Monsters: The Imagination of Faith and Fear by Samizdat Creative

M onsters

THE IMAGINATION OF FAITH AND FEAR

dr. david mcdonald

This book was written primarily for the people of Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Michigan. It is part of a series of similar books called “Teaching Atlases,” which supplement David’s sermons during the weekend worship services. They are part study-guide, part reminder, part artifact. Additional Atlases can be obtained through the office of Westwinds Community Church (www.westwinds.org) David is also available for guest teaching and lecturing and can be booked through his personal assistant, Norma Racey (norma.racey@westwinds.org). The set-up costs of each Atlas are privately donated by a Westwinds’ parishioner, thus enabling extensive self-publishing at a reasonable cost. The proceeds from each Atlas are designated by the donor for a specific project—such as installing wells in developing countries, providing artistic and educational scholarships for children, or financially supporting pastors and missionaries around the world. If you would like to donate to the Atlas project, please contact info@westwinds.org

Visit Dr. David McDonald’s website at www.shadowinggod.com Visit Samizdat Creative’s website at www.samizdatcreative.com Monsters: the imagination of faith and fear Copyright © 2010 by Dr. David McDonald. All rights reserved. The author retains sole copyright to the materials Author photo and design copyright © 2009 by David McDonald. All rights reserved. ISBN-10: 0982612478 ISBN-13: 9780982612477 Published in association with Westwinds Community Church, 1000 Robinson Road, Jackson, MI 49203 Published by Samizdat Creative, 5441 South Knox Court, Littleton, CO 80123. All scriptures used in this Atlas are taken from the NIV translation unless otherwise indicated.

This is for Jacob, my knight and for Anna, my princess: May you never forget that King Jesus wore a crown of thorns so you could be beautiful and brave.

Special thanks to Eric Weatherwax, my research assistant, for his commitment to Christ and his Church. Take comfort, friend, the bald are honored in heaven.

t abl e o f c o n te n ts Introduction

Part One: The monster of false authority False Gods False Authority You Are Worthy Part Two: the monster of the unknown Cryptozoology Out There You Are Loved

18 28 36 44 56 64

part three: the monster of god Apocalytpic Monsters Retributive Justice You Are Loved

76 82 90

part four: the monster of our own making Idols Monsters of our Making You Are Powerful Conclusion

100 106 116

Resources

127

124

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Introduction Two of my closest friends in Junior high were Cory Stafford and Chris Burns. Cory was an artist, Chris was a sax player, and I was a ninth grader with size 12 shoes. We used to get into incredible mischief, but never were we more imaginative, more outlandish than with our excursions into the Bad Place. The Bad Place, Tynehead Park, was an underused green belt about a mile or so behind my house. In recent years, it’s regularly used in all sorts of television shows—Stargate SG-1, Battlestar Galactica, the X-ﬁles, Alias—but back then, we three were probably the only ones who ever really ventured into Tynehead on purpose. With its full canopy of glowering trees, Tynehead was dark by about 2 pm and impassibly black after supper. The darkness there was palpable—like gallons of pitch, a paint pool, latex midnight—and it used to scare us immensely. Such a profound emptiness deserved a name of its own. hence “the Bad Place.” But the Bad Place wasn’t uninhabited. In our adolescence, we understood that such a place needed—no, required!—an indigenous species. There had to be a caretaker to keep such emptiness unfilled. And so we came to fear the Bad Thing. for two summers, we bravely ventured into the Bad Place, simultaneously eager and unwilling to meet the Bad Thing. We ran from it when we heard it rustle in the thorns, and we screamed defiantly when we thought it had finally caught up to us. It was only when we tried to introduce some of our other friends to the Bad Place that the spell was broken. They brought ﬂashlights, made lots of noise, and quickly came to the conclusion that we must have been eating the wild mushrooms that grew on the feet of trees.

dr. david mcdonald

The Bad Thing was my first real monster, my first spectral adversary, and though I know— believe me, I always knew—it wasn’t real, I was truly terrified in the woods with Chris and Cory. We all have our monsters, and whether or not they are real is less important than whether or not we are afraid. We all have secret and abiding fears, shades of doubt and fear-filled wonder, pecking away at our confidence and causing us to question our capability, our culpability, and our ability to live. I want to tell you that by reading this book you will never hearken to those fears again, but, I can’t. It would be untrue. Despite the fact that the most oft-cited command in the Bible is “do not be afraid,” we always seem to find something new to fear. That fear eats away at us. It has real-life consequences, making us cower, search desperately for approval, and live powerless lives of victimization, isolation, and grief. What we need to do is learn to live with courage in the face of our fears, while simultaneously working to de-power those fears. We need to know and understand that even in the midst of our worst fears coming true, God will still sustain us and lead us into a better future.

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Monsters in the Bible There is good biblical material to this effect, though I confess that the approach we’re about to take in Monsters is likely very different than anything you might be expecting. Throughout the scriptures, diverse species of monsters appear—false gods (like Ba’al), cryptozoological fiends (like Leviathan), apocalyptic beasts (like the Beast from out of the Sea), and idols (like the Golden Calf)—and as they appear they strike terror in to the hearts of God’s people. Typically, we take this for granted: Of course Leviathan is scary, we think, he’s a sea-born Chaos monster. But we never stop to consider whether or not these beasts are real or simply imagined. Ba’al, for example, was simply a stone statue. Asherah was contained in totem poles. No one has even seen a unicorn (mentioned, in hebrew, in Job 39), nor was there any record of the Golden Calf laying waste to the Israelite’s camp in the wilderness. But, again, whether or not the object of our fears is real is less important than whether or not we’re afraid. The fear must be dealt with. In most cases, I think we’re safest to understand the descriptions of these creatures and cretins as either metaphorical depictions of evil personages (such as the dragon in Revelation, whom many understand to be a representation of the Roman emperor Nero, or possibly Satan), or imaginative descriptions of actual animals (the unicorn in Job 39, for example, bears a striking resemblance to a rhinoceros). Whether or not these creatures were historical is less significant than the fact that the people within scripture were actually terrified of them. God’s people were terrified of the false gods (even if they were just stone statues), Leviathan (even if it was just a crocodile), the Beast from out of the Earth (even if that was just a clever name for Diocletian), and the Ashtoreth poles.

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Monsters in our lives These biblical monsters bear a strong resemblance to our contemporary monsters. There is nothing new under the sun. We fear what they feared: We fear the objects of authority; we fear the unknown, what’s out there; we fear retributive justice; we fear the offspring of our own imagination. The antidote to the fears of the Israelites was Immanuel: God with us. God never scolded his people for being frightened, but he constantly reminded them that he was present and powerful. he still is. you do not need to fear because “the Lord your God is with you.” you do not need to fear dehumanization at the hands of authority, because your worth is in God. you do not need to fear for your life, consumed with anxiety, because God will protect you. you do not need to fear for the condition of your soul, because God is good to all, and you are loved. you do not need to fear the creatures in your mind because God can help you turn your imagination toward life, bravery, heroism, and goodness, and you can be powerful with him. You are worthy, protected, loved, and empowered.

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Live boldly That’s what this book is about. Not the promise to conquer every fear, but the promise to conquer yourself and live boldly in the face of fear. This is something I had to teach my son. Jacob was woefully afraid of monsters when he was younger. having been unwisely introduced to vampires by a distant relative, Jacob used to lay awake at night in his room scared stiff with fear that he would be eaten in his sleep. The only way he would ever calm down was for me to climb into bed with him, hold him tight, and promise to protect him from all harm. Dave McDonald, Vampire Slayer. Despite my assurances that vampires were not going to attack him in the night, Jacob continued to be terrified unless I was with him. He imagined hordes of slathering, biting, minions scrambling up the vinyl-siding of our home and cutting open his bedroom window with their elongated fingernails. In his mind, my son was under the heat lamp of a ghoul’s buffet. I despaired that Jake would ever get over his fear. Night after night I tried to reason with him, but to no avail. After exhausting every argument or line of rationality I could conjure, I decided to try another tact. I told Jacob about the sovereign power of Christ. I don’t mean to imply that I taught him theology in the strictest sense, or read bits of the Bible to him. Oh no, I acted out the confrontations between Jesus and the powers of this world. I told him (age-appropriate versions) stories of Christ and devils, of Jesus defeating the powers of darkness, of the final collision between Yahweh and the Satan, and of Christ’s wonderful power to work miracles. I gave Jake a robust vision of the awesome power of his Savior. And do you know what he said to me? Daddy. You don’t need to sleep with me anymore, because Jesus keeps the monsters away. Jesus keeps the monsters away. yes he does.

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Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the ﬂames will not set you ablaze. for I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; Isaiah 43.1b-3a What we need, more than techniques or tools or time-honored prayers, is a grounded understanding that “greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” We need to know that God is with us, and that Jesus keeps the monsters away. Over the next few pages we will explore how false gods can be de-throned, how the monsters can be de-clawed, how the apocalyptic beasts can be de-powered, and how the idolatrous monsters we make can be destroyed. We will learn eventual and persistent fearlessness, and immediate and lasting courage.

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dr. david mcdonald

monsters

dr. david mcdonald

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False Gods Marduk was the ancient Sumerian god of magic. It was also the name I gave to my first big screen television. In the early 2000s, I was offered a job at a local Christian college to teach classes on worship, ministry philosophy, and church leadership for a very small sum of money. My wife asked me what we should do with this honorarium, and I looked curiously at her and asked why she thought “we” were going to spend the extra money that “I” would be earning. “I” was going to buy a magic TV. “We” could watch whatever “I” chose together. Despite my early marital thuggery, Carmel was actually quite enthused about the prospect of owning a giant television. We did a little research, shopped around, and finally came home with a refurbished Sony 51” LCD. I loved it. I still love it. It’s still our main TV, and it’s every bit as magical now as it was then. Which, of course, is why I initially gave it the nickname Marduk. In the ancient world, supplicants would approach idols of their Sumerian deity and offer sacrifices. In the modern world, I made sacrifices too. You can imagine the nature of my contemporary sacrifices—parties, Cheetos, pay-per-view—but the point remains that there may have been more truth than fiction to my divinization of the TV. Eventually, though, I began to question the wisdom involved in even dismissively invoking the name of a false god, and we reverted to referring to the big silver box in simpler terms. Because even loose-association with the god Marduk was a problem. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that we shouldn’t fool around with gods

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and goddesses at all. Worship of those false deities created significant problems for the hebrew people, our spiritual ancestors, and even lighthearted joking is probably out-of-bounds for sane people in a contemporary setting. If you’re like most people, though, you probably wouldn’t make theology geek jokes like that—not because they are so bad, but much more likely because they are so obscure. Still, I want to look brieﬂy at some of the major deities of the ancient world and then unpack the ways in which I think they are still at large today, and why we ought to be on our guard.

