Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World

by N.D. Wilson

But in order to know why this is all here, a simple how is a prerequisite. How did this place happen?

Marx called religion an opiate, and all too often it is. But philosophy is an anesthetic, a shot to keep the wonder away.

If you knew the meaning of life, would you necessarily like it?

I look around at the stuff of the world and I ask myself what it is made of. Words. Magic words. Words spoken by the Infinite, words so potent, spoken by One so potent that they have weight and mass and flavor. They are real. They have taken on flesh and dwelt among us. They are us. In the Christian story, the material world came into existence at the point of speech, and that speech was ex nihilo, from nothing. God did not look around for some cosmic goo to sculpt, or another god to dice and recycle. He sang a song, composed a poem, began a novel so enormous that even the Russians are dwarfed by its heaped up pages.

But why would any Christian claim that God has stopped talking? Did He speak the world into existence? Does matter exist apart from Him? Is it still here? Are you still here? Then He is still speaking.

Who are you? What kind of novel are you in? What is the conflict? If you were reading this story, watching an omniscient (really) narrator describe you, your innermost thoughts, your insecurities, and all your desires, would you have any trouble at all giving your character counsel? Would it be oh-so-difficult to tell when that character was motivated from selfishness or pride? Would you love to see that story written? Would you like to see yourself as you are, as you really are, with not one of your thoughts or impulses omitted?

Place your faith in the infinitude of matter if you like, and Chance will write the story. He’ll shuffle together pages, words, scribbles from different languages, other people’s noses, and small bits of string, run it all through a mulcher, and spray it into your yard. Enjoy your novel.

The infinite Creator has an infinite attention span, an infinite love of detail. In His story, every prop must have a complete history. Every extra must have a complete genealogy. And the set must be convincing. Spare no expense. There should be three-dimensional graphics, convincing sound-effects, and something to break up the background blackness of the night sky, something tasteful like a few billion solar systems flaming and spurting, spitting colored worlds and sparking stars, set far enough away to achieve an understated twinkle

What is the world? What is it for? It is art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite.

How much do I care for these ants? I think I care. I’ll stop to watch their wars. I’ll buy my children documentaries—insect tributes. I won’t crush them when I can help it. But, if given the chance, would I be willing to become one of them? Would I be willing for them to drag me to the place of execution, taunt me, mock me, ridicule the gift I offered, a gift entirely beyond their comprehension? Would I be willing for the earwig, executed beside me, to add his insults to those of the ants? Would I be willing to die? Hell no. Never. I have more self-regard than God does. I have less love for the characters beneath me.

Do not cry to me. I can only cry with you. I will not die for you. I am still too young in the meaning of love. Talk to the Fool, to the one who left a throne to enter an anthill. He will enter your shadow. It cannot taint Him. He has done it before. His holiness is not fragile. It burns like a father to the sun. Touch His skin, put your hand in His side. He has kept His scars when He did not have to. Give Him your pain and watch it overwhelmed, burned away by the joy He takes in loving. In stooping. In the end, when your life is of a different sort, your first flesh will be dust, and of your grief, not one grain of ash will remain.

Heaven will be hard and bright, and the winds will be strong. You will have the body and the eyes and the purified, well-aged soul to bear it.

Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shekinah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag. But we cannot hope to reach the final chapter by dreaming, by holding our collective breath and staring at unshaded acrylic escape paintings. The only road to that final chapter began at the garden and led into the wilderness. It runs through these chapters. Live now. Relish the tensions, the challenges, and laugh at the petty pains.

I’m sorry to tell you this, but the world will end happily. Sorrow goes down in a barrage of bullets, and Grief is executed after a fair trial.

I will beat the ocean, but only by being beaten. I’ve lived inside sand walls—we all do—and they are always torn away. Generations, people, black and white ancestors with forgotten names and forgotten graves, have broken the waves and been broken.

I know little, but I know this: When you have died and your leaves have been raked, when you have looked on the face of God and had your final conversation, exchanging words others may never know, you will be where you want to be. If you cannot let go of yourself, if you cling to the filth that you’ve loved for so long, stroking the cherished scabs that line your soul—hates and bitternesses that you cannot lay down, an imagined mirror picturing a glorious self—then He will push you away. You will be sent out into the darkness, far from His presence. You will not like the darkness, but the other option seems worse. You couldn’t bear to be without those scabs. You will be in good company, wandering with preachers, priests, and kings, and every lofty human unable to live without themselves. Many “righteous” will crowd into that corner with you, people who cannot imagine themselves as anything other than good, who cannot bend to a God who will not bend to them.

You will be exiled from joy, but you will not want it at its price. You will be exiled from love, because love means sacrifice, and why should you do that? You will be exiled from the dance, from the music, from the center stage and life in the sun. But you will hear only thundering and clamor, you will see only blisters and work and burning pain.