scene.

Not at all!

God is not the type of a Father who abandons his household. God eternally and constantly upholds and sustains His creation. He keeps giving breath and being to all His creatures, even to those who do not follow Him.

When an artist paints a scene and hangs it on the wall, we know that the painting is not a part of her in the sense that her arm or foot is a part of her. But we do say, “she really put herself into this work” Or, “Look, that could only be hers!” That is what the Bible means when it says things like, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament His handiwork.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could stand at the edge of the universe and look at all of God’s handiwork from that vantage point! If we could look at all things, angels and archangels; all the company of heaven; at butterflies and even single-cell life forms, finally even to the non-living parts of creation; what exactly would we see?

We would see a manifestation of God’s character and personality.

St. Paul says this in Romans, chapter one.

In that passage Paul tells us that human beings can understand even God’s attributes, simply by observing His creation.

(Maybe you will want to stop and read that chapter. Its concepts are very important for Christian theology.)

A few years ago, I was praying on a Florida beach at midnight. As I looked out at the waves, bathed in silver moonlight, I was suddenly gripped with a great reverence for God. I began to pray something like this: “I have always known you as my Savior. From my childhood I have sang about how you walk with me, talk with me and tell me I am your own. But tonight I worship you as my Creator, my Father, and source of all that is.”

That night my intimacy with God deepened.

I came to know God in a new way.

As you can see, we keep returning to the subject of worship.

That’s what real theology does; it leads to intimacy with God. It helps us know Him. It leads us to worship Him.

For all these reasons, it is important to know God as Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Today is the feast day of St. John Chrysostom. He was a great pastor and his age’s most famous preacher. Back in the fourth century, the emperors were very powerful people and Bishop John pastored the church where the emperor attended. When the emperor ordered a synagogue burned with people inside, the bishop publicly refused to serve him communion. This resulted in the bishop getting kicked out of his church.

Years later, the population rose up and demanded their pastor be returned. Bishop John agreed but said that he would still refuse the emperor communion until there had been a public repentance of his sins.

God is not our Heavenly buddy. He is the Sovereign Lord. He created all things, visible and invisible.

Knowing Him in this way fills us with awe and reverence. We stand before One who is incomprehensibly great.

When you know a God like that, Thor and Osiris are not very big deals.

Not to mention a mere pharaoh or emperor!

A Bride Named Zoe

In my last blog, I said that God creates by making things and by “begetting” children.

All human beings are God’s children in a certain sense, simply because he created them. However, when God “saves” a person, He puts into him or her something of His very nature. God creates all men and women. He makes “saved” man or women into sons and daughters. That’s how God “begets”.

C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, reminds us that there are two Greek words for life, “Bios” and “Zoe.” The difference between these two words describe this difference between “making” and “begetting.”

All living human beings have Bios; only believers have Zoe.

God gives a human being Zoe, which the New Testament describes as life everlasting or life more abundantly. When that happens, we say that we are “born again.”

This is New Testament language.

1 Peter, 1:23, says that when we are born again, we are “begotten, not of corruptible seed, but the incorruptible, even the Word of God, which lives and abides forever.”

The Greek word for “seed” in that passage sperma.

Read that verse again, substituting the word “sperma” for the English word “seed.”

Now think of the new birth in this light: we are born again, not of corruptible, or earthly sperma, by of the Word of God, which endures forever.

Reading it that way drives home the fact that when the Word of God finds lodging in our hearts, it initiates a process of regeneration. It imparts the very life force, the very nature of God into us.

In his first epistle (1 John 3:2), St. John says this:


“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”


The apostle John seems to be saying that although believers know that they are God’s children, they do not yet fully grasp what this implies. We only know that in some way, and at some point in the future, we will be like Him!

Children often look like their fathers. God plans for us to look like Him because HE is our Father.

We have such crude ways of imagining this.

On today’s date, in 1858, Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" was played for the first time. The occasion was the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Victoria, to the crown prince of Prussia. Since then, how many millions of brides have marched down the aisle to that music?

Do all those brides know what that their lives are drastically changing? Do they know that they will be a different person in twenty years that they would have been had they married someone else?

Yesterday, in the One Year Bible, we read how Jacob prophesied over each of his sons. He described what their descendants would be like after his death. How did he know these things? Because he was their father and had, for their entire lives, observed them carefully. He was concerned with the attitudes, characteristics and behaviors he had observed in each of them and how these would keep impact them and their descendants.

Jacob was fathering his elderly children, even though he was about to die. The reason for this is clear: covenant is about the people who come after us, about the quality of our descendants’ spiritual lives.

Jacob knew what millions of brides have not known, marching down the aisle to Mendelssohn’s music: our choices create huge shifts in the history of the world. As God’s children, we are responsible for those choices and for the impact of those choices. We are stewards and trustees of our family, the covenant and the power of God’s life within us.

Today, the Old Testament reading in the One Year Bible leaps ahead four hundred years, where we can observe the impact of the actions of Jacob’s sons upon the future.

How important it is for us to honor the beginning stages of things. As the music is playing and we are enthralled with the festivities, we must remember that the real work begins the following day, when we must remain true to the course of action we have committed ourselves to take.

In parenting, being disciples, taking up the responsibilities of citizenship – in all the joys and labor of adult life, a force moves through us that renews the world and “fits us for heaven.”

The Greeks called it ZOE; Jesus called it Eternal Life.

A Note To My Children

No one gets into the world without a Dad.

This is an important point to establish because today is my daughter’s birthday. I want to remind her of the vital role I once played in her existence.

Although I know I will pay dearly for this, as she waxes eloquent in her own blogs, I am compelled and I must express myself.

No one gets on this earth unless some man, somewhere, cooperates with the necessary mechanics of reproduction. Our parents are the source of our earthly, biological life.

Since God made us in His own image and likeness, the way He designed human reproduction must be at least a crude copy of His own creative urge.

How can that be, since God is a spirit?