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gods and goddesses In the first Testament, Marduk was one of many gods that plagued the Israelites. his image astride a dragon at one time decorated the Ishtar Gate, an entrance to Babylon, and many biblical commentators perceive allusions to Marduk’s evil presence in the references to the serpent in Eden that tempted and beguiled Eve. Marduk, of course, was not the only noteworthy deity in the ancient near-east. In fact, there were several such prominent figures in the First Testament. Ba’al, for example, was dominant among the ancient near-eastern cultures of the Bible. Known as “the Storm God,” Ba’al and his wild warrior consort, Anat, were revered for their supremacy over and above many of the other gods. They contended for bragging rights and an elevated position in the pantheon of Mesopotamian deities by first defeating Prince Yam—the god of chaos—and Divine Mot—the god of death. The people of that time believed that Ba’al had vanquished chaos and could now bring peace to the land; just as they later believed that Ba’al had destroyed death itself and could grant eternal life, or at least a quality of life worthy of eternity during our time alive in the world. Dagon was a Philistine god who, according to the rabbinical interpretation of 1 Samuel 5, was a kind of merman, having the torso of a man but the lower extremities of a fish (“dagon” derives from the Hebrew word “dag” which means “fish”). The last noteworthy deity was Asherah, the goddess of fertility and sex, called by some the “Queen of heaven.” She was famously revered, as both Jews and Gentiles devoted themselves to her through the use of Ashtoreth poles—totem poles, carved from living trees, bearing the image of the deity and objects of her rule.

dr. david mcdonald

The power of the unreal you may be wondering why I’m rattling off the details of these gods and goddesses, so let me quickly get to the point. These gods, which people worshipped, to whom they prayed, and of whom they were afraid, were not real. Let me clarify: They were really worshipped—they had real temples, real servants, real statues and idols representing them to the world, real rituals and supplicants and acolytes and congregants—but there was never a time when Marduk actually walked the earth. unlike Christ, or for that matter Mohammed or Moses or Martin Luther King Jr., no one has ever set eyes on Anat or Dagon bathing in the river or reclining for a meal. And yet, despite the fact that they only truly ever existed as manifestations of the spiritual imagination, Marduk and Ba’al, Dagon and Asherah, and Anat and company all affected the lives of real people. Real people perceived them to be powerful, and so they became powerful. Real people perceived them as worthy of worship, and so those people became devoted—deceived, we might say—to such a degree that it cost them money, relationship (family ties as well as religious ties within pious Judaism), and—ultimately— their freedom. Though our spiritual ancestors never understood it, and though we ourselves seem willfully blind to this universal truth, at some point we must come to acknowledge that unreal things affect our reality. Invisible, immaterial, insubstantial things become powerful motivators, creditors, and critics when we allow them to dictate our behavior. And so inanimate objects became animated in the aspirations and anxieties of their followers, and they took on a kind of power over them. This power led the people to do strange and unholy things, things that went against their better judgment and their national traditions and beliefs as practicing Jews. King Manasseh, for example, erected Ashtoreth poles in the Temple because he was afraid that, without her help, Israel’s crops and Israel’s children were in trouble.

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King Solomon worshipped the gods of his many wives, among them Marduk and Ba’al, because he was afraid that it would cause trouble in his home if he declined. The Prophet Jeremiah vehemently declaimed the worship of Chemosh (national god of the Moabites), which had become prevalent among God’s people during the time prior to their exile. The people ascribed power to these previously powerless things, gave those things the authority to control them and to make them afraid. They took something lifeless and gave it authority, trading away their God-given dignity and responsibility in the process. We do this today. Instead of revering God and following him, we empower other people, other things, other systems and institutions to rule over us. I’m not referring to the political or judicial systems—this is not an anti-establishment rant—but to the power we give other people. We allow others to determine our worth through their words, or through their approval, or through their opinions, and we make our own happiness contingent upon whether or not we appease their social and relational authority. We work hard to please our boss, because if we don’t, we feel worthless. We work hard to please our father, because if we cannot, we feel like failures. We work hard to please our spouse, our in-laws, our mentors and coaches and teachers, all the while giving them more and more power over us, more and more control over us, to dictate to us how we ought to behave, how we ought to live, and how we ought to believe, never once considering that this is a power they should not have. This power—the power to approve and have it matter— is a power that rightly belongs only to God.

dr. david mcdonald

Yet still we empower them, all of the time, thoughtlessly and with great neglect, and then we fear the power we have just given away. Consequently, we feel like our value is determined by our productivity and we become victims of the fear-driven marketplace in our world. This relationship between fear and power is a potent one, for when we are afraid we can be controlled. We enslave ourselves to our own power, out on loan. This is how false gods work.

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Where “the real” is In the ancient cosmogony—the myth of the beginning of the world—the gods were seen as rulers of the world and human beings were either their food or their servants. humans were subservient and nutritious, disposable, digestible, and of no real concern to their supra-human authorities. But God—the great and wonderful God of the Bible—has a very different perspective on humanity. he did not make us for food, but for relationship. he made us to be like him, to know him, and to share with him the goodness of his creation. Somehow we find it highly appealing to trade away this divine-human relationship in favor of divine-human serfdom. We tend toward slavery. Made like God, we find ourselves making gods, and then distancing ourselves from God in an effort to please the false gods of our own creation who we cannot please or, if we do succeed in pleasing, are not satisfied. My friend Jeremy does this. When Jeremy was a young man, his father left their family, and Jeremy has been looking for a replacement dad ever since. At his first job, Jeremy worked for a restaurant that was managed by a handsome man in his early forties. he was well-to-do, eloquent, and intelligent. But he was also abrasive and narcissistic. Jeremy allowed his manager to fill in for Jeremy’s dad, desperately wanting his approval. When he didn’t get it at work it sent him into fits of melancholy and depression. Jeremy never got the approval he wanted because he was looking for that approval from a false father, a kind of false god. This issue isn’t limited to Jeremy’s employment at the restaurant. It shows up in the vulgar male comedians he enjoys, the down-talking guilt-inducing preachers he envies, and the verbal abuse he accepts from his on-again off-again girlfriend. Jeremy empowers others to tell him how worthless he is. Jeremy has value, but he doesn’t know it because he’s authorized others, to an unhealthy degree, to determine that value for him. Let’s not pretend that this condition is unique to my friend either. I suffer from this failure as well. Every time I worry about how people perceive my writing or my teaching and let their responses determine how I feel, I am empowering them as false authorities. I am making them my god(s), yearning for their approval like a supplicant. Every time we allow the opinions of others to control our behavior, to dictate our responses, and to make us afraid of their displeasure, we have made them an authority in our lives. We might argue that this is healthy in small doses. But that argument is ultimately ﬂawed. for example, I care a good deal about what my wife thinks about how I behave and how

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I look, and, to a certain extent, her presence dictates how properly I will behave. But only to a certain extent. I would never cower in front of her. I would never let her determine my value as a person. If, in some rare moment, she gets angry with me and says something hurtful, I’m not going to allow that to affect what I know to be my worth as a child of God. Every time we agree to something we’re not totally comfortable with, we empower a false authority. Every time we give in to pressure, either pressure at work, peer pressure, or pressure in social circumstance, we empower a false authority. Every time we sign something we’d rather not, or say something we don’t mean, or go along with something we would never do on our own, we empower something that will one day enslave us with fear.

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Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room for only one deity But let us not forget that the True God will not allow these false gods to compete with him, as we see by the incident in the Philistine city of Ashdod. In 1 Samuel 5 we read about the Philistines carrying the Ark of the Covenant back into their capital after routing the Israelites in battle. Within their temple, a stone statue of Dagon was erected, but when the Ark was brought into the temple, Dagonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s statue split in two. The Philistines were plagued with tumors and sores, and it was only when they finally returned it to the Israelites that they had any rest from Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s retributive justice. There is room for only one deity within us. And the real-life consequences of turning over our worship, our need for approval, and the control of our behavior to someone other than God are far worse than tumors or sores. In real life, the consequences are long unhappiness, isolation, and regret. I pray you never know how terrible that is.

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False Power People only have the power you give them. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of 32nd President of the USA We are strong enough to survive being rejected. Rabbi Harold Kushner, 20th C author and theologian Just as I was first beginning in Christian ministry, a friend of mine had a heartbreaking experience with his father. My friend’s dad was a pastor—and had been for many years— but abruptly decided to hang up his cross, abandon the faith, and pursue some shady business dealings that quickly made him a lot of money. The truly heartbreaking part of this encounter for my friend centered on a conversation he had with his father. My friend asked his dad: What happened? How could you turn your back on God? To which his father replied: What did God ever do for me? I’ve served him my whole life, and I’m poor. Your mother is unhappy. You are ungrateful. I’m not even sure God exists any more. But I am sure that I need money and I know how to get it. If everyone else is going to be miserable, at least I can be comfortable while putting up with you. That conversation took place almost ten years ago, and it has had disastrous consequences. My friend is now on his second marriage and onto his third church. he no longer speaks to his dad, and his parents have been functionally divorced for years. his dad is very wealthy, but is now more miserable than almost anyone else I’ve ever met. Strangely, though, he claims great happiness. he says his “TV keeps him warm at night.” And despite the fact that there is great evidence that God’s absence has harmed his life, he maintains that God is not real (he’s certain now, after a decade of distance) and that God never helped him before.

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from the outside, that seems like the most foolish conclusion you could possibly draw. When he was with God, loving and sacrificing for Christ and his kingdom, my friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father had security, a host of meaningful relationships, a significant support system, and two children who loved and respected him. True: he lived below the poverty line. True: his wife was cantankerous. But, also true: he was happy. What better proof could there be for the existence and potency of God?

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The Israelites did it . . . The ancient Israelites referred to the sum of this evidence as God’s “salvation history.” God, it seems, has always been in the habit of lending a helping hand. It was God who brought the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage. It was God who caused Moses’ staff to bud. It was God who rescued Daniel from the lion’s den. It was God who preserved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the midst of the fiery furnace. It was God who delivered Jonah from the belly of the whale. It was God who raised Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter from the dead, just as he split the curtain, opened the earth, and raised Christ from the dead. God acts, and his continued and persistent activity in the world has accumulated as proof to his people that he exists, he cares, and he helps. for my part, I am convinced that God is real because he has been active in my life. I am convinced he is real because I have seen him intervene medically— healing a blind boy in a filipino hospital, a lame man in a thatch shack, a swollen one in a hostel, a congested man in a sanctuary, a cancerous woman in a neighborhood. I am convinced God is real because I have seen him intervene socially— repairing the relationship between an alcoholic parent and her child, between a corrosive employee and his gracious employer, between an angry pastor and his bashful congregation. I am convinced God is real because I have seen him intervene financially— supplying the economic needs of a young family beyond any reasoned expectation of sufficiency, the tuition of an orphan from mysterious benefactors, the groceries of a layperson through an anonymous gift on their door. Some may doubt these seemingly random events to be the work of an all-powerful Creator, but in my short life I have witnessed too many coincidences, all of which are attributed by the persons involved (people I know!) to be the handiwork of their God, to sustain my disbelief.

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One miracle might be a coincidence mistaken for providence. Many miracles, many rescues and salvations, and restorations and blessings cannot be mistaken for anything other than the intervention of a God who loves the world and wants it to heal. And yet, the Israelites in the Bible were often criticized for wandering away from God. They grew bored. They doubted whether or not they had imagined God’s intervention. They became curious about other religions. Their affections strayed towards other gods, other hopes, and other beliefs about how to make the grass grow green and the rain fall when it’s dry. When we read of God’s salvation history, it can seem bafﬂing that the ancient Israelites could wander away. We wonder how they could be so obtuse that they would abandon the God of their Fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—in favor of stone statues and carvings. They were like my friend’s father—discontent with security, community, and happiness— looking instead for wealth, privilege, and entertainment.

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. . . and so do we Like our spiritual ancestors, we create and empower false authority and then cater to it. We give our peers the ability to dictate how we should behave, and then crave their attention and acceptance. We give our employers the power to dictate the terms of our humanity, of our family life, of our workﬂow and rhythm and values, and then spend all our time trying to make them believe we’re not only good at our job, but that we are also good at being human because we’re good at our job. We have power, but we give it away and grant authority over ourselves to others. We falsify ourselves in an effort to please the ones who have power over us, because false fear always gives birth to false power. We’re afraid we do not know what the powers want, and even if we did we’re afraid we would not be able to deliver. We’re afraid of being too slow, too old, too fat, too dim, too poor, too uncouth, too controlling, too obtuse, too broken, too mean, of having too much in our past for which we cannot be forgiven, of having been given so many second and third chances that no fool would ever believe we could succeed if given just one more chance to prove that we are not, in fact, fools. We’re afraid of being a disappointment, of letting down “the powers” or “the authority” in our lives, whatever they may be. I was initially tempted to think this was only [a] my fear, or [b] only the fears of a young man, but through some heartfelt conversations with my elders and betters, I became convinced that all of us fear being useless, unproductive, and leaches rather than leaders. No one wants to live on social security. 32

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The masters In fact, when I am privileged to spend time with the elder members of our community—the Masters, as I’ve taken to calling them—I am almost always certain to hear a lament about their declining usefulness. Once proud and independent, many of the Masters now feel as if they have become a burden upon society. They hate this. They hear, in their minds as they hear on TV, the frustration of the younger generations who must now work longer and be taxed more greatly in order to foot the bill of the government’s retirement plan. And, more than anyone else alive, the Masters wish it were different. They want to work. They want to contribute. They want to provide and grow and achieve and love and enjoy. But instead they feel trapped. I remember one old gal holding my hand in hers, her eyes rheumy and her knuckles spotted, asking me to pray that God would let her die, not because she was ill, but because she was a disappointment. I cannot help, she said. I cannot hold the grandchildren. I cannot cook, or drive myself anywhere, and when it comes time for everyone to do something around the house I just have to sit there so I don’t get hurt by accident and cause a fuss. It’s time for me to move on. In that moment, I reminded her that she was worth more than her productivity. As old as she was, she was still a child—she and I are peers in Christian heritage—and God still had plans for her. The righteous will ﬂourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will ﬂourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him. Psalms 92.12-15 In our lives, the Masters have made a significant contribution. My wife’s grandmother, Elisabeth Burke, was a strong woman of profound faith. Before Carmel ever knew Christ, she knew her grandmother to be a woman of beauty, truth, and love. Elisabeth used to write Carmel letters of encouragement, in which she would tell my wife-to-be that she was praying for her to find a husband, to love a family, and to know God.

