Symbolism | Questioning the Answers

Raging Rivers and Ruby Slippers

April 8, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

The night after I found out that I lost my job, a friend came over with McDonald’s ice cream sundaes in hand. I opened a bottle of wine and we ate ice cream, drank wine, and talked.

He was great, holding nothing but a positive outlook on my situation, while still validating what I was feeling.

I truly did have the same positivity, but it was battling against all of the raw emotions that were still churning about. Having him there helped tease it out and give it the air it needed to grow a bit stronger.

At one point, we started talking about the need to take steps. To not sit around and wait for something to look right or feel safe. And to not refrain from taking a step due to the uncertainty of how it could possibly lead to something beneficial.

It reminded me of the story in the Bible when the Israelites cross the Jordan River. He wasn’t familiar with it, so I found a copy of the Good Book, fumbled through it until I found the passage in question, and read it to him, specifically calling attention to the fact that it says the river was at flood stage. “Then it says, ‘…as soon as their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing…'”

He got all excited. “What a great metaphor!”

We chewed on how powerful it was, taking a brief moment to acknowledge that it didn’t matter to either of us if the story “really happened” because its power is found in the truth of the illustration: The water didn’t stop flowing until the people stepped into it.

We talked about the tendency for us to stand at the edge of our metaphorical rivers and wait for the raging waters to stop flowing before we step away from the safety of the shoreline.

In other words, we stand alongside a situation and wait for it to look safe or for an obstacle to be removed before we move forward. But only in moving forward – only in stepping into what looks impossible or like it may even harm us – can the obstacle be overcome.

It was a great conversation and held potent relevancy as we discussed our lives and our futures.

Shortly after, I was reflecting on the conversation and it reminded me of a story I wrote as a late teenager.

It’s no secret that The Wizard of Oz has always been one of my favorite films. Many people don’t pay attention to the fact that when Dorothy begins her journey down the yellow brick road, there’s also a red brick road adjacent to it. In the story I wrote, Dorothy didn’t have a contingent of little people singing a song about which road to follow, so she got confused and took the red brick road by mistake (in her mind, this made perfect sense because it was the same color as the coveted ruby slippers that she’d been given).

I haven’t read the story in forever so I’m fuzzy on the details, but at one point Dorothy ends up at the witch’s castle with her life on the line and she gets chased to the turret atop one of the castle towers. Desperately trying to avoid being caught, she climbs out a window and, while precariously perched high on its ledge, stares at another tower across the way.

Unable to turn back, she gazes down at the ruby slippers on her feet, musters up as much courage as she can, and cautiously steps out into the air. The slippers begin to glow vibrantly as something forms under her feet to keep her from falling.

She hesitantly takes the next step onto thin air, fully supported as a walkway forms beneath her. The walkway continues to extend itself – but only as far as each step that she takes; it never extends out in front of her.

Fear sets in as she hears her pursuers. She looks back to see them starting to climb out the window after her, causing a paralysis that steals her focus and courage. The walkway begins to erode under her feet and she feels herself losing control, but once she regains focus and moves forward, it solidifies and she gets to the other tower and through the window. She turns back in time to see the walkway dissolve, and I’m guessing that her chasers probably fell to their demise.

When I penned the story, I had no real concept of the notion of deliberately stepping into nothingness with only the trust that somehow things will be okay. I certainly wasn’t familiar with any biblical stories to that effect (though there may have been some other influence that middle-age has caused me to forget). But interestingly, even though I don’t recall many details of the story, that scene has always stuck in my mind with arresting clarity.

A couple nights ago, my kids and I were watching Onward, Pixar’s latest flick, and there was a very similar scene. There were no ruby slippers, of course, but there was a magical staff.

I’ll be honest. I had a brief response of internal indignation that my scene – my 30-year-old scene living on faded pages tucked away in an old Pee-Chee in my office – had been repurposed by Pixar.