Well, we know that God creates in two ways, just as we do.

God creates by making things, just as we do when we paint a picture or build a piece of furniture. However, God also creates by “begetting” children, not exactly as we do when we unite with our mates to produce our own children, but in some spiritual way that makes it possible for us t0 call Him, “father.”

When human beings make something, it demonstrates the personality of the maker. However, when human beings begat children, they give to those children a part of their own nature.

God “makes” things.

He also and God “begets” children.

We do these things too because He created us to be like Him.

Obviously, the way God “makes” and “begets” are different than the way we do those things.

God speaks things into existence.

I can’t do that; I’ve tried.

If I want a cabin in the mountains, I have to plan a way to get the property and the materials and then actually build it.

For you and me, dreaming doesn’t make it so. With God, it does.

That’s the difference in how we make things and how God makes things.

Nonetheless, when He does make something, we can see His nature and personality through that thing. Sometimes, we have to look long and deep to do that. I have a difficult time seeing God in an aardvark, but he’s there somewhere because He made it.

If I really take the time to look at a mountain, really look at it, I will see something of the nature of God.

When I really look at a tree, I will understand something new about God.

A lion and a lamb will reveal more things about God than a tree or an aardvark.

When I take the time to really know a man or woman, I see the nature of God in a much more profound way than when I meditate on any other part of nature.

A man or woman has emotions.

People think.

People make decisions.

People love and hate.

All of those characteristics of human life reveal aspects of God, who created us. This is true of every man and woman, whether or not he or she has experienced the new birth.

God’s being shines through everything He made.

However, to those who receive Him, God gives a new kind of life. After that, they are not only created, they are begotten.

That is another reason we call God “Father.”

In his notes on St. Thomas Aquinas, Peter Kreeft once reminded us that the word “understand” means to know “what stands under.” Knowing what stands under the Christian custom of calling God, “father” leads to wisdom. This wisdom teaches us how to behave toward our God, and toward our earthly fathers. It also teaches us how to become the sort of father we read about yesterday in the One Year Bible, who could give such advice as this:


“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom: and with all thy getting, get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honor, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee. Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many.” Proverbs 4:7-10


Happy birthday to my beloved daughter. May she acquire wisdom, which is the pearl of great price and may her children rise up and call her blessed.

The Tiger God and the Supreme Court.

I wrote about anthropomorphism last time. If you are still with me, I would like to talk briefly about anthropologists, the people who study human behavior.

On January 20th, 1801, John Marshall became the first Chief Justice of the United States and served for thirty years, the longest term of any of our chief justices.

He was not an anthropologist. He was a lawyer.

More about him in a moment, if I can fit it in.

Many anthropologists say that Christians worship an anthropomorphic God, a god we have created in our own image.

They say that every god is created either in the image of a man or a beast.

Think about a wild man watching a tiger run through the forest. His heart starts beating fast as he watches it run. Soon, he is awe-struck.

Later, as he thinks about his experience, he imagines a Great Cosmic Tiger, running through the sky.

Soon the wild man builds a Tiger Temple.

Then he organizes a tiger religion.

Can’t we understand that process?

Don’t people (certainly not us, but all the other people!) project their experiences into the sky and call what they imagine there, “god?”

Well, think about it!

Some people you know probably view God as a Great Cosmic Tyrant. He basically hates everybody.

Others seem to believe in a God that resembles something like a doting grandfather. He thinks it’s cute when we disobey Him and just chuckles when we act like brats.

We do seem to make our gods after all from things that either please or terrify us.

After we create our god, we want to keep him, her or it happy.

So, we are guilty as charged.

We do indeed make up gods.

We may even call our private god “Jesus,” or “Father.”

The Bible calls that process idolatry. We are all guilty of it.

What would happen if the actual God, The Father Almighty, showed up?

What if it turned out that He was nothing like all the gods we have been worshipping?

That would be upsetting.

Choosing between a real God and the anthropomorphic gods of our imagination is something all spiritual seekers must learn to do.

But back to the Tiger!

A Tiger God is interesting, a lot more interesting in fact, than the Heavenly Paw Paw of modern Christianity.

When I teach about the beliefs of Christian faith, I hear people say something like, "Well, I don't care for a religion like that."

Of course, what we like about it or don’t like about it is not the point at all! If God really is a Cosmic Tiger, if He growls His way through the universe and consumes people with a fierce and eternal “gulp,” I may not like it, but I better figure out what He wants or how to stay out of His way!

It’s really not about what I like or don’t like. It about learning what is true.

I know. Christians don’t believe in anything like a Tiger God.

“Ahhh,” say the anthropologists, “but you do. You take your experience with your own “father.” You keep inflating that image. You project it up in the sky somewhere. You call that image “God, the Father”.

The Christian response is that the Bible teaches the exact opposite. It says that “God, The Father” is the form. Earthly fatherhood is the crude copy of that form.

Earthly fathers are supposed to mold their fatherhood after the form God reveals in Scripture. One of the things that should happen to us when we say, "I believe in God the Father," is that we begin to understand what makes a man into a true father. We then commit ourselves to become that kind of father.

Perhaps it begins to come clear why it is important to call God, “Father.”

Nonetheless, it is also important to not misuse the term “Father,” as a way to justify our own cultural bias.

We must see what “Father” means in the scripture. We must read the Bible words, not “read into” them. In other words, we must not make the Bible word mean what our own political and cultural conservatism or liberalism, or any other “ism” for that matter, makes them mean. Resisting this human tendency requires humility and mindfulness.

It is also important not to make the phrase “God, the Father,” mean, “The God of the Old Testament.” When we do that, what can Jesus be but “another God”? That means the Holy Spirit becomes yet another God.

Our commitment to monotheism won’t allow us to do that.

The English word “God” refers to the entire Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We don’t believe in God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We believe in God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In an earlier blog, I quoted earlier from an Orthodox theologian who said that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the internal names of God. Allow me to review some of the crucial ideas behind that statement.

