I don’t know exactly when most of us trade our imaginations for calculators, but it happens far too early, and it is a very bad trade.
Once the deal is done, we spend far too many of our days wandering through life with our eyes half-closed, our spirits half asleep, dull and insensible, so witless that we barely notice the grievous loss. But sometimes a beautiful glimpse of the wonder we once had by the overflowing bucket-load takes us back to what is precious.
I think that’s what happened to me on a wonder-filled Easter evening. In the afterglow of the most wonderful Resurrection of all came a much more modest but still “wonder-full” resurrection of my spirit right in our back yard.
Two granddaughter-princesses, five years old and three, and a little eleven-month-young elf, were spending the weekend with us.
“PawPaw,” the princesses begged, “tell us a scary story!”
That presented a bit of a problem. First, my 55-year-old imagination is old and withered and can’t possibly keep up with theirs! I also have a 55-year-old back that soon became a factor. Plus, there’s scary and there’s SCARY. It’s a fine thing when magic seeds sprout into bean-stalks but no grandpa worth his salt wants scary story seeds to sprout into nightmares.
But we got started. In the shed/greenhouse, I sat in my chair and the princesses sat in their little “frog” chairs. I reached back into my own childhood for a story, but I soon found that all I had to do was get things started.
“Once upon a time, two princesses left their fine castle and started out for the forest. Their names were . . . Hmm, I’m trying to remember . . .”
“Alexandria!” shouted the older. “Belle!” interjected the younger.
And off we went. I provided some basic details and the princesses filled in the rest, bouncing up now and again to draw the story in chalk on the shed floor. A bridge. A troll. A witch. Cookies with enchanted sprinkles (because princesses don’t always eat the whole cookie but they always eat the icing and sprinkles). And a rescue by Kings Chris & Jeff and Queens Shayla & Amy. We went all the way to “happily ever after.”
Later in the day, the story moved to the trampoline, a tale my back still tells wordlessly. A troll looking much like me discovered that though princesses on trampolines are invisible, they are not inaudible or inedible. If you bounce them a bit, they soon start giggling and then you can find them and eat their tummies.
As the day was ending, Princess Number One made me promise to tell them another story about the Muleshoe Scare. It is evidently quite a well-known scary story, but I don’t know it yet. I promised to tell it when they come back, so I’m working on it.
“Here at the magic hour,” sings Andrew Peterson, “Time and eternity / Mingle a moment in chorus.” I think we found the magic hour. But I’d never have found it alone. It took two little girls (and a little elf) on Easter to take me by the hand and lead me to it. Yes, indeed, “a little child shall lead them.” No wonder the Lord of all wonder so loved the little ones! They remind us of what really matters. They lead us to Joy.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
"The Most Expensive Hyphen in History"
“The Most Expensive Hyphen in History.”
That was the title I ran across in a Google search as I was editing and designing a recent issue of The Christian Appeal, the monthly devotional magazine my brother and I edit.
The “hyphen” in question was actually an “overbar” (“hyphen” to most of us) that a programmer failed to properly copy into “coded computer instructions” in the “data editing program” that allowed faulty guidance instructions to be sent to . . . guess what? A space probe! None other than NASA’s Mariner 1.
Launched in 1962, Mariner 1 was supposed to head for Venus for America’s first planetary “fly by.” Unfortunately for the 18.2 million dollar (1962 dollars!) spacecraft, the missing hyphen caused such serious guidance problems that the spacecraft had to be destroyed just 294.5 seconds into the flight. (Mariner 2 would later do the job right.)
The whole hyphen incident seems to have taken on something of “urban legend” status, clouding fact and fiction. But Mariner 1 did indeed become expensive toast, and, though the reality may well be more complicated, a single hyphen has often received the blame.
So, you see, the moral of the story is clearly that, while computer programmers are a dime a gigabyte, what the world really needs are more conscientious English majors with a flare for proofreeding. (Make that “a flair for proofreading,” lest this column go off-course and crash into innocent bystanders.)
