I’m tempted to write about my elephant cookie cutter; the one I got without the donkey during an election year. Though my progressive mind leans toward the donkey’s policies, the elephant fits better in my collection!
The problem with writing about that elephant cookie cutter, is that I immediately think of the donkey I left behind which then results in my thinking about the polemic hyperbole in which our politicians engage today. Then I get caught up in my own hyperbolic diatribe and there goes any kind of spiritual lesson. After all, my “elephant Fridays” were my intentional commitment to explore spiritual ideas through something seemingly so unrelated: my elephant collection.
So apart from the political context in which the cookie cutter was purchased, how might I make it a spiritual story? Well yesterday as I was musing over this, I came up with several different spiritual ideas the cookie cutter metaphor might represent. But it was the following idea that stuck with me.
A cookie cutter cuts many cookies. One ball of dough can become many individual cookies. God is the ball of dough, each cookie is an individual part of that dough. If one were to decorate the cookies, one could make each one very different. Which in a sense, is what God did with each of us…though most of us might argue with the “ornamentation” He chose to use!
Anyway, if all the cookies are put together they once again become the whole ball of dough, i.e. God. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the whole takes on a completely different character or essence than the sum of its parts. In other words a ball of dough could be made into 15 cookies. The sum of the parts would be 15 individual elephants (in the case of this cookie cutter). But the whole (the ball of dough) is a totally different entity.
With this in mind, is there any way I can truly condemn those I find despicable among us? If I believe that God is love, and God created me in His image, as He did every other person on this earth—because He loves, remember—how can I then believe that even the vilest person on this earth is worth any less to God than I am? (After all, I am so very holy and worthy! NOT!)
If I believe God’s grace extends to all – and I DO believe that, I must believe that yes, even men like Rush Limbaugh (dare I say it?) will be with God eternally. If I believe anything less than that, I can’t really believe that God so loves the world… and I certainly don't believe in His amazing grace. Thanks be to God, the whole is greater than the sum of His parts. That gives me hope.
2 comments:
Very well put. Maybe you need to start a donkey collection too!! :-)
The point that your post makes for me, today, is that I know in your point that 'God being in all of us which he saves' is about the only change I have at His grace.
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