In the Old Testament, all the names believers used for God describe aspects of His external nature. They refer to things God does. That is why the Old Testament emphasizes God’s Oneness. Old Covenant believers always saw God “from the outside,” as it were.

The New Testament takes us closer, to a more intimate look at God. New Testament believers begin to contemplate the paradoxical distinctions within God’s nature. That moves us to sometimes emphasize God’s triunity.

As we have seen, the creeds attempt to describe and define the New Testament’s intimate view of God. The Nicene creed speaks of the Son as begotten of the Father. The same creed tells that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. But notice that both the Son and the Holy Spirit are described as “coming forth” from a single, common source – the Father. That is why we begin the creeds and the Lord’s Prayer by acknowledging God’s Fatherhood. For when Christians honor God the Father, they are acknowledging Him to be the ultimate authority and source of all that is, both in Heaven and in Earth. An earthly father is a source of our biological life. God the Father is the source of everything.

This is some heavy stuff, to be sure; but you’re up to it.

By 1801, the founding fathers of our republic realized that we needed our judicial branch to help us discover the implications of our founding documents to the on-going life of the country. They chose Justice Marshall to preside over that work.

They chose well.

Justice Marshall worked hard to secure the sanctity of the United States Constitution. As presidents and parties came and went – his own party disappeared during his tenure – he helped common citizens transitioning from being British citizens, who had very little say in government, to become fully functioning participants in government.

Justice Marshall believed in a concept called Justice.

On the front steps of the Supreme Court Building is an anthropomorphic depiction of Justice, blindfolded. The scales are in her hands and she weighs without regard for the outcome.

It is a very important picture of what is supposed to happen inside that building.

What would an anthropologist say about that?

A Fancy Word

I have been trying to avoid fancy words in these blogs about theology.

By fancy words I mean the Latin, Greek, Hebrew and German based terms that make up the jargon of theological conversation. Those terms drive people who want to talk about God and how He wants us to live our lives, positively nuts! To most of us, the jargon seems created for the purpose of keeping Joe Truck Driver away from the conversation.

(Joe Six Pack isn’t interested in the conversation.)

Today though, I want to use a Greek term: “anthropomorphism.”

Some people say that when we call God “Father,” we are guilty of being crude.

Anthropomorphism is an important word and it really will help us talk about God.

Anthropos is Greek for “man.”

“Morphe” is the Greek word for “form.”

Thus, anthropomorphism means, “in the form of a man.”

Anthropomorphism is the act of attributing human features or characteristics to non-human beings or objects.

Mickey Mouse is an anthropomorphisized mouse! In other words, Mickey is a mouse that acts, speaks and dresses like a man. Have you ever seen a real mouse dressed up like Micky in nature?

No, you haven’t!

We made Mickey up.

We imagined what a mouse would be like if it dressed and behaved like a human being.

Some people say that calling God, “Father” is anthropomorphism. They claim that we are creating an imaginary God, by attributing human characteristics to Him. (Oops! I am supposed to say, “Him, Her, or whatever God may be.”)

Truthfully? Sometimes we do treat God in an anthropomorphic way; don’t you think?

Even the Bible does it.

“God’s ear is not too heavy that He cannot hear; nor is His arm short that He cannot reach,” the Bible says.

That is classic, Biblical anthropomorphism. I mean, does God really have an ear or an arm?

No, He doesn’t.

However, God does hear. He also “reaches.”

Since human beings reach and hear with their arms and ears, they find it difficult to think about how a Being could hear or reach without arms and ears. Therefore, human beings envision God as having arms or ears. That helps us understand God.

This is a legitimate use of anthropomorphism. It helps us understand God, using terms and pictures that we can grasp.

In a sense, using the word ‘Father” in reference to God is, as the critics claim, anthropomorphic. God did not “begat” anyone in the way human beings “begat".

The issue is however, that God Himself Has chosen this term. He calls Himself a father and does do for His own good reasons.

Today’s Old Testament reading in the One Year Bible is about Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams. This becomes the key to the future of both Egypt and Israel.

The New Testament reading is about how Jesus spoke to the people in parables. Jesus said that we have to pay attention to the parables because most people “look but don’t really see; they hear but they don’t really understand.”

Why the dreams?

Why the parables?

Why anthropomorphism?

Because there are things we need to know that are difficult to understand. We have to move step by step, picture by picture until we grasp what we need to know.

C. S. Lewis tells about a child that asked him once what adults meant by the term, “having sex.” (That was a long time ago!)

He replied that it was a fun thing adults did when they are married.

The child then asked if it was good as ice cream.

Lewis said, “Well, yes, it is as good as ice cream and even better sometimes.

The child was overwhelmed.

“Gosh, better than ice cream. Imagine that.”

Now we see as through a glass, darkly.

That’s why we need anthropomorphism

The Father: Begat, and Be Good!

The creeds began with the phrase; I believe in God, the Father. These days, many people have a big problem with using the word “father” in reference to God. They may understand that God is our “source of being” or “ultimate authority.” It’s just that the word “father” leaves them cold.

Obviously, their problem with the word “father” is usually due to some bad experience they have had with someone called father. Many people have been beaten, abandoned or even raped by fathers. It is extremely difficult for a person who has had such an experience to love and respect a God who is addressed by that title. For far too many people, the word “father” is a harsh and angry sounding word.

The problem with calling God, “Father” is not new. The people who heard Jesus had difficulty with it too, though for entirely different reasons. As a rule, before Jesus, religious people had usually addressed God only in reverential terms of awe. In fact, they often showed so much reverence for God that He seemed far away from everyday life. The word that Jesus actually used, Abba, meant something like “Daddy.” It sounded too tender, too gentle. It still sounds a bit jarring, even though we now tend to err in the opposite direction than those ancient Jews, away from reverence and awe and toward familiarity and even contempt.

Jesus came to reveal to us God's real nature. He deliberately chose His favorite title for God to teach us an important reason. Calling God “Father” thus teaches us something Jesus considered vital about how we should view God.

