God

A Ship on Dry Land

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By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved… Hebrews 11:7[1]

The classic story of Noah’s ark weaves through many cultures around the world and across millennia. But beyond the saga presented on movie screens, through Bible studies, and in a big tourist attraction, that epic pulls heaven and earth together in a tight braid of timeless wisdom vs. moral goofiness and invisible vs. visible truth. 

 Noah’s Ark also presents a towering example of how things are rarely what they seem. Let’s look at that.

The focal point of the story is a ship sitting on dry land. Look at how it imposes a silent but disruptive image. Profoundly countercultural—out of sync with, and challenging to, everything—Noah’s ship had no flow with its environment. None. It was built in one time and place but would only work in a distant future no one had seen or considered. As we zoom out, we see a massive disaster racing like a tsunami below the surface. It’s moving toward us and all we cherish. 

Since no one could see the storm coming, a farmer building a 500-foot-long ship in his pasture probably suggested he was insane. He was apparently the only person on earth who built a ship “in the middle of dry land.” His neighbors probably joked about how he would drag that thing to the beach. 

I guess no one thought about water rushing to the ship.

Corrupt to the Core

God’s assessment of the earth was stark: “As far as God was concerned, the Earth had become a sewer; there was violence everywhere. God took one look and saw how bad it was, everyone corrupt and corrupting—life itself corrupt to the core. God said to Noah, ‘It’s all over. It’s the end of the human race. The violence is everywhere; I’m making a clean sweep.’” (Genesis 6:11-13)

If the Creator, who so loved the earth, held those thoughts, you know it was bad. Very bad. Beyond bad. No breezes of spiritual renewal, no prophetic voices, no fresh thinking, and no hope. “Corrupt to the core.”

 We too live in a sewer. The toxic streams of injustice, poverty, violence, lust, nihilism, etc. all flow into our water supply. So, why doesn’t God just “fix it?” Maybe because He thinks in terms of generations, eons, seasons, and seeds. Every seed carries entire orchards or forests. The Lord plays the long game. The very long game. 

Seeds of the Future

Genesis 6:8 says, “Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah.” Because God liked the guy, he warned him about things coming that could not be seen. And Noah acted on that. So, of all the people on earth, God only disclosed his heart to one person, a man who lived by faith—total confidence in God’s purposes and promises. 

God seemed more interested in saving Noah and his family than in rescuing the corrupt world. He would have a conduit for His seed that would produce a magnificent future. So, in His conversations with Noah, His words fell as seeds into Noah’s fertile and willing heart. 

When those seeds came up, they caused the man to complete a grueling, audacious, and historic construction project. As a true visionary, he built something that had no apparent purpose. Because Noah aligned with the heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16), he had to build with none of the earth’s cultural and financial support. 

The lines of conflict were dramatic, literally “earth shaking.” The population of the earth comprised one team. God and Noah formed the other one. Then the future dropped into the soil of one human life. Even as neighbors mocked Noah, seeds cracked open below the surface. 

Then, suddenly, one day, rain revealed the only sane person on earth.

[1] All scriptures quoted are taken from THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH (TM): Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

The Tree of Life

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Most of what we see on movie screens follows the mythic structure of storytelling.

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is the first movie I’ve seen that borrows from a different pattern. It is contemplative or devotional literature. While it is the most visually gripping movie I’ve ever seen, it is far more than breathtaking pictures. It pulls you into a serious consideration of God, the origins of life, death, grace, heaven, and the variegated textures and touches of life on earth.

Much of the dialogue is whispered. You hear characters thinking. Perhaps we hear God’s thoughts. My hearing is poor, but I think I heard a version of Romans 7:19 ~ “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.”

As a story, The Tree of Life leisurely serves vignettes of life in the middle of the 20th century, in the middle of America. We see the O’Brien family – father, mother (Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain) and three sons. We see their tenderness and strict discipline, familial requirements and forgiveness, church services and family prayer. (I never did figure out why Sean Penn was in the movie. Apparently he didn’t either)

The way they cope with losing a child certainly rang true to me. I grew up with those people. They always seemed to view life on earth through a heaven-mounted telescope.

The dialogue is simply stunning (albeit difficult to hear). I’ve never seen a movie that handles such sweeping ideas in dialogue so well. Consider:

  • “Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.”
  • “I didn’t know how to name You then. But I see it was You. Always You were calling me.”
  • “I wanted to be loved cause I was great, a Big Man. Now I’m nothing. Look. The glory around… trees, birds… I dishonored it all and didn’t notice the glory. A foolish man.”

And, the Voice that starts the whole movie belongs to God: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” ~ Job 38:3,7

Questions & Answers

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A famous American politician once boarded a Washington to Los Angeles flight, settled into his first class window seat, and prepared for a long nap.  The aisle seat was empty; he expected no intrusions.

But a young man approached and asked if an equally famous and very controversial Muslim minister could sit with him a few minutes.  The politician recognized that the Muslim could have come directly and forced the issue.  Instead, he acted in wisdom and grace by sending an emissary.  Quite contrary to his public personality, he did not storm the gates.  The politician told the young assistant that he would glad to talk to the leader.

A minute later, the grandiloquent and polarizing minister slipped into the seat.  They ended up talking almost four hours.  They spoke of days of childhood; of parents, siblings, and spouses; and of triumphs and tragedies.  The politician told me, “I liked him very much.”

I thought of that story recently when I read a new poll from the Pew Research Center.   The poll sought to identify the “political typology” of respondents.  As I scanned the questions, I realized I would not answer any of them.  They were too cold and reductive.

For example, on the issue of immigration, the only choices were:

  • Immigrants today strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents.
  • Immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health.

 

Think about the innumerable reasons and patterns behind immigration.  They are as complex and mysterious as the kaleidoscopic patterns of global weather or infection.  The survival choices faced by some people are myriad, brutal and heartbreaking.

Yet, an arbitrary set of questions tries to reduce all of that into a flattened and simplistic binary code.

People are magnificently complicated and unfathomable bundles of flesh and spirit.  Contradictory and endlessly variegated.

An African-American friend once told me, “As a black man, it is more important to me that you respect me than that you understand me.”

Those words changed my life.  In that moment, I knew he spoke for everyone on the planet.  We must respect, handle carefully, and wait to be invited into the secret gardens.  Respect should precede understanding.  We just cannot regard anyone lightly.

To slice-and-dice the human bundles, for whatever reasons, is to disrespect and dehumanize people.  Yet, the structures of today’s life do exactly that with increasing frequency and severity.

As I pay for a bag of bolts at the hardware store, the gum-chewing clerk – one third my age – suddenly blurts, “What’s your phone number?”

The only appropriate answer is, “None of your damned business.”

At the grocery store, I give a twenty-dollar-bill for $19.37 of merchandise.  The clerk says, “Want to give your change to a homeless shelter?”  Think of it; the free market now trains agents to ask that people robotically break off a piece of themselves for an amorphous notion.

I choose to bless people because of the generosity of God in my life.   But I do that on my (and His) terms.  I am very careful about opening the private garden of my thoughts or feelings to strangers.

I resent being merchandized, politicized, and…groped!  I sometimes wonder why and how our society ever granted such audacious authority to the TSA and other bureaucracies.  Or, how our personal information become digitized and open commodities.

Why and when did we first allow the barbarians to crash through our gates?  I think it may have started with our lack of vigilance and self-respect when asked personal questions.   In the words of Hosea 7:9, we gave our strength to strangers.

Perhaps refusing to answer intrusive and reductive questions from strangers will be the first step in reclaiming what we have lost.

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