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When I ask Carmel about her conversion experience, it is invariably these letters to which she refers. Though she accepted Christ during her college years as a result of a Campus ministry, it was those letters from Elisabeth that sowed seeds of faith in her spirit for many, many years. Elisabeth was not productive in the mind of the world, but her faith produced something of tremendous value in the mind of God and in the hearts of Jacob, Anna, and David. What we all need is a solid and unwavering grasp of the fact that we are worthy because we are God’s. We have been made to be like him in some important sense and that godliness gives us—in and of itself—an inherent human value that no one can ever take away. The real monster is not the magical creature ﬂoating through the heavens forcing us to obey. The real monster is the monster we make of ourselves when we give the power over our own happiness to someone other than God.

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You Are Worthy I can clearly remember one Sunday morning, sitting in church listening to the sermon and asking God: What is my greatest need? Just as I wrote down the answer—my greatest need is for approval—I heard the preacher, a guest that day, say that “the need for approval is indicative of the fear of man.” The “fear of man” is a biblical construct referring to the power we give others over us, our willingness to allow others to determine our worth and our value based on their opinion of our performance, our appearance, or our ability to contribute to their vision of the world. It’s what we’ve been talking about as the construction of a false god. And it was my biggest need in life. Ouch. God used that “coincidence” to convict me of my inability to believe the scriptures. The Bible teaches clearly that human beings have worth and dignity because we are made in the image and likeness of our Creator. We are inherently valuable because we are like God and, beyond this, we have additional value because we have been redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God paid a high price for us, and that price determines our worth.

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God determines your worth When I recognized that I was enslaved to the fear of man, it was like a lance going through my heart. I was looking for my security in the wrong place and God was reminding me of where my true value actually resides. In him. In him in me. To those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God John 1.12 In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ Ephesians 1.5 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children...heirs and joint heirs with Jesus. Romans 8.16 There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Matthew 10.26-31 I began to pray and invest myself in the scriptures above, seeking God’s wisdom and understanding of what it means for me to be his child, desperate for the appropriate source of approval. I began to repeat to myself, over and over, the promises of scripture: I am a child of God, I am made in the image and likeness of my creator, I am worthy, I am worthy.

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And over time the truth of that message began to sink in. My worth is not determined by my productivity, my wit, my popularity, or my sexual attractiveness. I belong to God. I have dignity and worth. God determines my value. I matter. I am not my job. I am not my father. I am not my teacher. I am like God. I am God’s. I know this now. I have this knowledge tucked into a secret place inside of me. I can remember this, and I can recall it when I find myself discouraged or disabused of some other truth. We all need to be reminded of this. When the false gods beckon us back into slavery— when others dictate to us the means by which they will determine our value—we need to repel them and their judgments and remember that we belong to God. you are God’s. God places the price tag on your heart and the sticker on your soul reads, “SOLD.” you have been purchased, bought with a price, and redeemed. your soul is not now for sale. Do not every forget this one human truth: You are worthy because you are His.

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dr. david mcdonald

monsters

dr. david mcdonald

monsters

Cryptozoology My dad is a preacher, and a fine one, I suppose. It’s difficult to be inspired by your father, though, when the same voice that tells you “thus sayeth the Lord” also tells you to go to your room and make your bed. Truth be told, when it came time for bedtime stories, I was always more partial to “once upon a time” than “thou shalt not.” This was never more apparent, even in the limited understanding of my adolescence, than when I was forced to sit through an adult service at our church. The music sounded to my young ears like it was pulled out of wooden lungs and stretched from yawning throats. The prayers were like boring afternoon television on a rainy Saturday, and the preaching was a long scold. Tired of my ecclesial lamentations, my folks decided my religious enthusiasm might be stimulated if I had a big-boy Bible. They took me to the store and let me pick out a study Bible, one with footnotes and maps and appendices, that would be my companion on Sunday evenings for those times when I got bored of staring at the maroon-colored carpet and orange-peel pews. That next Sunday night I cracked open said Bible and quickly discovered it was mostly boring too. But, it was too late. The Bible was both my savior and my sentence and I was stuck with it (like it or not). I didn’t like it for a long time, until I one day stumbled across a peculiar passage in a peculiar book named Job:

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Can you pull in the Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering. His snorting throws out ﬂashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn. Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds. Nothing on earth is his equal— a creature without fear. Job 41.1,9,18-20,33 Wait a minute, I thought, this sounds cool. I began to envision some sort of dragon, yahweh’s pet that inspired awesome fear in the hearts of God’s adversaries. Why hadn’t I been told about this before? Who had kept this amazing science-fiction secret from me, and why?

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Monsters of the Bible There are many such monsters in the Bible: Leviathan, Behemoth, the basilisk, mermen, unicorns, giants, and dwarves. They fall into the category of cryptozoology—creatures of legend, myth, and lore—and I wonder sometimes if the Bible isn’t poorer since our translators did away with these potentially embarrassing nouns. further dumb luck with a concordance revealed to me that there were other mentions of Leviathan in the Bible. In Psalm 104, for example, Leviathan is imagined as a playful part of God’s wondrous creation, while Leviathan is seen in Psalm 74 as an adversary to the creator. This challenged me. I began to wonder if sin was possible among God’s nonhuman creation—the fall of the Cryptids, for example—a tragedy among mythological types. Leviathan, I reasoned, couldn’t be wholly evil, for God created nothing evil. So if Leviathan (by the way, they seemed to be a species of creature rather than just one monstrous creation) were the adversary of God, they must have fallen from a great height. They were not malicious creatures, but unfortunate ones who made themselves miserable in their rebellion and now sought to make humans miserable as well. Over the years I have found there to be incredible artistry in the Genesis account of God creating Leviathan (tannin, literally “the great sea monsters”). The vernacular used in this passage of the Bible is closely associated with the legend of Prince yam, the chaos monster we mentioned in section 1 who fought Ba’al for supremacy in heaven. here, though, the tannin is no chaos monster, but part of God’s good and well-ordered creation. The biblical writers often represented Israel’s enemies as terrifying beasts. Egypt, for example, was often portrayed as a chaos monster whom God defeated by means of the Exodus. In Psalm 89 we read that God crushed the haughty Rahab (a chaos-serpent, another name for Leviathan), and in Isaiah 51 the prophet recalls God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt in terms of a victorious battle against Rahab and yam, written in hopes of rousing God to defend Israel against their new enemy, Babylon. And, of course, Leviathan is not the only cryptozoological being in scripture. In the book of Job, Leviathan has a close companion known as Behemoth. The Behemoth in Job likely refers to a hippopotamus, though it’s easy to understand why previous generations have ascribed mythical traits to this abnormal brute.

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Look at the Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. his bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God, yet his Maker can approach him with his sword. The hills bring him their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby. under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal him in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround him. When the river rages, he is not alarmed; he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth. Can anyone capture him by the eyes, or trap him and pierce his nose? Job 40.15-24 Leviathan and Behemoth...act as living billboards for God’s sublime creativity and awe-inspiring authority. The giant creatures are not opposed to God, but represent the more chaotic and frightening visage of God. Stephen Asma, 20th Century biblical scholar here are some of the other biblical monsters: A basilisk had the body of a snake, the head and wings of a rooster, two to eight birdlike legs, and killed people merely by looking at them. ...out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a basilisk (cockatrice), and his fruit shall be a fiery ﬂying serpent. Isaiah 14.29, KVJ (1611) Until the middle ages, during which time the existence of actual unicorns was officially debunked, the ‘singlehorn’ mentioned in the hebrew Bible was popularly conceived as a unicorn. Only later, when the dubious existence of a horse or goat-like creature with

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a long horn and possessing magical powers was finally put to rest, did these passages come under closer scrutiny. The popular, scholarly, opinion is that the singlehorn (re’em) mentioned in the scriptures was a rhinoceros. God brought them out of Egypt. he has as though the glory of a re’em (literally. ‘singlehorn’, Greek monokeros). Numbers 23.22 In Leviticus, another mythical creature appears, as we read about what can only be merfolk: And everything that does not have scales in the seas and in the streams—from all that swarms in the water, and from all the living souls (nefesh ha-chayah) in the water—they are an abomination to you. Leviticus 11.10 Nefesh ha-chayah means, literally, “the soul of the animal of the sea.” Rabbinical commentators (among them Rabbi Avraham ben David and Rabbi Tzvi hirsch Rappaport) consider this to be evidence of a mermaid, being similar to a fish, with scales close to its tail, and with long arms and the form of a person. Giants also appear in several places throughout the first Testament, most notably Goliath (1 Samuel 17.4-7), Og (Deuteronomy 3.11), the Anakim (Numbers 13.32-33), and the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 2.10-11). Dwarves, or gammadin (hebrew, see Ezekiel 27.11), were tribal archers from the regions next to Palestine, and were thought to grow only as large as five feet, though some were as diminutive as eighteen inches. how the rabbinical community arrived at this consensus seems confusing, but in Judges 3.16, Ehud is noted as having a dagger in proportion to the length of a gammedin (“of a gomed length”) and that dagger fit beneath his right thigh. So either Ehud was a sizeable giant, or the gammedin were very small. Scripture even describes episodes of human-animal transmogrification. King Nebuchadnezzar, for example, is recorded as turning into a wild animal in Daniel 4.30, and many medieval scholars considered this to be a kind of lycanthropy—meaning, Nebuchadnezzar was a werewolf. While such a belief would be totally outlandish today, back then it was far more commonplace. Though some likely interpreted this passage as a reference to a kind of mental illness, others literally believed be became a wild beast. There is also mention of a phoenix (hebrew chol) in the book of Job. The Midrash contains a discussion about Eve feeding the domesticated and wild animals from the Tree of

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Knowledge, and all the birds accepted this food except the chol who, according to Rabbi yuden, had no need of long life because the chol lives for a thousand years anyway, before it finally withers into a heap no larger than an egg. From this heap eventually grow new limbs, and the chol lives again (Midrash Bereishis Rabbah 19.5). I would say, in my nest I shall expire, and as the chol, increase my days. Job 29.18 The righteous shall bloom like the phoenix. Psalm 92.13 LXX, trans. There are also plenty of composite beings—or griffins—in the Bible: In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea. The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a man, and the heart of a man was given to it. And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, ‘Get up and eat your fill of ﬂesh!’ After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule. After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast—terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns. Daniel 7.2-7 Dragons, called ‘fiery ﬂying serpents,’ are mentioned in Isaiah 14.29 and Isaiah 30.6, just as they figure predominantly in John’s description of the Apocalypse (more on that in a later section). The nephilim, or grigori (literally “the watchers”) are those sons of God who mated with the daughters of men (see Genesis 6.1-4). for many thousands of years interpreters have

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understood this to mean that fallen angels came and impregnated human women, giving birth to giants and monsters. Enoch, an apocryphal author considered to be authoritative in Jewish mystical literature, held that it was the destruction of these angel-human hybrids that occasioned the great ďŹ&#x201A;ood in Genesis 6 and not the sins of humanity at all.