Okay, so it was more like indignation mixed with excitement (“See, I actually do have good ideas!”) and a dash of regret (“Aww, I shouldn’t let my stuff just fall by the wayside…”), along with a quick battle of scarcity vs. abundance (“If I don’t hurry and get my other ideas out there, they’ll be used up by someone else and then what?” “Wait, no, the pie is big enough for everyone. There’s plenty to go around. Plus, this scene is different enough from mine.”).

It’s amazing – and slightly exhausting – how much can go through your mind in a split second.

Anyway, I quickly refocused so I could absorb the scene.

As I watched the Pixar character take his steps, I thought about what the scene was representing. I also thought about Dorothy in the story that I wrote decades ago. And about the Israelites crossing the Jordan River thousands of years ago.

And I thought about how stories can serve as fantastic, nonthreatening illustrations of powerful truths that can have enormous significance in our lives.

Of course, it’s one thing to watch these things on a screen or read them on a page. It’s something else when we’re faced with these situations in real life.

So I also thought – perhaps most importantly – about myself and how I hope that each time life brings me to the edge of another raging river, I’ll have the confidence I need to step into the water.

Sin in the Presence of a Holy God

March 30, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

There’s a fun little anecdote that most of us are probably familiar with about a frog in a pot of water. The water is warming up to a deadly boil, but at such a slow pace that the frog doesn’t have any idea, so it just floats around happily until it ultimately boils to death. But, as the story goes, if the frog had jumped into the boiling water from outside, the temperature difference would’ve been so stark that the frog would’ve promptly jumped out to safety.

Last week, I was making my way through a book that had been recommended to me and at one point the author talked briefly about Jesus dying on the cross to deal with the sin that separates us from God. This got me reflecting on another thing I’d read recently about sin and the wrath of God. Which made me reflect on yet something else I’d happened across recently that said sin cannot be in the presence of a holy God.

These things then got me thinking about the pained, desperate words of Jesus when he cried out from the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As the story goes where I come from, this gripping, dramatic cry reflects the pivotal moment where God had to turn his back as Jesus took on the sin of the world, leaving Jesus to experience separation from God for the first time ever. And why did he experience this separation?

Because sin cannot be in the presence of a holy God.

We hear and repeat this idea frequently within Christian communities. It’s the reason that Adam and Eve were booted from paradise. It’s the reason the priests had to go through painstaking preparations before entering the temple. And it’s ultimately why Jesus was abandoned on the cross.

Because sin cannot be in the presence of a holy God.

As I was recently thinking about all of this, I was reminded of a sermon I once heard where the preacher discussed white blood cells and red blood cells to illustrate how God responds to sin: he annihilates it.

Because sin cannot be in the presence of a holy God.

These ideas are so pervasive within Christianity that most people don’t seem to think twice about them, at least in my experience.

Yet there’s a problem with this kind of theology. It’s a problem that either we don’t feel comfortable discussing or that simply eludes us.

And it’s a problem that can be summed up with one word.

Jesus.

The one who put his fingers in the ears and touched the tongue of a deaf and mute man. The one who touched the eyes of a blind man. The one who reached out and touched a man with leprosy… and who let a sinful woman anoint and kiss his feet… and who took hold of a man with dropsy … and who invited himself into the house of the chief tax collector… and who let one of the disciples rest against his chest during the Last Supper.

Jesus.

The one who didn’t avoid adulterers, pull back from prostitutes, or turn away from tax collectors. The one who didn’t shudder around sin.

Jesus reached out to and engaged and touched others. And he allowed others to reach out to, engage, and touch him. And he did this to help heal people from whatever kind of disease that plagued them, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual – though I would venture to say that Jesus saw it all as spiritual.

He did these things to validate people and show them their inherent worth. In a sense, to say “You are deeply and truly valued in spite of what your religion has taught you.” Or in some cases “…in spite of what their religion has taught you.”

Jesus made it clear that God can most certainly be in the presence of sin. So to hold onto theology that tells us otherwise is problematic, no matter how it’s packaged.

