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sorenthestoryteller · 3 years

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February 8th, 2021 – In Which Soren Runs a Fever and Decides Now is a Great Time as Any to Start Kicking Over Money Changer Tables Being Operated by Arm Band Wearing Elephants

“what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

You have made them

a little lower than the angels

and crowned them

with glory and honor.”

-Psalm 8:4-5

In Milton’s “Paradise Lost” everything you need to know about the fall of Lucifer is summed up in the quote, “It is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.”

Over the years I have had many conversations about the Fall in general and in specific with Lucifer being the instigator of this whole mess. C.S. Lewis, Frank Peretti, and a few other names that slip my mind have helped to formulate some thoughts on the nature of darkness and evil, but the chief characteristic of Evil and Heresy is Pride.

I truthfully cannot grasp the level on which angels operate. Beings of pure spirit and intellect that are not limited by having to use physical processing powers. My best guess is that their thoughts, recall, and experiences are all hyper-aware.

What do you think the angels thought of God’s plan for creating something beyond them? Creatures that were weaker than angels yet somehow deemed worthy of love, honor, and glory?

After Adam and Eve are created what do the angels see? Furless monkeys with no tails that make noises when you talk to them. Maybe in Lucifer’s mind, he thought Jesus just made a bunch of pets he could train to pick up tools and make things.

I cannot imagine the response of these beings when the Trinity keeps going on with creation and take the time to create this bizarre mixture of spirit and animal. Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters” has the title demon refer to us humans as being amphibians:

“Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.”

- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Those who have the misfortune to sit under my teaching for too long will recall that I often refer to the human experience as being a series of paradoxes. This quote from C.S. Lewis is the root of that claim. We exist in two realms at the same time, which is of course a paradox in and of itself. In a sense we are all Schrödinger’s Cat, waiting for the transition of the box being opened and our reality being redefined by what the Eternal is and is not.

Bearing in mind how much nonsense and insanity is produced by even the most well-meaning humans among us, multiple that by a few billion, and that is a typical day for God.

Infinite as the Trinity is, I cannot grasp the love it takes to take care of me, much less the capacity to feel an emotion and intimately know the name of billions of humans going through various stages of pain, elation, terror, love, and wonder.

That experience, that Loving Madness of our Lord is what drove Lucifer to the point of rage and quitting. Was it first child syndrome, a group of angels being angry that God continued creating after making a series of intricate and beautiful beings so intense Scripture often calls them stars (you know those giant glowy things in the night sky we take for granted? That are an endless series of self-perpetuating nuclear explosions? Those are the angel metaphors.)?

If humans were the ones creating, we never would have created ourselves, we would have been content with making beings of a spiritual nature and creatures to inhabit the earth.

However, the Trinity rolled up their collective sleeves and said to the archangels, “Hey fellas, checks this out.”

And what does that mean?

What does it mean to be created to be just a little lower than the angels?

What does it mean to be found worthy by God? To be chosen to be His sons and daughters? For God to decide each of us is worthy of love not because we could perform or do something, but because we simply are?

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

― C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

At this point I would like to bring this to the practical and meaningful point, there is much sickness in how we hate and isolate others by naming and grouping people as “sinners”. Fellow miracles of life, beings who are as equally of a mad paradox as us, and somehow we think we have the right to judge them.

This is pride, this is the root sin of Lucifer, and it is the cause of most of our current misery and the threat of a revised version of Nazism becoming ever more popular here in America.

For too long people in the Church have existed on this prideful notion that to be Christian means to live in judgment of those we deem our inferiors. Jesus does not care about our fake attempts at piety when it comes to extending love to those who are broken. Jesus is not concerned with how noble we think we are when we hold our nose and associate with those, we later judge and murder with our thoughts.

Evangelicalism is on the verge of plunging to its death and we who chose to be judgmental in Jesus’ name due to politics are the ones who have done this. We brought the entirety of this church culture to the altar of conservative politicians and sacrificed it to receive Donald Trump.

Evangelicals will never be able to remove the disgusting stain of the association of Trump and the horrific human rights abuses of the Republican party.

Why is this such an important point?

Because the people the Church is supposed to deliberately minister to are hated and despised by those who have conservative politics. It is a prideful human who decides those who are addicted to drugs, those who are disabled, and the poor are all worthless. It is their politics that dictate a person’s value is whatever they can contribute to further capitalism. Whatever is not explicitly stated in the Republican party is sure as Hellfire lived out in action.

That action says those who look different, speak a different language, have a different culture, and have a different religion are subhuman.

The only thing Christians should not tolerate is intolerance.

If we are not willing to open our arms to all of those, we deem unworthy of Love, then we are not Christians. Instead, we merely belong to a social club that likes to get together to talk about how great we are while judging those we think lesser of.

Like Lucifer did.

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