Tag: Image Bearing

Categories
Every Thumb's Width

A Cup of Tea at St. Anne’s

Or, A Culture of Imaging and Imagination

Below are the notes from the talk I gave at the Equipping the Saints Conference a couple weekends ago.

Fairytales as Terrorism

It is really fun to be here, and to mutually encourage one another’s faith for building culture in hostile territory. We are in a non-fiction fight with the “principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights” (as C.S. Lewis put it in Perelandra, 21), not to mention our reductionistic and materialistic earthly authorities. While we need faith to be strong in the Lord, He strengthens our faith through fellowship in truth, and I can testify that the Lord can and does strengthen our friendships through good fiction.

You may have seen that earlier this year a UK anti-terrorism group has identified reading books by C.S. Lewis (along with Tolkien, Huxley, and Orwell) as a possible sign of far-wing extremism and white supremacy (source). If you’ve ever imagined yourself enjoying a cup of tea and piece of cake at St. Anne’s, you are the enemy. Well done.

I’ve spoken about That Hideous Strength before, and for as amazing as my observations were (at least to me, ha!), I’ve often failed to appreciate how many of the people I’m talking to haven’t yet read THS; I might as well be speaking the solar language. Let me know: how many people am I’m going to be babbling in front of?

There are a lot of resources for basic character introductions and plot points for all three books in the Ransom trilogy; today I want to make a more particular appeal for expanding our imaginative coordinates in order to encourage our image-bearing culture-building.

More Literary Connections

Before I make my point, which is mostly drawn from THS, we shouldn’t fail to recognize that Lewis works back and forth between making his point in THS and The Abolition of Man. He explicitly references Abolition in the preface to THS; THS is the narrative ride of his prophetic thesis (“This is a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my The Abolition of Man”). There’s also a lot of narrative overlap with his essay called “The Inner Ring” (here’s a reading on YouTube). But it’s not stepping out too far to say that the greatest connection to THS is the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.

I’d like to present a case that the Tower of Babel is the key to understanding THS, it is the key to fixing a critical misstep in Abolition, and it is the rallying point for us to fight the good fight better.

What’s in a Name

There are two obvious connections between THS and Babel Tower. First is the title, second is the easy climax, or the penultimate—not final climax, of the plot.

The name of the book, That Hideous Strength, is a line in a poem written by Sir David Lyndsay in 1555 (one of the first readers of William Tyndale’s translation of Scripture into English, also a supporter of John Knox and the Reformation in Scotland). Lyndsay’s line is: “when the building of the tower of Babel was abandoned the schaddow of that hidduous strenth was already six miles long” (glorious Old English spelling found in English Literature in the 16th Century Excluding Drama). Lewis uses the phrase, “the Hideous Strength”; each time H and S are capitalized, like a proper noun: Hideous Strength. It’s used three times in chapter 13 which is titled: “They Have Pulled Down Deep Heaven on Their Heads.” What is the Strength, and why is it Hideous? Those are essential terms to define.

Of course the other connection to Genesis 11 is the Banquet at Belbury (second to last chapter), when Merlin brings “the curse of Babel,” also capital B, and confuses their language, but not just into dispersing the party—they disperse alright—but into the chaos of killing and being killed. The disorder in language is only the beginning of the disarray and destruction and death. “Wither had once heard [Merlin’s] voice calling loud and intolerably glad above the riot of nonsense, ‘Qui Verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis.’” Meaning, “They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away.” The Babel curse conquered the NICE.

Back up to Babel

What is the deal with this Babel influence? The biblical story itself is only one paragraph, nine verses long at the beginning of Genesis 11. At this point in the biblical narrative we’re post flood by a few generations, not quite sure how many people were around, but likely in the tens of thousands.

The “whole earth had one language and the same words” (verse 1). They settled together in the same place, Shinar.

And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:3–4 ESV)

Attentive readers already see some problems, and the response of the Lord corroborates it. Three times they say “let us make…let us build…let us make.” That should sound familiar. In Genesis 1:26 “God said, ‘Let us make…’” Hmmm, and let us keep going. Building themselves a city is not necessarily bad, though it hints at premeditated refusal to “fill the earth” as the Lord mandated in Genesis 1:28. Their tower was to have “its top in the heavens,” none would be above them, and it would presumably be tall enough to protect them in case there was another flood. These projects would “make a name for ourselves.” They thought they could determine their place, their own limits.