It’s curious that these two opposing ideas have somehow managed to live next to each other in this thing we call Christianity. I guess when we’re used to living in the middle of a story, the obvious may escape us. We’re like the frog in the pot of water that’s slowly getting warmer and warmer. We don’t notice what’s going on. We get acclimated to the environment around us. It feels comfortable and familiar. There’s no sense that something might be wrong.

As I sat through the sermon with the illustration of the red blood cells and the white blood cells, even though I found it deeply troubling, I didn’t consider in that moment how it completely conflicts with the idea of God intimately dwelling among us in the flesh.

Photo credit: Image from page 281 of "The pictorial Bible and commentator: presenting the great truths of God's word in the most simple, pleasing, affectionate, and instructive manner" (1878) (license) — Photo credit: Image from page 281 of “The pictorial Bible and commentator: presenting the great truths of God’s word in the most simple, pleasing, affectionate, and instructive manner” (1878) (license)

So even though we’ve got stories in the Old Testament like a man getting struck dead because he touched the Ark of the Covenant where God was said to reside, we need to stop using them to bolster up the notion that God is somehow untouchable by the general populous and that God can’t be in the presence of sin. Because, in case we’ve forgotten, we’ve also got an incredible story in the New Testament of a bleeding woman who had been suffering for 12 long years and who was healed because she approached Jesus and touched his cloak.

Sin can’t be in the presence of a holy God? On the surface, it may seem like a legitimate conclusion, but it can’t be reconciled with what we see in Jesus. Something else is going on with these stories and we need to take the time to consider it, even though it may fly in the face of what we’ve always heard.

The bleeding woman in the gospels who “touched God” was healed, commended, and sent on her way with the encouraging and compassionate words “Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

In all seriousness, perhaps the “timeless truth” from this gospel story – the one that gets masked from a surface, literal reading – is that the suffering we all need to be freed from is theology that tells us that God is untouchable and that sin can’t be in the presence of a holy God.

For When You Eat of It

December 6, 2014 By admin Leave a Comment

One morning several months ago, I was lying in my hammock and I pulled up a guided meditation playlist. I pressed “shuffle,” closed my eyes, and tuned out the world as a meditation by Deepak Chopra on the subject of judgment began to play.

I listened intently as he mentioned that the need to judge others can be a form of defense, and my interest was piqued when he indicated that judging others comes with consequences.

“When you judge someone, it makes another person wrong. Someone else is wrong to feel a certain way, to look a certain way, to hold certain opinions… Judgment immediately creates separation… The same walls that keep other people away also shut off the flow of spirit.”

What struck me in particular was his comment about shutting off the flow of spirit. I realize that the term “the flow of spirit” sounds a little ethereal – perhaps a little too new-agey or “woo woo” to give it serious thought at first.

But what was fascinating is that not long before I heard this meditation, I’d read about how our thoughts and emotions can get stored up inside of us, literally creating energy blockages that keep things from flowing within us as they should. Blockages that have the ability to wreak havoc on our health and well-being. In other words, you could say that the flow of spirit gets shut off.

As I pondered this, I considered the words of Jesus as written in the gospel of Matthew. “Do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

The notion of energy blockages at the core of our being and shutting off the flow of spirit puts a whole new perspective on these words of Jesus.

When we judge others, we can’t escape being judged. Maybe it’s not in the ways we traditionally think of, but if being judgmental can create a form of negative energy that’s in some way toxic, who’s it going to affect? If I’m the one doing the judging, it’s going to affect me. And the greater the intensity behind my thoughts and emotions, the greater the toxic effect on me and on the flow of my spirit. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

All of this had taken root in the back of my mind and had given me much to think about. Then one day, I was hanging out with some friends and we were talking about the challenges that can arise from taking everything in the Bible literally. One of the women shared how she had recently read about how the Adam and Eve story from Genesis was actually about judgment.

I was perplexed at first. It was a difficult idea to wrap my mind around, probably because in Christian circles, the focus of the story is on sin and disobedience.