I hate proofreading, but what I hate worse is wading through slop published by careless proofreaders. Our little magazine gets proofread at least four times before it hits print. I dare anyone to find a cleaner publication (in any sense). But it still drives me crazy when I’m reading through an issue later and am hit in the face by an extra space that managed to creep in and hitch a ride to publication between two words that needed only one space.
Grammar is another issue, and one that recently almost caused a rift in the family. (You need to understand that my family plays Scrabble as blood sport.) My younger brother Jim wrote the sentence. Editor Me passed it on. Older brother Editor Gene flagged it to be fixed. Here’s the original: “I’ve become acutely aware of the chaos so many ‘loose ends’ tends to create.” The question: “tends” or “tend”? It’s a subject-verb agreement issue. Brother Jim thinks “chaos” is doing the tending. Brother Gene thinks the “loose ends” tend. I just tend to be confused, but I bowed to seniority and went with “tend.” I just hope the issue doesn’t go off course and blow up if that’s wrong.
Mistakes do creep in, don’t they? In print. And, heaven knows, in life. Thank God that he didn’t forget to cross the most important T. We call it the Cross. The gift of God’s Son. Truly amazing GRACE. And, yes, that’s supposed to be all caps. (But Gene says italics would’ve been better.)
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
That was the title I ran across in a Google search as I was editing and designing a recent issue of The Christian Appeal, the monthly devotional magazine my brother and I edit.
The “hyphen” in question was actually an “overbar” (“hyphen” to most of us) that a programmer failed to properly copy into “coded computer instructions” in the “data editing program” that allowed faulty guidance instructions to be sent to . . . guess what? A space probe! None other than NASA’s Mariner 1.
Launched in 1962, Mariner 1 was supposed to head for Venus for America’s first planetary “fly by.” Unfortunately for the 18.2 million dollar (1962 dollars!) spacecraft, the missing hyphen caused such serious guidance problems that the spacecraft had to be destroyed just 294.5 seconds into the flight. (Mariner 2 would later do the job right.)
The whole hyphen incident seems to have taken on something of “urban legend” status, clouding fact and fiction. But Mariner 1 did indeed become expensive toast, and, though the reality may well be more complicated, a single hyphen has often received the blame.
So, you see, the moral of the story is clearly that, while computer programmers are a dime a gigabyte, what the world really needs are more conscientious English majors with a flare for proofreeding. (Make that “a flair for proofreading,” lest this column go off-course and crash into innocent bystanders.)
I hate proofreading, but what I hate worse is wading through slop published by careless proofreaders. Our little magazine gets proofread at least four times before it hits print. I dare anyone to find a cleaner publication (in any sense). But it still drives me crazy when I’m reading through an issue later and am hit in the face by an extra space that managed to creep in and hitch a ride to publication between two words that needed only one space.
Grammar is another issue, and one that recently almost caused a rift in the family. (You need to understand that my family plays Scrabble as blood sport.) My younger brother Jim wrote the sentence. Editor Me passed it on. Older brother Editor Gene flagged it to be fixed. Here’s the original: “I’ve become acutely aware of the chaos so many ‘loose ends’ tends to create.” The question: “tends” or “tend”? It’s a subject-verb agreement issue. Brother Jim thinks “chaos” is doing the tending. Brother Gene thinks the “loose ends” tend. I just tend to be confused, but I bowed to seniority and went with “tend.” I just hope the issue doesn’t go off course and blow up if that’s wrong.
Mistakes do creep in, don’t they? In print. And, heaven knows, in life. Thank God that he didn’t forget to cross the most important T. We call it the Cross. The gift of God’s Son. Truly amazing GRACE. And, yes, that’s supposed to be all caps. (But Gene says italics would’ve been better.)