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Feeling not at home while at home As I survey all of this incredible material, a veritable compendium of monsters from within the pages of scripture, I cannot help but wonder what sense we are to make of it. What are we supposed to do with all these creatures that had real impact upon the biblical world and the biblical characters? If you believe, as I do, that all scripture is useful for teaching and training in righteousness (see 2 Timothy 3.16), then what possible use are we to make of these monstrosities? What can we learn from people who were scared of things that aren’t real? There is a word, unheimlich, that comes to mind here. It is a term first coined by Sigmund freud and literally means “unhomely” or “uncanny.” Heimlich refers to that which belongs inside the four walls of our home, so unheimlich refers to the fear that our home is not safe, that our sanctuary has been compromised. This is the root of all fears concerning things that go bump in the night. This is the root of our paranoia, our exposure, and our shame. Monsters are personifications of the unheimlich— they stand for what endangers our sense of safety at home, our sense of stability, integrity, security, well-being, health, and meaning. They make us feel not at home while at home. This is why so many scary movies involve people being attacked at home. for example, in the beginning of Scream, a babysitter is taunted by a serial killer who is calling her from within her own house. This is also why we find such comfort in the inability of vampires to cross a threshold without an invitation. We know we’re safe at home, so long as we don’t invite the devil in for tea. We are terrified of what might be out there—monsters, giants, and killers—even if they aren’t real. We supply ourselves with ample horror without any help from the real world. And so it is crucial that we remember that what’s “out there” is less significant that what lives inside.

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Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. 1 John 4.4 Make your home in me, as I make my home in you. Those who remain in me with me in them, bear fruit in plenty. John 15.4-5 I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. John 15.11

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Conquering fear, not being controlled by it We need never be afraid of monsters. Like actors on a stage they can change their shape and frighten children, but are permitted to do no real harm. The real harm is often caused by us while we are controlled by our fear. I have an old acquaintance, for example, who found himself hardly recognizable after a long period of giving himself over to his baser emotions. We played rugby together in college, and he was always fearful that he would lose his starting position on the team. Truthfully, he was a fine athlete and shouldn’t have had any real worries, but his fears gnawed at him. He worried he would be replaced by someone quicker, and once replaced he would not enjoy the same camaraderie with his fellow starters, and and once robbed of his position and popularity he would no longer enjoy the game he had loved for his entire life. he was afraid I was going to take his place. Which, eventually, I did, though not necessarily because I was a better player. In fact, I’m still convinced he was my superior on the pitch in almost every category. But my friend’s fears and anxieties caused him to behave differently. he was more short-tempered, more prone to ﬂy off the handle, which caused him to take stupid penalties and compromise our defense. his behavior created tension with the other starting players, who no longer felt like playing with him because he was such a loose-canon. He couldn’t enjoy the game, just as he couldn’t allow them to enjoy the game. he had become a monster. Like the titular character(s) in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll Hyde, my teammate had succumbed to his darker nature because of his inability and Mr. Hyde to control his fear concerning what might happen. There is a monster like that in each of us, a looming threat, best described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 7: I do not understand what I do. for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. for what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

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So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! We become our own bestiary when we allow our fears to deform us. The monsters “out there” are far less problematic than the monsters we become when we are distorted by pride, hatred, fear, prejudice, judgment, religion, and expediency. What we need is a strong assurance that, even while living with the possibility that there are monsters out there somewhere, God will protect and defend us. What we need is a strong confidence that we do not need to revert to our baser natures in order to cope with the unknown, the terrifying, and the threatening “out there,” because we can – instead – trust in God. What time I’m afraid, I will trust in you. Psalm 56.3 KJV

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Out There Terrorism stops you from claiming the world as your own. It stops you from relating to other people. It creates fear and hatred. The only way to fight terrorism is to deny them those emotions . . . the one thing they are not expecting is my happiness. That is true revenge. Mariane Pearl, wife of Wall Street Journalist Daniel Pearl, who was abducted and killed by Islamic fundamentalists Many people live with a constant, pervading fear of what’s “out there.” My old neighbor, for example, used to ask me why I would ever want to go trick-or-treating on halloween down one particular street in our neighborhood. Despite having never been down that street herself, or even knowing anyone who lived there, this old gal used to always tell me: don’t do down there, there’s weirdos. Weirdos. Weirdos keep us in at night, but so does the fear of the unknown: the dark spot under the bed, the house at the end of the row, the forest path, the abandoned farm, the burned shed, and the lurking suspicion that someone, something, somewhere, soon, will get us somehow.

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Which, I think, is why there is now an Apple app for the iPhone that tracks the movements of sex offenders. Dubbed â&#x20AC;&#x153;Offender Locator,â&#x20AC;? this handy little widget can be downloaded onto your iPhone and will inform you of the present living arrangements of nearby sex offenders.

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Afraid of what’s out there Despite the fact that it is to a certain extent cautious and prudent to know who lives in your neighborhood, just as it demonstrates wisdom and good parenting to know where your kids are spending their time, and just as its important for the legally available information regarding previously (and possibly once again) dangerous people to be distributed to concerned parties, it is also indicative of a particular kind of fear on our part. We’re afraid those sex offenders are coming for us, and for our kids. We’re afraid they are plotting and planning to sneak up on us and do us harm. Don’t get me wrong, when we were informed about the halfway house in our neighborhood (primarily conditioned for sex offenders seeking to reenter society), I tucked a little note away in my mind that will ensure my children don’t go riding their bikes alone at night by that house. But I was surprised at the reaction of some folks in our community when the app first came out. We almost had a lynching. There was panic. Nothing in our lives had really changed, we all know there are unsafe people in any neighborhood which is why we’re cautious about the safety and protection of our children and ourselves. But now that we knew who the unsafe people were and what manner of harm they had previously caused, our community was out for blood. Because we’re afraid of what’s “out there.” Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. James 4.13-14 Paranoia besets us. We are petrified of all the things “out there.” We worry about terrorists, killers and rapists, oil shortages and ozone depletion. We get scared about the condition of the economy, the rising interest rates, the possibility of foreclosure, affordable tuition, and the cost of milk and cheese.

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We wonder if this will be the paycheck when we finally run out of money, or if this will be the boy that finally hurts our daughter, or if this will be the woman who takes us for everything we have. We are afraid of not being protected. We are afraid God is not really watching, or if heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s watching he has chosen to watch us squirm. Anthrax is not contagious...fear of anthrax is. Dr. Marc Siegel, 20th C associate professor of medicine at NYU

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The fear is worse than what we fear But what we need to understand is that our worry about all of these evils neither diminishes the probability of our harm, nor increases our ability to cope with it. In fact, our worries and fears likely encroach more upon our happiness than actually suffering one of our worst fears come true. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Matthew 6.15-27 for example, a wonderful couple in our church (we’ll call them Ted and Susan) recently shared with me their life-long fear of losing their home in a fire. Susan told me about their paranoia concerning things like appliances left on, electric outlets uncovered, unclosed microwave doors, and the like. Half-joking she told me it was almost impossible for them to go away on any kind of vacation without having to double back and then check every single thing in their house “one more time” in order to ensure there wouldn’t be a fire while they were away. Susan also mentioned they routinely had someone come to their home while they were away to check on the house in case it did catch fire, so they could come back and try to save something at least. Susan said they lived with this exhausting fear for decades. And then, one day, their house burned down and they lost everything. I’ll never forget Susan’s words to me on the phone, delivered while she watched the firemen put out the last glimmers of ﬂame on their ruined house: Here it is, our worst fear come true, and you know what? It’s okay. I can feel God’s peace and it’s amazing. Jesus is very real right now and we’re going to be okay. If I’d known this, I never would have wasted all this time worrying. It’s ironic, isn’t it?

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How to have courage Even in the midst of our worst fears coming true, the grace and peace of Jesus Christ are sufficient to sustain us through difficulty and deliver us out the other side. It’s going to be okay. Yes—there are monsters out there, both real and imagined. Yes—there are things in this world that can harm you, that can take away those you love, that can rob you of your possessions. Yes—the world is unsafe, uncertain, and insecure. All of that may be true, but what’s also true is that Jesus will sustain you and make you brave in the midst of even the most trying circumstances. While we are simply concerned with getting through life with the least amount of discomfort and inconvenience, the Spirit is working inside of us to make us strong and keep us courageous. We worry about getting through it; God is more concerned about what we’re getting through it. We want to get it over with; he wants us to get over ourselves. It’s the difference between endurance and development. And, if we fail to learn, we find ourselves repeating life’s lessons endlessly. Life is scary, but God is awesome, mighty, supreme, sovereign, and steadfast. What you need is not life lived in anxiety, but courage to live in the face of your fears and keep living the life God has designed for you to enjoy. Bravery means going through scary stuff. As George Clooney said in Three Kings, “you can’t be brave if you’re not scared.” Courage trumps fear every time, because with each courageous encounter our old fears diminish and the next thing that frightens us will already have met its match. God gives us that courage. When we know and understand who we are to him, we know and understand that he protects us. The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27.1

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Perhaps an old fairy tale helps illuminate the nature of God’s protection and his commitment to rescue his children. Be advised: this is a fairy tale, and like every such tale, it’s relationship to reality ultimately breaks down. But it’s a story I tell my children to remind them they are not forgotten, they will never be abandoned, and God will pursue them relentlessly across the earth. Twelve princesses, each more beautiful than the last, slept in twelve beds in the same room; every night their doors were securely locked, but in the morning their shoes were found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night. The king, concerned and perplexed—for his daughters were as worn out as their shoes—promised his kingdom and a daughter to any man who could uncover what was going on. An old soldier who had just returned from the war came to the king’s aid. While traveling through a wood he came upon an old woman, who gave him an invisibility cloak and told him not to eat or drink anything given to him by one of the princesses who would come to him in the evening, and to pretend to be fast asleep after the princess left. The soldier was well received at the palace and indeed, in the evening, the eldest princess came to his chamber and offered him a cup of wine. The soldier, remembering the old woman’s advice, threw it away secretly and began to snore very loudly as if asleep. The princesses, sure that the soldier was asleep, dressed themselves in fine clothes and escaped from their room by a trap door in the ﬂoor. The soldier, seeing this, donned his invisibility cloak and followed them down. The passageway led them to three groves of trees; the first having leaves of silver, the second of gold, and the third of diamonds. The soldier broke off a twig of each as evidence. They walked on until they came upon a great lake. Twelve boats with twelve princes in them were waiting. Each princess went into one, and the soldier stepped into one as well. Once he was in the boat, the old soldier got a closer look at the princes. They were not princes at all, as it turned out, but goblins possessing a powerful magic placing the princesses under an enchantment of desire and frivolity. Once the boat reached the other side of the lake, the goblin princes and the twelve princesses entered into a magnificent castle and danced the night away. The princesses danced until their shoes were worn through and they were obliged to leave, sore and fatigued. This strange adventure went on for three consecutive nights, and everything happened just as before, except that on the third night the soldier carried away the

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golden cup of the Goblin King as proof of where he had been. When it came time for him to declare the princessesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; secret, he went before the king with the three branches and the golden cup and told him everything. upon hearing this alarming truth, the king roused his soldiers and led them down the trap door. They dressed as princesses themselves and laid in wait until nightfall. When the goblin princelings arrived, the soldiers killed them, dispelling the threat to their children and the future of their kingdom. The soldier then chose the eldest princess as his bride (for he was not a very young man), and was made the kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heir. The goblins taste for the company of princesses was greatly diminished by the affair, and no further enchantments were cast. I use this story to remind my children that they are protected. I offer it humbly to you, an adaptation of one of Aesopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fables, to remind you of the same. you are a child of God. you are not lost. you are safely at home and your father is with you. his Spirit protects you. his Son defends you. And you are not afraid. Because you love me, says the Lord, I will rescue you; I will protect you, for you acknowledge my name. Psalm 91.14

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You Are Protected Jesus doesn’t promise to calm every storm, but to calm us in the midst of every storm. Len Sweet fear not, for I am with you, says the Lord. Isaiah 41.10 The other day I was getting on an airplane, and on a whim, I asked the elderly couple behind me if they had grandchildren, and, if so, what they told their grandchildren when they got scared. The woman looked at me, beaming, and said, “Easy...you’ve got angels!” Ha! And you do! I mean, normally we would be tempted to dismiss this comment or laugh it off; but the beauty of it is found in its simplicity. We are divinely protected. Before I spend a few moments justifying this, though, indulge me for just a moment and simply acknowledge how quickly we’ll believe in the destructive forces of this world—the monsters “out there”—but not in the generative, protective, life-giving forces of this world. We seem to have no difficulty believing in monsters, sometimes we feel compelled really, but are spectacularly unable to believe for even one minute in a cherub, a phoenix, or a holy beast upon which we will be borne into a fearless freedom.

