2023-01-08 A Meditation on Modeling Life

“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (Jn 1:9–18 ESV)

True conflict is difficult to model in the mind. Either we are contented and see all as sweetness and light, or we despair, and see all as impossible bind. How, for example, will any progress be made if both sides of the dispute simply hate the alternative: hate each other. Some have this innate wish to be inoffensive, to help others, not to ruffle any feathers. Some have a slightly too accurate model of total war, hunkering down, refusing to converse, being bellicose.

The breakthrough is fruit of some spiritual appropriation: we appropriate some lesson or genius from first principles. We hold in mind some model wherein a dialog ameliorated the center, brought a little give from both sides, created tangible change. No fruit of Man’s genius alone, it is the hard-won plainspoken humble experience of the second born: the Born Again, the new believer. Their experience proposes that hearts hardened by sin can by love and contrition reach a stage unheard of: can accept total defeat, and thereby accept total Resurrection.

This sounds like hand-waving or rote speech. Indeed, much of our religiosity seems as such. Do we really internalize and believe anything, or is all simply taste for a certain brand of language? Yet this is where we observe, sagaciously, wisely, hopefully: see my own heart in football match mode accepting these nurturing words from our Savior. See my own heart begin not to worry about dying or getting old; rather, see how a gospel advance brought with it immediate pangs of old-age and despair, yet that only so that this newfound gospel could be applied at once to what is immediately a place of need.

There will be no silver bullet, perhaps, no perfect solution. When, reflecting on God’s goodness we err on the side of too much optimism, that is a True vision just as much as the vision of total combat. It is True that God has been God for all people, and will at the last Raise up His saints in the land, dialog restored, community endeavors once more intending to better the human condition in language of peace and debate. It is also true that God is hunkering down with us in those trenches, because some give and take is unavailable. Some mutual recognisance, recognition, is long overdue. Some model of war is out of our simple minds’ reach; we wish to see it in mocked-up map and model, but don’t know how to depict the areas of disagreement. That depiction is what Jesus showed us on the Cross: total war, meets total giving, total service, total tradeoff of this life for a better one for neighbors and kin tomorrow.