One of the great scourges of our time and place is the idea that what is real is predictable and governable.

The real is what we can wrap our minds around and wrestle into submission.

The real can be measured and understood.

The real is able to be repaired and manipulated.

I would assert (along with most Christian theologians) that, in fact, the opposite is true.

The real is the thing you would never have guessed.

Almost everyone would agree (there are always a few truly dedicated relativist philosophers who might not concur) that birth is real. The process by which humans procreate is a thing that is real.

C. S. Lewis asks us to consider this way of creating new life, writing that it is

a very curious process, involving pleasure, pain, and danger. A process you would never have guessed.

This is never more true than when considering the first reality to exist.

The same God who is terrible to gaze upon is also good.

The same God who couldn’t allow Moses to look upon His face lest Moses die submitted Himself to a humiliating death out of love for us.

The same God who is the King of heaven and earth became poor for our benefit.

Mr. Beaver, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, says of Aslan, the Christ figure in the Chronicles of Narnia, “He’ll be coming and going. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild you know. Not like a tame lion.”

God is not safe, but He is good.

The real is the thing you would never  have guessed.

This is important to remember when life is out of control, when circumstances are spiraling downwards.

When life seems more than we can bear, safety is not what we need.

A “wild, terrifying, powerful” goodness is what we want and what we need.

He is somehow perfectly self-consistent and yet altogether unpredictable … (able) to love in ways that nobody could have guessed. ~ Jonathan Rogers in The World According to Narnia

There is nothing predictable or safe about God. But He is good.

And in the end, omnipotence turns out to be the same thing as infinite love. Who would have guessed it? ~ Jonathan Rogers

I often work through ideas by writing about them. Writing helps me to process what I am learning, consider what I am thinking, understand what I believe.

Sometimes this process shows up in my blog posts. I use my crafting of an essay as a way to work through what I think about an issue. This is one of those times.

I have been thinking through the idea that the way we speak of the world impacts the way we treat it.

I have heard a lot of language recently, in a number of arenas, that is very machine-like, very utilitarian.

Language of consuming and using, language that speaks of things in terms of how useful they are and how well they serve our needs.

I have heard this language used in regards to the natural world, to communities …

I have even heard it in reference to Christianity.

The hosts on a recent podcast were discussing the possibility of another Christian Reformation, and the main question they posed was whether Christianity is useful in our modern world. They discussed which elements of Christianity were outdated and which were still useful to us.

Now I do not deny that the Church in every age has blind spots, areas where we get it wrong. Perhaps a Reformation is needed.

But simply by using this mechanical language of what is working and what is useful, we miss the core of Christianity.

Christianity is not useful.

Christianity is true.

The kind of language we need is the language of reality, of being, of what is true, of joining in with what is already happening.

We need the language of creation.

When we speak of everything, from the natural world to the people around us to our faith, as being there to be useful to us, we have lost sight of the created nature of things. We are blinded to the truth of the world as Creation rather than material for man to act upon.

When we view everything around us as finding its purpose in satisfying our needs, we have lost something essential in ourselves and in our world and we become impoverished.

The remedy?

Worship.

Divine worship reminds us that we are created beings living among other created beings in the middle of a created world.

Worship creates an atmosphere of true wealth even in the middle of the direst material want because the living heart of worship is sacrifice,

a voluntary offering freely given. It … is in fact absolutely antithetic to utility. Thus, the act of worship creates a store of real wealth which cannot be consumed by the workaday world. It sets up an area where calculation is thrown to the winds …, where usefulness is forgotten and generosity reigns. ~ Josef Pieper (German theologian in the early to mid-20th century) in Leisure: The Basis of Culture

When we view everything around us in terms of use, when we falsely believe ourselves to be the master and owner of creation, we create an atmosphere of grasping for what will satisfy our needs, an atmosphere where we can never be content, an atmosphere of poverty regardless of our material condition.

If our world is a Creation, however, our true wealth consists in “seeing what is and the the whole of what is, in seeing things not as useful or useless, serviceable or not, but simple as being.” ~ Pieper

Language matters. I plan to spend time thinking this through more deeply, and as I do so I will attempt to use more words of joining, of generosity, of creation and what is rather than words of usefulness and ownership. Perhaps you will join me in paying more attention to the words we choose?

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Art Credit: Cogs photo by Marin Walls; Circuit Board photo by Nicolas Raymond; all other photos are my own, copyright 2021 Made Sacred