People make two big mistakes about creation. The first is the most common. This error treats the things around us as if they were everything. It considers food, or nature or family or art or our own bodies as if they were the end of life. It’s the grossest sort of idolatry. We’ll call it “Nothingbutteryism,” because it says that reality is nothing but time and stuff. This is a mistake because it simply gets things wrong. It leaves things out. What’s missing? Anything and everything that we can’t see- God, the entire heavenly realm, the world to come…even our emotions and dreams. People who commit to option one say that life should be lived for stuff, because that is all there is to live for.
It’s not just athiests who live out this error; many who believe that life is more than stuff, live as if they don’t. All of us do this more than we want to admit. It’s the easiest error to fall into because so much of this world is so beautifully and obviously wonderful.
Like all errors involving reality, Nothingbutteryism is cruel because it says life should be lived for something that can never give final fulfillment or happiness. That’s because verything we see is passing away. It’s impossible to find meaning in something that will one day rot and be infested with worms.
The second error is usually lived by those who want to avoid the first one. They see the evil that’s part of life and the temporary nature of the reality around them and conclude that this world isn’t important. They treat creation as if it didn’t…or at least shouldn’t matter. They’re concerned with “spiritual” truth only. They are disgusted…or at least feel as if they should be…with the distracting things they can see and touch. We’ll call this painful error “Angelism,” because it teaches that men and women ought to long for and be interested only in a nonphysical reality.
This error is cruel because it denies what we all know to be true: our bodies and this world do matter. It forces us to reject a large part of who we are as unimportant…maybe even nasty.
Many people see these as the only real options. But they’re wrong. They have to be. Think about what we’ve said concerning our God. Would such a God create a world that was anything other than gloriously important? On the other hand would such a God view the suffering around us as good? Let’s think about it.
The self-giving God we’ve been discussing made all of this stuff for the purpose of revealing his glory (not in the selfish way we think, for the Father seeks to glorify the Son, the Son the Father, and the Spirit the Son and Father). Like a finger that points beyond itself to something else, the beauties and joys of creation point to the God they were meant to hint at.[i] Creation is a great street sign pointing towards the location of the Trinity’s party. The error of Nothingbutteryism treats the sign post as the real party. It misses the point. Angelism believes it can find its way while ignoring or degrading the signs the host has provided. We shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t recognize the party when they get there.
All of creation was meant to image something about God.[ii] And basic to our God is the exchange that marks his existence. All around us we see the wonderful truth that “the way to receive is to give” acted out for us. Everything we have, we have as a result of something or someone else. Can you think of any exceptions? The shoes we wear were created by the effort and sacrifice of another. The bread and meat we eat required the literal sacrifice of the wheat and animal. Each of these items arrives at our home through an exchange of goods for money. Everything lives and grows through an infinite dance of these ever present exchanges. I believe God did this on purpose.
Men and women have a special place in the great dance of creation. Because men and women are persons, they must choose the type of being they are to become. Of course there are limits to this (and we’ll talk about those in a bit), but while the water cycle, quarks and neutrinos, and world economy inevitably declare in their own cyclic way the truth of God’s giving, man must decide to live a life that mirrors truthfully his Creator’s love. On the most basic level of existence men and women can’t help but participate in the exchange that simply comes with being a creature of the Triune God, but where mankind stands above all the rest of creation, as a person, we can choose a life that refuses to give or receive. To deny either is to deny the dance. It’s to remain seated alone against the wall as partner after partner asks us to join them on the dance floor. Why go to a dance if you have no intention of dancing? But, people refuse all the time.
Fortunately, we can also accept the invitation. When we hold the door open for another, let another into traffic, get up in the middle of the night to get a drink for a brother or sister, we are imaging the self-giving nature of our God. To do so is to live in a truly human way. It is to be like our Father God. It is why we were made.
If a life of self-giving is a reflection of how things are done in heaven, we can accurately label the other way of grasping and self-importance as hellish. One way declares “I (an immeasurably valuable person) am here for you.” The other selfishly demands “You (an object for my pleasure) are here for me.”
Every man and women, girl and boy still declare “this is what God is like” in all we do. This is simply what it means to be human- we speak about God because we are his image bearers.[iii] The problem is that we lie. We declare God to be selfish, dishonest, and hateful in each and every one of our acts of selfishness, dishonesty, and hate. That’s what sin is- falling short of the glory of God.[iv] And when mankind became a false witness about God, the world itself became broken. Many of the images have become cracked and bent. An evening watching the Discovery Channel will show you what I mean. We see the violence of our own hurtful words in the venom of the spider that dissolves it’s victims from the inside out. We can see the pain of a life lived apart from God in the emancipated body of the starving child. The terror in the eyes of the young Wildebeest being dragged to the ground by the Lion’s claws shows us what we do to each other for pleasure or money. We live on the blood and suffering of others. The exchange is there, but we take what’s not given and it’s violent and ugly.
Like evil itself, these anti-images work their message through the truth of loving exchange gone wrong. Hell has no reality of its own. It must distort and dirty up the Creation that God has made.
