It was Arthur C. Clarke who posited this law-Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I disagree. The technology need not be advanced at all. The truth is that the sole reason we don’t see the world all around us as magic is that we are jaded, too cool for the school of wonder. A little fire, a little sand, a little care, a little gentle blowing, and presto chango, we have glass. That’s magic that we now watch at Founders’ Days fairs. A little water, a little sluice box, more fire, a hammer and some nuance, and abracadabra, we have a golden ring.
CS Lewis reminded us of the glory of dirt in his account of the creation of Narnia. As Aslan sings his creation song the ground itself begins to bubble up like a toasted cheese sandwich. Soon those bubbles burst and elephants, badgers, platypi shook off their mantle mantles and walked forth into the light. Having been just born they mistake the evil Uncle Andrew, with his wild shock of hair, for a plant. Believing that hair to be roots they plant him upside down, and the coins in his pocket (silver and gold- this was a bygone era) fall to the ground, and up sprouts trees of silver and gold. The fecundity of Eden, I suspect, would have been much the same.
As Jesus is about the business of remaking, redeeming the world, as He, the second Adam succeeds in fulfilling the dominion mandate, our dirt becomes ever more productive and fruitful. Sand was turned into computer chips such that I rub the tips of my fingers across plastic keys (also formulated from liquid dirt, petroleum) and the words on my head become words on the screen in front of me. Sand turned into glass wires, through pushing a few more buttons, will take those same thoughts across the globe to your magic machine. You are reading my mind right now, all because of magic fairy dust.
Technology is indistinguishable from magic, because it is magic. The exercise of dominion flows out of the image of God in us and is empowered by the same Spirit who said “Let there by light” and there was light. God took nothing and made everything. We, reflecting His glory, take dirt and make widgets. The widgets, however, exist ultimately not for our comfort, but for our sanctification. They exist so that we might give thanks, that we might praise the One whose image we bear. To be jaded, to fail to be astonished that hot water pours forth when we twist a knob, that cool air flows into our homes, offices, shops and cars with the push of a button, that sheep become sweaters, that iron, wood, and cat gut become guitars to accompany our praise, is to be bored by magic.
Dust has a greater power still. When it is molded and shaped, then filled with the breath of life, it in turn speaks words of life, just as its Maker did. Words- spoken, written, preached- these bring life from death, conviction from indifference, gratitude from cynicism. Lord, give us wonder.
Patience please. It’s done, ready to go. And its delay is on me. Working on it.
Of course He does. How strange that such should even be a question. But of course, He also sends such strange questions. There is nothing that comes to pass that overpowers God, that He did not plan from before all time, that He could not stop. God is not a storm watcher, but a storm maker. Hurricanes are profoundly destructive events. Properties are destroyed, lives are lost, whole cities are devastated. All because God ordained that such would be.
How do we know? For two compelling reasons. First, He’s God. Once there was God and nothing else. Everything that comes after is a creature, made by Him, for Him. Everything else depends on Him for their own existence, and for their own power. There is no being, and no power that does not find its ultimate source in His will.
Second, and just as compelling, we know because He has told us so. That God is sovereign over calamity isn’t something embarrassing about God that He is in heaven hoping we never figure out. It is something He delights in, something He is proud of. Consider these words spoken to King Cyrus, himself a plenty destructive fellow, through the prophet Isaiah:
“Thus says the Lord to His anointed,
To Cyrus, whose right hand I have held—
To subdue nations before him
And loose the armor of kings,
To open before him the double doors,
So that the gates will not be shut:
‘I will go before you
And make the crooked places straight;
I will break in pieces the gates of bronze
And cut the bars of iron.
I will give you the treasures of darkness
And hidden riches of secret places,
That you may know that I, the Lord,
Who call you by your name,
Am the God of Israel.
For Jacob My servant’s sake,
And Israel My elect,
I have even called you by your name;
I have named you, though you have not known Me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other;
There is no God besides Me.