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Newt: My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones – but there are. Ripley: yes, there are, aren’t there? Newt: Why do they tell little kids that? Ripley: Most of the time it’s true. From Aliens (1986), directed by James Cameron Why are we so apt to feel unsafe, but so unwilling to feel protected by good monsters of our Maker? how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it. St. Jerome

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Guardian angels No one knows for sure whether or not we each get own guardian angel (or, for that matter if we are able to get more than one each), but the concept that there are guardian angels is clearly seen in both Testaments. In Matthew 18.10, for example, Jesus says of children, “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my father in heaven.” This is often understood to mean that children are protected by guardian angels, and appears to be corroborated by hebrews 1.14 when speaking of angels, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” Other references to guardian angels include Acts 12.12-15 (when Rhoda believes she sees Peter’s guardian angel), and the episode in Genesis 28-29 in which angels play the dual role of God’s executors of divine judgment and Lot’s spiritual protectors. The first Christian theologian to outline a specific scheme for guardian angels was honorius of Autun in the 12th century, and his work was further developed by Thomas Aquinas who believed that lesser angels served as guardians. Since then poets and thinkers, philosophers and rock stars have all extrapolated the work done by those theological pioneers with one rare and tremendous result: Our basic, culturally-formed belief in guardian angels is actually legit. Who knew? There is no one like the God of Israel, who rides on the heavens to help you and on the clouds in His majesty. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. he will drive out your enemies before you, saying: Destroy him! Deuteronomy 33.26-27

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You are protected Those moments when you’re afraid, when you’re walking through a dark place and feel an oppressive presence, when there is a scuttling behind you, when you feel a descending gloom, do not be afraid. When boogeymen of all sorts and shapes come at you— in your room as a child, in the hallway as a teenager, on the Dean’s list as a collegiate, and in the boardroom, the neighborhood, or the senior’s center as an adult— threatening to make you feel unsafe even in the places where you feel at home, do not be afraid. you’ve got angels. you are protected. Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me. Psalm 50.15 he has delivered us and he will continue to deliver us... 2 Corinthians 1.10 It is the certainty of God’s protection that gives us the courage to face danger. And though, sometimes, the nature and the manner of his protection may seem puzzling, we are protected nonetheless.

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More than one kind of protection One of my favorite stories of protection concerns the second century Christian martyr, Polycarp. Polycarp was the Bishop of Smyrna during the persecution of Christians by Marcus Aurelius (yes, the one from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator). As a personal friend and disciple of the Apostle John, Polycarp had learned generosity and hospitality in the face of dire circumstance. So, when the Roman centurions arrived at his home to arrest him, Polycarp made them a meal, served it to them, blessed them, and inquired after their families. The soldiers were so impressed by Polycarp that, instead of executing him on the spot, as per their original instructions, they lead him on horseback to the Emperor to have his fate decided officially. Marcus Aurelius, too, was impressed by the elderly gentleman and promised to spare his life if Polycarp would simply recant his faith in Christ. Polycarp famously replied: Eighty-six years I have served him, and he never once wronged me. How can I blaspheme my King, the God who saved me? Outraged by this response, for he perceived himself to the Polycarp’s true regent, Marcus Aurelius began to threaten him with fire and torture and the promise of being fed to wild beasts in the arena. Again, Polycarp famously replied: What are you waiting for? You may do whatever you please. At this point, the elderly saint was seized and bound at the foot of a stake. Kindling was laid and a fire was lit, but Polycarp did not burn. Confused and frustrated, a soldier ran forward into the inferno and stabbed the Bishop through the heart, at which point the gross effusion of blood from his chest extinguished the ﬂames. Relighting the fire, the soldiers then cut up his body, and burned Polycarp in the Coliseum. I am at peace. He, who gave me strength to sustain the fire, is he who helps me not ﬂinch from the pile. Polycarp’s dying words, as witnessed by his executioner, c. 161 AD.

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Polycarp was protected, even though he died. his integrity was protected. his reputation was protected. his dignity was protected. The value of his witness and testimony was protected. Because of his stalwart example, because of his courage, the Gospel of Christ Jesus was protected. Because he willingly went into the fire, the future of Christian spirituality was not only protected but perpetuated.

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Life worth living Some might scoff at this little litany of God’s so-called “protection,” and I understand their initial skepticism. After all, what good is protection if you still suffer and die? But, in response, I might ask: What good is life if you can’t stand by your beliefs? If you are coerced into living unethically by the dominant forces of power and control? If you must compromise your identity, your integrity, and live in fear? you might “survive” in the strictest sense, but to what end? What life would then be worth living? Every man dies, but not every man truly lives. William Wallace, Braveheart (1995) The world is not safe, but you are protected within it. you are not alone. There are outlaws in the world, but there are guardians too. The King’s justice will prevail. When you feel yourself caught up in the fear of everything “out there,” do not be afraid. The Garden is overrun with monsters, but the Spirit goes before you with fire, and he is around you like a hedge, and is within you as Light.

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Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Psalm 23.4

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dr. david mcdonald

monsters

dr. david mcdonald

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Apocalyptic Monsters Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. his tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and ﬂung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. Revelation 12.3-4 And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. he had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority… Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. he had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. Revelation 13.1-2, 11 In the final year of my undergraduate degree, I did a yearlong concentration on apocalyptic literature. I studied privately with an international scholar, and we began our work in (and quickly past) the biblical books of Daniel and John’s Revelation. Throughout that year, I learned the basic rules of this genre of sacred literature—secrecy and numerology, prophecy-as-forecast and prophecy-as-criticism, metaphor and vision, semiotics and inspiration. It was an incredible year. The best part about it was that I got to deal with dragons. I’m now thirty-three, hardly more than a slightly fatter version of myself as a young boy reading the appendices in his Bible to stay awake in church. I like it that way, and I’m convinced that God gave us our capacity for novelty and wonder and curiosity, so I’m praying that it won’t diminish in me anytime soon. I’ve turned my love of all things cryptozoological into a continued study of apocalyptic vision, of God’s final cleanup of this world (and the marriage of this creation to a new,

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heavenly creation), and of the End in which every wrong path will be made straight and every broken thing made whole. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,â&#x20AC;? says the Lord. Isaiah 65.25 I have learned that the monsters in Revelation and other apocalyptic literature are not real in the strictest sense, just like Leviathan, Marduk, and Dagon. The four beasts of Daniel and the dragon and hydra of Revelation are incarnations of the fall and its effects upon all the world. They are divinely inspired images meant to convey a spiritual truth, symbols of prideful insurgency. Whether they refer to one particular political leader (likely the Roman Emperor Nero) or any political system that seeks to oppress the people of God (also a common understanding and interpretation of Revelation), the monsters are symbols of what men will inevitably become, pawns in various regimes of torture attempting to rule without the guidance and approval of God.

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Dragons and horned beasts Allow me a brief moment to provide an overview of the apocalyptic bestiary in Revelation. It involves, among other things, a giant red dragon (12.3), a hybrid leopard-bear-lion beast (13.2), and a two-horned beast that emerges from underground (13.11). These three creatures work a kind of cooperative evil in the world, and their monstrous hierarchy is clear in scripture: The satanic hydra is the central authority of evil, giving power and strength to the beast from the sea with seven cat-like heads, who in turn is served by the beast from the earth (referred to as the “false prophet”). It is the subservient beast of the earth that famously encourages humans to get “the mark” of the sea beast, the number 666, thereby revealing to us the job description of the false prophet as a kind of PR rep for the sea beast. The dragon plays a crucial role throughout the Apocalypse and also down through the ages as a symbolic counterpart to Christian virtue in western Christianity. In eastern Christianity, however, prior to the military and cultural dominance of China, the dragon was a Christian symbol of awe and power, Leviathan before the fall, and it reminded God’s people of his tremendous creative power and love of creation. I was once heavily chastised by a middle-aged Canadian woman of Asian descent for using a dragon as a sermon illustration, in which I portrayed dragons in a heroic light. It was a profoundly liberating experience for her when I walked her through both (a) the scriptures concerning Leviathan and the delight God takes in play with him, and (b) the history concerning dragons in the Christian east. We should not shy away from the weird stuff in the Bible. Seminaries (pastor-training schools) are very fond of telling their students that we should really only explore the bits of the Bible that can be easily explained and that point obviously to Christ as our Savior. I think that approached is deeply ﬂawed. Christ is our example in every aspect of life—including the aspects of biblical study, pedagogy, and ministry—and he often spoke in parables that were difficult for even his closest followers to understand, cited obscure scriptures and imbued them with new meaning, and spoke about himself as Messiah and Immanuel in rather vague and shadowy terms. If Jesus opted not to focus on the ‘main and the plain’ (as they say), why should we? The clear and the obvious bits of Scripture make for a good essay, but a dull theology, a ﬂavorless Christianity, like a meal without salt. The hard parts contain great worth for us—they teach us not to be afraid of things we cannot fully explain, of our heritage, or of novelty and joy and delight for their own sake.

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What if I’m wrong… At any rate, the reason I feel like the dragon, hydra, and beast are worth noting here is not merely for their own sake, but for the bloodlust that seems to come upon many Christian people while reading the book of Revelation. Something happens to many of our friends and peers while perusing the pages of this difficult-to-understand-but-full-of-disasterousconsequences-if-you-do-not book. In my experience, most people come to John’s Revelation unaware of the basic literary guidelines of apocalyptic literature and biased towards a narrative of violence (thank you halo, Desert Storm, and Quentin Tarantino). They are full of a misplaced confidence that, because they are smart people and want to listen to the holy Spirit, they alone of all people in the world will correctly understand and reveal the mysteries within that that have confounded minds of brilliance and genius for centuries. It is this ﬂaw in our thinking at leads us to associate Russia or Iran or China or whomever we happen to be scared of at the moment with the biblical nations of Gog and Magog, while casting ourselves as the White Army of God because we live in America. What we need in the American church, perhaps more than anything, is an alternative understanding of eschatology and the Apocalypse. We need something more biblical, more consistent, and something far less grotesque than what we see on Christian TV or read about in Left Behind. Dwight Friesen, 20th C Associate Professor of Practical Theology, Mars Hill Graduate School We love the End Times. We love to think about God’s retributive justice finally coming down from heaven and blowing evildoers away like napalm in the morning. We enjoy cultivating horrible scenarios like these because we know we will be okay. “They” will get what’s coming to them, and we will get crowns and mansions and enjoy an eternity of perpetual ecstasy. But behind this violent fantasy—or, if I may humbly suggest, because of it—we secretly hold onto a very dark set of fears. Way back in our subconscious, in the part that only really speaks to us when we feel ashamed or have sinned or are at our weakest, there is a fear that we might be on the wrong side, that maybe we’ve screwed something up, and or fear that maybe we’re wrong. It is this fear I would like to address in this section of Monsters—the fear that God is not altogether good, or that we are not altogether right, or that our sins have not altogether been forgotten.