I’ve often heard that the whole reason the tree was off limits to begin with was because that was God’s way of giving Adam and Eve the choice to love God or not. And by choosing disobedience, they chose sin, which destroyed the relationship with God. Then we extrapolate the idea that God can’t be in the presence of sin so he kicked them out of the garden.

But is it possible that judgment is the point of the Adam and Eve story? The more I meditated on the idea, the more it began to make sense and the clearer it became. In fact, it soon became an incredibly illuminating interpretation of the story, one that makes far more sense than the traditional one. Let’s think about this.

God tells Adam, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.”

One can’t help but wonder why God wouldn’t want Adam and Eve to know the difference between good and evil. It’s hard to see the downside to that, especially when you consider that one of the first things we attempt to teach our kids is what’s good and what’s bad.

But if we view all of this through the lenses of judgment, it makes sense.

We judge others when we start categorizing their actions or beliefs as right or wrong, good or evil. Interpreting the Adam and Eve story this way says that people weren’t created to judge others. That’s why God forbade them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Judgment was something that was meant to be reserved for God and God alone. Because, as Deepak said in the meditation I referenced earlier, judgment creates separation and can ultimately shut off the flow of spirit.

It’s interesting that God says the consequence of eating from the tree is death. “When you eat of it, you will surely die.”

Obviously, they didn’t die in a literal sense, so we’re left to ponder what this meant. The typical explanation is spiritual death: Adam and Eve were separated from God due to their sin. This separation would be handed down and persist throughout time, only to be finally dealt with by the atoning death of Jesus on the cross – but even then, only for those who respond appropriately.

It’s a reasonable conclusion within the confines of Christianity.

Yet, I’m left to wonder what the story would’ve meant to the original audience. Because the Adam and Eve story was written at a particular place and time, for specific people. And although there is certainly a timeless quality to it, I can’t believe that the primary point of the story is something that would make sense only when viewed through the lenses of things that developed hundreds – if not thousands – of years later. Things like atonement theology and the doctrine of original sin.

Things that simply couldn’t have possibly had meaning to the original hearers.

And so I circle back to the idea of judgment and I ponder the words “When you eat of it, you will surely die.” And in the framework of judgment, those words make a lot of sense. Because judgment creates separation.

It builds walls, causes distance, erodes community, and destroys intimacy. “We” becomes “us” and “them.” And often times “they” are only truly worthy if they’ll become like “us.” Judgment can even keep us from extending compassion because of how easy it is for us to think of all the reasons why the situation or person doesn’t deserve our compassion.

And when any of this happens, the very essence of our humanity begins to die. And if we’re living devoid of our humanity, are we truly living?

These days, we understand science and we have mind-boggling technology and eye-opening research. We can say “When you think or feel a certain way, it affects you in a massive way.” And we can go on to talk about energy blockages and cellular makeup and physiology and how at the quantum level all things are connected. All things. And we have empirical evidence to prove it all.

So we point to this evidence, imploring people to be very careful about how they live and the thoughts they think and the choices they make because there are ramifications, whether we can see them or not.

It’s as though the author of this ancient story wanted to implore the same things, but since he didn’t have our modern knowledge and terminology, he simply used the medium of the time – story – to convey the point. “Don’t do this or you will die.”

So I chew on all of this and I circle back to the words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. “Do not judge or you too will be judged.”

Then I flip over to the gospel of Luke, where the author placed this teaching alongside “love your enemies,” expanding it and rendering it as “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

These words come alive in a completely new way and with a depth that I’ve never known.

And it makes me consider the types of judging that can be very common within Christianity. Who’s right, who’s wrong. Who’s in, who’s out. Who’s a true believer, who’s not. Who’s saved, who’s lost.

And I reflect on how I’ve been taught at times that God actually expects us to make some of these kinds of judgments.

Was judgment the original point of the Adam and Eve story? Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.

But as I consider everything – the words of Jesus, the original audience of Genesis 3, shutting off the flow of spirit – the more I realize that I, too, would do well to avoid that fruit tree.

“For when you eat of it, you will surely die.”