Stuffed Animals and Law

This year I have been working in the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center book store where I assist customers in purchasing edification.  Because of scheduling needs, there are some days that I work in the gift shop instead. 

The gift shop has all sorts of trinkets and whirligigs and knick-knacks, ceramic dishes, ornaments, smelly soaps and the like.  I much prefer to sell customers sources of edification and knowledge in the bookstore than I do to sell customers dishes and smelly soaps in the gift shop.

I can’t help but wonder if these purchases are really necessary, that maybe this money could be used to educate some child in an inner-city community or feed a hungry mouth in a third-world country.  Though, I do recognize that if it were not for the dishes and smelly soaps, there wouldn’t be a Colonial Williamsburg and many more people would be unemployed (maybe myself?) and people wouldn’t be able to enjoy this rich national historic treasure.  So smelly soaps it is, I guess.

Part of working in the gift shop entails making sure the sale floor is stocked and orderly (the more obsessive compulsive, the better!).  And among the first things I do is to make sure that my fuzzy little stuffed animal friends are looking good—friends like Sally the Sheep and Prince the Dog, which is creepily modeled off of a dead dog carcass from the early 1900’s.

This all harkens back to my childhood.  My bedroom was filled with furry friends.  In fact, there was a time that there was barely enough room in my bed for me!

Every child dreams about what he wants to do for a career when he grows up.  Somewhere between physicist and pharmacist, I wanted to be a stuffed animal maker and have my own stuffed animal shop.

I ultimately decided on Law, but it was a close choice.

Our Great Curse and Our Greater Blessing

Lifted and edited from a discussion thread on Facebook.  Alexander, a non-believer, had some genuinely honest yet tough questions of the God in which Christians believe.  As best as I could, I tried to give him some genuinely honest answers.

Alexander,

I appreciate your honesty.  I appreciate that you ask tough questions, big questions, important questions.  There are many of my fellow Christians who I wish would do the same.  I hope you will join me as I muse over some of the points you made.  They are very interesting.

The notion of original sin is deeply thought provoking.  Is a newborn baby guilty of some immoral act?  Is such a baby somehow deserving of a metaphysical death sentence?  Such notions seem to clash against our sense of innate justice and fairness.  I think you are right in that observation.  But I think that original sin is far deeper than an intrinsic status of moral guilt.  Original sin is the accursed state, the state of brokenness, into which we are all born.  We live in a broken world--few would deny that, one of pain, and suffering, and death.  No baby is evil, but every baby enters a world weighted down by an evil burden, this curse.

But why this curse?  You point out that it is hard to believe that everyone is born in the image of God, even the mass murderers, pedophiles, psychopaths, dictators, and rapists.  If we were not made in the image of God, then the curse of our world wouldn't seem that alarming or disturbing.  But since we are made in the image of God, that's what makes this curse seem so striking, so unfair.  What did we do to deserve this?  This curse seems to be connected with our being made in God's image, and yet being separated from our creator.

At this point many Christians would point out that God gave Man a free choice, and choosing to sin is what Man did with it and that it's ultimately Man's fault, but God is going to save us anyway.  You probably find this explanation to be a bit of a cop-out and rather disingenuous.  In fact, you say that this "exonerates God for any responsibility..."  You probably find this explanation unsatisfying and hard to believe.

And I agree with you.  And I am a Jesus following, God believing, Christian.  

In the Garden of Eden story, yes Adam and Eve choose to eat the fruit and accept the serpent's suggestion, but God is the one who puts the forbidden tree smack dab in the middle of the garden, kind of like a mother who puts the cookie jar right in front of the child and tells the child not to eat.  Even if we assume that God HAD to put the tree in the garden in order for Adam and Eve to genuinely have free will, did God have to allow the serpent (Satan) into the garden to tempt them?  Surely an omniscient and omnipotent God could have foreseen and prevented this.  Even if the tree's presence is needed for Man to genuinely have free will, to give him an opportunity to obey or disobey, Satan's presence is not.  Allowing the serpent in the garden is a needless provocation.  And God knows that Man is but dust, he knows his frame, and his predispositions.  It certainly seems that God is setting Man up to fall.

