Far Away Things

A lot of science fiction and fantasy that I have enjoyed reading over the past several years (most notably the Thief's Quartet, go read it, it is amazing), talks about how gods are supposed to be something up with the priests and long ago in mythology, not something walking alongside you to the supermarket in the morning.

They make the case that we believe in gods in a quiet way.  A never-questioning-it way.  The same way I believe in quarks and supercolliders. People more qualified than I have looked into the question, and I see no reason to doubt their word.  Also, they sound cool.  The world is better for someone out their understanding them and them existing.

I don't change my daily life over it.

Our God is not like that.  He's not far away and long ago.  I wrote several years back a piece at the end of a television show I'd like to revisit now.

There is no Robin of Locksley to cast off his titles and surge to our aid.  We need Miracle Max to make a pill to bring you back, but he retired long ago when one too many bean counters spit at his craft.  The Age of Heroes is over.

This is a lie they have been telling since man first invented stories.  Because every story serves two purposes: to remind us of the greatness of humanity worthy of songs and remembrance; and to remind us that we don’t do things that way anymore, the Age of Heroes is over, that kind of thing only worked back when everyone was running around in tights, this is the Age of the Bean Counter and the Small Lies of the Politician.  

Like Hell it is.

Every age is the Age of Heroes.  The Time of Miracles is not past and it is not to come.  It is always now.  We are all living in the Age of Heroes.

The Age of Heroes is now.  We are Robin Hood.  We are stars in the night sky.  And we are waiting for our hero to bring us back to life.  We are the stuff of minstrel’s songs.  There is too much, far too much for one of us to defeat, but that never stopped you.  We are all Robin Hood.

The Time of Miracles is now.

I was talking about the BBC's Robin Hood and how the proper lesson of it isn't simply entertainment but a call to take up odds, risk the dungeon, and generally upend the status quo.  Just like he did, back when that sort of thing was "done all the time."

I'm sure the people in the time of Moses were as surprised as anything -- and hostile to boot -- to find that the God they prayed to in a vague way, an actually hopeless way, was real and ready to rain down plagues on their behalf.

What a frightening figure that is -- an active God taking an active daily role.

Science fiction and fantasy are teeming with such stories.  We are terrified of artificial intelligences and supervillains with Killgrave powers and a host of other monsters that actually amount to something beyond us not Out There Somewhere but Among Us Right Now.

What I'm saying is that I understand where Jesus's frustration is coming from here, because I read about it all the time. We are actively trying to wrestle with this question right now.  That thing we say we want -- that thing we claim we pray for -- we are terrified of it.  Petrified of God's direct, unquestionable intervention.

How little do we trust God's love.

Or is it how little we trust ourselves to behave properly?  To be glad to be brought out into the light rather than cowering in the darkness?  How precious are our lives to us as they are now that we would rather they not change and everything stays worse?

How precious is the world we've built ourselves that we don't want the infinitely love and powerful God to walk in it with us?