Transience

A measure of uncertainty is our certitude.

Recall that fundamental to the Fall was human presumption on divine prerogative. Creation remains in a variable state; it is in one sense nothing more than the contextual extension of God’s imagination. It does not exist in its own right. At the point where God tires of this game, the whole thing evaporates (Colossians 1:17). Thus, a critical element in the Fall is that crazy notion that reality is somehow its own thing, and that by extension, truth is a self-existent quality discernible by the greatness of human intellect.

Not only was this adopted and institutionalized wholly into the foundations of Western Civilization, but virtually every element of the West stands on it. Take that away and it quickly becomes apparent the West is one big lie. The truth is that God keeps things in a usable state and that He promises to maintain His direct interest in things until some point of ripeness. However, He has amply warned that His holding things together does not include any theoretical stasis. The whole of Creation remains subject to His whims. If you can’t see that in His Word, it’s because you refuse to read it as He wrote it.

Even looking in the mirror, I find ideas that don’t belong in God’s revelation of reality. Who will rescue me from myself? I can write all these books and read the threads of human history, but I find in myself the instinct to inject my hands into that stream and affect the flow. Such a notion is the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It’s so very tempting to play the role of reformer.

The antidote to that poison is a frequent reminder that, if we keep playing such silly games, we will lose touch with our identity. Not the self-image we all try to shape and repaint, but the identity of who we are in Christ. Do you suppose Paul set out the change history? I submit that he was only trying to be obedient, day by day. Oh, but we sing sweet songs about that ethic:

(Lyrics here.)

The whole question has been analyzed to death with a body of theory (“time preference”) that mostly misses the point. Scripture presses a particular kind of time focus that is missing from all the official studies — “give us this day our daily bread.” That translates poorly into English because it’s a figure of speech. In the context of Jesus’ Model Prayer, it built on the Roman soldier’s daily ration. At the end of each day a trooper was given just enough food to last through the next day. It kept him dependent, not as a slave, but as a servant of his commander; it was quite personal. We take precious little from their military traditions these days.

But the practice was older than Rome. It arose from the expeditionary life, where the servant was on the road with his master, regardless of the ostensible purpose. It left the servant free to work unsupervised, but generally unable to run off very far without serious help. But it was more than a mere transfer of rations, because the moment renewed the personal bond between the two. It was a time to chat and interact, and a large lore of literature indicates judges were not too keen on punishing servants who ran away from serving assholes. It was more common than you might think that the wealthy and powerful held themselves to a high noble standard that saw a regular passing of temporary debt servants over into permanent slavery entirely by choice.

There is nothing in the West that touches on any of this, including the ethic of trusting some higher power to track the broader strategy and just mind your own mission for the day. It doesn’t mean you ignore the times and seasons, or that you ignore history. It means you avoid dreaming of being a big hero. That conscious choice is a critical element in rejecting the big lie of the West. It rejects the assumption that reality can be tracked reliably, that you can account for the factors and steer things on a course that you can understand.

David said nothing regarding dreaming about his throne or what he would accomplish as king. Instead, he constantly wrote poems and songs to remind himself that his greatest accomplishment was walking in the law during any current day. Molding yourself to God’s moral character and remaining in close communion with the living and breathing creation around you should be your highest aspiration. Even if you could reliably predict human nature at large in terms of historical trends as they occur, it doesn’t make you able to steer any part of it. There remains a wealth of natural phenomena you are fortunate only to observe and experience.

We are just along for the ride, and already have more than we can do just living the Laws of God.