Now, here’s the good part: All of creation was an expression of God’s love and provision for man. Everything was given as gift. This means that everything, every physical thing, was an example of God’s love and a means of learning about and growing closer to God. When Adam ate the food that God had provided, it was an act of Communion with God. There was no option one or option two.
Nothingbutteryism says there is no nonmaterial reality. It erects a wall between reality and what it sees as fanciful dreaming. Stuff exists. The intangible doesn’t. Angelism disagrees. There is a spiritual reality and it is at war with the material one. Angelism is determined to maintain a distinction between the two-between what matters and what doesn’t or even between evil and good. It seems these two views couldn’t to be farther apart, but they share a common root. Did you see it? Both agree that there is a line separating the Material world and the Spiritual world. More than that they teach that this division ought to be there, but Adam didn’t choose between eating and relating with God. Rather eating was one of the many ways of communing with God.
Men and women in their prideful rebellion have trouble seeing this. This is because the first man and woman rejected it. Adam desired the fruit of the tree apart from the gift of God. And by doing so he was the first to conceive the ugly division. He grasped at the food even if it meant loosing communion with God. And so creation, instead of being a means of fellowship with God, became a competitor. The result was the perceived division between the creation and its Creator and the certain death that can only come when man attempts to live by bread alone or laments the fact that he needs bread to live. Apart from God food is merely dead stuff we consume. Apart from our food sustained bodies we are ghosts fit only for haunting- not men and women created to embody life.
The Gospel heals this screwed up way of looking at all the glorious things around us. For those who don’t understand the end for which creation was made- to bring God to man- God wrote it as large as possible by putting creation on himself. God became man.[v] And it is in the body of that man that we most fully see and experience God. We don’t do so by confusing man with God or by denying his humanity[vi]. We see God and Creation brought mysteriously together.
Christ’s human body does in an extreme way what all of creation was designed to do- allow us communion with God. This is the Christian answer to the question of “what is creation for?” The world responds with one of two cruel answers: “it is the meaning of life” or “it is insignificant and dangerous.” But we know, however, that it is much like an advertisement. Its like those free samples at the grocery store, it can never be enough. You’ve got to buy the whole package if you want to be full. The hunger and desire we feel can only be fulfilled in God.
Man’s proper response to creation is to bless it. What does that mean? Consider water that has been blessed. We call it Holy Water[vii]. To bless water isn’t to turn it into something it wasn’t before. Holy Water isn’t different from other water. Rather, Holy Water is water that we have asked God to help us see his love through. Really, what is true of Holy Water is true of all water: it was created to bring us closer to God. To bless water is to attempt to see, through God’s grace, what it already is. Or consider a more everyday action, the blessing of a meal. What are we doing? When food is blessed we acknowledge that it comes from God, that he gives it to us for our good and that we ought to thank him for it. To bless our meals is to see them for what they really are: God’s love to us.[viii]
All of this is terribly important. It means that every thing is tapping our shoulder. When we turn to ask what it wants, it points us towards our God. It means that every action we choose points towards heaven or hell. Everything we do declares “I am for you” or “You are for me”. But the thing I want you to notice is so obvious that you might miss it. Everything we do, we do with our bodies.
We and our bodies are indistinguishable. Angelism says our bodies aren’t important to who we are. According to its view of Creation our bodies are like clothes we put on or take off. We are angels trapped in bodies. In fact, many people believe that our salvation is completed when we are separated from our bodies, when we die and go to heaven. The sad thing is that most of these people were taught this by those who have spoken for the church. While various individuals may have taught this, the church has always affirmed belief in the resurrection of the body.[ix] Do you see what this means? God saves us, and we are human beings. Being human means having a body. That’s how God made us. He saves our humanity and he does so without destroying it. We’ll get our bodies back, only better.
Someone has written that our bodies are the part of our souls that our five senses can touch. Though it’s not exactly right, that comes very close to what our ancient faith teaches. Our bodies and the bodies of others are how we know each other. There simply isn’t any other way.
But more than that, I’ve said that it is not only our actions but things themselves that mean. If all of creation declares God’s glory, what might the bodies of men and women declare? That’s where we’ll go next.
[i]For a wonderful introduction to a more ancient way of seeing meaning in the warp and woof of creation see Thomas Howard, Chance or the Dance? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, n.d.) also C.S Lewis The Discarded Image
[ii] Isaiah 6:3, Psalms. 8:3-4, 19:1
[iii] Genesis 1:26-28
[iv] Romans 3:23
[v] John 1:14
[vi] Christ was truly God, perfectly man, distinctly both and indivisibly one
[vii] Numbers 5:17
[viii] Alexander Schmemann, (For the Life of the World, New York: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1973) pp 11-22
[ix]See N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) for a masterful exposition and defense of the orthodox doctrine of physical resurrection being a cardinal belief of the early church.
PART 1/ PART 2/ PART 3/ PART 4/ PART 5/ PART 6/ PART 7/ PART 8/ PART 9/ PART 10
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