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, April 2, 2012
A Tsunami of Joy Flows from a Little-used Tomb
“Joy is the serious business of heaven,” wrote C. S. Lewis. Whatever the musical key of “the concert of the age,” on the eternal day when God’s people from across the ages, people of every tribe and tongue, all band together to praise him, joy will be the tone and timbre of every single note.
And we don’t have to wait. Whenever Heaven bursts in unexpectedly right here on earth, joy marvelously overflows the banks of our hearts and spills out in delight.
A tsunami of joy started one morning long ago and has not stopped, its source a little-used tomb in Palestine. Unquenchable Light and Life spilled forth as our Lord breathed new life and death’s bonds were loosed forever. The joy-flood that burst through the mouth of that stone crypt still flows freely, an unending spring of the water of life.
The words of John of Damascus (d. 749) are as true today as they were over a thousand years ago when he contemplated “The Day of Resurrection” and urged, “Let all things seen and unseen / Their notes in gladness blend / For Christ the Lord hath risen, / Our Joy that hath no end.”
Delightfully drenched by that joy-flood, the Apostle Paul exclaims, “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20), or as Eugene Peterson paraphrases in The Message, “the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.”
No, that kind of joy can’t be contained. You can’t successfully ignore it, quench it, throttle it, demean it, crucify it, bury it, roll a stone over it. You might as well try to bottle up the liquid light of the Milky Way in a paper cup, capture Niagara Falls in a Boy Scout canteen, contain and control a nuclear reaction in your cupped hands.
It won’t happen.
Not in this life.
And not in the next.
So it’s a good thing to get an early start praising the risen Lord, tilting our heads back, our faces heavenward, and allowing the flood of his joy to start washing over us right now.
While his blood washes away the stain of our sins, his joy becomes the flood washing away the dust of a drought-stricken world, the grit that would have relentlessly ground down our lives into despair.
While Satan the accuser and a host of less poisonous but still dangerous and depressing finger-pointers and tongue-waggers hurl insults to shatter our joy, hobble our delight, and dry up our spirits, Christ, alive and life-giving, stands at the right hand of the Father defending us, upholding us, proclaiming the truth that we are his, and delighting to claim us.
Yes, the joy-flood started long ago, flowing forth from the angels’ words to the astonished women at the tomb: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!”
Because he lives, joy lives! “Our Joy . . . hath no end.”
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
And we don’t have to wait. Whenever Heaven bursts in unexpectedly right here on earth, joy marvelously overflows the banks of our hearts and spills out in delight.
A tsunami of joy started one morning long ago and has not stopped, its source a little-used tomb in Palestine. Unquenchable Light and Life spilled forth as our Lord breathed new life and death’s bonds were loosed forever. The joy-flood that burst through the mouth of that stone crypt still flows freely, an unending spring of the water of life.
The words of John of Damascus (d. 749) are as true today as they were over a thousand years ago when he contemplated “The Day of Resurrection” and urged, “Let all things seen and unseen / Their notes in gladness blend / For Christ the Lord hath risen, / Our Joy that hath no end.”
Delightfully drenched by that joy-flood, the Apostle Paul exclaims, “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20), or as Eugene Peterson paraphrases in The Message, “the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.”
No, that kind of joy can’t be contained. You can’t successfully ignore it, quench it, throttle it, demean it, crucify it, bury it, roll a stone over it. You might as well try to bottle up the liquid light of the Milky Way in a paper cup, capture Niagara Falls in a Boy Scout canteen, contain and control a nuclear reaction in your cupped hands.
It won’t happen.
Not in this life.
And not in the next.
So it’s a good thing to get an early start praising the risen Lord, tilting our heads back, our faces heavenward, and allowing the flood of his joy to start washing over us right now.
While his blood washes away the stain of our sins, his joy becomes the flood washing away the dust of a drought-stricken world, the grit that would have relentlessly ground down our lives into despair.
