Encounter With an Onion

A friend of mine sent me a book entitled The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon.  It belongs to a genre all its own, something along the lines of "theological treatise meets the cookbook."  In Chapter 2, ("The First Session"), he has his reader "confront" an onion, examining, peeling, and carefully studying it in order to make various discoveries about onions and their Maker.  He also uses this encounter to say the following about "place."

You have, you see, already discovered something:  The uniqueness, the placiness, of places drives not from abstractions like location, but from confrontations like man-onion.  Erring theologians have strayed to their graves without learning what you have come upon.  They have insisted, for example, that heaven is no place because it could not be defined in terms of spatial co-ordinates.  They could have written off man's eternal habitation as a "state of mind."  But look what your onion has done for you:  It has given you back the possibility of heaven as a place without encumbering you with the irrelevancy of locations.  This meeting between the two of you could be moved to a thousand different latitudes and longitudes and still remain the session it started out to be....

...What really matters is not where we are, but  who -- what real beings -- are with us."

Now compare this to an excerpt from Sinclair Ferguson's book, Grow in Grace.

The order of spiritual experience has not changed since the psalmist's day.  We too need to go to the place where God has promised to meet with us.  That is no longer in Jerusalem.  It is in Christ.  No longer in a place, but now in a person.

Back to Capon:

"In that sense, Heaven, where we see God face to face through the risen flesh of Jesus, may well be the placiest of all places, as it is the most gloriously material of all meetings."

Amen!

Sunday Reading

I'm finishing up a theologically-rich book edited by John Piper entitled Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity. This book has been very thought-provoking, as it has shed light on some ways in which I am tempted to think unbiblically.

Recently I encountered the question, "Did God allow it or did He plan it?" (This was concerning the birth of a child with Down Syndrome.*) Some may say that it somehow relieves God of His responsibility if He only "allows" something. This is somehow the more comforting answer for some people, but I say, "NO!" My only comfort in hard situations is the knowledge that God has indeed planned it. For only then can I know that God is working His good purpose in my life. To quote from Beyond the Bounds,

From the smallest thing to the greatest, good and evil, happy and sad,
pagan and Christian, pain and pleasure--God governs all for his wise, just, and
good purposes (Isa. 46:10). Lest we miss the point, the Bible speaks most
clearly to this in the most painful situations. Amos asks, "Does disaster come
to a city, unless the LORD has done it? (Amos 3:6) After losing his ten
children, Job says "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the
name of the LORD" (Job 1:21). Covered with boils, he says, "Shall we receive
good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10) . . . Let us beware.
If we spare God the burden of his sovereignty, we lose our only
hope. (emphasis mine)

*I also have a child with Down Syndrome, and am so glad to know that she is not an accident. God planned, before the foundation of the world, to create her and to put her in our family. That is a true comfort during the difficult times.

Thoughts on Frankenstein

I have just finished reading Frankenstein for my son's Omnibus course, and was struck by the way that the monster "fleshes out" (sorry for the pun) the Biblical doctrine of man's depravity and slavery to sin. At the end of the book, he laments:

"I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey."

And earlier, he confronts his creator with these words:

"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful
and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more
horrid even from the very resemblance."

And yet, not only is he a "filthy type" of man, he is, as Harold Bloom says in his afterword, "more human" than his creator. He is more intelligent, thinks and feels more deeply, has more appreciation for beauty, and when he falls, falls deeper. Bloom doesn't discuss the sin issue, but it is interesting to me that the creation of Shelly's imagination is still subject to the Fall. And because he is "more" of everything that we are, his fall is greater ("how the mighty are fallen").

There is no redemption in this novel; the only rest for Frankenstein and for his creature is in death. Why death would be any better than earthly life is not explained, except in portraying death as a "rest."

I really like it when I find nuggets of truth in unexpected places. In a novel such as Frankenstein, they seem more valuable because they weren't necessarily intended to be found.

Little Peep

Charles discovered a baby robin the other day, followed it around, and took some pictures of it. He then drew pictures of it in his nature journal, using the pictures as a model. He named the little bird "Peep."

Look at the lizard!!!!

Wordless Wednesday Post

Mapwork for Beowulf

Here is a list of mapwork activites that can be used when studying Beowulf. Use a map of Scandanavia, or Denmark. I like the free outline maps at the National Geographic website.

I. Find and label:

• Denmark
• Sweden
• The Frisian (or North Frisian) Islands
• Kattegat (body of water)
• Kieler Bucht (body of water)
• Flads River
• Varde River
• Islands of Fyn, Sjoelland, Lolland, and Bornholm
• Copenhagen (capital of Denmark)

II. Put Beowulf on the map:

• Draw a castle icon where Heorot may have been.
• Label the "Land of the Geats"
• Using a dotted line and ship icon, show a route that Beowulf may have taken when he voyaged from his land to the land of the Danes.
• Draw a cross to show a possible burial place for Beowulf.

Have fun! I recommend using fine black marker or pencil for Part I, and colored pencils for Part II. Remember to shade bodies of water in blue, and land forms in a contrasting color.