The Church Fathers must have believed this too.

The Apostles’ Creed begins with, "I believe in God the Father Almighty."

We can see then that the creed calls God Father even before it calls Him Creator. There must be a reason for this.

If we are to understand God as He wishes to be understood, then evidently we need to acknowledge Him as “Father.”

Still, we must be careful when we use the word “father.” God may not be a father as we imagine when we hear the word. Jesus calls God, “Father,” so Father He is. However we need to realize that God is a Father as He defines the word, not necessarily as we define it.

On this date in 1535, King Henry V111 declared himself the head of the English Church. He had been a faithful son of the Roman Church but then wanted to divorce and marry again, then do that again, and then do that yet again. The Pope had to draw the line somewhere. Henry wanted to annul his marriage to Queen Katherine after twenty years. He claimed to have a sudden "aha!" of conscience about marrying his late brother's wife, and blamed this oversight for his lack of legitimate male heirs. As always, there was much more going on than just these facts. But Henry wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, and needed Katherine out of the way. The pope said “no”.

Kings don’t like to be told “no” by anyone, including popes, and so he declared the churches of England free of papal control, and, for good measure, added that he would now head the church himself.

It’s a real historical problem for those of us with roots in English Christianity, since our Reformation was not as clean and clear cut as was the reformation on the continent. This is not the place to go into that, except to say that the king was merely moving the population where the people wanted to go anyway – out of the Roman orbit. Like many good politicians, he used the popular mood as an excuse to get what he wanted.

The issue for this blog is “fatherhood.” What does spiritual fathering look like? It certainly doesn’t look like religious bullying or political posturing. It looks like God, who comes to us like a shepherd of a flock. He’s not a jolly granddad up in heaven, laughing at all our silly sins – I mean he can get rough if he has to do so. What he really wants though, is relationship. He wants to grow us, mature us, defend us, and care for us.

God is the source of all existence. Thomas Aquinas used the phrase “fountain of existence.” I love that. I imagine a cosmic hole spewing out comets and kangaroos, rainbows and rhinoceroses (why isn’t it rhinoceri?) God not only created everything, the existence of all things continually depends upon Him. If He decides, the entire universe can disappear, not with a bang but without so much as a whimper.

Just poof!

God’s Fatherhood has to do with origin and source. Even the Godhead has its source in “God, the Father Almighty.” Fatherhood is what comes first.

We owe reverence to God for our existence.

We also owe reverence to our earthly fathers for our existence. Some of them try to deserve that reverence and some do not. That is the main point of the Book of Genesis, what we are reading right now in our church: Fathers do not just begat and then begone. They sustain, comfort, teach, train, defend, love, care for, mentor and grow up their offspring.

When we worship God as “Father,” we are learning how to parent as we as how to honor our own parents. That makes it possible to transmit covenant, civilization and culture form one generation to the next. So there’s a lot riding on this concept.

Oh, and if you want to know how to be a father, spiritual or otherwise, just look at Henry VIII.

Then, do the opposite.

YADA, YADA, YADA!

We are already into a month’s worth of blogs about theology.

“OK,” I hear you saying, but what is the importance of all of this to me right now, in this life? I am sure that God is a higher level of being than me, and I suppose He may indeed be paradoxically both One and Three. I’ll accept that if that is what the church says but for the life of me I can’t imagine how it really impacts my relationship with God or my personal life in the day-to-day.”

Glad you asked!

This gives me a wonderful opportunity to share one of my favorite Christian teachings about God!

In one of his epistles (1 John 4:8), St. John says, “God is Love.” Notice that he does not say that God loves, though that is certainly true. He says that God is love.

To translate the word “is” into the language of mathematics, we might say God = Love. The nature of an equal sign is that we can invert whatever is on each side of it and be left with the same fact. Therefore, “3+6= 9,” is the same statement as “6+3 = 9.” This implies that if God is love, then love must also be God.

Naturally, everything we call love is not God. However, love in its pure form; love undistorted by all our human stuff, is God. All real love in the universe comes from God because all real love in the universe is God.

That is such a beautiful teaching!

There is just one problem with it.

Love cannot exist without an object!

When we utter the word “love,” we immediately realize that there must be someone who loves.

We also realize that someone or something is the recipient of that love.

Question: how could love have existed before creation, when there was only one being in the universe? When God was alone, whom did He love? In what sense can we use the word love where there is only one being exists?

Before the existence of angels and humans, whom did God love? If He is love, He must have loved something or someone.

The doctrine of the Trinity – God’s Triune nature – evolved in early church theology in order to address this very question.

There is a reality within God’s nature that allows us to use the word “love” to describe Him, even when He is alone.

Evidently, God’s nature is something like the following: the Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit without limit, the Son loves the Father and the Holy Spirit without limit, and the Holy Spirit loves the Son and the Father without limit. This dynamic of infinite love begets infinite love, receives infinite love, and then gives it out again. Think of it as a trillion Niagara Falls, pouring vast reservoirs of love from each of the divine persons into the waiting pools of love in the other divine persons. Each of these “pools of love” swirl through infinite, unfathomable eons of time and space, ever-multiplying the power of love as God contemplates His own glory and goodness, then pouring the increased love back into the other persons of the Godhead.

And how does this affect you?

Well, St. Paul tells us that those believers are “in Christ.” C. S. Lewis said once we are truly “in” Christ, then we become the recipients of that love that the Father has toward the Son. If this is true, and it seems to be the case, then we are now involved in that cosmic dynamic motion of ever-increasing love within the Godhead.

The divine love for us penetrates our being and mutates us into an entirely new form of life.

Surely you will remember the old science fiction movies where people were somehow exposed to radiation. Usually, the people in these stories gained some strange new power or mutated into some bizarre form. I think the love of God must work something like that in us.

St. John says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!”(1 John 3:1) Isn’t he talking about this sort of spiritual mutation?