While Satan the accuser and a host of less poisonous but still dangerous and depressing finger-pointers and tongue-waggers hurl insults to shatter our joy, hobble our delight, and dry up our spirits, Christ, alive and life-giving, stands at the right hand of the Father defending us, upholding us, proclaiming the truth that we are his, and delighting to claim us.
Yes, the joy-flood started long ago, flowing forth from the angels’ words to the astonished women at the tomb: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!”
Because he lives, joy lives! “Our Joy . . . hath no end.”
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, March 26, 2012
A Good Book Sounds an Important Warning
I don’t know how long it took Eugene Peterson to actually write his book The Pastor, but though he’s written around thirty others, it took him almost eighty years to be able to write this one.
An amazing book (Peterson doesn’t write any other kind), what he says for pastors and churches (and Christ’s church as a whole) has never been more important for us to hear. We live in a culture “uncongenial” not only to the vocation of pastors but to what is most truly important in the life of Christ’s Body, the church.
As Peterson says, “The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.” The church has often become just one more business among many, the only difference being that it specializes in religious goods and services.
Congregants become consumers, always shopping for the best deal, the best show. Congregations become competitors instead of outposts of one Kingdom. Pastors, whose idea of “success” is measured only by numbers, jump on a career ladder where God “calls” them to ever larger churches where their “effectiveness can be maximized” and the beautiful term “pastor” loses any meaning. Always on the prowl for more exciting pastures and more promising sheep, they don’t even know the names of the sheep, much less their needs and struggles, hopes and dreams.
In their drive to be religious rock stars, “religious entrepreneurs” have little time for the sacred trust of living life walking beside “ordinary” sheep whose lives are notably short of dazzle and drama. Desperate to orchestrate the next eye-popping program or the next worship explosion, they bow to the very temptation Christ eschewed as Satan cajoled, “Throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple! Play to the crowd!” No addict ever needed cocaine more than they need a crowd.
Much of the religious business marketing could be carried out just as effectively if God had retired. It pays lip service to God’s presence, but almost completely disregards God’s most truly amazing work: his presence in the sacred realm of what we easily disregard as the ordinary—ordinary people and places and events and life.
So much of the modern approach to mega-religion is profoundly disrespectful of sheep and of the Shepherd as it trades the values of the Kingdom of God for those of the kingdom of man. The whole thing becomes impersonal, competitive, and manipulative, functional rather than relational, something to be counted and charted, quantified and graphed, and thus judged valuable or not.
Those “ordinary sheep” are God’s sheep. He loves them and lives in them. What a sacred privilege to walk with them and “be present” together with “what God has done and is doing.”
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
An amazing book (Peterson doesn’t write any other kind), what he says for pastors and churches (and Christ’s church as a whole) has never been more important for us to hear. We live in a culture “uncongenial” not only to the vocation of pastors but to what is most truly important in the life of Christ’s Body, the church.
As Peterson says, “The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.” The church has often become just one more business among many, the only difference being that it specializes in religious goods and services.
Congregants become consumers, always shopping for the best deal, the best show. Congregations become competitors instead of outposts of one Kingdom. Pastors, whose idea of “success” is measured only by numbers, jump on a career ladder where God “calls” them to ever larger churches where their “effectiveness can be maximized” and the beautiful term “pastor” loses any meaning. Always on the prowl for more exciting pastures and more promising sheep, they don’t even know the names of the sheep, much less their needs and struggles, hopes and dreams.
In their drive to be religious rock stars, “religious entrepreneurs” have little time for the sacred trust of living life walking beside “ordinary” sheep whose lives are notably short of dazzle and drama. Desperate to orchestrate the next eye-popping program or the next worship explosion, they bow to the very temptation Christ eschewed as Satan cajoled, “Throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple! Play to the crowd!” No addict ever needed cocaine more than they need a crowd.
Much of the religious business marketing could be carried out just as effectively if God had retired. It pays lip service to God’s presence, but almost completely disregards God’s most truly amazing work: his presence in the sacred realm of what we easily disregard as the ordinary—ordinary people and places and events and life.