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We live in fear of the End, and that it will somehow end badly for us. Though the wicked spout like grass and evildoers ďŹ&#x201A;ourish, they are destined to be destroyed forever. Psalm 92.7

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Retributive Justice As a young man, eager to please and curious about the exact nature of God’s dealings with people, I made God a promise that after the next time I sinned I would not stop begging for his forgiveness until he made it stop raining. I lived in the Pacific Northwest at that time and it was winter, so I should not have been surprised when it didn’t stop raining. In fact, it poured non-stop for three days. Those were terrifying days, full of horrified prayers. I remember wondering: Should I build an ark? Will this rain actually stop? Have I misunderstood all those parts of the Bible that deal with grace? Is my belief in God’s forgiveness severely ﬂawed? A few months after that experience, I reﬂected much on what God was trying to teach me. I realized, among other things, that I have always lived with the fear that God isn’t interested in forgiving me for things I could have chosen not to do. Contrary to all scriptural evidence, I only thought God forgave accidental sins—like if Eve had inadvertently eaten the apple because it was hidden beneath some romaine in her spring salad.

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What if Jesus doesn’t love me? These fears are common to us all, especially those of us who grew up reading scripture and hearing about the revulsion with which God views sin. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. Colossians 3.5-6 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 6.9-10 The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. Revelation 21.8 We’re afraid of God, afraid we’ve made too many mistakes to be forgiven, afraid of the consequences of our sins after we’ve been saved. So, many of us ask Jesus to save us all over again. We wonder: What if “God is love” is a lie? What if Christianity is a lie? We fear punishment, we fear judgment, we’re afraid that God isn’t good, and that worksrighteousness (the idea that you get into heaven because of all the good stuff you’ve done instead of the free gift of God’s grace) actually is the way the metaphysical universe works and we haven’t done enough. We fear that no one else will get what they deserve, or that we won’t get the good stuff we think we do deserve. And the truly evil component of these fears is that we have no such trepidation for others. We’re afraid we might suffer at God’s hands, but we are excited that others—outsiders and nonbelievers and backsliders—most certainly will. We want grace for us, but justice for everyone else;

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yet what God promises is grace for all. We want Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s justice to be swift, terrible, and deserved except when it falls on us. In our religious fantasies, Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s judgment is always for someone else.

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We are all accidental Pharisees In Luke 7.36-39, we read about Jesus at Simon’s house. Simon, a Pharisee, slights Jesus upon his entry, denying him the traditional welcome of a kiss upon the cheek, a bath for his road-muddied feet, and oil for his head. This was no mere oversight. By all accounts, Simon had invited Jesus to his home in order to shame and humiliate him, but the tables would soon turn on Simon, for Mary Magdalene, a prostitute, would do everything for Christ that Simon refused. Mary poured her perfume—a common accoutrement for prostitutes, who needed to cover the bad odors associated with their line of work—over his feet, kissed his feet, and dried them with her hair. Though this strikes contemporary audiences as strange to say the least, it would have been perceived by the 1st century community as something sexual and scandalous—the cultural equivalent of a lap dance on a nun’s couch. Jesus defended her actions, though, understanding immediately that these were acts of genuine worship, and began to teach the following parable: “Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. Luke 7.41-43 The impact of Jesus’ words must have hit Simon from several directions at once. first, it must have occurred to him that Jesus was calling him a sinner, in debt to God. Second, this implied that he was as equally unable to repay his debt to God as this whore. One important note here: This woman was not some degenerate pagan, completely outside of the Jewish faith. She was a Jew, and would have seemed to Simon the cultural equivalent of a backslidden Christian, the sexually promiscuous member of a local church. That would have made this realization so much worse. Gentiles, it can be assumed, would of course be sinful. Their sins didn’t count. But this woman was supposed to have known better, and – from Simon’s vantage point – either did not, or did not care to. She was a sinner and Jesus seemed to be condoning her lifestyle choices, telling Simon she was no less holy than he.

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furthermore, God in his grace, like the benefactor in the story, had canceled Simon’s debt. In other words, God had forgiven him of his sin and, just as graciously, also canceled the debt of the prostitute. finally, Simon must have realized that if this was all true, then he ought to be overjoyed at the prospect of forgiveness. The upshot of this realization by Simon would have begged the question: Why, then, do I not feel the same sense of devotion and adoration as the whore? The answer: because you think you’re perfect. There are many Pharisees in our world today, some accidental, some devout. They are proponents of what they would call ‘godly’ violence and judgment. You know who they are. Every time someone attributes the death of an Imam, or a heretic, or a nonbeliever to the hand of God, we see someone with Simon’s level of gratitude. Every time someone gives God “credit” for a hurricane, or a famine, or an earthquake, we see someone who has decided the God of peace is really only a front, a cashonly business, laundering money for the God-of-the-Mob. Every time we see someone sing or preach about judgment and hell with wideeyed enthusiasm, we see someone who has invited Jesus to bear witness to their intended slight, their affront, and their attempted humiliation of the Prince of Peace. Every time we place ourselves over and against others, even seeing the Simon-like characteristics of others, we fortify our self-righteousness and miss the accusation of the Spirit saying: You, too, David McDonald think you’re perfect.

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The real monsters of the Apocalypse I often wonder at the glee with which these hellfire and brimstone preachers and pundits describe Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s final judgment. How can we celebrate the death of another human being? Jesus himself tells us that he did not come to judge the world, but to save it (see John 3.17). Scripture tells us that God is not willing that any one perish, but that all might come to the knowledge of God (see 2 Peter 3.9). how do we read those words and then allow ourselves to be happy while imagining someone else going to hell? What is wrong with us? Which God do we really serve? Remember, in Revelation 12 it is the dragon who roams through the world eager for people to die, not Christâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how did we come to align ourselves with the destroyer, with Satan? have we forgotten that we too are sinners? for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 3.23 Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. Romans 5.12 Somewhere, somehow we have forgotten what it means to share the human condition. We should never celebrate when someone rejects God, or piously posture to ensure we appear more righteous than the person beside us. On the contrary, like God we should grieve for those who remain separate from their Creator and we should understand the pain this causes him. Love your neighbor as yourself Leviticus 19.18 Remember that loving others is akin to loving God in the teachings of Jesus (see Matthew 22.36-40), and, for all our preaching and practicing, most of us still have no idea what it means to consider ourselves cooperatively human. Perhaps this image, from the late Austrian theologian Martin Buber, will help:

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Imagine yourself peeling an apple. you are holding the apple in your left hand and the knife is in your right. Suddenly, the knife slips and wounds the hand holding the apple. Should the right hand feel relieved that it is the left hand that is bleeding? Should it be pleased that it was spared? Should it look at the left hand as an alien limb to be pitied? Of course not; both hands are part of the same body. When one hand is hurt, the entire body feels the pain. That is the meaning of Jesus’ commandment to love our neighbor. Our neighbor is part of us. When any human being suffers, it should be a source of pain to all of us. We should feel pain, not pity. We should hurt with those who may experience the judgment of God, not celebrate. Or have we forgotten that the ground is level at the cross? More immediately, how have we allowed ourselves to think that we would survive the wrath of such a God? And, once we realize we never could, how can we possibly cope with the fear of such a God settling his score with humanity? It is at precisely this moment, when our evil glee at the destruction of others comes crashing into our enduring propensity to sin, that we become afraid of God and lash out. We tell others they’re damned in order to show God that we are on his side—“See, I warned them. I tried to tell them, but they didn’t listen!”—and hopefully slip either under His radar or find the last sliver of His grace and thus escape damnation ourselves. As it turns out, the real monsters that ravage the world during the Apocalypse are you and me. And that may be the most terrifying fear of all.

dr. david mcdonald

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You Are Loved About a year ago I executed my first ever surprise visit to my mom. She and I have always been close, and I know much it hurts her that our families live so far away from one another. I call her frequently, and try to make sure she hears from our children, but nothing takes the place of just being there. My dad and I arranged for me to make a brief stop over without my momâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knowledge. We connived. We plotted. We put a nice little plan into place, and late one night, after all my business and ministry dealings were taken care of, I drove from Seattle (the place I had just been visiting) to Vancouver, arriving at her home somewhere around 10pm. I knocked and she called out into the darkness (dad had turned off the porch light) wondering who was there. I told her it was the police, so she opened the door, and then the most amazing thing occurred. She gave me proof that I was loved. Surprised, grateful to God, and overjoyed, my mom let out this wailâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a howl of sorts, somewhere between a siren (letting the world know we were together) and a lamentation (her grief over our separation, her anxiety for her child, her repentance for selfishly wanting us all to be closer). It just came out, and it lasted for a long time with me grinning like a fool in front of her, and dad weeping gently behind her, ready to catch her if she didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make it through the shock.

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I have a beautiful wife and fantastic children who love me very much. I have a great relationship with my parents, and always have, and many friends whom I consider dear. But that sound was the unmistakable translation of the most important truth in the universe, the interpretation of a groan that couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be uttered, telling me: you are loved.

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You are loved The way my mom loves me is only a shadow of the way that God loves his children. God loves you. God is good to all, and he loves you specifically. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Jeremiah 31.3 The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. Psalm 145.8 May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. John 17.23 Peter Rollins shares a parable in his book The Orthodox Heretic about God sending his angels to gather all of the holy wisdom he dispensed throughout human history into one volume and give it freely to the world. They do, and quickly, but the book is so heavy no one can even lift it, let alone read it. God then authorizes the angels to abridge the book, to make it more manageable, but to no avail. People are too busy to read these days. Finally, in his frustration, God tells the angels to whittle the book down to just one word, one simple word that will allow the masses to grasp the greatest spiritual truth of all. That one word was â&#x20AC;&#x153;Love.â&#x20AC;? God is love, and in him is no darkness at all. he loved us before we were born, or conceived, before we passed through the minds of parents and into their womb. When you are scared, anxious, and worried that maybe your capacity for sin has just outstripped Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capacity for grace stop, take a moment, and speak the words of Christ back slowly in your mind: As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. John 15.9

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Hard to believe God is good to all. You are loved. Yet, most of us find this hard to accept, as if there is some default switch inside of us that wants us to need to love but never get it. Why is it so hard to believe his love is really for you? Why is God’s grace so unbelievable? Is it because we find it difficult to love, to forgive, to extend mercy, and limit God to our own capacity for selﬂessness? Why do we want so badly to believe that God does not want to forgive, not really, when everything in scripture tells us otherwise? We still have yet to learn from Elijah, who searched for God in the hurricane and could not find him, and then in the earthquake and God was not there, and then in the fire, and still God could not be found. In 1 Kings 19.11-12, Elijah found God in a whisper. This is an important facet of God’s character. Those who wonder if God sent the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center, or Hurricane Katrina, the Haitian earthquake, or the collapse of the freeway in Minneapolis have completely forgotten this passage of scripture and all that it reveals about the goodness and gentleness of our God. This is the God in whom we believe. Our God loves and sacriﬁces for us, he loves to forgive, and in him is life, not horror and betrayal. We all find this hard to accept, but we are often blind to how unacceptable this grace truly is.

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The priest and the Filipina girl Michael frost, in his most recent book Jesus the Fool, recalls an inspiring story about a missionary American in the Philippines. Prior to his departure from the States, the American had committed a horrific sin about which no one knew except God to whom the man confessed. But, despite his confession, this American priest continued to be wracked by guilt and deep feelings of shame. When he arrived in the Philippines, the priest learned of a young girl who claimed to have visions of Christ standing at the foot of her bed every night, and that he would answer questions for devotees. Many people came to see the girl and hear from Christ, and the priest, afraid she was deceiving them somehow, decided to investigate. But he could find no proof that she was either [a] legitimately having visions of Christ, or [b] deliberately deceiving people, albeit in a fairly harmless and hope-giving way. The priest realized that the only way he could determine her legitimacy was to ask the girl to inquire of Christ what his secret sin was. The girl was not in the least perturbed by this proposition, merely asking the priest one question: Does this sin still trouble you? “It does. Greatly,” the American solemnly replied. “you have confessed it to Christ?” “Of course, my child. That is why I want you to ask this question of him. It is something that only he has heard.” “Then,” she ventured cautiously, “why does it trouble you? The Bible says that when we confess our sin, God casts it from his memory as far as the east is from the west.” The missionary nodded absently. he knew this better than she, he suspected. But he could not share her childlike, innocent faith in a God who not only forgives, but completely forgets. Several days later the girl again met with the priest. “Did you ask Christ the question?” he asked her. “I did, father.” “And did he answer you?” “he did.”

