an ant farm

perspective is important. that is an understatement.

in my opinion, a person's perspective is at the very foundation of who they are - it controls how they think, and so how they speak and act. even as a young person, i know that a person's success hinges largely on whether or not, when given lemons, they choose to make lemonade or cry about it - whether they view themselves as one who overcomes or one who is overcome.

this is why i believe that theology is so fascinating - it provides us with countless little blocks from which we can pick and choose to build our perspective - how we view people, how we view ourselves, how we view God, how we view the earth - the list goes on. hopefully the picking and choosing has more to do with truth than convenience, but that's a topic for another time.

one day, long ago, i was sitting in a theology class, and we were discussing atonement theories (how, exactly, the whole "salvation" thing works). i was intrigued because not one had ever told me that there were varying theories. this came as good news, because the image that had evolved in my head was somewhat frightening:

i saw God as an old-fashioned judge, with the gray wig and everything, sitting at a high judge desk with a giant wooden gavel. i am a tiny little person, standing under the gavel on that little wooden circle on which judges bang gavels. God looks at me and says 'you have been judged and you have been found wanting.' as soon as he says it, he raises the gavel high in the air to squash me and then Jesus shoves me out of the way and gets squished himself. God then leaves me alone, being satisfied to have squashed someone, even if it wasn't me. now, no one ever told me that story, but it's the imagery that comes to mind when we sing words like 'the wrath of God is satisfied.' (absolutely no offense to that song - it's one of my favorites, apart from that line.)

when i was in this theology class and we were discussing atonement theories, my professor spoke about it in a different way. he proposed that, instead of being squashed by God, Jesus, in his death and resurrection, was defeating death. my professor made a fist and called it humanity, and then covered his fist with his other hand and called it death - death was something that eventually subdued every single human. but, when Jesus died and rose, the fist suddenly opened - throwing off the other hand - freeing humanity from bondage and making fear of death a thing of the past.

disclaimer - i'm not really trying to propose that this salvation idea is something different than you think it might be, i'm just trying to propose a different way of looking at it. perspective.

i've come up with my own analogy. an ant farm. i know i've never had an ant farm, and i may have never even seen an ant farm in real life, so if something about this analogy is inconsistent with known ant farm truths, you'll have to forgive me.

so, in this ant farm analogy, we are ants. God is the little kid watching us, overjoyed. now, the little kid feeds the ants by putting their food, let's say a delicious christmas cookie, on top of the dirt. at first, all is well - the ants walk around on top of the dirt, eating the cookie, looking up at the little kid with grateful, even teary, eyes because they love their christmas cookie so much. (i'm not an expert on ant nutrition, so let's just pretend that christmas cookies are very good for them.)

eventually, one of the ants finds its way into the dirt. all of the others follow, forgetting about christmas cookie. once the ants are underground, they can't find their own way out and they begin to starve. this is devastating to the little kid, who loved nothing more than to watch the ants enjoy his cookie. instead of giving up on his precious little pets, he sits and watches as the ants, who are mere centimeters away from what they need, run around with no way back to the top.

if i didn't lose you at the christmas cookie, i might lose you here:
the little kid then turns himself into an ant and follows the ants underground. he finds a few of the ants, gains their little ant trust and leads them back to the christmas cookie at the top. the journey wasn't easy, but he did have some extra insight, having seen the ant farm from the outside.

i'm going to stop the story right here, before we get into the last ant supper, methods of early ant execution, or the great insect commission, but i think you get the point, hopefully. and hopefully i get the point too.

no analogy is perfect - not the artist in my last post, not the gavel, not the fist, not the ants. but each of them can help us make sense of things. i just like to remind myself that i don't know everything. in fact, one could make the argument that i don't know anything. therefore, i certainly can't pretend that there is only one way of looking at something and i've found it, especially when it comes to important things, like christmas cookies.

paint me perfect

because we humans love our analogies, and because it's difficult to understand our relationship with God, the bible is full of helpful analogous descriptions of how we are regarded and how we, in turn, should regard God. our God is our shepherd, our rock, our foundation, our shelter, our strong tower, our provider, our groom. i could go on and on. interestingly, the parent-child (usually father-child) relationship is probably the most popular. i say this is interesting because, looking at the state of many parent-child relationships around us, i don't know that we, as a species, really have that one down. all of the others can be more easily understood. a provider, for instance, is, by definition, one who provides. a father, on the other hand and as sad as it is, is not necessarily one who fathers.

i have recently come to fancy a different analogy. God is my artist. if we think about it, the artist chooses everything about his or her creation (not the same can be said for parents and children). the colors, the shapes, the mediums - it's all intentional and meant to work together to accomplish something - the expression of the artist, the glorification of the artist, the connection between the artist and the spectator. i like this. i like to think of myself as a piece of art, crafted for a purpose - an expression of my creator, something to bring glory to my creator, something that can help others connect with my creator, who they might come to know as their creator.