And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11:5–7 ESV)

Initially it might seem that the LORD is being petty, that He is threatened by what they’re doing. What is His concern?

This goes back to Genesis 1 and God’s creation of man and the nature of man and the mandate to man. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). They were made with the capacity for relationship and family. As they, and their offspring, filled the earth they were to subdue it and have dominion. They were made with the capacity for responsibility and rule as God’s stewards.

Isn’t that what the men in Shinar were doing? No one man, or family, could accomplish the city and tower enterprise. They were in a community, in relationship; they were trying to build culture. And certainly the tools and the plans and the construction were parts of demonstrating human ingenuity and creativity and responsibility.

But virtuous relationship and responsibility depend on God’s blessing (doing it the way God said to do it). The first part of Genesis 1:28 is key: “God blessed them” and then God said be fruitful.

And even more, the relationship and the responsibility were part of what it meant to be made in His image. Note the plural, “let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). While the doctrine of the Trinity is obviously not fully revealed here, God didn’t make humans in the likeness of Himself and angels, or in the likeness of Himself and lesser gods. Men are made as images of God, the imago Dei. In Babel, the LORD said, “Come, let us go down” (Genesis 11:7). That plural pronoun in God’s mouth is used in 1:26 when He purposes to make man in His image and only again in 11:7 when He sees men using His language without reference to Him.

A man is not a man in his own name or his own image. When the LORD said, “this is only the beginning of what they will do,” He was referring to the beginning of their abolition of man. They were running into self-sufficiency, autonomy, and attempts to live and master themselves as if God wasn’t necessary.

In the “shadow of that hideous strength” the tower symbolized or embodied the will and work of men. There is glorious strength in image bearing relationships and responsibility, but all the results are hideous as men try to define the image for themselves.

Back to Belbury – The Nice Guys

The setting for THS is on earth where the Macrobes have convinced men in the name of “Science” not just to ignore, but to destroy, what is human (how prescient was Lewis about our present culture). They were reimagining in order to reengineer the human race. But mirrors reflect a given shape, they can’t create their own shape. So by the end of the story Wither (think: Dr. Fauci) and Frost and Straik have lost even the love of their own flesh, their own lives.

The NICE, the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments, the NICE guys are experimenting themselves right into vanity and dust in the wind. The story of Babel, and the story of Belbury, are Men, in the name of Man, ruining men and Man. This is the key to understanding THS.

The Tao < the Dei

I said at the beginning that Babel is also the key to fixing the misstep, or at least insufficient (and actually self-refuting) step, in the otherwise glorious The Abolition of Man.

I don’t know that I could read Abolition (or THS) enough. There’s barely anything in it that doesn’t edify me. If Lewis was alive to see our generation I’m sure he’d clarify that when he argued for men with chests, he wasn’t talking about big prosthetic boobs at the city library’s Drag Queen Story Hour.

And while I appreciate his setting, that he was giving academic lectures at a university, and while I am compelled by his success in showing the nonsense of objective claims that there are no objective realities, for my money I think he doesn’t quite go far enough.

What is needed is to recognize that the Dei (in the imago Dei) trumps the Tao; the Tao < the Dei. This is needful for two reasons. First, it’s not just that men must recognize objective values, they must reflect objective values as image-bearers. Second, the objective values we reflect as image bearers are personal, they are revealed to us in God, and the Triune God at that, Father, Son, and Spirit. We are made in the image of one God in three Persons.

This means that to be truly men we cannot be alone. So “the LORD God said, ’It is not good that the man should be alone’” (Genesis 2:18). (What is so gutting in the movie “Castaway”? It’s not mostly his lack of shoes, but his lack of companionship.) The Tao has a rhetorical value in exalting the real world, but it falls short of the glory of God.

Friendship at St. Anne’s

The “company” at St. Anne’s isn’t just literary detritus. Lewis uses “company” 29 times in THS and a couple of them are capital C. A company refers to the group of companions, from the Latin words “com-” meaning “together” and “panis” meaning “bread” so those who shared bread/meals together. The company at St. Anne’s wasn’t perfect, but it was powerful; it pulled Jane in.

(Jane:) “You keep on talking of We and Us. Are you some kind of company?” (Ransom:) “Yes. You may call it a company.”

St. Anne’s provides a true picture of image-bearing: singing, gardening, doing dishes, eating cake and drinking wine, having word play and making puns(!), dressing up, having a cup of tea.

The main human characters struggled as image-bearers. Mark wanted relationship with the wrong set, Jane wanted responsibility according to her terms. Mark avoided true responsibility, Jane avoided true relationship.