The love of God, whirling through the infinitude of space and time in self-multiplying glory, overflows to become creation. This same love now infects us, like some great virus. Only this is a “virus” that creates instead of destroys. It gives life instead of taking it away. When we catch it, it creates even more love.

As we grow in God, we learn how to give God’s love to others. Our love too multiplies as we share it.

We learn how all this works by observing the One and Triune God, loving Himself and all of creation so that creation is continually lifted and transformed.

As He loves us and we love Him, we learn to think as He thinks. We learn to feel as He feels. We learn to do as He does.

That, my friend, is Christian theology. It’s not an armchair exercise in foolish speculation.

It is life everlasting.

What the Beatles Say About Theology

The Beatles launched their career in the United Sates on this date in 1964 with “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Had they known how our generation would have lived, they might have just called the song, “I Wanna!”

I remember where I was when I first heard the song. I was listening to my little transistor radio. What a marvel it was! Technology was going places. It was wicked, listening to devil music like that but I couldn’t help myself. I was eleven and was just beginning to wander what it meant: “and when I touch you I feel happy inside.”

I felt happy inside listening to the little transistor radio, before going out into the cold to walk to school through ice and snow.

I walked ten miles to school, trudging through the forest everyday to get my education.

That’s actually a lie. It just sounded so good to me that I had to write it down.

The radio and the Beatles are not lies though. That really happened.

It’s so much more fun to write about the Beatles than about Plato and Aquinas. I mean, the Beatles actually existed. The other guys seem so removed from our everyday lives.

If Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas had had neat haircuts or sang with guitars, they would have made a better impression.

Why should anyone care about people like that or what they wrote?

If anyone has a hope that we will pay attention, then they must convince us that a study about God – or theology – has a real purpose.

When I was listening to the Beatles on the radio, I had no idea that the world was going to change as it has in my lifetime. It had already changed really; we were just about to deal with the implications.

Hitler was dead then for twenty-five years but he had so rearranged the world with his madness that we were still reeling. Millions of Jews were dead. Also, the discoveries in physics that had occurred in the early part of the century now had to be faced.

How were Christians to think “Christianly” about such things as quantum mechanics theory, genetic engineering, management science, or any other “secular” information we were about to face?

A Christian wants to understand his chosen life’s work in the light of his spiritual journey. If his spirituality is to be anything more than an escape into his own imagination, then what we learn from the spiritual journey must have serious and usable applications in other areas of life. Conversely, whatever we learn in other areas of life, if it is really truth, ought to shed light upon our spiritual path.

Spirituality is not; after all, a diversion from life; if it is true, then it is life.

However, changing our view of spirituality from a weekend diversion into the core of our existence takes work. We have to apply ourselves. We have to actually learn about our faith. Prayerfully learning about the ideas of faith is a way of forming our inner being, of expanding our capacity to reflect the glory of God. It is the way we connect our adult lives (and our chosen field of work) with God’s Word so we and our work may reflect God to the world.

After all of my talk about cookbooks and dinner, giraffes and Jell-O, we now return to our original question: why should we ever bother ourselves about obscure and ponderous Christian doctrines?

Perhaps we are now ready for the answer.

Thinking about a difficult concept like the Godhead is sometimes nothing more than an exercise in pride. It can be an egghead’s escape into an inner world of hopeless abstraction. If the egghead cannot face up to the challenges of a real life with real people, abstractions are the smokescreen behind which he hides from real life.

Theology can even be a religious intellectual’s way of avoiding God. He can waste everyone’s time spinning endless words about God.

These are often the charges laid against theology. They are often well-founded and are thus warnings about the dangers of intellectualizing our faith.

On the other hand, contemplating Christian doctrine can also be a way of humbling the intellect under the hand of God. It can be a way of letting God in-form us, re- form us, and, in the end, completely “trans-form” us.

The Bible tells us (in Philippians 2:5-11 & Colossians 2,3) that Christ Jesus came “in the form of God.” In other words, Jesus came to reveal the fullness of God to human beings.

God had already revealed Himself through nature. He had also revealed Himself through the Bible. However, God has most fully revealed Himself through the person and teachings of Christ.

God first informed through the scriptures and the hearing of the gospel. Then He became a man and revealed himself through the flesh of Christ. He has revealed Himself to us through the Holy Spirit as well, who came to not only live with us, but to live inside of us.

We are called to worship and meditate upon the One and Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As we do, His grace and glory bursts through one after another of our intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and finally even our physical limitations. His aim is to make us into creatures that will shine like the stars.

That is why contemplation is important; it is about loving God with our minds. It brings the intellect under the influence of glory.

On that day in 1964, in Marmet, West Virginia, as I was getting ready for school, my world was suddenly interrupted by a new sound. Coming out of a piece of technology that would soon reconfigure the way human beings communicate and store information, the sound hit the ears and the brain of an eleven year old boy. It was from London, far, far away. It was in an accent that was different than mine. It sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. It promised experiences that I could hardly imagine.

The world has been reeling since.

The Beatles have come and gone.

Transistors have become dinosaurs.

Men have walked on the moon.

Under the swirling eddies, the foundations hold the world secure.

He who is wise takes the time to acquaint himself with all that is eternal, and with all those through history who think about those things.

That’s what I wanna.

The Beatles didn’t have a thing to say about that.

That’s why they weren’t all that important after all.

General Jackson and an Alligator

Too much contact with Plato can drive you crazy.

I think that’s what happened to Andrew Jackson on today’s date in 1815. That when he fought the British in the Battle of New Orleans.

Johnny Horton claims that when the Americans run out of canons, they used alligators. Here is the official scoop on that.


“So we fired our cannon 'til the barrel melted down.

Then we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round.

We filled his head with cannon balls and powdered his behind.

And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.”


The untold part of this story was that while all this madness was occurring, General Jackson was busy reading Plato’s’ Republic. He was not paying attention to everyday reality and had his head up in the world of forms. At least that’s my theory.

