Foreplay
God moves in a mysterious way. Very often, in the midst of hardship, we don't understand why God is "so far off." Why does He come, and then seemingly go? We know that we are pilgrims on earth, groaning for Christ's final return when all creation will be made new. Perhaps this is God's foreplay. He is preparing to return, and indwell the earth. In that day, Christ will know his bride.
From Peter Leithart's exposition of the Song of Songs:
"Why didn’t the Son come in the flesh just outside Eden? The erotic theology of the Song of Songs provides a possible hint. Throughout the Song, the lovers admire each other’s bodies and express their longing desires to be together. Union comes at the end of reciprocal arousal. ”Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” the bride says at the outset. ”How beautiful you are, my darling, how beautiful you are!” says the bridegroom. But the bride doesn’t get her winekiss until later, until he takes her to his “house of wine” (2:4) and until his enters the locked garden and drinks of the wine, milk, and honey of her lips and mouth (4:11-5:1). A period of intensifying desire precedes tasting and touching; distance, approach, distance, approach, repeated again and again before consummation.
The history of Israel is God’s foreplay with His bride, bringing her to a pitch of desire before He takes flesh and dwells with her. Perhaps too this provides a way of describing the frenzy of Messianic excitement that Israel was undergoing in the first century.
God waits to send His Son because He is a good lover."
Speed and Time
Like many modern advances, the domination of time turns into its opposite; absolute control of time through absolute speed, speed for its own sake, leaves us feeling we have no control of time.
Peter Leithart, Solomon Among the Postmoderns, 42.
Death & Resurrection
The one thing that is "not good" in the original creation is Adam's loneliness. And how does God go about addressing that imperfection? He puts Adam into deep sleep, tears out a rib from his side, closes up the flesh, and builds a woman from the rib. The solution to what is "not good" is something like death, and something like resurrection.
That's always the solution. When God sees that something is "not good" in us, in our life situation, He tends not to ease us into a new stage. He kills us, in order to raise us up again. That has to happen, because it is a universal truth that "unless the seed go into the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit."
Unbearable burden of Evangelicalism
Anti-sacramental, anti-ritual evangelicalism emphasizes a personal relationship with God, but tends to encourage what Anthony Giddens calls "pure relationship," a relationship that is not tacked down with external anchors and supports. A live-in relationship, without benefit of the rites and legalities of marriage, is a pure relationship. Evangelicalism tends to encourage a live-in relationship with Jesus.
This is wrong, a departure from Christian tradition, and unbiblical. It also places unbearable burdens on the soul. Tempted by the devil, Luther slapped his forehead to remind himself of his baptism. His standing before God was anchored in Christ, to whom he had been joined by baptism.
For evangelicals, assurance cannot be grounded in anything so external and objective. Spontaneous enthusiasm is the test of sincerity, and the source of assurance. But eternal, self-scrutinizing vigilance is necessary to ensure that the enthusiasm is really spontaneous.
Enthusiasm was supposed to liberate the soul from all the dead forms, but it comes with its own set of chains.
Laughter is Warfare
"Like the closing chapters of Job, Ecclesiastes teaches that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophies or theologies, that God is up to more than we can possibly conceive, and that, limited and finite as we are, it is only natural that our grasp of the pattern of history is partial and our control of life is limited." (Deep Comedy, Dr. Leithart)
(God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. . . )
"Like the days of creation, which move from evening to morning, biblical history moves from darkness to light, from the darkness, emptiness and formlessness of the original creation (Gen. 1:2) to the lighted and teeming city of Revelation. History moves toward day." (Ibid.)
(The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. . . )
"The joy of Easter, the joy of resurrection, the joy of trinitarian life does not simply offer an alternative 'worldview' to the tragic self-inflation of the ancients. Worked out in the joyful life of the Christian church, deep comedy is the chief weapon of our warfare. For in the joy of the Lord is our strength, and Satan shall be felled with 'cakes and ale' and midnight revels." (Ibid.)
(Calls you one and calls you all to gain his everlasting hall . . . )
"Good Christian Men, Rejoice!"
HT: Lydia Smith
