Lenten Reflection for March 17, 2014
I decided to stop numbering these reflections. It's pretentious, a scorecard--let's see how many I can do!
Last night I was walking Nala at the high school. At dusk the deer come out on the property around the school's parking lots. There were at least a dozen of them, and they are small; some were does. They are probably more tolerant of humans than they should be. Nala wanted to chase them, badly, so I let her, since no one was on the premises--there was a misty rain and it was Sunday night. She bolted as soon as I unleashed her, but she only ran to where they had been and then went to explore something else, eventually returning to my call. The deer, of course, were gone in a second, but as we walked the perimeter of the parking lot, they returned. I did not let Nala go again, much as she wanted to. I decided doing so was mean.
So we stood and looked at each other, about 50 feet. They looked at me with a mixture of expectation, fear, naivete, and ignorance. What were they thinking? What was Nala thinking? Natural enemies, of course. The descendant of wolves and the descendants of real, wild deer, staring each other down, not wanting and wanting to do exactly what their instincts tell them to do, and have, since time immemorial. That does not change. Animal nature does not change. Dogs will chase deer (especially a pent-up, hyper pitbull) and deer will leap away.
Only humans can reflect, change, imagine a difference, decide. Nala would not hold back; only I could hold her back on the basis of a moral decision that the deer should not be tortured like that, even if she could never catch them. The deer have even less will than she does.
All this has to do with Lent. Christ stepped into history to make a change, but one foreordained. We can decide because we can imagine a difference. We can reflect and be reflexive about this difference, this non-instinct, this possibility. Yet we are far less powerful than we think.
I was reading this morning from a popular evangelical book (named before) and I was struck again by how glibly we talk and write about God, who numbers the hairs on our head and keeps the world in balance at the atomic level, the atomic particle level. That is perhaps the charm and the bane of evangelicalism, that we have some sort of "personal relationship" with God and therefore think we have Him figured out. We should, especially now, step back and remember the mystery rather than the knowledge. The Bible is what God wants us to know, not everything there is to know; it says so itself. Let's stop this know-it-all attitude that is so off-putting and unrealistic.
Last night I was walking Nala at the high school. At dusk the deer come out on the property around the school's parking lots. There were at least a dozen of them, and they are small; some were does. They are probably more tolerant of humans than they should be. Nala wanted to chase them, badly, so I let her, since no one was on the premises--there was a misty rain and it was Sunday night. She bolted as soon as I unleashed her, but she only ran to where they had been and then went to explore something else, eventually returning to my call. The deer, of course, were gone in a second, but as we walked the perimeter of the parking lot, they returned. I did not let Nala go again, much as she wanted to. I decided doing so was mean.
So we stood and looked at each other, about 50 feet. They looked at me with a mixture of expectation, fear, naivete, and ignorance. What were they thinking? What was Nala thinking? Natural enemies, of course. The descendant of wolves and the descendants of real, wild deer, staring each other down, not wanting and wanting to do exactly what their instincts tell them to do, and have, since time immemorial. That does not change. Animal nature does not change. Dogs will chase deer (especially a pent-up, hyper pitbull) and deer will leap away.
Only humans can reflect, change, imagine a difference, decide. Nala would not hold back; only I could hold her back on the basis of a moral decision that the deer should not be tortured like that, even if she could never catch them. The deer have even less will than she does.
All this has to do with Lent. Christ stepped into history to make a change, but one foreordained. We can decide because we can imagine a difference. We can reflect and be reflexive about this difference, this non-instinct, this possibility. Yet we are far less powerful than we think.
I was reading this morning from a popular evangelical book (named before) and I was struck again by how glibly we talk and write about God, who numbers the hairs on our head and keeps the world in balance at the atomic level, the atomic particle level. That is perhaps the charm and the bane of evangelicalism, that we have some sort of "personal relationship" with God and therefore think we have Him figured out. We should, especially now, step back and remember the mystery rather than the knowledge. The Bible is what God wants us to know, not everything there is to know; it says so itself. Let's stop this know-it-all attitude that is so off-putting and unrealistic.
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