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Hesitantly, he inquired further. “You asked what sin it was I committed all those years ago?” “yes, father. I did.” “And what did he say?” “he said he couldn’t remember.” And with that he wept before her as he would in the presence of any saint. By recounting this story, frost brilliantly reminds us that God’s capacity to forgive is infinitely beyond our capacity to sin, that he has no desire to count our sins against us, and that, like a good parent, what God most wants to communicate is not disgust of our failures at holy living, but his righteous joy when his children come home. That story is our story—mine and yours—and it reminds us of two unalterable facts: you are loved, and so is everyone else. We should love our fellow sinners like God loves us, and we should be grateful that he loves us like he does.

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dr. david mcdonald

monsters

dr. david mcdonald

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Idols The mind is an idol-making factory. John Calvin, 16th C French theologian and Protestant Reformer How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Psalm 104.24 There is an old story about a Satyr (a mythical human-goat hybrid, often associated with the Greek god Dionysus), haunting the woods outside of the Greek city of Alexandria. The beast was said to be so terrifying that the pagan idolaters in that city began to worship it. Perturbed by the new cult, St. Anthony of the Desert, an early Christian hermit, went to confront the Satyr, and found him alone in the woods. When St. Anthony asked the Satyr who he was, the creature responded by saying that he was only a mortal beast. According to the Satyr, the locals had, in their pagan ignorance, mistaken him for a god. The Satyr was excited to learn more about Jesus Christ and the true God, leading Anthony to exclaim: Woe to thee, Alexandria. Beasts speak of Christ, and you instead of God worship monsters. I’m quite certain that this curious little tale is not frequently repeated in American Sunday School classes, and for good reason. It’s made up, an imaginary tale written by wellmeaning Christian poets to illuminate our tendency to make up monsters and then worship them. This story does, however, illustrate a powerful point: We can create our own monsters, but they don’t have to either terrorize us or live in rebellion to God. “Monsters” don’t have to be bad. 100

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Bad idols and good idols Monster-making has always been a favorite pastime for religious folk. The word “Monster” derives from the Latin monstrum, which is related to the verbs meaning “to reveal” and “to warn.” Often this refers to a divine portent that reveals the will or judgment of the gods. In a sense, a monster is a message that breaks into this world from the world of the divine. The Bible has much to say about monster-making. In fact, one of the most important commands of the first Testament was God’s prohibition against creating idols. Idols were visual representations of supernatural persons usually made out of stone or wood or precious metals, and they were believed to contain the actual spirit of the god or goddess they represented. They weren’t just statues, they were more like houses for spirits and demons. God tells his people repeatedly not to make idols, nor to worship them (see Exodus 20.4; Leviticus 19.4; Deuteronomy 27.15), and it only takes a moment of biblical study to understand why this is so important. As I’ve written elsewhere, when we read about God creating us in his likeness in Genesis 1.26-27, the key hebrew term is the word tselem, which we commonly translate “image,” but which literally means “idol.” We are God’s idols, and we are the only idols that God permits to exist in this world. This means we are made to represent God’s actual presence to the world around us, just as we are meant to provide a home for God within our hearts and minds and spirits. We are his dwelling place (see Ephesians 2.22; 1 John 3.24). When we make idols, we dishonor God and we dishonor ourselves. We dishonor God by paying tribute to false gods, and we dishonor ourselves by granting the same kind of dignity to a stone carving as God attributes to a human being. God creates people to worship him, to know him, and to represent him to the world. We, in turn, create something less than ourselves and then give those created things the worship due only to God. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Romans 1.25

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Despite the fact that the variables and circumstances are very different, we are still making idols in our contemporary setting. Speaking literally for a moment, an idol is anything we worship in place of the One True God. An idol is something we make, which we fear. People often worship money, success, achievement, fame, sex, their children, their legacy, their heritage, their religious tradition, or really any number of things that they hope will bring them absolution, fulfillment, or meaning. Some of these things may not be inherently bad â&#x20AC;&#x201C; our children, for example â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but because of the importance we place upon them, they fall out of their proper relationship with the rest of our lives and become problematic. Others have written on this issue of idolatry with greater clarity and intelligence than I, but I would like to explore here one oft-overlooked piece of the idolatry-puzzle; that is, these idols come from within human beings, and then they control human beings.

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Possessed by imagination In real life, we abdicate our role as God’s idols and give that power instead to something less than ourselves to represent something less than him. Whether that happens historically— like in the episode of Israel and the Golden Calf, or Manasseh erecting Ashtoreth poles in the Temple, or with Solomon adopting the gods of his wives— or presently— like how we allow our imaginations to make monsters out of worst-case scenarios, broken relationships, past hurts, or possible failures— we are always scared of things that aren’t real. Our imaginations have been loosed upon the world, bringing to life (and to television, video games, and the internet) the monsters of our making: Dracula, Pinhead, frankenstein, freddy, Jigsaw, and the starry host of creatures and beasts that populate the nighttime world of our minds. We need to redirect the energy of our imagination. We need to create good stories, good characters, and good plots as a means of fore-telling and re-telling the story of God and this world. When God made us, he made us to be like him—that’s what those famous words imago dei (“image of God”) mean. The earliest, specific task that He gave us was a task of the imagination: Adam was to name the animals. Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. Genesis 2.19-20 Clearly, there are especially significant words here. first, we notice that the idea of naming something connotes some kind of power over that thing. Adam is defining, for the rest of the world and for all of time, what those animals will be known as. This is a special quality given only to Adam. He is superior to the nonhuman inhabitants of the world, but he’s also responsible for them.

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Second, we notice that Adam is permitted to create these names. his task is not simply to label them with pre-existing terms and conditions, but to name the essence of those creatures from within the witness of his God-bearing self. As an image-bearer of God, Adam is invited to create alongside God, to do his own creating, not simply copying the creative choices of God. We most closely echo him when we are creating, whether in art, song, business models, solutions, play time, or stories, because creativity is part of bearing the image of God.. Notice, too, that God was curious as to what Adam named the animals. Isn’t that funny? God is all-knowing and can see all possible futures, yet he is curious about Adam’s creative thoughts. God is present in our creativity with a special interest, just as we are present in Him while creating from within his shadow. To express ourselves in creative acts is to more fully experience the richness of being human, of being a God-bearer, of shadowing God. Our desire to create, our ability to make things out of nothing, and our pleasure in doing so are all part of God’s original enjoyment in His own creation of the world (let there be…it was good). We have power, because God has power and he gave it to us. Like the anonymous author of St. Anthony and the Satyr, we ought to find ways to redirect our imagination to tell good stories, stories of redemption and rescue, of Christ-come-in-many guises in order to heal, to restore, and to purify the world he loves.

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Monsters of our Making If we go from a base level, vampires create a hole in the neck where there wasn’t one before. It’s a de-virginalization—breaking the hymen, creating blood, and then drinking it...so that’s pretty sexy. Plus, Robert Pattison is just hot, right? Steven Moyer, star of HBO’s True Blood, as quoted in Rolling Stone Magazine concerning the modern ‘vampire craze’ Of all the freaks and ghouls we’ve dreamed up over the years, the most persistent horror has to be the vampire. The modern iteration of the vampire—a sex symbol that is one part hunter, one part hooker—first came into being on the famed evening during which Mary Shelley created her “modern Prometheus,” Frankenstein. Lord Byron had invited Shelley and their mutual doctor, John Polidori, to spend the summer at his lake house. Bored of the lake and bored of re-telling old ghost stories, Byron challenged his guests to come up with a new kind of haunt. Shelley crafted the tale of a scientist whose curiosity and god-complex knew no bounds, and frankenstein’s monster was born. Polidari retooled the old myths of vampires—then nothing more than withered corpses with long talons instead of nails, void of sex appeal but rich in foreboding—in his story “The Vampyre.” Since then, vampires have been a staple of pop culture—from Anne Rice and the Vampire Chronicles, to Stephenie Meyer and Twilight, to Alan Ball and Charlotte harris’ True Blood. Our fascination with vampires goes beyond lust and loathing, however, into a deeper part of our psyche. The ever-present themes of love and death, sacrifice and promise, make vampires more metaphysically seductive than their more monstrous counterparts. We love vampires, because we yearn for more knowledge and understanding of ultimate desire and fulfillment.

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Vampirism is a religion. It’s a soap opera religion that worships romantic love. It’s a religion that offers salvation and eternal love if only you will sacrifice your all on the altar of romantic love and put your neck on the line. yes, love hurts. yes, love sucks. yes, love causes suffering, pain, and agony. But falling head over heels in love with your wounded lover, your addicted abuser (who can’t help himself after all) is worth the sacrifice. Len Sweet, 20th C Author and Futurist, in his sermon “True Blood”

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Everybody loves Dracula Dracula is, of course, the most famous of these passionate parasites. Written in 1897 by Irish author Bram Stoker, Dracula tells the story of a Transylvanian vampire and his re-location from his ancestral home into 19th Century London. Dracula, whose name comes from the Romanian dracul (literally, “the dragon”) represents a monstrous threat to England, and especially to its religious faith and its women. This monster has deeply religious roots, indicated by the association of Dracula’s name with the biblical tradition of diabolical monstrosity, especially with the great devil-dragon in Revelation. Dracula appears as a false Christ to his seduced lover and intended mistress, Mina harker, parodying the words of Christ in the sacrament by declaring to Mina that she is: “now to me flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful winepress for a while; and shall later on my companion and my helper. And, of course, there is a diabolical symmetry between Dracula inviting Mina harker to drink his blood and Christ’s mandate that his disciples eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6.56). The one is sacred, the other profane—a twisting of the sacred meant to rob God of what rightfully belongs to him. furthermore, the character of Renfeld (Dracula’s human slave) is portrayed as a zoophage (a “life-eater”) who roams about eating bugs and spiders and birds, anything he can get his hands on, citing Deuteronomy 12.23, “The blood is the life.” for Renfeld, any kind of life-consumption is consummate to the life-ending chaos that Dracula will bring into the world. Dracula is a chaos monster that invades England, threatens the virginal purity of Christian women, and blurs the fundamental modern western distinctions between animality and humanity, wilderness and civilization, invading madness and political order.

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The value of horror At this point, it might be worth asking ourselves why any of us would actually create something as terrifying as a vampire? What lead Polidori, Bram Stoker, and Anne Rice to sit down and craft such horrific creations? Were they deviant somehow? Sick? for that matter, why do any of us read them or watch movies in which they play a central role? And, most importantly, what are we to do once we’ve watched them and then cannot get them out of our minds? for my part, after seeing a scary movie I’m always hit by a sudden case of giddiness. I cannot stop laughing, or telling jokes, and reveling in the experience of my own fear. A couple of years ago, for example, some friends and I decided we’d go and see a movie after a particularly long evening of prayer at our church. If you’re from an earlier generation, this may seem like a strange impulse on our part, but for us the afterglow of the prayer meeting was pretty solid and we wanted to continue being together, albeit with less spiritual intensity. A movie seemed like a good idea. We thought we purchased tickets for an underwater adventure, but the film began differently than we’d expected. First, it took place in space. Second, it didn’t have the tone of a summer popcorn film. It was darker somehow. As the movie progressed, about forty minutes in, we realized the third big difference: This was a horror movie. We were caught totally unawares, but were too proud or macho or whatever to just get up and leave. None of us wanted to look like we couldn’t handle the movie, and so we all stuck it out to the bitter end. What a mistake! In the film, Event Horizon, the space ship finds itself sucked into a black hole that literally lands the crew in Hell where they are tortured and tormented to death. It was the scariest thing I’d ever seen. Probably because we didn’t know what we were getting into it made things even worse. I screamed out loud at one point, and we all kept sending sidelong glances at each other during the movie as if to ask: Are you as absolutely terriﬁed as I am right now? When the movie was done, we were all too skittish to just go home, and so we went to an all-night Denny’s restaurant and talked for hours about how scared we were. We laughed and made fun of each other, ashamed at the fast transition from prayer to petrifaction, and it was one of the best evenings I have ever had. Perhaps we might understand an experience like this as an example of the good side of horror films. Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, says that movies like this create a shared experience of feeling scared, reminding us that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. And I think he’s right—going through an experience like that allows us to face with our fears with our friends and come out the other side unharmed.