He should have read Aristotle.

Aristotle was Plato’s student, who modified his teacher’s theories about forms in ways that that angered the old man and still ticks Platonists off.

For example, Aristotle used Plato’s idea of forms to explain how humans learn.

He believed that we learn by “abstracting” a thing’s form from its substance. When we speak of someone thinking “abstractly” that’s what we mean.

Aristotle taught that if I see a bear, I will “abstract” (make a mental picture of) the bear’s form and then absorb the bear’s form into my brain. (Well, I certainly can’t absorb the bear’s substance into my brain!)

I don’t even have to see a “real” bear to do this. I can get a bear’s form into my brain just by seeing a picture of a bear, or by reading about a bear.

Aristotle called this process “in-formation,” (certainly a common word for us!)

St. Aquinas was a medieval Bible student who studied Aristotle. Like Plato and Aristotle, he believed that as we learn (as we are in-formed), we are profoundly changed. Every form of every object or idea that we take into ourselves becomes a part of our constantly expanding self.

Modern neuroscience agrees with this and tells us that learning changes the very structure of our brains.

Imagine a man living in Bristol, England in 1820. He reads an article about a giraffe in the encyclopedia. The article explains where giraffes live, what they eat and so forth. Beside the article is a little pencil drawing.

Aristotle would claim that as the man in Bristol reads, he is being “in-formed” by “giraffeness.”

Remember now, the reader has not seen an actual giraffe. If he ever goes to Africa and sees a giraffe, he will realize that his imaginary, mental giraffe simply did not compare to a real giraffe. Nonetheless, he will recognize the long-necked animal when he sees it. The encyclopedia in England in-formed him and he now knows. Therefore, when confronted with a real giraffe, the man from Bristol is prepared to recognize it.

The process of being “in-formed” changes a person.

The man who reads about a giraffe cannot return to his previous state, before his mind got infected by “giraffeness.” After he actually sees a giraffe, smells it, touches it – or God forbid, tastes it – he will become a different man than before. The form of the giraffe, the “giraffeness,” will have become a part of his own nature.

As Aquinas contemplated this sort of reasoning in the light of Scripture, it suddenly made sense to him why God wants us to read the Bible, pray, eat the bread and drink the wine of Holy Communion, smell the incense and so forth. He thought that as we pray and meditate on God, (“tasting and seeing that the Lord is good") the form of God enters our spirits. Thus, holy habits, performed with faith in the crucified and risen Christ, results in a divine “in-forming” of our nature. Gradually, our “per-form – ance,” (a word which means “to put form into action,”) works to “trans-form” us; into the image of our Lord.

Therefore, thought Aquinas, worship is submission to and contemplation upon, the nature of God. It is a human heart’s humble cry to be changed, to become more like God. Therefore, our intellect, no less than our emotions and our will, must be involved in worship.

To use the words of Scripture, we must learn to “worship God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.” That’s how we get informed, allowing “this mind that was in Christ to be in us, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”

Well, that’s probably enough theology for the day. Ideas like this are heavy. We moderns are not accustomed to them.

We need a car chase or a naked person now to run across the screen so we can relax.

The best I can do on a church site blog is to cut back to poor General Jackson in 1815. He had already been there a while.

Jonny Horton says so:


“In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin' on
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.”

If only the British had read the right encyclopedia, they would have known that in New Orleans, anything is possible. The poor alligator was about to be made into gumbo anyway and after a night in the French Quarter, was quite ready to allow someone to put a cannon ball in his mouth and powder his behind. Neither the alligator nor the British were informed and so the Americans performed according to their own script.

That’s why, evidently,

“They ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go.
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.”

When you write your own story, you get to control its form. That’s how Jonny Horton, St. Aquinas, Plato, Aristotle and General Jackson all get to be in the same short blog. This has never occurred before in the history of the world.

I formed it that way.

Pepe Le Pew And The Epiphany

Can you tolerate just one more visit to Plato’s world of forms and substance?

Even though today is Epiphany?

It’s really important. To understand the world in which the New Testament writers lived, a little knowledge about Plato and his teachings is flat out necessary.

(In our contemporary world, a thing to note is that Pepe Le Pew was created on today’s date, in 1945. Mr. Le Pew was envisioned to be an amorous but confused skunk that fell in love with cats. When this “form” became “substance,” it created layers of unwelcome questions from curious children. This has been happening ever since. Some ideas should never see the actual light of day. They should remain pure forms.)

Believe it or not, in the first century Plato’s ideas were the topic of everyday conversation. Two centuries later, the Bishop of Constantinople complained in a letter to a friend that one could not go to the public bath or buy a carrot at the market without being accosted with questions about philosophy and theology. Most of those questions were Plato’s fault, directly or indirectly.

The good bishop would have enjoyed being a pastor in our times. If I get accosted at the market; it’s almost never about theology or philosophy!

I am much more likely to get in a conversation about some figure like Pepe Le Pew, as to whether or not he is or is not an appropriate cartoon for healthy Christian children to watch. Personally, I think Le Pew stinks, and am willing to take a stand on that.

Anyway, back to Plato and how his ideas influenced Christian theology. Who knows when the days will return like those that troubled the bishop of 3rd century Constantinople? We will need to be prepared.

Imagine God preparing to create the universe. First, according to those influenced by Plato, God made “molds” or “forms.” Because these ‘forms” were made of spiritual “stuff,” and came from the being of God, the forms were eternal and perfect.

Now imagine God making material substance, stuff we can see and taste. (I personally don’t know anyone who can taste a form.)

Finally, imagine God taking His various mixtures of “earth-stuff,” all the carbon, water, silicon, and whatever else seemed good to Him to make, and pouring this stuff into His invisible and perfect “forms.”

If you can imagine that process, you have started to understand Plato.

However, as you can imagine, when “substance” gets poured into the forms, the result is never as perfect as the forms themselves were before becoming matter. A building’s lines aren’t as straight as the blueprint designed them to be because the materials used to build buildings are always a bit faulty, a bit “de-formed.”

