Uneeda Mess...

I'm sure this is not original with me, but it occurred to me after reading most of Deuteronomy, and being poised on the verge of the Song of Moses, that the foreknowledge of God is unlimited; and He states in Deut 38:26"

"Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your GOD. There it will remain as a witness against you."

I was struck by this statement in that there is no additional purpose adduced to these relics.  They, while sacred in origin, were not to be worshipped. Gideon's Ephod and the Bronze Serpent in the desert are good counter-examples of the kind of worship we always prefer; to worship objects that we can create and control, regardless of the goodness of God, their origin. The Middle Ages and even before were witness to pieces of bone, teeth, and hair becoming venerated, in spite of their usual origin as fakes. Secularists are regularly engaged in trying to find a bone box that will discredit God and His Messiah, making fools of themselves all the way--but what they are really looking for is a bone or fossil that they can look to and prize and worth-ship when they want to evade their considerable responsibility before God, and live only for their own pleasures.  (Ever wonder why modern Sadducees and Sophists are so hot on "good sex?" And why the schools they create and sustain are so good at handing out condoms and promoting sterile sex, but can't otherwise educate their charges even to read beyond a grade school level?  It's just the rattling of idols and temple prostitution being called up from the dead....)(Feliz Dia de lost Muertos, eh?)

But to return to my topic, which is worthy of Pascal and probably somewhere in his Pensees in other words:

"You need a mess to need The Messiah!"  In other words the law has to do what it can--which is less to prevent sin than to call it to mind and cause more of it all the while--"as a witness against you."--so that Messiah can come and do what only God can do: "Operation Rescue."  The Absolute does it Absolutely.

We of course abhor holy relics to hold, kiss, or desire as the flesh would have us to do.  Not kosher, to say the least!  But to say the most I can, our "relics" and idols are now in the form of abstract ideation, whole cultural masses of traditions which scream out the Basic Assumption of Modernism, that there is no God--but if there is, He is a Big Liar and at the disposal of his human trainers and owners--a "tame lion," in CSL parlance.

But is it not, "odd of God, to choose the Jews," only then to destroy them  again and again in the various deserts where he said they would wander?  As Moses questioned God, why bring all this people out of Egypt only to destroy (most of ) them?  And esp. why do this if You Knew already what they would do, in  spite of and perhaps even because of being chosen?  It's the non-eternal but all too human question of why God does not force us to love Him even though He wants to spare us some of the consequences of our thinking and actions?  And the accumulation of the sins of the world over multiple millenia certainly represents a vast mountain range of decay and the waste products of many civilizations which we nonetheless revere in vain. (I think about the tremendous trash pile of Wall-E--a good "solid waste" representation of our current state.)(I won't get much argument there, even from the most sanguine of progressives!)

Thus the purpose of all this futility is to bring us to Christ. Wasteful? Not in comparison to macro-evolution which sacrifices everybody and everything for no reason at all.

But if it's so obvious, what about the Bleeding Obvious? The exploding unplastic inevitable? God has provided a Blood Sacrifice because it's the ultimate one, and One worthy not only of His Purity, but also designed to be supra-cultural and trans-cultural and counter-cultural all at the same time. Culture and Civilization are simply "superclusters" of dead stars all burning down and out as we speak--but also leaving black holes all over the place, formed of pure negation and total failure unto oblivion. "You began well-what happened? (Gal 1)

"Jesus knows our every weakness--take it to the Lord in prayer." Well? Why not, then?