So much of the modern approach to mega-religion is profoundly disrespectful of sheep and of the Shepherd as it trades the values of the Kingdom of God for those of the kingdom of man. The whole thing becomes impersonal, competitive, and manipulative, functional rather than relational, something to be counted and charted, quantified and graphed, and thus judged valuable or not.
Those “ordinary sheep” are God’s sheep. He loves them and lives in them. What a sacred privilege to walk with them and “be present” together with “what God has done and is doing.”
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Perceptions and Reality Only Occasionally Line Up
May I state the obvious? People react to other people, situations, and issues on the basis of their perceptions of those people, situations, and issues, and not necessarily on the basis of reality.
I mean no particular disrespect to either breed, human or canine, but in that regard I think we humans generally operate a little below the level of man’s best friend.
If you meet a dog in the park, thrust your hand out to pet the cute little beast, all the while sincerely holding nothing but love, warmth, kindness, and the very best of intentions in your human heart, BUT he nevertheless perceives your action as threatening, you may well draw back a bloody nub. He reacts, you see, not so much to reality as to his perception of reality.
And he may be dead wrong.
If he’s an exceptionally intelligent canine, he may later “learn” that his estimation of you and your intentions was flawed. Maybe you’ll go on to help him reach a more realistic conclusion as you reach down more carefully to pet him with your remaining hand.
Or, probably more likely, he may run over the hill before you have an opportunity to change his mistaken opinion of you, and he may be even quicker to sink his teeth into the next human who quite innocently reaches out her hand. He may well go on to his reward in doggy heaven a decade or two (in dog years) later still firmly wedded to the erroneous opinion that all humans who reach down to pet him are mean, malicious, mutt-haters. Now, he would be absolutely wrong, but he would believe deeply in his error and die not knowing that his perceptions were completely unfounded in reality.
I wish this sort of thing was only a problem with dogs. But I’m afraid that we humans are often just as witless and wrong when we react quickly, and very often poorly, just on the basis of our all-too-fallible perceptions. How hard it is for someone else who doesn’t share our fouled up view of a particular person, situation, or issue to try to help us see reality when everything from our backgrounds, our upbringing, our unfortunate experiences, all the way to our lack of sleep and the state of our digestion, conspires to give us flawed perceptions and, to some degree large or small, blind us to reality.
Then you know what happens, don’t you? We go around biting folks who don’t deserve to be bitten. And then too often they go off and bite someone else.
The fact that we are such poor judges both of reality and of the motives of our neighbors is one significant reason Jesus warned us not to spend time judging and criticizing those around us. You and I are very poor judges.
Our dogs may not always be great judges either, but I personally would trust a dog with a good nose a lot farther than I’d trust a biting, barking, snapping, ill-tempered human.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
I mean no particular disrespect to either breed, human or canine, but in that regard I think we humans generally operate a little below the level of man’s best friend.
If you meet a dog in the park, thrust your hand out to pet the cute little beast, all the while sincerely holding nothing but love, warmth, kindness, and the very best of intentions in your human heart, BUT he nevertheless perceives your action as threatening, you may well draw back a bloody nub. He reacts, you see, not so much to reality as to his perception of reality.
And he may be dead wrong.
If he’s an exceptionally intelligent canine, he may later “learn” that his estimation of you and your intentions was flawed. Maybe you’ll go on to help him reach a more realistic conclusion as you reach down more carefully to pet him with your remaining hand.
Or, probably more likely, he may run over the hill before you have an opportunity to change his mistaken opinion of you, and he may be even quicker to sink his teeth into the next human who quite innocently reaches out her hand. He may well go on to his reward in doggy heaven a decade or two (in dog years) later still firmly wedded to the erroneous opinion that all humans who reach down to pet him are mean, malicious, mutt-haters. Now, he would be absolutely wrong, but he would believe deeply in his error and die not knowing that his perceptions were completely unfounded in reality.
