"Pogo........................"

In the original “Alice in Wonderland”, the main character encounters Humpty Dumpty who, in conversation with her, uses the word “glory”. When she informs him that she doesn’t understand its meaning, he scornfully replies “Of course you don’t, not until I tell you, for every word I speak means exactly what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less!” She observes that “The question is whether you can make words mean different things”; and he, unhindered in his vanity, simply states that “The question is only who is to be master. That’s all.”… I’m about halfway through my perusal of Alan E. Lewis’s “Between Cross and Resurrection”. Thus far it has mostly been like a “schematic” of historical Christianity’s putting divinity under a microscope and dissecting Trinity in an attempt to dissolve all the mystery. Not yet expressing his own personal theology, the author quotes Barth, Moltmann, Hegel, Jensen, Rahner, and Martin Luther, just to name a few prestigious names of those who, from the very beginning of this, have forged various images out of chapter and verse. They frame God in terms that suggest Him possessing an “eternal longing to become a man and to make of every man a god out of grace.” They describe Him as “being in becoming”, a deity experiencing metamorphosis, passing through eternity with us and evolving as He goes. Like the Jews, who took the Law and turned it into religion, so too has the Church complicated “Christ in me”, debating its simplicity until Christianity now comes in seventeen flavors, including several counterfeit imitations. While I applaud a need for believers to study their Bible, to investigate their salvation as they go, yet wisdom dictates our goal be forged out of a recognition of our humanity being part of the process. There is no doctrinal box of dogma big enough, strong enough correct enough, to completely hold Him captive; and pursuit ought to be more about a thirst to know His reality in our life than about some desire to label His parts…….