Gimli and Christ

As some of you know, I'm a fan of The Lord of the Rings.

In each re-reading, I am struck by Gimli's reaction to being asked by Galadriel for what he would wish from her:  a strand of her hair, as an heirloom to treasure for all generations in honor of the Lady of the Wood.  In the story, he actually refrains from asking her for the gift, but names his desire at her request.  She is so moved that she gives not one but three strands.

At their parting, she foretells that he will be a dwarf over whom wealth will hold no power.  In a throw-away line, Tolkien says of Gimli that he was thinking of gold—not to enrich himself, but to imagine how it could be used to best display the gift Galadriel had given him.

This is powerful:  all of his desires were subjugated to his worship of the lady.  His people's penchant for the mining of gold and jewels was transformed from a thing of perhaps miserly interest into a service to be rendered to the true object of his desire.

All idolatry is misplaced and misdirected desire.  The materialistic fire is quenched not because we have learned to somehow discipline ourselves (thereby exalting the will above its proper value—and so asceticism is also idolatry), but because we have properly valued Jesus Christ.  When we properly value him, all that he has given to us becomes a tool for properly worshiping and honoring him:  its value rests not in what it can do for me personally, but for what it does to honor and exalt Christ, to make him more precious and valuable to others.

Quick hits from the news

I don't often put together any commentary on the news, but a few things caught my attention during this morning's browsing.

God was behind Big Bang, Universe No Accident: Pope

Mainly my thoughts were directed here by the comments in the user section. I don't suppose that a majority of practicing scientists would echo their sentiments—at least not in such an uneducated way—but it illustrates one of the serious problems with marrying a philosophy to a process.

One of the issues with the science movement today is that it is essentially philosophical and not practical. By this I mean that its adherents have forgotten that science is a process and not a cathedral. There is an arrogant assumption made (not to excuse arrogance on the side of religion) that science really answers philosophical questions. It does not and cannot.

Let's look at a second article as an example:

Chemical signal in women's tears a turn-off for men

The thrust of the article is that research suggests that women may have evolved crying as a means of fending off unwanted advances from men. This may or may not be true (I suppose men's tears work differently, as all they seem to do is make us men embarrassed).

What has happened here, regardless of the connection, is that a process—natural selection—is insidiously taken as an explanation for an emotion. No one can really tell whether women used to cry to avoid smelly frat-boys in Paleolithic bars, but certainly this is not the (only) reason they cry today. The steady proposal of these kind of news articles is that emotional content is not actually Real in the sense that it has an external, objective meaning. Science itself cannot comment on those kinds of realities—it is in fact precluded from doing so by its very nature—but when wedded to a material evolutionary philosophy, it's nearly plausible to suggest that tears came first and emotions came second.

(One might note that in a system that favors offspring, it seems unlikely that we should find natural selection favoring less offspring in the reportedly non-malthusian world of our ancestors.)

Then, lastly:

Man with golden voice: A great story, but does it help the cause of the homeless?

While not as entertaining, perhaps, as Antoine Dodson's meteoric rise to Youtube fame ("We gon' find you"), this one is a bit nearer and dearer to my heart (and birthplace).

This quote kind of irked me a bit:

While few of the nation’s homeless get the chance or exposure Mr. Williams has garnered, “we care about guys like Ted Williams and the soloist because deep down inside, many of us long to have our own inner greatness discovered by the world,” says Los Angeles author and speaker BJ Gallagher via email.

Why?

Because it suggests in the end that our care for the homeless is ultimately rooted in some sort of Smithian selfishness or narcissism. (Quick, let me find a mirror and see if I can tease my balding pate into something that resembles Ted Williams' shock of awesome froness.)

Obviously we want to root for a guy who can call the Reds game in the rarefied air of Gus Johnson. But it is a far cry to serve your fellow man because he looks like you instead of because he looks like Christ.

Ultimately the respect we owe our fellow human is rooted in his likeness to God, being made in his image. To serve from self-interest seems a bit like idolatry to me.

Idolatry and Salvation

When it rains it pours, I guess.

Intervening these paragraphs is the span of about ten days. So at least in this case, it's not quite pouring posts here.

To be honest, I'm recycling a few thoughts that I've had in the past, anyway, so there is not much in the way of original thought. It was prompted by my recent sprint through the major and minor prophets (I'm nearing the end of the Bible in a Year program!).

It is somewhat ironic that the Israelites seek freedom in their worship practices, and that this freedom leads them to cast off the law and to ignore the prophets. They eschew the judgment of the law to choose that which is no law and carries no judgment.

The irony in this is that while the idols promise no judgment—the Israelites may live as they please if they fulfill whatever cult rituals seem appropriate—they cannot save, either. God chides them for this:

They have no knowledge
who carry about their wooden idols,
and keep on praying to a god
that cannot save (Is 45.20).

It is God alone who is the Savior (43.11), and these idols cannot save. The connection that is made here is that God's ability to save is intrinsically related to his ability to judge. He is both Savior and Judge, and we cannot have one without the other.

This is common sense, of course. If God is to save us, from whom does he save us? Who is more powerful than he? Whom should we fear but him (cf Ps 27.1)?

This is, in fact, a big theme of the gospel passages in Isaiah. God promises to save Israel. In the context of the prophecies, it is salvation from the wrath of their enemies and redemption from the lands to which they were consigned, but all of these are God's judgment on Israel.

The message, then, is clear: idols promise no judgment, but they cannot save either. The ability to save is intimately related to the ability to judge. We cannot have a God who does not judge, but somehow saves. It is simply nonsense; but of course this is what the gospel has told us all along.