I’d argue that the climax of the story happens after “The End.” Not only are Mark and Jane converted, they are unified. The end should remind us that the first word of THS is “matrimony.”

“Matrimony was ordained, thirdly,” said Jane Studdock to herself, “for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other.” (Location 54)

She repeats it a few paragraphs later: “Mutual society, help, and comfort,” said Jane bitterly. (Location 620)

The last sentence in the book, as Jane stood outside the lodge: “Obviously it was high time she went in.” Here are image-bearers, male and female, about ready to be fruitful and multiply. And their fellowship is only the beginning.

Winning the Good Fight

Lewis wrote:

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as “what a man does with his solitude.” (“The Inner Ring”)

Today, this conference, talking about culture building, is part of the good fight. It’s not the only part, but those who fight alone on the right side only understand half of what it means to be on the right side.

We don’t read THS to become “Athanasius Contra Mundum,” we are like the little company of St. Anne’s contra mundum simul, against the world together. We do not love the world or the things in the world, but we do love one another and sharing these stories keeps us from being solo soldiers. You don’t have to read in a group, but you better read for the group, not to isolate yourself from it. It is our fellowship in receiving good gifts from God, including our flesh and blood relationships, as hard as they may be, that make us jealousable salt and light.

May the Lord of heaven and earth, one God in three Persons, bless us to be fruitful as we multiply our reading of good fiction that we would fight the good fight of faith with broader imaginative coordinates and stronger connections.

Categories
Bring Them Up

Making a Contribution

I had a roommate in college who loved to play SimCity. Even though I’ve never been a huge video game sort of guy, he let me play every so often and it was strangely fascinating. At that time, SimCity was a fairly new game without the niche variations available today.

“Sim” in SimCity stands for “simulation.” It means to imitate or make a computer model of something. The goal of the game is to build a thriving city, keeping digital citizens happy and maintaining a stable budget. You, as mayor, start with a given amount of capital and you choose where and what to build. You need transportation (roads, railroads, airports), power companies, stores, schools, and homes for all the people. As the population grows, you also need an adequate amount of police stations and hospitals to keep people safe and healthy. Even in the two-dimensional world, without the complexities of personalities, it gave a bit of appreciate for the challenges of setting up a society.

Unlike SimCity we live in the world where your thumb hurts if you hit it with a hammer, not because you smashed the controller buttons too many times. Here there are life and death consequences without a reset or reboot. Even more unlike SimCity, we are not the architects of humanity, we’re not city mayors or presidents, and certainly we are not God. We do not get to make all the decisions even if we thought we knew all the ways to guarantee a glorious future.

However, even though we don’t get to be the boss, we are all called to build. We don’t get to start with a full back account and open fields, but we do get to invent and design and fix and remodel and renovate. We are cultural construction workers. We’re not building in order to make it nice for Jesus when He returns. We’re building because this is what Jesus made us to do.

As we start our fourth year of Evangel Classical School, I want to remind us who we are, what we’re trying to do, what we’re up against, and why we work hard with humility and laughter.

You are the imago Dei, the image of God. Each one of you, students, parents, and teachers are mirrors of God Himself. God revealed our reflective nature in the story of creation. According to Genesis 1 He made a world for men and then He made men to be makers in the world. Dorothy Sayers wrote the following in her book, The Mind of the Maker:

[W]hen we turn back to see what he says about the original upon which the “image” of God was modeled, we find only the single assertion, “God created.” The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.

The reason you color, cut and paste, write and paint, sing and dance, is because the creative impulse beats in your chest. At some point drawings are not only art for the front of the refrigerator, they become blueprints for better refrigerators. You cut paper made from trees and later you cut trees to make paper. You sing tenor in the school choir and then someday you give your report on the city council; both are better when you contribute your part.

God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and take dominion. What He had made was great and yet He wanted them to make more great things. God made little makers with minds and hands. You bear God’s creative glory as you create.

ECS exists to equip and encourage culture creators, or at least culture contributors. It takes faith to see how a kindergartner chanting phonogram jingles could one day write a novel that shapes the thinking of generations better than Virgil’s Aeneid. But phonemes become graphemes via penmanship which turns into published books. You will learn names and dates and places, not only so that you can rule at Trivial Pursuit (which you could), or even so that you can be thankful for the good foundation we stand on (which you should), but also so that you would want to do your part in these days in this place.

