fire

In many ways my negligence towards the blog has been just another symptom of an overall crappy month. It has been crappy because of me. God does not change. When I have a "bad" day, week, month or year, it's because of me. I hate that I have the power to affect my own attitude. I love that God is never the problem, because then I at least know which of us needs fixing.

I'm really glad Bernice shared those lyrics in her comments to the last post. The last 10 minutes have been the divine confluence of a series of thoughts that have all had the flame metaphor burning at the core. I'm going to share them now.

Let me start with a book I've been reading. It's called "The History of God" by a reknowned religious scholar named Karen Armstrong. Let me tell you, this book will mess with your theology. To start, it's not clear what the author's own views are, though she attempts to explain them in her introduction. Basically the book is exploring the "god" of the 3 major world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Maybe a better way of describing it is the book is exploring the human perception of God in all 3.

So far I'm just reading about the God of Judaism. It has been fascinating to me to learn about the culture and the social context in which God revealed himself to the Israelites. These were polytheistic times. The Babylonians believed in a number of deities, and the Israelites would have too. Then they made a covenant with God, and vowed to serve him above all the others. That was unprecedented for the time, and the whole Old Testament records the Israelites' struggle in upholding their end of the covenant, and continual dabbling with other gods.

This is where the flame metaphor comes in. God asked for complete and unconditional loyalty. He asks nothing less of us. This is why a flame is such an appropriate image: something is either on fire or it's not. I'm not a chemist or a physicist, but as I understand it, there is a combustion point of every material. Once ablaze, we say it's "on fire." There are varying degrees of heat, of course, but there's still the point at which something catches fire.

Nearly every song I've heard on my computer's playlist for the last little while has been about this very thing. Right now it's Delerious: "All the Way." Am I going all the way with God? Are you? You've either been set on fire or not. If not, then pray the lyrics of the old song "Lord light the Fire Again." That's what I'm going to do right now.

The best part is, fire spreads.

Jeff