I will gird you, though you have not known Me,
That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting
That there is none besides Me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other;
I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create calamity;
I, the Lord, do all these things’ (45:1-7).
Do you hear God boasting? “Oh,” you might object, “these are all good things God did for Cyrus. They’re not bad things.” But you don’t want to make that objection. Because it is often the case that one man’s blessing is another man’s curse. Those doors that God opened? They were gates protecting the cities that Cyrus conquered. The king’s armor that God unbuckled, the king put that on for his protection, but Cyrus took him down. God creates calamity, for His glory.
Can we then conclude that those harmed but hurricanes are under God’s judgment? Are they worse sinners than the rest of us? They may be, or they may not be. On more than one occasion God sent wicked nation A to punish wicked nation B when A was more wicked than B. His ways are not our ways. His methods are often inscrutable. We would be wise to remember we’re not wise enough to figure Him out. And we ought to be humble enough to remember that He is almighty over all.
The Bible is an extraordinary book, and it is an ordinary book. It is not, of course, the only book to cross history’s stage to come with a claim to being the very Word of God. In some instances it is the extraordinary nature of the Bible that sets it apart from other claimants, in other instances it is its ordinariness.
Consider first two rather distinct books that claim to be the Word of God- the Koran, the holy book of Islam and the Book of Mormon, the holy book of the Latter-Day Saints. In both instances these faiths seek to affirm some level of respect for either the Old Testament (Islam) or both the Old and New Testaments (Latter Day Saints). In both instances the accounts of these books tell us that God sent a messenger to one man, that no one else was able to see. Mohammed and Joseph Smith wrote, or translated their messages essentially on their own, before revealing them to the known world. Both books recorded events outside the stream of history and distant from the time of the events covered. Both books contain no predictions future to the book’s writing and past to us who are its readers.
The Bible, on the other hand, was written by dozens of different authors over the space of thousands of years, living and ministering in different countries, speaking different languages. The Bible was given to men who lived among those to whom they spoke. Better still, the Bible was written by men who not only performed miracles to attest to their truthfulness, but performed miracles which could be tested by those who first received God’s Word. Remember that even Nicodemus rightly understood this, “This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2).
Jesus Himself not only does not correct Nicodemus, but in another circumstance makes essentially the same argument. In Mark 2, in Capernaum, a paralytic is lowered through the roof in order to get to Jesus. Seeing such faith Jesus said, “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (v.5). Because we know they are the bad guys we are put out by the skepticism of the scribes. These reasoned in their hearts that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy. Only God, after all, has the authority to forgive sins. They, however, reasoned rightly. Jesus next, however, demonstrates why He has the authority to forgive sins, but doing that which only God, or a messenger sent by God, could do- But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them, “Why do you reason about these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralytic, “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house” (8-11). Jesus demonstrates His authority, He authenticates His message, by healing this man of his paralysis.
In addition, the Bible includes in it multiple prophecies that were fulfilled after they were given, but before today. That the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem was promised five hundred years before it happened (Micah 5:1-2). The rise and fall of the Medo-Persian empire, the coming of the Greek empire, and the coming of the Roman empire were all foretold by the prophet Daniel during the height of the Babylonian empire. Some scholars have argued that the Bible contains over three hundred prophecies that have already been fulfilled.
The Bible contains miraculous predictions of future events which have since come to pass. The Bible contains miracles, verifiable miracles in their day, that authenticate the authority of the writers of the Bible to reveal the truth of God. One miracle, however, stands above all the rest. As He predicted, three days after His brutal death by crucifixion, Jesus Christ walked out of His tomb alive. The Bible isn’t a book telling the story of how men might go and find God, but is the true story of how God came to be reconciled with men, through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of His Son.
These miracles, just like the books of the Bible which recount them, are not the work of men, but rather the Holy Spirit. The Bible alone is that book by which God the Holy Spirit determined to reveal the fullness of the godhead working in and through mere men.
