Blogotional

Back in March, John Mark Reynolds wrote one of those posts so meaty, it ought to be a book. There is so much valuable discussion in stuff he writes to set up his major thesis that it is amazing.

He starts by discussing "chronological ignorance.

"When reading old books, it is easy to display a chronological snobbery, as C.S. Lewis called it. The chronological snob is to time what the ethnocentric person is to ethnicity. His chronocentrism assumes that everyone in the past should know everything he knows or agree with all his assumptions. When visiting the past in his imagination, he views it as Cameron viewed the people of 1912 on Titanic: moderns with funny clothes and less stuff.

I think it can be even worse, I think people often assume people in the past were ignorant wretches, that with technology came understanding, and all who went before had no actual wisdom. Yet as a person who makes a living of knowing technology, I am consistently amazed at how unwise it often renders us.

The JMR discusses the methodology of revolution:

The Lord God of Sacred Scriptures is not a revolutionary, thank God. Rapid change in human culture has rarely been for the best and God does not make the mistake of the French or Russian revolutionaries. Each revolution was led by men who believed that they could rapidly bring heaven to earth, but ended up making France and Russia look more like hell. God knows that even a great good must be brought on slowly to avoid doing greater harm.

What I find interesting in this bit is that God really is not a revolutionary, but He is a radical. We so often conflate these two descriptions. The point that JMR is making here is that the changes which God wants to bring about are SO radical that they simply cannot be wrought in a revolutionary fashion.

All this JMR uses to set the basis for an argument to understand the apparent "immorality" of Old Testament action, particularly as ordered by God Himself. It is a great argument, but JMR does it so well, there is little I can add.

But I do want to return to this idea that God is radical but not revolutionary.

We are impatient people. We want things perfect, the problem is we want them NOW! God is making them, and is the only one that can make them, perfect. But we are so flawed, that it is going to take a while.

Pardon me while I get all geeky for a second. "Viscosity" is a science term we use to describe the flow characteristics of a fluid. You have probably heard about it related to your motor oil and think of it vaguely in terms of "thickness," but the reality is a little more complex than that. When one gets into the realm of very high viscosity how force is applied to the fluid can determine whether it flows like a fluid or tears like solid.

Years ago I worked with some silicone oils that looked in a beaker like silly putty, but clear. If you grabbed it, you could pull a hunk of it off like a putty. But if you set up an apparatus to hold it like you were pouring from one glass to another it would so pour, eventually filling the receiver vessel and taking its shape - all the things that define a liquid. But it would take the material several days, sometimes weeks to do it.

I think we are like that. If we try to change all at once, like grabbing a hunk of that material, we break - we are less than we were before. But if we are poured from one vessel to another with the patience required, we fill that new vessel perfectly.

But this is more than a lesson in patience - this is a lesson in humility. You see, God does not work so slowly because of who He is, but because of who we are. We are high viscosity people, and He does not want to break us. He is the one that requires the patience, not us.

Next time you are impatient with God for not "fixing" you fast enough, you might want instead to thank Him for having the patience to bother at all.

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