Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
The challenge of Christianity, especially in our post-modern age, is to celebrate the Person who lives at the very heart of all reality.
Our fascination with machines has to wane someday. If the Solar System seems like a marvelous machine caught up within an even more amazing Milky Way machine, the resemblance fails to say everything that must be said about astronomy. There is much that machinery cannot explain.
Turning our telescopes inward we will notice that plants, animals, fungi and other life forms -- despite our initial estimates -- also bear little resemblance to machines. The human being is not a machine; not even close.
The individual human being is made in the image and likeness of the Person who is God. That mysterious resemblance cannot be reduced to a metaphorical machine.
The Romans created aqueducts to carry water into the city; centuries later European cities created pipes and sewers to carry water out of the cities. They also created pumps and valves to facilitate the systems. A brilliant insight led William Harvey to posit that blood flows through the human body like those amazing water mains and sewers. The heart, he said, is like a pump with valves.
Edison and Tesla and other geniuses created electrical systems to bring current into factories, businesses and homes. Around that same time, doctors realized the nervous system is something like an electrical grid, carrying messages hither and yon. More recently, some people suppose the human brain is an amazing "carbon-based" computer!
As we created more and more clever machines we supposed we could understand the human body as a machine. I remember one Veteran who complained "My mechanic can fix my car; why can't the doctor fix me?"
Because you're not a machine. The analogy is clever but it falls far short of the reality.
At the heart of all reality is the unfathomable mystery we dare to call God. In fact, God is a community of three persons in one God. Each person is God, yet there is only one God. The reality of God is too subtle even for mathematical formulas like "one" and "three."
This "person" is not fate, luck or karma. It is not blind, unfeeling or remorseless. God gives and God takes away. God chooses. Machines don't choose; they only do as they're programmed. Sometimes people act like programmed machines. Some counselors, teachers, politicians, and judges do only as their told by the reigning ideologues. Some Christians can only recite religious formulas to their children. But their formulas have no heart and no authority. As human beings they fail; their programs enslave them like machines.In the person of Jesus we recognize the One who calls reality out of nothing and into being. He has not come to follow a mechanistic program of rules, laws and formulas. He says "I have come not to abolish (the Law and the Prophets) but to fulfill..."
Our following of Jesus can never be formulaic or mechanical. My faith sharing with authorities, peers and children must express the truth about who I am and about the God who has shown himself to me.
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I love to write. This blog helps me to meditate on the Word of God, and I hope to make some contribution to our contemplations of God's Mighty Works.
Ordinarily, I write these reflections two or three weeks in advance of their publication. I do not intend to comment on current events.
I understand many people prefer gender-neutral references to "God." I don't disagree with them but find that language impersonal, unappealing and tasteless. When I refer to "God" I think of the One whom Jesus called "Abba" and "Father", and I would not attempt to improve on Jesus' language.
You're welcome to add a thought or raise a question.