If then the Bible is extraordinary in its sources, extraordinary in its message, in what sense can we rightly say that the Bible is also an ordinary book? Because the Bible is a book that speaks to us as we speak to each other. Some ancient holy books come to us less as revelations and more as riddles. The ancient Gnostic gospels as well as some eastern texts are designed not to reveal but to conceal. Indeed the very term “Gnostic” references its promise to slowly, carefully, make you one who is “in the know.” These religions thrive by promising to unpack the secret knowledge hidden in their sacred texts, knowledge ordinary people, the uninitiated, could not understand.
The Bible, on the other hand, contains a broad range of literary forms that are to be read in accordance with their form. Many, both inside and outside the church, complain that Bible believing Christians are guilty of reading the Bible “literally.” Sound biblical interpretation, like any interpretation is “literal” interpretation. This doesn’t mean that we ignore literary forms, but that we read in light of them. To read the Bible rightly, like any other book, we read poetry according to the rules of poetry. We read history according to the rules of history. We read similes and metaphors as similes and metaphors. What we do not do, however, is read history as poetry, and therefore deny its accuracy, nor read poetry as history, thereby accusing it of being off. One is not reading the Bible literally if, when Jesus said, “I am the door” (John 10:9) they wondered how many hinges Jesus had, or whether he came with curtains.
Too many want to argue that the Bible is a delightful collection of ancient men’s thoughts of matters of great import. The great lay apologist CS Lewis would object on two counts. First, borrowing from His apologetic on Jesus, based on the Bible’s own claims about itself, the last thing we can conclude is that it is a helpful, if flawed book. It is either lies, lunacy or the Lord’s abiding Word. For no erroneous book, no merely man created book can claim to be God-breathed, can claim to equip us for every good work. A patronizing perspective on the Word of God is as sensible as a patronizing perspective on God Himself. You can hate the Word for its alleged errors. You can disdain it for its purported outdated perspective. Or you can submit to it.
Finally, we would do well to confess that the Bible in one sense is ordinary in its history. That is, the Bible is not alone in affirming a worldwide flood. It is not alone in telling a story about a Son of God that comes to earth, dies, and then rises again. Liberal theologians and unbelieving historians delight to point out the similarities between the Epic of Gilgamesh of other ancient near eastern texts and the Bible. Some Christians, perhaps threatened and skittish, labor to affirm the differences between those stories and the story. These brothers seem to suggest if we can put enough distance between what the Bible says and what these other ancient holy books say we can hold on to the claim of the Bible as the one true holy book.
Lewis, in his marvelous essay Myth Became Fact, suggests that we have nothing to fear from these overlapping stories, not because we would expect multiple garbled versions of one story once it goes through history’s “telephone game.” Rather Lewis argues that because the whole of creation is the manifestation of the grace and glory of God, we should expect to see these themes cropping up anywhere we find those who bear His image. The dying and rising God is not just some scheme our heavenly Father came up with to rescue us, but is the very reason for the universe. These “myths” are the meta-narratives, the over-arching story that explains who we are, for all of humanity.
The difference, however, with our story brings us back to its ordinariness. The Incarnation is a myth, not in the sense of a lie, but in the sense of a transcendent identity shaping story, that became fact. Our story became also reality. It happened in space and time. Thus Luke explains to his original intended audience, Theopholis, “There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea (Luke 1:5) and later, “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinuis was governing Syria (2:1-2). It is for this reason that our most ancient creed, a brief summary of the most salient affirmations of our faith says of Jesus that He “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
The Bible, unlike all its rivals old and new, is an astonishing book that clearly and straightforwardly claims to be the Word of God, that defends that astonishing claim, that reveals the very character of God, that shows how we might have peace with God, all through telling us, in a rather ordinary manner, the extraordinary events that actually happened in space and in time. As the beloved disciple reminds us, “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
Though they don’t feel like such when we are in the midst of them, light and momentary, Paul tells us, are our afflictions, not worthy to be compared to the eternal weight of glory (II Corinthians 4:17). CS Lewis captured this glorious wisdom as he concluded The Last Battle, the final installment of the his Narnia Chronicles-
“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
When Jesus returns He will not toss this world into the ash heap. Instead when He returns not only we, but the whole of the world will be complete. What we are to remember is that we are going back to the garden, only better. The end of the story is the fullness of the victory of Christ. The Second Adam succeeds, and we with Him. We will be raised and perfected. The whole of the world will no longer be groaning. We will become what we should have been. This is certain. Be of good cheer. He has already overcome the world. We are living in the denouement.
