Saturday, April 12, 2008

Flat Earth Society

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide everything into two kinds of things and those who don't. (Another quote from that lost book of mine on General Systems Thinking.)

Side by side with this is a story I remember about some obscure group or other who were being addressed by a well-known scholar. He was being primed to help him target his talk to the assembled crowd. "Sir," warned his advisor, "there are two kinds of people in this room, those who believe the earth is flat and those who don't - same people."

Chris Tilling scored 29 comments and growing on his post "was Jesus wrong?" I was going to try and develop an argument that would put some of the claims for the perceived need to have an omniscient 'Jesus' in an absurd light, but it seems so unnecessary. I was thinking of how necessarily limited our God-talk is and how poor we are even at figuring out who we are ourselves. What is the human that you give it a passing thought?

Would Jesus have answered a scientific question? There were plenty of answers attributed to him that are tangential if at all related to the stated question.

- Jesu, my love, is the earth as flat as we think it is?
- shall the One who made the heavens and the earth not build a miniature so that you can know this answer yourself? Amen, amen, I tell you, since you do not know this or even who you are in yourself, let yourself be known by the maker, and you will by that same brooding love, come to know exactly how flat the earth is under the canopy of the heavens.
- Jesu, my love, how is it that the man and the woman could not speak accurately to each other even in the beauty of the garden and in the presence of the ineffable?
- Are you a teacher in Israel and you do not know this? What is incomplete must be completed. As the Lord God took from one and made two, so I will take even you from my side and bring you to myself that we may be one. In that day, they will not say that the two should not be divided, for the light and the dark, the waters above and below the canopy, the day and the night will be such a unity that each of you and all of you together and severally will no longer fear to gaze, to touch, or to eat.
- Jesu, my love, when will these things be?
- Amen, amen, I say to you. They are, they have been, and they will be in me. For where I am, there all things are gathered, and you yourself will divide them and will decide in your joy how to be even as I am in myself.

1 comment:

Beyond Words said...

This made me weep. Because today, my own beloved showed me the grace that flows from knowing and being known, modeling for me knowing and being known in Christ. Together, we had to reach a decision about supporting one of our adult children (my daughter, his stepdaughter) and he chose to err on the side of grace instead of legalistic certainty, to preserve the relationships.