I don’t know if Pepe le Pew turned out exactly as Chuck Jones planned. I doubt it. The artists and engineers, the sound guys and the program directors all had to tweak the idea as it moved through production and I’m sure the original idea shifted a bit before it became a cartoon character for kids to watch on Saturday mornings.

The visible parts of the universe are not in as good shape as the invisible parts. (Except for the Devil and his friends but that’s another story.) Here in the material universe, things diverge in small and big ways from the divine plan. This difference in quality between “spiritual” things and “material” things, are due to the imperfections of substance. That’s Plato’s idea, anyway.

This way of looking at things is behind many expressions and arguments in the New Testament, as we will see.

Once again, material things – things that exist in our visible universe -- are imperfect. They do not adequately represent the eternal and invisible forms that give them definition, shape and identity.

Plato coined several terms that we use every day to express his view of reality.

For example, he created the word “deformed.” When something is deformed, it has lost some of its form. When things are deformed, they should be “reformed,” that is, “returned to the original form.”Sometimes, we can change the form of a thing, in which case it will be “transformed,” or “made into an entirely new thing.” If something is “formal,” then we are observing the form much more closely than we do under normal circumstances. All meetings have a form but a “formal” meeting tolerates much less deviation from that from than when the meeting is more relaxed.

We could go on and on about this, but you get the idea – if you are still reading!

In Plato’s opinion, all visible and material things are imperfect copies of the perfect and eternal forms, up in the real world (what the New Testament calls “the heavenlies.”)

Some Platonists, or people who study Plato, believed that this inferred that material things are necessarily further from God than the eternal and perfect forms. That is not a New Testament idea, but one that crops up repeatedly in Christian history.

So even though the New Testament writers used Platonic terms, they did not agree with him in some very important ways.

Nonetheless, the idea that things in this world are only imperfect copies of the eternal, and perfect things, is used several times in the New Testament, particularly in St. John’s gospel and the book of Hebrews.

The New Testament twist on Plato is that material things as they are today, after the fall of Adam and Eve, are indeed imperfect representations of what God originally intended. However, material things, before the fall, were “perfect,” at least perfect in the sense that material things were exactly what God created them to be.

Since the fall, material things are not as they were created to be. Material things have indeed become imperfect, or to use a platonic word, “deformed.”

That is why God called the Wise Men from far away by the light of a star, which we celebrate on Epiphany. It announced that light would now be shared with the gentiles – the non Jews – about God and faith. The nations would now be given the law of God and the good news that Jesus Christ has come to save us from our sins.

Now, one question remains: why doesn’t Pepe get it when Penelope the Cat tells him that she doesn’t want him around? Why does he keep thinking that she wants him but just can’t bring herself to admit it?

Perhaps it’s because he cannot recognize his own stink and has no grasp of his real condition.

If only Chuck Jones could talk to Pepe about the original design and how to bring life and love into conformity with that design.

Of course, he would have to pay attention.

Becky Scott, The American Revolution and The Renewing of Our Minds

In the last blog, I tried to interest you in Plato. If I succeeded, I will be nominated teacher of the year. Or, we could give that award to Becky Scott, since today is her birthday.

I could also talk about how that near this date in 1784, the American Revolution officially ended and the founding fathers signed the treaty of Paris. (In happened on January 14th, to be exact.)

Perhaps we should forget about Plato and all the rest of this stuff and just return to our Bible readings!

However, reading the first stories of the Old and New Testaments requires us to stop and think. Sometimes as much as talking about Plato.

(Understanding what was gained by the American Revolution also requires a thoughtful reading of -- and reflecting on -- the nation’s founding documents. We used to do that in an ancient course called “civics,” which taught us how to be citizens. So, healthy citizenship and Christian discipleship each require mature and thoughtful engagement with a text. Who would have thought?)

Anyway, why were the Bible stories written in a way that although entertaining at surface levels, requires such intense thought to get the main points?

Why do the characters in the Bible stories say what they say?

Why are things mentioned in those stories that seemingly lack any connection to the plot?

You can be sure that there are no “throw away” passages or meaningless insertion into the stories. Every word counts; every symbol speaks; every reference to another part of scripture is there for a purpose. So what’s the deal with the complicated structures of the Bible?

Well, reading God’s word is a form of meditation. Prayerful reading focuses our thoughts and emotions and leads us into what we might call “spiritual” consciousness. That’s when we begin to see the connections and begin to submit our intellect to the molding influence of the Holy Spirit.

Many influential Christian thinkers have taught that we learn to stretch toward God by contemplating what lies behind and beyond the things God has made and the things He has said. To use Plato’s language, we learn to look through the substance of a thing in order to perceive that which makes the thing what it is – its form.

(If you didn’t get that, go back and read the last blog on Plato and Jell-O.)

To make this simple: we should practice looking at and through the world, the Bible, and our experiences. We should continually meditate about what these things mean. Our everyday lives, the life of our society, and in the life of the world to come depend upon eternal truth, goodness and beauty that shines through the World in unexpected places.

Many great men and women of God have claimed to have been transformed by their contemplation of God’s Word.

One of my favorite people in history is a medieval monk named Thomas Aquinas. While not all Christians agree with his theology, he is an example of how human intellect humbles itself before the majesty of God. He did this without sacrificing his intellectual integrity. Aquinas believed that once we give our allegiance to the Word of God, we can apply our intellect and emotions in the life-long work of filling our being with the presence of God. We can learn to see all of life, not just the “religious” part of life, through God-touched eyes.

Aquinas especially wanted to understand and explain the old Greek philosophers (Aristotle and Plato) in the light of Holy Scripture. As he did this, he came up with some pretty amazing thoughts about how contemplating God can transform the human heart.

Most of us are not as smart as Thomas Aquinas or Plato, of course. But we don’t have to be. The simplest believer opens himself to the wisdom of God every time he reads the words of scriptures.

