I've got this theory about how women deal with guys they don't quite know how to handle. I first observed it with a close friend in college and then refined my theory in the subsequent years. It resurfaced after I got married when I noticed all my friend's wives were doing the same thing. When ever we were in a situation where the girl didn't feel especially confident or was unsure of how to proceed they would refer to the guy who was the source of their problems as a small child or with a condescending air, as if to infer that they were correct simply because of an age/maturity difference-even if no such difference existed. My wife and all the other women I confronted about this denied it emphatically, but they would, wouldn't they?
Humans have the understandable tendency to reduce objects and ideas in size until they are, or seem, manageable. This can be seen everywhere, from the division of gigantic tracts of land into small maps to the scientific categorization of every variation in plant life we are aware of. Somehow, our solar system becomes more manageable when we turn it into a three foot model, people become less perplexing when we analyze and label their behavior. To the bewildering images thrown on canvas by an empty artist we say, "post-modern" and to the confused business man who struggles to find meaning we say, "Mid-life crisis". Faced with an omnipotent, eternal, uber-complex being, it makes perfect sense that our minds carve out a small chunk, put it carefully in a box and label it God. If we did not do so our minds would just shut down. Give it a shot right now. Try to wrap your mind around the concept that God is everywhere, at the same time, interacting with everything, simultaneously. It is not possible. Our brains were not built to think in multiple dimensions at the same time. We have a hard enough time keeping one thought in our heads, let alone, two or three or infinite.
How then, practically speaking, do we interact with God? Most often, I divide him up into small pieces that I think I can handle. A method as faulty as it is common. The past few weeks have been revealing an alternate method, if you can even call it that, for handling my relationship with the Almighty. In his book, Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton says, "The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." What a profound thought? What if, instead of dividing God into compact, easy to manage portions that fit inside my head, I instead began to dwell "in the heavens" with him. What if I were to seek to be constantly in his presence instead of seeking to introduce him, piecemeal, into mine?
This deserves more thought. What do you think?
The desire to make miniatures has been connected to the development of bourgeois subjectivity. That is, when a typical Victorian English middle-class person began to think of himself or herself as being a certain kind of person or doing certain kinds of things, he or she began to see the need to develop a "life of the mind," an interior identity that had certain desires and needs. This led to the development of all sorts of miniatures: miniature train sets, dollhouses, ships in bottles, etc. See Susan Stewart, On Longing: http://books.google.com.eg/books?id=DtLTTAYvBFkC&dq=stewart+gigantic&hl=en&source=gbs_navlinks_s
ReplyDeleteHi Seth! You are right that God's infinite majesty prevents us from being able to know him as he is. Yahweh tells Moses that if he could see his face, or the full measure of God's glory, he would be destroyed (Exodus 33). The divide between Creator and creature is not one we can cross - in our knowledge or even in our imagination.
ReplyDeleteHowever, God can cross the divide from the other side. He has revealed himself to us, so that we can know him and worship him.
God revealed himself to our first parents, Adam and Eve, through the world he had created (general revelation), and by making direct contact when he walked with them in the garden (special revelation). But they disobeyed God, and the hearts of men were darkened with sin, so that we willfully deny the revelation of God in nature.
Yahweh revealed himself to his chosen people, Israel, through Moses and the prophets. But they disobeyed him and broke his covenant by seeking after idols.
"But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Heb 1:2)." The incarnate Christ is the final revelation of God. The infinite God took on a finite human nature, and redeemed us from sin, so that we could know and worship him forever. Because of the finished work of Christ, we are reconciled to the Father through the power of the Spirit, according to the plan of our election (we know him because he first knew us).
We are frail flowers who last but a day, and our minds cannot contain the glory of the living God. Worse than that, we were dead in sin, awaiting the judgement of God. But in Christ, the Creator of the universe has stooped down to speak baby talk to us (as John Calvin would say) so that we can understand, believe the gospel, and worship. What a wonderful mystery, that God would love me, a sinner! Hallelujah!
Anyway, sorry for the long post. Your post was really thought provoking! Keep blogging!
- Jamie Duguid