On Being Square

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 5:48

In the last post we talked about the problem of good being in the world.  How is it that we determine good?  We know that someone like our current president has said that, for him, sin is doing something not in alignment with his own values.  Virtue for such a person might be summed up by the Shakespearean edict “to thine own self be true.”  We acknowledge the need to be honest and straightforward, that deception is wrong at all levels.  The full quote from Hamlet says, “This above all:  to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”  There is virtue in this, but it is not a virtue much practiced by politicians, including Mr. Obama.  You might recall how quickly in 2008 Obama discounted and abandoned his mentor and surrogate father, Jeremiah Wright, when Wright’s sermons and utterances became too embarrassing to his campaign.  Wright even somewhat graciously recognized the need for duplicity in the political realm saying that Obama had to denounce him to win the election.  Was that a sin by Obama’s standard?  Or is that merely a reflection of his values? 

When we compare ourselves to ourselves, we find that our measurements are less than reliable.  A psychopath or sociopath can be “true” to himself.  Pol Pot, Mao, Che, Stalin, even Hitler may well have never sinned by their own subjective standards.  Did you ever try to measure something by holding your hands apart?  It might do in a general sense – you can probably accurately ascertain that your new Boxer will not be able to use the Yorkie’s old carrier, or that when they said the Prius seats five, they did not envision five NFL offensive linemen.    

It is hardly surprising to find that we deceive or attempt to deceive ourselves and others.  I think it is more surprising to see how much energy, psychic or otherwise, we invest in justifying or camouflaging our attempts.  It is almost as if we know instinctively that something is out of plumb -- as if we can somewhere, somehow perceive an objective standard of truthfulness, righteousness, and perfection which we know we are violating. 

Now, there are going to be some people who say that these are instilled into us by family and community, by our education.  I’m sure this must be partially true, for a child raised under inhuman conditions will be inhuman.   Yet we are not merely products of our environment.  We are born with potentials that can be shaped and guided or thwarted and perverted.  Again, that there are and have been cultures and societies that deviate and have deviated from the Absolute should not surprise anyone.  The astounding thing is that we are able to perceive those deviations. 

I refer to this passage frequently but that’s because it seems so profound to me:   Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.  (Hebrews 1:1-3)

If we look at Jesus we see the perfection of God framed and defined in human flesh.  The Incarnation is the ultimate – so far – Revelation.   

It is certainly no easier to be perfect than it is to set a post plumb.  One of the reasons is that a post, like a human, generally has a few crooks and warps and twists you have to work through in order to get it straight -- as you might say, overall.  What we cannot do is accommodate our crookedness and say that we are merely being true to ourselves.  We cannot look at the post planted in the next hole and say that we are pretty straight compared to it.   

Unlike a breathing, mobile human, obviously, a post is a piece of dead wood.  While you and I may have some dead flesh that needs trimming, some overgrowth that needs pruning, we are still living and malleable, still capable of being formed and shaped toward “true and square”, toward perfection.  And we can see where we miss it.  We can know that we were we are not precisely on the level because we have something -- SomeOne by Whom we may measure and compare, Jesus Christ -- the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Look upon the tested, tried, and true Cornerstone.    

[T]herefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am the one who has laid 1 as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation:  ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’   And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.”  (Isaiah 28:16-17)

The Mediator is the Message

Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” – Exodus 20:18-19

This is the “Jesus willies” on steroids. Not only is the presence and reality of God undeniable in this situation, it is frightening. I am sympathetic to these people because they were seeing their reality invaded; their very conception of what was real was called into question. It is hard to imagine that such an experience would not leave a person shaken, even terrified.

We are going to talk about responses to hearing the word of God – in a series, if I don’t get distracted by something shiny, and Exodus seems a good place to start. When I was younger and talked about it, I almost mocked these Israelites. How could they not want to experience God in such a powerful way? I have learned better. To request a mediator is actually a good and reasonable response. God “raw” and direct is too much. It shatters the necessary separation with such psychic and spiritual violence that the container of material existence is ripped apart. We might liken it to trying to catch Niagara Falls in a paper bag. We need a go-between, someone or something that can mitigate the violence of the ultimately Real, that will allow us to draw the truth through a straw rather than the proverbial fire hose.

Moses was transformed by his nearness to God such that, “… the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him” (Exodus 34:30). But even Moses, in his communion with God could not endure the direct light of Divine glory but only what we might call the after-glow (Exodus 33:17-23). We may not be certain what that means, exactly, but we know how it is described by Paul when he speaks of the Old Covenant being “put in place through angels by an intermediary” (Galatians 3:19). In other words Moses dealt primarily with the Angel of the Lord, a Theophany, or some kind of angelic manifestation which modulated the Divine Presence enough for a man to survive the encounter.

This brings us to Christ who is the one Mediator between God and man -- the Logos. What is unique about Jesus is not only is He the Mediator, He is the Message. According to Hebrews, the Father has “spoken to us by His Son” in a new kind of apocalypse, where the veil is removed and we can see what Moses longed to look upon, “the radiance of the glory of God” and, in the Man, “the exact imprint of His nature”.

It is not surprising then that as the Holy Spirit begins to reveal Christ to us, we get a little shaken up. We can understand Isaiah when he says: Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence— as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. (Emphasis mine)

Whoa!

Perhaps it is just me, but I find in myself a sort of ambivalence. I am all ready for God to “rend the heavens and come down” as long as He doesn’t actually, you know, come down. I will light the fire, but I don’t really expect the pot to boil. Yet that is what is going to happen at some point. If we continue to allow His Spirit to work on us and draw us, a time will come when Christ will become real to us and the solid earth will be bubbling beneath our feet. After that, I do not believe there is any turning back. We cannot return to Egypt, though it is possible to die in the wilderness, and it is just that irrevocability, I think, that causes us to be hesitant, to draw back from full contact, to cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus”, and to mumble “just not today.”

The answer is not to back away but to seek the human face of Jesus, the Son of Man -- His own preferred title. Not that the Son of Man will not still shake up our worldview, but we know that He is one of us despite being fully God, that He understands us, is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Jesus knows what it means to live in a body formed from clay and filled with the animal cravings and weaknesses inherent in the meat nature. We need a mediator, and He is the best.