Plato said that there is a form behind and beyond “things.” The form is eternal. It exists in another time and another place. A thing’s substance looks as it does and acts as it does because of the form that gives it shape and definition.

The Bible is a concrete, material thing: a book. However, this book expresses God’s eternal nature. If we read it with a worshipful heart and a fully engaged intellect, the Bible will pull us into God. This can only occur if we read with reverence, focused attention and remain intellectually engaged. Our reading has to become a form of prayer – conversation with God.

If we do these things, the Word will penetrate our intelligence, disciple our minds, and stretch our capacity to think.

The Bible claims that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

The renewal of our minds is made possible by the entrance of the Word into our minds.

Our human substance becomes deeply affected by the way we take into ourselves the Form that is above all human form, when we, as the New Testament puts it:

Let this mind be in us that was also in Christ Jesus. The American founding fathers were scholars who were well acquainted with everything I have said here. They envisioned a citizenry that would master the great ideas that formed our republic, come to solid opinions about how to apply these ideas to the nation’s on-going political life, and thus become capable of governing themselves: the first such nation in history.

They didn’t envisioned that we would not take the time to read the founding documents, be unconcerned with what those documents say and would prefer politicians who speak in sound bites, wear nice haircuts and who never challenge us to think. Perhaps they would not have fought a revolution had they realized that we would hate civics so much.

The writers of the Bible also believed that we would want to meditate upon the Word that God had inspired them to write. They believed that we would read until we learned how to live, how to think, and how to find God. They thought that forming a God-consciousness that transforms one’s life would be worth the effort of reading, meditating, praying and acting out the Word of God.

Jello, Plato, and Theology

In my last blog, I wrote a lot about food.

For some reason, it made me think about Jell-O.

(The way some of you celebrated New Years, you might need Jell-O!)

I understand that one might not conclude an elegant romantic meal with Jell-O (outside of West Virginia anyway), but indulge me. Jell-O will help me explain something important.

The old Greek philosopher, Plato, had a very considerable influence upon the writers of the New Testament, the church fathers, and many great Christian thinkers since. Sometimes early Christian thinkers have agreed with Plato and sometimes they haven’t. Whether they have or not, most of them borrowed words and concepts from him. They needed those concepts to communicate with their Greek-speaking audience. For this reason, we need to have some idea of of what Plato taught before we proceed.

So please bear with me for a couple of pages as I plunge us into some of Plato’s heavy thoughts.

Come on, you’re up to it!

Let’s begin with Jell-O. (Jell-O is not that heavy, you see.)

Plato said that everything in the universe is made of two things – form and substance. Now before you give the words “form” and “substance” the meaning you normally assign them, let me explain how Plato used these words.

By “substance,” Plato meant the stuff you can hold in your hand and do tests on and so forth, the elementary stuff of our material world. You know, stuff!

By the word “form,” he meant something like a blueprint. He believed that “forms,” or the blueprints of everything that exists in our material world, came first. Substance was added later.

Forms were made of some sort of spiritual stuff that is now invisible to us. We can talk about forms, but that requires a special kind of thinking and talking.

Think of Plato’s “substance” as Jell-O.

Now think of “form” as a mold into which you can pour the not-yet-solid Jell-O.

Congratulations, you just started understanding Plato! The only difference is that Plato thought “forms” were eternal and were, therefore, the most important part of creation. He also believed that the “substance,” (the “Jell-O”) was a much lower level of creation than the mold we choose to pour the Jell-O into.

(Of course, Plato never tried to eat Jell-O molds. At least one would hope not!)

However, Plato’s idea makes spiritual sense. Any plan that God makes exists on a much higher level than any human plan.

For example, when I decided to write this blog, I first made an outline. Then I began thinking about stories, illustrations and so forth I could pour into my outline.

God did something similar when he created the world. However, God’s “outline,” Plato would say, was itself a living thing. It came from God, for God’s sake! In fact, the blueprint for the universe, the form of all forms, was a part of God.

A bit further along in this book, we will see how St. John’s gospel used this very pattern of thought to introduce Jesus to the Greeks. He called Jesus the “logos,” the form of all forms, who in Christ become flesh and dwelt among us.

As we read through the Bible, we will be challenged by the thought patterns of ancient people. We will have to think about how God chose particular cultures, languages and ears of history to craft his Word into the form we now call the Bible.

A few years ago, I visited the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem. It commemorates the place where the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Just a few feet away, there is an old monk’s cell, where St. Jerome worked for years to translate the Bible into Latin, so we Westerners could read the scriptures.

I remember the awe of standing between these two memorials, one that helps us remember how the Word became a body; the other that helps us remember how the Word became a book.

As Plato might have put it: the perfect form leapt into the world, taking upon itself corruptible substance so we could see and touch the Word of life.

What he did not know was that the corruptible substance would itself be transformed, so that mortal might put on immortality and corruptible might put on incorruptibility.

Christ became a mortal body that we might become an eternal body. The Word became a book so that its power might transform us into God’s eternal companions.

There are some things that even Plato didn’t know.

Also, he never knew that there is always room for Jell-O.

This is a New Year and a new decade. It’s wonderful to think about how God had a plan for our lives before He even created the universe. Our spiritual journey is about discovering that plan and then living accordingly. Furthermore, the plan is not a dead description of God’s hopes but a living entity that flows from God’s own being; sort of like D.N.A. When children are conceived, the “plan” for their physical being is contained in a set of “drawings” that come from the Mom and Dad.

The plan for all creation – God’s D.N.A -- is Himself a living entity, a “form” in Plato’s language. That “form of forms,” the Logos, Blueprint, Word, once took on substance so we could see Him and hear Him.

Sometimes, God’s plan for our lives takes on flesh too and becomes a living thing. However, we have to cooperate with God for this to happen.

Like a woman long ago that prayed, “Let it be done unto me according to Thy will.”

Its not a bad prayer to pray on this first day of the year.