Wake Shake the Dead

I know that whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it. God does it, that men should fear before Him. — Ecclesiastes 3:14

Heaven and earth are heartless, treating creatures like straw dogs — Tao Te Ching

God is the reason for our problem and simultaneously the Solution. One of the things I have to do when I pray, and I just learned this recently — is to think about my view of God. I need to take a closer look at Who I think I'm talking to. When I do that, I find I am often looking to God to solve my problems or the problems of my friends and family. I may find myself looking at Father as Someone to bring around to my way of thinking, as One who will sympathize with me if I just take time to explain the specifics of my situation. I may see Him as the Complaint Department or Customer Service.

I wouldn't say those are misconceptions as much as limited conceptions — sometimes desperately limited conceptions. Sometimes we are just desperate for some help, and we are unable to see beyond the pain or the fear or the panic — at least initially. Even if we did have genuine misconceptions about God, He would not be upset by them, of course. As long as we are seeking Him and trying to communicate with Him — even with improper motives or a faulty assumption, He will not stop speaking to us or stop guiding us toward the Light — which is Him. He will stick with us, patiently peeling the scales from our eyes. We cannot stop Him with either our sin or our ignorance. Only if we come to dread the light and shut our eyes will He stop working to open them.

God is more than a problem-solver. He is the Solution. When we are troubled, we simply want the trouble to go away. If we are sick, we want to be well. If we are frightened, we want to rid ourselves of the fear. Our inclination is to ask God to deliver us from the bad situation. Our need is to relate to our Father, to know Him and to speak with Him as a child and as a friend. The temporal problems that are seen are not forever. They are a function of the forever-work that God does, just as the rolling, spreading wake of a ship is a function of the vessel's passage. It is the nature of the material universe to be disturbed by the transit of the Divine Plan. It's not a disturbance in the Force, but a disturbance by the Source — a righteous upheaval. When God called Jeremiah, He called him "to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down". The gentle Jesus said, "I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled."

God doesn't like a lot of what goes on in this world. Of course we know He doesn't like the abuse and the oppression, the exploitation and the excess, the filth and the greed. But He doesn't like a lot of stuff we think of as not so bad or even all right. In fact, Jesus says, what is highly esteemed by men is an abomination to God. We go blithely on our Route 666 way building with wood, hay, and stubble when God wants us to build with gold, silver, and precious stones, in the Kingdom way. When our straw houses, straw men, and straw dogs are blown apart or burned to ash, we weep and wonder at God's heartlessness or perhaps His cruelty or His cold justice. Even His prophets have been known to question His kindness and His motives.

We see only the ripples. The view of forever is breathtaking. What is gone was what man tried to add on. Nothing of the eternal is ever taken away or destroyed.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.

Zen and the Art of Weeding the Garden

One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. Job 1:6

Jesus gives us the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. It isn't an intricately detailed story. There is a field plowed, prepared and sown with good wheat seed. For a time nothing but wheat is seen. The plants begin to mature, and, to the distress of those who will harvest, the field is seen bringing forth a great many noxious and worthless weeds along with the stalks of wheat. The servants ask the master what they should do. He replies that all should be left to grow until the harvest, at which time the weeds can be separated from the wheat without loss.

What Jesus isn't doing in this parable is justifying the presence of the apparently unredeemable in the world. He isn't explaining to us in any comprehensive sense the why of evil. Instead, He says, the nature of a thing will be revealed in its time, and it will be dealt with in its time. God does not label every seed that comes into the world that we might know its true nature from the start. He does not automatically yank someone out when they go bad, even when they are beyond the point of no return.

To uproot a weed — whether it is an individual, an institution, or a nation — means the destruction of much that surrounds it. It means the loss of souls, who, for various reasons, have had their lives become entangled with the roots of the tare in their midst. The very fabric of reality is light woven over a background of darkness; it is pools and eddies of order amidst chaos and destruction. It is wheat among the weeds.

With any event or circumstance, it is hard to determine its true nature. Whose son is it? Does it have the nature of the Good? Even if it has walked in the presence of God, we cannot know into what it might mature or what motivates it.

I understand the people who want to see a utopia, a heaven on earth — all that we-are-the-world-and-I'd-like-to-teach-it-to-sing-jeremiah-was-a-bullfrog stuff sounds pretty good. But we are not going to get rid of the agents of evil. We could kill them all off, but that's been tried before, and a good number of the people you get to do the killing are just as evil in some ways as the ones they kill off. The Revolution always looks great on paper, but uprooting tares is a nasty, bloodly business, and, in the end, most of the wheat is lost. The field is barren. The weeds always come back.

Can weeds be turned into wheat? I don't know. I do know if the wheat keeps turned to the sun and grows, it may well overshadow and stunt the invaders. It becomes an internal battle — to overcome evil with good, to be completely focused on the Son and filled with His light, to grow in grace and goodness. When we, as the sons of God, reach our fullness and maturity then begins the harvest and the separation.

I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before God. (Tao Te Ching)