i like this, too, because it helps me celebrate myself. parents are often trying to shape their children - curb things that may prove problematic and encourage things that will be helpful. artists are different. if there is something in art that appears to some to be errant, it is not. the artist put it there and it will serve a purpose at some point. i fear that some christians of a more legalistic persuasion miss out on this. if dancing brings joy to my soul, i can be confident that i was created that way - it's a gift, not a blemish. it is not something shameful, it is something put in me for my own good, at least, if not for something greater (in my case, it's probably just for me).

let me push the analogy to include the human condition and human error. i acknowledge that everything in me is not good. i do have a capacity for evil. perhaps that capacity is an imperfection in my canvass that the great artist manages to work into the piece. it is said that God does not waste pain and i believe that. i can think about some of the most painful things that have happened in my short life and not wish them away. they are so much a part of me that i can't imagine myself without them - without the things they taught me. how's that for efficiency? no waste. God is so green.

in light of all of this, let me say that as pieces of art, we have certain responsibilities.

• we cannot mute ourselves, or each other. imagine, if you painted two pictures and they came to life and decided that they were ashamed of and needed to hide the very pieces of themselves that you loved best - the parts that made them special (adam and eve?). i realize it's a weird hypothetical situation, but it would be rather heartbreaking.
• we cannot mar ourselves or others. same situation - if one of the paintings set itself on fire while the other attacked it with a knife. even a little weirder and definitely more heartbreaking.
• we must embrace ourselves and each other so much that we nearly explode. i don't really know what that would look like for our live-painting analogy, but you get where i'm going with this.

in short, you are beautiful people, and i'm not so bad either, so we should act like it.

but seriously

a theology professor once explained learning about God this way - sometimes we can draw a box of definition around God using only what we know God is not. finding what God is can sometimes be more of a challenge.

i know that God is not a God who has intended for me to live my whole life by emotion, chance and my own interpretation of events that may or may not be natural. i say this because i have seen christians live this way. i have seen some people very close to me live in agony and fear because the only way they know by which to make good decisions is to wait for a consuming conviction-to wait and see what God reveals to them through fleeting sentiments, billboards, or the good old fashioned 'open and point' scripture-reading. don't misunderstand me. i have heard several stories of God speaking through these very things, but as a general rule, i don't think that my relationship with my Creator should hinge on feelings and divinations.

i believe, rather, that i have been divinely equipped for this life, in a way that allows me to walk in humble gratitude and confidence in a life that is guided by principles of righteousness and love, when it is, in fact, guided by principles of righteousness and love. i do not always need to wait for a feeling to tell me 'yes' or to tell me 'no.' i do not need to live in guilt and uncertainty. guilt is not of God. once again, do not misunderstand me. it is important, it is vital to be ever-sensitive to the leading and the presence of the Holy Spirit. one would be a fool to disregard such a priceless gift. once again, i think i am just trying to find truth by naming non-truth. if i get caught up in over-spiritualizing every thing in my life (for instance - i saw a purple finch sitting on a lilac bush and so clearly, God wants me to move back to nh. no, that's silly), i believe that i will dilute what it is that i love most about God - the beauty and grace right in the midst of human depravity.

my real question in all of this is the role of God in my life. i think i that i understand, or at least know how to pursue further, how the existence and character of God changes the way i live my life. what i don't understand is where to draw the lines between attributions: for what am i responsible? for what are you responsible? for what is God responsible? for what is no one responsible? i'm not sure.

i started thinking about this a couple of years ago in the context of babies. my friend was getting married and having a hard time deciding what kind of contraception to use, or whether she should use it at all. i had heard before that the bible calls children a blessing, and so who are we to try and dictate when or how God chooses to bless us. this made sense to me at the time. then again, it didn't matter too much to me - marriage and babies being so far away.

then, my friend and i had a conversation with our pastor and his wife, who had decided to have no more children. they told us not to over-spiritualize the situation. they said that when a woman mis-carries, it's not necessarily because God took the baby away, but because God designed our bodies to work a certain way. this made me think about conception. i know that the bible says that i was knit together in my mothers womb, and that's a beautiful thought, but i wonder if we've interpreted it in a slightly over-literal sense. for instance, every day there are babies born in africa to impoverished women with AIDS and they do not survive through their miserable first year of life. is that the will of God, or is that just a consequence of humans refusing to care for one another?

since that time, i have struggled with this whole idea of attribution. i still don't really understand, but i guess if i understood everything, i wouldn't need a God. i have resolved to the philosophy that i should do all that i can do because that is all that i can do. whatever is out of my control may or may not be orchestrated by God, but i do know that whatever happens, God will help me to find the good and encourage it to grow.