Human/Divine Parable

In the human context we are not visited with the full knowledge of the depth and extension of the meaning of the attributes of God.  Our experience in human attributes reflected and found as nature’s parables of God are quite distant from those of God, more distant than that found in mankind from the most gifted animals.  Even our performances of human attributes are humbled in the single greatest attribute of this or that animal.  Many animals can run faster than human beings, turtles may live longer, eagles see better, dogs outperform in olfactory skills, and so the story may be extended, but none of the animals can act so well in the context of life as mankind does – reflective thought that is allegorical to the mind of God, with great limitations but fine enough to offer constructive thought about the context of God.  Mankind is the only earth creature that knows good and evil, and lives in that meaning.  This leads to many parables about man and God in relationships that include father or mother and child, Shepherd and sheep, Christ and bride, Creator and friend, Savior and sinner/redeemed, Counselor and counselee, Comforter and comforted – all reporting the unique rapport of mankind with God. 

For his own reasons God wanted for his pleasure an intimate fellowship with a creation of his making.  Part of the context is likely that what God is in his personhood becomes so fully transcendent that he wanted to share it with other persons competent of reflective thought and reflective image that includes factors of love, righteousness, creativity, freedom – the list lengthens.  So it was that the seed was planted in mankind identified in Scripture as the image of God.  (Hamlet spoke about this in Shakespeare’s eminent soliloquy about mankind’s god-likeness.)  That meaning is only partially known to us, with enough revelation to know that God will not permit his image to be lost in the denouement.  The verification of that evidence of God is reliant upon the outcome of the evaluation (judgment) of God on humanity’s last day.  From one point of view this seems exotic, nonsense for some.  From another point of view it seems orderly and is offered in Scripture as the plan of God applied to cooperative mankind, and that to no other earth entity.

Earth life for human beings is quite contradictory and/or paradoxical – sometimes shrouded in a kind of game-play as that found on the story of God’s Little Acre.  The farmer shifted the dedicated acre to a less productive one when he found the first to be more productive than the rest of the farm.  Complex without any such games, life becomes confusing and tangled with these conflicts in thought and action.  Not only are the negative factors unacceptable by God’s standards (known as hypocrisy) but by our standards, often legal, that lead to good and ill procedures for individuals and the masses in thought and conduct.  To adopt Lincoln’s frontier reference for our purpose: It doesn’t scour.  That is to say it won’t clean things up for acceptance and approval by God and often by mankind when reaction sets in.  We make alcohol consumption legal, firearms legal, hallucinogenic drugs legal, gambling legal, carnal recreations legal, and emerging acceptance of sexual differentials legal, all affecting the tax structure of states and nation and then deplore the cost of them in modern life – the tragedy they cause, the breakdown in law enforcement, and the sordid story lengthens.  All of this is related to hypocrisy in greater or lesser meaning, but damaging and contradictory to what we espouse as important to society, to the nurture of families, and the long range benefit to society.  The confusion of values in a secular society ought to drive the population to some perception of God that includes wholesome lifestyle and the practice of virtue.  Without the social and personal value system reflected from the morality of God we do not develop the peace of personal and social life.  Wars of various types will follow us in personal life and relationships – wars within and without.  We are wise to understand morality, discovered in the affirmations of God. Warnings and examples appear commonly in the world – in our own lives (experiences), biographies, history, arts and Scripture.  We are aware that there is something better for us and we have that vision available in practical and applied form found in the acknowledgment that God has a plan for mankind that lifts us out of confusion, hypocrisy, sin, despair – to life, love, peace forevermore.  If Christians are wrong about God, faith and immortality, they have lost nothing in death – except good lives.