I wish this sort of thing was only a problem with dogs. But I’m afraid that we humans are often just as witless and wrong when we react quickly, and very often poorly, just on the basis of our all-too-fallible perceptions. How hard it is for someone else who doesn’t share our fouled up view of a particular person, situation, or issue to try to help us see reality when everything from our backgrounds, our upbringing, our unfortunate experiences, all the way to our lack of sleep and the state of our digestion, conspires to give us flawed perceptions and, to some degree large or small, blind us to reality.
Then you know what happens, don’t you? We go around biting folks who don’t deserve to be bitten. And then too often they go off and bite someone else.
The fact that we are such poor judges both of reality and of the motives of our neighbors is one significant reason Jesus warned us not to spend time judging and criticizing those around us. You and I are very poor judges.
Our dogs may not always be great judges either, but I personally would trust a dog with a good nose a lot farther than I’d trust a biting, barking, snapping, ill-tempered human.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
God-making Is Strange But Not Unusual Business
“Make me a god!” It seems like such a strange request—until we realize how often we probably make this same request ourselves.
Israel’s children were waiting in the desert at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses had been summoned up the mountain by God Himself. Jehovah was about to give to Moses to give to His people the tablets of the Law.
But Moses had been gone a good while. Forty days and nights. And Israel’s children were as restless and impatient as a little child waiting on his mama at Cloth World. (And I suppose that is an archaic allusion on almost every level, but . . .) What had happened to Moses? What was taking him so long? Was he even still alive or had that awesome display of power on the mountain unmade him?
At first, perhaps, they were just impatient. But impatience turned into anger, and anger flowered into folly as they accosted Aaron, “Moses is gone. We don’t know what happened to him, but he’s gone. Make us a god!”
Why did they need a god?
Was it because the God who rained plague after plague on their humiliated Egyptian task-masters was somehow away like Moses, off on a long journey?
Was it because the God who had parted the Red Sea and then swallowed Pharaoh’s entire army in swirling death was too weak to somehow help Israel’s children along on the rest of their journey?
Was it because the God who had created this world and who gave them their very lives was not God enough?
Was it because the God who would soon be feeding them with manna and sharing with them His very Presence was less than the answer to their need?
“Make us a god!”
A god you can make. A supposed creator created by his own creatures. Hmm.
What comes first—the chicken or the egg?
What comes first—the creator or the creatures?
I’ve always wondered how mechanistic and naturalistic evolutionists get around the big question: “Who lit the fuse for the Big Bang?” So, they say, life on earth originated from some primordial soup? Well, who made the soup? Where did the stuff of creation come from? It seems to me, you must have a creator, a cook, a pre-existent chef of amazing power, back there somewhere. I guess my faith is not blind enough to believe otherwise.
And now the request comes: Make us a god! And it makes me wonder about the kind of god who can be made by creatures who fashion him in their own liking, set him up on a stand, and then bow down to him, presumably to thank him for life and all good things.
I see a problem here. And it would seem even sillier if we didn’t do the same thing ourselves all the time.
“Make us a god!”
The god that Aaron made for them was gold. Fitting, I suppose. Lots of ours are, too. We bow before Money and what it can buy. We bow before Pleasure. We bow before Success and Prestige.
But the God who redeemed us on a cross is God enough. Let’s bow before Him.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Israel’s children were waiting in the desert at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses had been summoned up the mountain by God Himself. Jehovah was about to give to Moses to give to His people the tablets of the Law.
But Moses had been gone a good while. Forty days and nights. And Israel’s children were as restless and impatient as a little child waiting on his mama at Cloth World. (And I suppose that is an archaic allusion on almost every level, but . . .) What had happened to Moses? What was taking him so long? Was he even still alive or had that awesome display of power on the mountain unmade him?
At first, perhaps, they were just impatient. But impatience turned into anger, and anger flowered into folly as they accosted Aaron, “Moses is gone. We don’t know what happened to him, but he’s gone. Make us a god!”