Not only can we honor Christ in our work, we must work if we want to honor Him. We’re made to make.

Again, we don’t reign on earth as sovereign kings and queens, but we are poets and plumbers and pilots and parents. We do flavor and preserve and influence and shape the world. If you want to be a Christian doctor or nurse, we want you to know the skeletal, muscular, nervous, sensory, reproductive, digestive, circulatory, immune, respiratory, and endocrine systems. We also want you to know in your bones that God loves life. If you want to be a Christian lawyer–and why wouldn’t you?–we want you to know the true law, to love righteousness and hate evil. If you want to start a business or write books or build buildings, then believe that God is pleased with those who do such culture construction.

It is true, however, that all image-bearers are also the bearers of bad news. We are all mirrors of God’s glory, but we are also all broken mirrors due to sin. Sin is what ruins our plans and spoils our relationships. You will, at some point, prefer laziness to labor. You will choose to be angry with a classmate who disagrees with you, or a teacher who corrects you, rather than serve or learn. You will seek to grab rather than contribute. This happens because of sin. The reason the world is so messed up is because of sin.

But we have a Savior. It is of first importance that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. This is the evangel. He saves us and is sanctifying us to be like Him, which includes enjoying and using all the things He has made. Math? He created the problems. Logic? He is the Logos. Poetry? His invented language and lovers and flowers and rhyme and rhythm. Biology, history, Engrade, recess soccer? He is Lord over them all.

One more thing. ECS is a training ground for cultural contributors. You will (hopefully) bear much fruit after you graduate. But you are also creating now. Working hard is never wasted. Loving one another now is loving one another. Confessing rather than covering sin is building, not destroying. The stakes are high, the Savior is great, the new school year is here. It’s not a simulation game. Let’s get to work.

These were my notes from the ECS convocation assembly.

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

As Old as Dirt Made into Man

Jesus commanded His disciples to love one another. He told them that such love would identify them in the world and that He His life was the standard of love. Love for your brother is a distinctive of believers but was actually meant for every image bearer from the beginning.

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (1 John 3:11)

When is this “beginning”? Maybe John meant the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. But the biblical reports of Jesus’ early message were about calls to repent not calls to love. More likely John’s use of “beginning” refers to the beginning of beginnings, the beginning when the Word was with God and was God and then made all things. The message of brotherly love began in Genesis.

Further evidence for the historic nature of this message follows from John’s illustration in the next verse.

We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. (1 John 3:12a)

We’ll can consider why Cain killed Abel later. For now, let’s meditate on the fact that the call to love is as old as dirt made into man. From the beginning men were created in the image of the God of love and we are to love the people we can see (family, brothers, one another). We are to do it in deed and in truth, not just in word or talk.

According to John “we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers” and “whoever does not love abides in death” (1 John 3:14). How we treat one another, not merely how many Hebrew or Greek or English words we can list for love, is the behavior expected from the beginning.

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

Sharing in the Symbols

When we partake of the cup and the bread we partake in the nature of the Lord. To share in the symbols of His sacrifice is to identify with the God who sacrifices.

This is one of the reasons why Paul forbids idolatry before he gives instructions about communion in 1 Corinthians 10. Many of the Jews were idolators and he warns the believers to “flee idolatry” (verse 14). Behind idols are demons and “you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (verse 21). Be careful to choose the right table.

When we eat the bread we participate in the body of Christ. We worship one who gave His physical life for us and we learn how to do the same. When we drink the cup of blessing we participate in the blood of Christ. We identify with dying to bring life.

This is how it must be. We either serve demanding idols and become demanding of others or we serve the God who gives grace and become merciful. We either identify with false gods who consume or we identify with the true God who was crucified for others. “Those who eat the sacrifices [are] participants in the altar” (verse 18).

Our sacrifices are not original. We cannot save another man’s soul. But we can imitate the ultimate sacrifice. The lesson is on the Table before us.

Categories
A Shot of Encouragement

There Is Still Work to Do

Assumption One: Paradise was easy living. Incorrect. It was joyful and glorious, which is a very different thing. Adam and Eve were given an entire planet to tend. Every last creature to identify, name, and oversee. Or, in the case of the dragon, identify, name, and kill. All before the fall. All while the world was perfect. Adam and Eve were not in hammocks, relaxing in the light of a perma-sunset with even tans while sipping on honeysuckle bouquets proffered by miniature ponies. They were given a job so big that only Noah and the disciples who received the Great Commission saw anything like it.