As we remember these truths we see today and eternity intertwined. There is no great chasm that separates one from the other, no disconnect between this day the Lord has made, and the boundless future of paradise. Time and eternity are of a piece, even as sanctification and glorification are of a piece. Which means that as we fulfill our calling to remember eternity, we fulfill our calling to redeem the time. We move through our days knowing that as we faithfully seek His glory, our labors will not be among the wood, hay and stubble that will be burned off, but will be the very jewels on the walls of the New Jerusalem. We come to discover that right now really does count forever. And ennui slouches its way to hellfire. We live with purpose, with passion, with joy. The King is coming.
When we realize that time and eternity are one, we no longer try to keep a foot in both worlds. It is wearying business indeed to live both for the here and the now as well as the there and the then. Because such is always serving two masters. We are to remember that here is there and now is then. Because here is there, every bit of work matters, and every blessing is a taste of heaven. Because now is then, He is with us even as we await His return. We work, knowing He has already overcome the world. We rest, knowing He has already overcome the world.
Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” Luke 18: 9-14).
It is an unfair, gross distortion to hold that Rome teaches justification by works, while we Protestants teach justification by faith. The more accurate distinction recognizes on both sides the necessity of the work of Christ. Rome affirms that His righteousness is necessary for our salvation, that without it we are without hope. That righteousness, however, becomes ours through infusion. Protestants affirm also that His righteousness is necessary for salvation, that we have no hope without it. It, however, becomes ours through imputation.
Some here are quick to affirm that our differences now amount to nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. We are arguing over two, thick, theological terms that are not a part of our ordinary language. Surely such a nuance must be insignificant. But it’s not, as Jesus’ parable illustrates. Let’s look at these two men, what they have in common and what separates them.
First, it is an unfair, gross distortion to hold that the Pharisee believes he justifies himself, all alone. How quickly we pass over the one good part of his pray, “Lord, I thank you…” The Pharisee knows from whence came the power to make him righteous. He knows that he needed the grace of God, that God had to work in him, that God is due all the glory for his obedience. The publican likewise looks to God and His grace as His only hope. He knows where to turn, even as the Pharisee knows whom to thank.
The difference, however, is here. The Pharisee believes that God’s grace has made him whole, that he is now, albeit by the grace of God, just in himself. God helped him out. God stood him up. But now he is standing on his own two feet. He gives thanks to God that he is better than other men, that he doesn’t commit this sin and that, that he performs this duty and that. God has poured righteousness into him, and there he stands.
The publican, on the other hand, knows what he still is, a sinner. The mercy he cries out for isn’t that he would be made a saint, but that he would be a forgiven sinner. He cannot cooperate. He cannot stand. He can only, and even this is the grace of God, cry out for the mercy of God, which is found in Christ alone.
The bigger difference than the differing approaches of these two men, however, is what it meant for their eternities. Only one of these two men went home justified. Only one of these men was an adopted son of the living God. Only one of these two men will spend eternity walking with God in paradise. The other will spend eternity weeping and gnashing teeth. Teapot tempests have no such eternal consequences.
In our feel-good, dumbed-down, ecumenical age we find distinctions distasteful. In the faithful preaching of our Lord He demonstrates the difference they make. That said, may we Reformed protest against our own propensity to cry out, “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men, Arminians, semi-Pelagians, or even this fundamentalist. I score high on all theology exams and have a library that is the envy of my friends.” Instead let us, consistent with our theology, beat our breasts and cry out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
