Day 21 of Lent - Thoughts on Pantheism, Mystery, and Asparagus

There’s nothing common about you. There is a great mystery at work behind the events of your everyday life. There’s invisible threads stitched through your soul, fastening you to divine purpose.

This thread is not a suture; it is no mere baste-stitch. Your original design is not in need of repair, and this tethering of your design to the person of Christ is no temporary fix.

It also does not mean that you become God or God becomes you - because that would be a farce and a mockery of the eternal intent that lies behind the conception of you. If you become so absorbed into God as to “become energy” in a “friendly universe”, there is no YOU left for the Living God to walk and talk with.

This is a case of the clear-cut mystery of you, as you, in a meaningful, highly consequential relationship with God, as God.

Humanism is reductionist and boring at first, and then it gets ominous and frightening. Look around at the general condition of humanity, if you doubt me.

Pantheism blends God and creation to the point that both lose their distinctiveness.

Deism separates God and creation to the point that there is no essential connection.

So let’s go back to the mystery. In Christ Jesus, the Triune God has forever safeguarded your genuine participation in the warmest, wittiest, wisest circle of fellowship that has ever been and ever will be. Everything good and noble about you exists because of Jesus; all the affections of your unique soul, the creativity, the personality, all of it is preserved…and cherished. Without the God-man, you as “you” would be forever excluded from the plans of God.

That scarlet thread of redemption is why I love my life so much. It is why I love grilled asparagus, Wendell Berry, Snicker’s bars, and abstract art (the scribblier the better). That thread tethering me to Christ is why I have green eyes, why I am left-handed, why I read too much and laugh too loud. Christ experienced life as a human being, forever sanctifying my human experience. He left His place in glory to walk in sandals, grill fish over an open flame, forgive sinners, and weep with His friends.

Far from being abstract, these thoughts charm the living daylights out of me, and insert themselves into my ordinary day, changing it for the better and the sweeter.