Imagine an alien spaceship hovering over a city. Let’s say the aliens have an anthropological bent and start making observations. What intrigues them most is the city’s traffic. Initially it looks like chaos. The aliens are astounded by the fact that there aren’t more accidents. Not only do they observe many different kinds of vehicles, but they’re all going in many different directions, at different speeds, through intersections, making lane changes.
The alien anthropologists realize that there must be some logic or code behind it all. So they take a bunch of video and the run it through some powerful analytical tools. Pretty soon they’re looking at a printout of the rules of the road. They wouldn’t be entirely right, but they’d be close. They might misinterpret speed limits as minimums and yellow lights as invitations to zip through intersections, but for the most part they’d understand how things work.
Wouldn’t it be nice, we might think, if life were like that? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some underlying code that we could figure out? Continue reading “Is there anything we need more than wisdom?”
Or maybe not ‘dishonest’ exactly, but certainly ‘hollow’ or ‘one-sided’. Already, in the few days that have elapsed since Easter, I have spoken with a number of people who are suffering—who have been suffering for a long time. Some are in hospital beds, some have creaky knees, some have relationships that are strained to the breaking point. What does Easter mean in those situations? How do we speak about victory over death and evil, when there seems to be so little actual victory over death and evil? 
The digital thermometer in my car said it was -23°C. I was parked by the side of the road, wondering if anyone would show up. A couple of electronic regrets popped up on my phone. It was easy to understand, who wants to pray when it’s this cold. Or more specifically, who wants to pray outside, in the trees, in the snow, when it’s this cold. I’ve become convinced that it isn’t praying “in the trees”; it’s praying “with the trees.” There are two biblical passages that point me in this direction. One is Psalm 148, which speaks about creation praising God. The other is Romans 8, which suggests that creation groans for its liberation. Why do we think these passages are metaphorical and the ones the ones that refer to humans praising and groaning are not? The trees pray—that’s my conclusion. They praise and they groan. 