I believe in an omnipotent and omniscient God, which means that this God knew of the horrible curse that his frail, dust-like creatures would fall into, and God had the power to prevent it.  He did not.  And the ultimate question...is why?  Can this God possibly be good?

I see the history of our world—of us—as a giant narrative arc.  And the theme that stands out to me is the theme of redemption, but more than that, the theme of love.  Without the curse, there is no need for redemption.  Without the need for redemption, there is no Jesus coming into the world to die for us.  And that makes the curse of original sin a necessary and integral part of the grand story.  God Incarnate enters into this curse as a newborn baby, suffers because of this curse , and dies on a Roman cross as a result of this curse.  Without this, we don't see how much God actually loves us. 

Some Christians think of Jesus as God's plan B-- God creates this good world, Man sins, God says "darn it!  wait...I know...I'll send Jesus to die and that will undo what Man did."  I don't see Jesus as Plan B; I see Jesus as Plan A, from the foundation of the world, from the beginning of time, because God planned for that to be how He would show is love for us. 

Jesus.  Love-in-the-Flesh.  Most gods in the world's religions expect their devotees to cower before them groveling.  They expect sacrifices.  They judge you based on how good or bad you are.  But this God washes the dirty feet of those whom he created.  This God sends his own son as the sacrifice.  This God, in the ultimate act of humility dies for us.  He says of the curse, "It is finished, paid in full."

That is the God for me.  That is the God I love.

What Joy!

One of the most joyous days of my life was the day I beat my Dad’s high school 3,200m track record.  For decades that record stood untouched, and many solid, relentless runners attempted the feat, but my Dad’s mark was always left standing.  What is so intriguing is that for most of those 37 years, my Dad was Coldwater’s track coach, and he was the one training his own athletes to break his own record (cynics would snicker at the possibility that my Dad held back on training these athletes so that they wouldn’t break his record, but he was too invested in his athletes to pull a stunt like that).  Yet with all his effort, he could not raise up an athlete to match his own endeavor.

Until the Three Rivers Invitational in 2005 when the last of his sons was to make his attempt.  We both knew what the agenda was: he had coached me for this moment, I had trained for this moment, I was to attack the race from the outset running alone in a rather uncompetitive field of runners.

In my excitement I started out aggressively—perhaps a bit too fast to be sustainable.  I started to wonder whether I had made a mistake, whether I should let up a bit in order to compensate, but my Dad was right there to assure me that everything was fine and to encourage me to keep the fast pace.  It never crossed my Dad’s mind to give me bad advice, even at this late hour.  Toward the end of the race, everyone knew that I was feeling as strong as ever, a historic feat was now inevitable.

After crossing the tape and catching my breath, I found my Dad on the track.  I do not remember what was said; all I remember was our big hug.

For me, I had finally taken down the old man’s record, the most daunting of all the Coldwater track records I would break.  And for my Dad, he had finally trained an athlete to break his mark, and of all those athletes, he had the honor of passing that record to his son.

Some people in his shoes might be spiteful, jealous, possessive, but my father was filled with joy.  While I was surely happy with my achievement, the joy I felt had much more to do with seeing my father’s joy and being filled myself as a consequence.

Joy is often a selfless, infectious emotion.  It can spring up on its own, but when we can share it with others, it spreads like wildfire.

Toward the end of Isaiah, the prophet speaking of God’s future redeemed children, says, “the Lord delights in you,” and later, “God will rejoice over you” (Isa 62:4, 5).  In light of Christ’s work on the cross, my God sees me as His perfect creation.  The Lord delights in me; the Lord rejoices over me!  What a blessing to know this.

What joy!