Why did they need a god?
Was it because the God who rained plague after plague on their humiliated Egyptian task-masters was somehow away like Moses, off on a long journey?
Was it because the God who had parted the Red Sea and then swallowed Pharaoh’s entire army in swirling death was too weak to somehow help Israel’s children along on the rest of their journey?
Was it because the God who had created this world and who gave them their very lives was not God enough?
Was it because the God who would soon be feeding them with manna and sharing with them His very Presence was less than the answer to their need?
“Make us a god!”
A god you can make. A supposed creator created by his own creatures. Hmm.
What comes first—the chicken or the egg?
What comes first—the creator or the creatures?
I’ve always wondered how mechanistic and naturalistic evolutionists get around the big question: “Who lit the fuse for the Big Bang?” So, they say, life on earth originated from some primordial soup? Well, who made the soup? Where did the stuff of creation come from? It seems to me, you must have a creator, a cook, a pre-existent chef of amazing power, back there somewhere. I guess my faith is not blind enough to believe otherwise.
And now the request comes: Make us a god! And it makes me wonder about the kind of god who can be made by creatures who fashion him in their own liking, set him up on a stand, and then bow down to him, presumably to thank him for life and all good things.
I see a problem here. And it would seem even sillier if we didn’t do the same thing ourselves all the time.
“Make us a god!”
The god that Aaron made for them was gold. Fitting, I suppose. Lots of ours are, too. We bow before Money and what it can buy. We bow before Pleasure. We bow before Success and Prestige.
But the God who redeemed us on a cross is God enough. Let’s bow before Him.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Naive Leaders Can Be As Dangerous As Evil Ones
You don’t have to be an English major to be amazed by the power of words, but the English major under my hat is still amazed every time I open a really great book and find myself inside the head of a really great person. It’s almost a miracle to be able to sit at the feet of men and women who have long been gone but whose wisdom lives on, if only we sit down and take advantage of it.
I’d nominate Winston Churchill as the most influential leader, and one of the most fascinating people, of the 20th century. The first volume of his Nobel prize-winning The Second World War is entitled The Gathering Storm. Published in 1948, it is filled with the kind of wise perspective any would-be leader would do well to note.
When President Franklin Roosevelt asked Churchill what he thought the war (World War II) should be called, Churchill replied, “The Unnecessary War.” According to Churchill, it would have been completely unnecessary if the winners of the First World War had held their ground and behaved wisely. Instead, war-weary and hungry for peace at any price, they slept at the helm while Hitler took over the ship. Early on, Churchill saw what was happening and with a few others tried to sound the alarm, but to no avail.
The world watched as Hitler gobbled up Austria and showed time and again a complete willingness to break his word and any number of treaties. Corporal Hitler was a very dangerous man, a very evil man.
On the other hand, England’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was by all accounts—even those of his political adversaries—a good and peace-loving man. Longing for peace, he went to Germany three times to meet with Herr Hitler. Chamberlain led Europe in acceding to Hitler’s demands, even at the price of the honor of Britain and France.
When Hitler cast his eyes toward Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain encouraged France to ignore a treaty obligating them to defend the Czechs, which allowed Britain to sidestep for the time its own obligations to France. Czechoslovakia was thus sacrificed, parceled up, and thrown to the hounds like chunks of old meat. Hitler’s appetite increased even as Chamberlain tried to avoid war by “sweet reasonableness.” Sadly ironic is the fact that Hitler’s generals were planning a coup against him that would likely have been successful but was put off (and never happened) because Chamberlain chose to come to visit Hitler on the very day the coup was to take place.
The Old Testament prophets warn us about those who say, “‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” And Jesus himself tells us to be “wise as serpents” at the same time as we are “harmless as doves.” Foolish doves live short and unhappy lives. Churchill has convinced me that this world has every bit as much to fear from those who are utterly naive as it does from those who are utterly evil.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
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