On flying

The seven year old standing on the roof of his house believes that in stepping off and flying, he will be free. While he plunges through the air, the wind in his hair may be exhilarating, but the freedom in which he passionately believes and on which he has staked his future is an illusion. Freedom means discovering that we have two feet planted on the ground.

The "free" market, insofar as this requires belief in the possibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, is perhaps the largest exercise in unfreedom humanity has ever conducted. Can you feel the wind in our hair?

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

"He will command his angels concerning you",
    and "On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone."'

Jesus said to him, 'Again it is written, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."'

- Matthew 4.5-6 (NRSV).

Two cartoons for Lent

Jason has posted two very different Lenten cartoons. An insightful Leunig (well-loved by many Australians) and an animation that was simple and yet profoundly moving.

A dangerous question

The serpent said to the woman, 'Did God say, "You shall not eat of any tree of the garden"?' (Genesis 3.1b)

"What is the real evil in this question? It is not that it is asked at all. Is it that the false answer is contained within it, that within it is attacked the basic attitude of the creature towards the Creator. Man is expected to be judge of God's word instead of simply hearing and doing it. This is accomplished as follows. On the basis of an idea, a principle, some previously gained knowledge about God, man is now to judge God's concrete Word. When man proceeds against the concrete Word of God with the weapon of a principle, with an idea of God, he is in the right from the first, he becomes God's master, he has left the path of obedience, he has withdrawn from God's addressing him."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, Chapter Three.

Which ideas of God are we in danger of using to escape from his concrete word to us in Christ?

Could it be the (thoroughly biblical) notion that "God is love" (1 John 4.8, 16), which we fill with our conception of love, rather than allowing God in Christ to define it ("this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and gave his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" - 1 John 4.10)? Or could it be a notion that God must be just and so we demand that he conform to our standards of justice?

Could it be that God is mystery, and so can not speak a word to us that we might understand? Or could it be that God reveals himself and so everything about him must be clear, any hint of mystery must be banished through rational exegesis?

What do you think?