14. For he knoweth our frame;
he remembereth that we are dust. (KJV)
14. He knows us inside and out,
keeps in mind that were made of mud. (Message)
The “special creationists” have always ruled the church. That fact is now rendering the church irrelevant to a modern scientifically aware culture. It is time to grow up church. Accepting the creationist scenario is to reduced the divine to a cosmic magician who puffs humankind into existence a few short millennia ago. The Psalmist labors under no such delusion.
He states, “ He (God) knows us inside and out, (He) keeps in mind that we were made of mud.”(Message) Equally valid, the other translators use the word dust. Thirty five hundred years ago the Psalmist expressed the scientific equation for life, mix a little dirt with water, bake and life will happen. How can this verse be ignored? It has been ignored because it didn’t fit the divine magic spectacular.
Also, the church has felt compelled to remain in the magic corner fearing the accidental hypothesis of evolutionary religion. The Psalmist would never assume that the mud baking process was an accident. His mindset was immersed in the immediacy of the will of the Father God in this world, there are no accidents just foreseeable results. God is so powerful that magic shows are not of Him or Her. The Church can,therefore, with great confidence explore His universe reverencing His creation.
The concept of mud or dust is rooted in the beginning parables of Genesis. Am I loosening your biblical assumptions, let’s hope so? In like manner, Jesus used stories (parables), to convey God understandings to we street persons. Any preacher will tell you that a good story is worth a thousand words. Are stories (parables) deceptions? No they are not, if they help explain who we are and where we stand in relation to the Godhead.
The biblical revelation is that God purposes both a physical and a spiritual formation for the earth and He is about this dual baking process. Mankind alone has the potential to explore the spiritual dimension. We are, however, stubborn. We most often are content to pander to our physical inheritance. Slowly the ordained baking process continues. The goal of spiritual formation is an active identification with the Godhead and a willingness to express His definition of love in this world.
It is beneath our potential as created beings to value only the physical. All of scripture is the story of some of our attempts to find and step through the doorway to the spirit from the physical. All of this life that confronts us with the reality that the physical alone is futile, is of God. This includes the pain of our days. The good news is that God’s love has ventured back into the physical to entice us to follow His Love through the doorway to full humanity.
G.Goslaw
September 29, 2009
