On the Joys of Iconoclasty

06/13/2008 7:30 AM – 7:55 AM

Joy is an eager anticipation of the present. I’m not sure what I was thinking about when I thought of that last night. Things had been smoked. But, being now awake and caffeinated, I still agree with it. There are these big things about God that I’m considering in a smoky way, I’m not sure if they’ve coalesced into an actual statement.

The problem with being raised a creationist is that the statement is posed in such a way that you must either accept salvation or science. As the data accumulate, evolution seems far and away to be the lead horse. So one turns to problems of epistemology to sustain one’s belief in God. If I can doubt the whole basis of the enterprise, I can still believe in God. But then in turns into a mucky mess and nothing is knowable except that nothing is knowable. But here is this hand. And here is another.

But the situation is not either/or. It never has been. It is both/and. How, I’m not exactly sure. Perhaps the God who risks. Perhaps the God who waits. When you put the dice in the cup and shake it, you can’t know the outcome. Did God load the dice, predetermining the rolls? Did he touch them in medias res to set the outcome? Did he lean eagerly over the edge alongside us, watching to see what he should do next? But if four, six-sided dice go into the cup, four six-sided dice come out. Here is one hand. And here is another. There is room. There is quite enough room for salvation. And that is rather the whole of it. The dialogue is on-going. It was not the biography of God, as interesting as that perspective is. It was a recounting of the continuing evolution of God’s people’s understanding of him. We shouldn’t have closed the canon. Or maybe we should have, but recognize that our understanding of what it says can, must continue as we continue. God is not dead. It's just that their version of God never actually existed. The grandfathers weren’t dishonest, just wrong. Now they’re dishonest, plucking out their eyes, not because they offend them, but because they offend their grandfather’s rather bad carving of what God is. God was opposed to idols for reasons greater than vanity. For my part, I will learn to dance this dance. Here is my hand, here is my neighbor’s. When I fall from the circle, I’ll just pick it up again. With great joy, I think.