—N. D. Wilson, Death by Living, 74-75

Categories
A Shot of Encouragement

Image Bearing by Battle

Nails are forged for pounding. Man is born to trouble. Man is born for trouble. Man is born to battle trouble. Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded— under torch and hammer and chisel— into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God.

—N. D. Wilson, Death by Living, 69

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

Two Adams

There are two Adams that we need to know about. The first is Adam from Eden, the first man on earth, husband, father, gardener, and eater of forbidden fruit. The second Adam is Jesus, the eternally-beggoten Son of God the Father, carpenter, prophet, and sinless sacrifice. He is called Adam because He, too, stands at the headwaters of a people. Paul compares and contrasts the two in 1 Corinthians 15.

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)

The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:47–48)

God gave life to Adam from the ground. God gives life through the second Adam now risen from the grave. Not only do both Adams represent us, we reflect them.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:49)

The first Adam was brought to life in glory in a garden. The second Adam was buried in a garden and then raised to life in greater glory. The first Adam lost glory for all of us when he sinned. The second Adam secured glory for all of us when He rose again. We enjoy the blessings of both the natural body and the spiritual body; we follow and image both Adams. We were born and we were born again. We are humans and we are Christians, so we eat and drink on two levels, looking to our resurrection glory like the second Adam.

For more on how the spiritual man is still a material man read this post by Doug Wilson.

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

All That He’s Provided

After God identified the man the woman as His image-bearers, He eagerly showed them all that He had made for them. All kinds of food were available to enjoy and to energize them in their work. They would constantly be recognizing God as they received all that He had given to them.

Likewise, after God identifies a believer in baptism, marking him as one who has died and risen in likeness to Christ, so God eagerly shows him all that He’s provided. All righteousness, wisdom, and redemption are available to enjoy and to energize our work. We constantly recognize God when we receive what He has given us in His Son.

This is simple, but it is a needed reminder of our need. Our lives orbit the Son; He is the gravity that holds us together. Our life cycle is given by Him; we wake and walk and work and wind down and worship week after week according to His watch. Our responsibilities and relationships are given by Him and for Him. Our joy in the process and strength to persevere are given by Him. So we keep coming to Him by faith, at least once a week to this Table that reminds us of His provision. Jesus is our Lord, our Savior, our food, our everything. Our declaration of dependence by eating and drinking honors Him.

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

Image Conscious

We live in a society that places a lot of weight on appearance. Red carpet events devote extra attention to what the stars wear and, at the other end of the spectrum, even those who don’t wear anything are trying to make a statement by how they look. As usual, it is not whether or not you’re going to present an image, but which image are you presenting?

Christians ought to be the most image conscious of all. Our problem isn’t that we want to make a certain appearance too much, it’s that sometimes we want to make the wrong appearance. But for those who have “learned Christ,” we must “put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24).

All of this is true: we were made in God’s image, we are created after the likeness of God in salvation, and we must put on the new self that God recreated. We can’t create ourselves or make ourselves new, but we can wear the new clothes He got for us.

The Lord’s Table is part of the put off/put on work. We leave our soiled garments of sin and self-righteousness at the cross and we take up the body of the Lord as our own. We identify with Him in His righteous sacrifice and learn to dress in imitation of Him.

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

The Stamp of an Image-Bearer

The most heady and holy contemplation a human can have is considering himself or herself to be made in the image and likeness of God. No other breathing, let alone lifeless, creature in the universe bears this almost impossible weight of glory. Our existence reflects our Creator beyond His skill and power. Our existence reflects something in His nature.

How might this look day to day? What sort of celestial meditation or global enterprise or eternal longings should stamp an image-bearer of Elohim? A man who is mindful of his privilege will have certain big thoughts. But the apostle James says such awareness should also make a man shut his big mouth.

James illustrates the tongue as a ship’s rudder and a spark that sets a forrest ablaze with hell’s heat. He says the tongue “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God” (James 3:8-9). He’s addressing members of the church. Unbelievers don’t bless God or submit to Christ as Lord or claim the Father as Father. “From the same (Christian) mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so” (verse 10).

The more we appreciate our status as image-bearers, the more we worship God and are fitted for His glory, the more we will talk nicely about our neighbors. A salt pond can’t yield fresh water, and if there is no fresh water coming out of our mouths about our spouse, kids, boss, neighbors, mayor, barista, parents, Canadians, or fellow members of the body, then we don’t yet appreciate the doctrine of creation and man as the imago Dei.