PAXIL THE TEACHER
November 15, 2015
The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.
-Frederick Buechner
http://frederickbuechner.com/content/humanly-best
I dispersed Paxil’s ashes this morning at a local cemetery that shall remain nameless as it would not fully appreciate the honor I’ve bestowed on it with the ashes of three out of my four dogs.
For a long time I’ve wanted to write a book on theology. It will never happen.
The older I get, the simpler the gospel of God in Christ becomes.
It doesn’t fill a book. Not even sure it makes a decent essay.
For a long time I’ve believed that the gospel of God in Christ is the proclamation that God has authority over Death, understood as the various ways in which biological death is anticipated in our ordinary lives in events such as my short life with Paxil as well as how that anticipation is experienced as a threat to any final confidence in the meaning, value, and purpose of our lives.
That’s the “God” part.
The “in Christ” part is the rub.
God’s authority over Death is exercised in God’s apparent defeat by Death in the cross of Christ rather than by the serious butt-kicking that characterizes a vigilante movie.
God’s authority over Death is exercised in God’s apparent defeat by Death in the cross of Christ rather than by the serious butt-kicking that characterizes a vigilante movie.
This affirmation of God’s gift of life, though concealed in the suffering and messiness of life, is distinguishable from all religions (including the Christian when it succumbs to the religious temptation) through its lack of prerequisites.
God in Christ dispenses freely what religions, both sectarian and secular, demand human sacrifice for.
Paxil’s death, after I reluctantly took the hound to better safeguard him from his street-wandering ways, is the first time in a long time that I’ve experienced serious guilt, remorse, regret on top of the normal grief of losing a loved one.
I suppose Paxil’s lesson to me was simply this: if God is sufficient unto any Death than God is sufficient unto EVERY death, no matter how terrible, no matter how apparently forlorn, no matter how senseless.
God does not only vouchsafe the life of a beloved grandparent when they peacefully “pass away” (I HATE that euphemism), but of a child who burns to death in a house fire caused by some simple, ordinary negligence on the part of the parents that most parents, thankfully, get away with from time to time.
God does not only vouchsafe the life of a beloved grandparent when they peacefully “pass away” (I HATE that euphemism), but of a child who burns to death in a house fire caused by some simple, ordinary negligence on the part of the parents that most parents, thankfully, get away with from time to time.
Belief in God is not believing in theological doctrines, but trusting God as sufficient in all things including suffering, evil, futility, guilt, and death.
One may start with faith the size of a mustard seed but, in the end, life challenges us to go “all in,” completely vulnerable to the power of Death so as to remain open to God’s improbable gift of Life.
One may start with faith the size of a mustard seed but, in the end, life challenges us to go “all in,” completely vulnerable to the power of Death so as to remain open to God’s improbable gift of Life.
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