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You shall not fear the terror that comes at night, or the arrow that ďŹ&#x201A;ies by day. Psalm 91.5 Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not to say I think horror movies are entirely healthy, or that you should run out and watch a bunch of them. But I believe there are times when this sort of shared experience works toward our good and the good of our relationships.

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Telling good stories Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m telling you all of this simply to illustrate that our imaginations are tremendously powerful tools. yet the default setting for our imagination always seems to be the creation of something dark and scary. What we need to do is sanctify our imagination, baptizing our creative capacity, and make a conscious effort to create good things. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12.2 Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth John 17.17 The Son is the radiance of Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Hebrews 1.3 We need to create good stories. We need to create good fantasies. We need to create good works of art. We need to create good prospects for the future, a grounded optimism, in which we fully trust that God is in fact working on our behalf to help us and to heal the world. [he is] the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Romans 4.17 We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8.28

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One of my favorite Dracula legends counts, in my mind, as this kind of sanctified imagining. It is by far the most outlandish story ever written (courtesy of Marvel comics long-running Tomb of Dracula series) and concerns Dracula’s son, Janus. Janus was born to Dracula through Dracula’s human wife, but was killed soon afterwards by a stray arrow intended for Dracula by one of his enemies. however, an angelic spirit sent by God to remove the curse of Dracula from the world reanimated the child’s body and transformed him into a full-grown seraphic being. Like Dracula, Janus could change form, but whereas his father could turn into a bat, Janus could morph into a golden eagle; where Dracula could evaporate into mist, Janus could appear as particles of light. In the end, Janus was spared his destiny and did not have to kill his own father (whom he loved, despite his father’s moral absence). Instead, Dracula’s demonic powers were removed by Satan himself who acted in this way to protect his demonic realm from the invasive power of heaven. A human being once more, Dracula proved of little consequence to God’s assassin, and was permitted to live and seek redemption. I know this story is crazy and, if I’m honest, not very good. But it was written as an attempt to bring redemption into an otherwise bleak tale of deathless despondence. Other such redemption inserts have occurred in horror stories when Christian writers like Dean Batali or Nicholas St. John or Anne Rice have inserted their belief that God is at work, even in horrific circumstances. Evidence of this appears as divine intervention in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (see episode 77 in which Buffy receives supernatural assistance and overcomes her technological foe, turning bullets into butterﬂies), or as self-sacrifice in Memnoch the Devil (in which we are introduced to a sympathetic devil character, wrestling with whether or not God’s grace can be extended even to one such as himself) or, in what is arguably the most redemptive vampire movie ever made, the quiet, light-filled victory over sin in The Addiction. I love these kinds of stories, because they provide examples of how we can tool our imaginations toward good monster-making. We can create things, even spooky things, that have the capacity for responding to God and experiencing salvation. My vampire novels and other novels I’ve written are attempting to be transformative stories… All these novels involve a strong moral compass. Evil is never glorified in these books; on the contrary, the continuing battle against evil is the subject of the work. The search for the good is the subject of the work. Interview with the

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Vampire is about the near despair of an alienated being who searches the world for some hope that his existence can have meaning. his vampire nature is clearly a metaphor for human consciousness or moral awareness. The major theme of the novel is the misery of this character because he cannot find redemption and does not have the strength to end the evil of which he knows himself to be a part. Anne Rice, 20th C American author And, lest you think I’m totally off my rocker, it should be pointed out that there is a strong tradition of such sanctified science fiction. We can immediately think of the writings of Lewis and Tolkien, O’Connor and L’Engle, but it may surprise you to learn that our tradition leans back much further, extending even to the strange tale of St. Christopher, the Cynocephali (dog-headed man).

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The dog-headed man The dog-headed version of Christopher, a 3rd century martyr, is not well known among Roman Catholics or Protestants, but he is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Before his conversion Christopher was known by the name of Reprobus and was said to have come from Marmitae, a land of cannibals called the Cynocephali (literally “the dog-headed people”). According to a medieval Irish Passion tale, Christopher was one of a race that had heads of dogs and ate human ﬂesh. Reprobus, a gigantic and fierce warrior from a tribe west of Egypt, was captured by the Romans sometime around 300AD. Shortly after his capture and forced conscription, Reprobus converted to Christianity and changed his name to Christopher. Christopher refused to abandon Christianity under Roman pressure in Antioch. The Passion explains that Reprobus meditated much on God, but at that time he could speak only the language of the Dogheads. After asking God to give him the gift of speech, an angel of God came to him and blew upon Reprobus’ mouth, giving him the gift of eloquence he had desired. Thereupon Christopher arose and went into the city, and immediately began to stop the offering of sacrifices: “I am a Christian and I will not sacrifice to the gods.“ Authorities in Antioch tried repeatedly to kill him but he proved magically resilient. They tried burning him, skinning him, throwing him down a well, and various other techniques. The dog-headed Christopher proved to be troublesome company because every Antioch citizen who came in contact with him converted to Christianity. The frustrated authorities then set upon these fresh converts with redoubled zeal, torturing and killing them because they too refused to worship the Roman gods. Christopher kept encouraging the Christians telling them that the kingdom of heaven awaited them. This encouragement was greatly needed as the Roman persecution got worse, reaching its height on one Saturday upon which 10,303 Christians were put to death. finally Christopher agreed to his own martyrdom and allowed the executioner to remove his canine head. Like the previous story of St. Anthony and the Satyr, the Passion of St. Christopher is a pleasant fiction. In this case, though, it is a fiction based upon fact. There was a St. Christopher and he was a powerful evangelist, but he was not likely a Cynocephali because they, like all hybridizations, did not exist. yet there is a powerful and redemptive metaphor at work when we realize that God may have plans even for werewolves, for that of course is what the Cynocephali were meant to be.

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And we all start out as werewolvesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; beasts without eloquence, conscience, or salvationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and it is only by the grace of God that we are transformed back into the people he designed and destined us to be. These are the stories we should tell. They are fantastic monster stories, but they are not horrific. They give hope where none was first found. Onen i-Estel Edain, u-chebin estel anim I give hope to others, but keep none for myself. Aragon, Return of the King

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You Are Powerful Imagination is more important than knowledge Albert Einstein, 20th C German-American physicist There is another world, but it is in this one. Paul Eluard, 20th C French poet As I’ve alluded earlier, one popular method of creating idols is through our stories. I don’t mean that every story we write is idolatrous, just that often times the characters and scenarios we invent in our imagination take on a life of their own, a life which we often find scary. We make up scary monsters in scary stories and create that which we will one day fear. The chief problem with the monsters we make is that they get out of control. Like Frankenstein’s monster, we create something in our mind, and then that thing— that thought, that terror, that anxiety, that possibility— runs rampant in our minds, causing us to act strangely and suspiciously toward others, to doubt their sincerity, and to misread cues that would otherwise bring us comfort. This is all-too-common. haven’t you ever noticed, for example, how we have a tendency to believe something untrue and act upon that untruth in such a way as to harm ourselves? Othello, anyone? 116

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Killing the monsters in our minds My assistant, Norma, and I had such an experience not too long ago. I had been describing to a volunteer my level of dissatisfaction with our on-screen announcements at Westwinds and Norma had overheard me. I was telling the volunteer that the frequency with which various new announcements and slides appeared was unacceptable and that we needed to do a better job. Norma, however, only heard that I was dissatisfied with the slides and assumed I was angry about their quality. This was a problem, because in the absence of a capable volunteer Norma had been making these slides for a while, in her free time, as a means of helping the church. Norma thought I was criticizing her and was hurt. To her credit, she came to me at the soonest opportunity and asked for clarification. The situation was easily resolved and I assured her that I had no complaints about her work— quite the contrary!—and consider myself blessed to be her coworker. This situation worked out just fine, because of Norma’s willingness to kill the monster in her mind, but isn’t the obverse situation far more common? Most of us don’t have Norma’s gumption, and would rather be hurt and act shy than have a potentially uncomfortable conversation. Most of us would rather try to tough it out than talk it out and, as a result, the monsters in our mind become scarier and more terrifying. We get lost in the mess of our world. But, of course, it is not just the world “out there” that is chaotic and enﬂamed. We fuel the fires and stoke the furnaces of mistrust and betrayal, mistakes and negligence, pride and hate. And maybe our very nature has something to do with this. from the moment we are born, we are demanding and self-centered, coming into the world crying and on fire with madness. We do not wake up to this life in serenity and peace. We wake up mad. Perhaps this madness never really goes away. Sure, as we get older much of the madness is socialized out of us. We learn not to cry or pout; we learn to dissociate our desires from the selfish need to have everything be about us; but we often naively assume that the fury with which we are born, the passion of it, no longer poses any real threat to our lives. 117

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When we neglect that madness, thinking that it’s somehow been domesticated, we run the risk of being either totally depressed or completely narcissistic. But things can be different. In fact, they should. There is a creative energy in us and we must harness it appropriately. We must find a way to channel our passions so they don’t get the better of us. We must turn our imaginations over to creating scenarios in which we speak openly and kindly to one another, declaring our true intentions and designs, and work toward frequent and friendly win-win scenarios. Everyone born of God overcomes the world. 1 John 5.4 you will receive power when the holy Spirit has come upon you, Acts 1.8a What we should do is make things of which we are proud and through which God can speak to the good, the beautiful, and the true. We ought to turn our imagination toward life, beauty, intimacy, heroism, passion, and goodness. Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece-suit on hire purchase in a range of fabrics. Choose DIy and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spiritcrushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life . . . why would I want to do a thing like that? Renton, from Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. for the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Deuteronomy 30.19-20 (from which the monologue in Trainspotting was adapted) 118

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Because we have power over our thoughts, we can capture them, invite the Spirit to renew our minds (see Romans 12.2; 2 Corinthians 10.5) and teach us to think differently. When the monsters of our own making come calling from the dark recesses of our imagination, we can stop them. We can stop ourselves from fantasizing about the harm others intend, or the hopelessness of our financial situation, and in this way the evil that exists in our minds can be overcome. Evil is vanquished by being revealed, as our own monsters are revealed as our creations and their power over us is broken. We become disillusioned and we reclaim our power over them. Evil must be named before it can be dealt with. N.T. Wright, 20th C Bishop of Durham

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Become disillusioned Disillusioned is a powerful word. Though nowadays it refers to skepticism, connoting some sense of intellectual or religious burnout, in the old stories that word was used much more literally. To be dis-illusioned meant that the illusion cast upon you by some sorcerer or witch or dark power, causing you to mistake wrong for right or friend from foe, was dispelled. The enchantment was broken. you saw clearly what and who was in the right. We must allow ourselves to be disillusioned of our fears. Most of what we fear, we have created in our minds. Once we know this, we can deal with it appropriately. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. Luke 10.19 There is something sacred about our imagination, something special and secret about the ability within our minds to create worlds and wars, people and places struggling for significance. Through our imaginings we operate as co-creators with God, echoing His creative capacity in miniature. Whenever we create anything, we mirror his creation of all that there Is. And our creative acts are beautiful to him. Our creative acts are representations of his power in us. you have power over your thoughts. you capture your thoughts. you invite the Spirit to renew your mind. Because you are powerful.

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Conclusion frederick Buechner, acclaimed Christian thinker and writer, refers to the gospel as a “fairy tale” in his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy, and Fairy Tale. he didn’t mean to suggest that the gospel was untrue, merely that the narrative of the gospel story is one in which certain elements persist that are common to fairy tales: Elements like hope, heroism, and transformation, in which people at the end take the form of what they truly are— the ugly duckling becomes a swan, the frog becomes a prince, the wicked queen is revealed as a hag. Fairy tales suggest that we discover the infinite in the ordinary. They expose evil for what it really is by naming the evil, thereby exhausting its inherent power of subtlety and disguise. They offer us hope that, in the final confrontation between darkness and light, light emerges alone and victorious. And as for the king of the [fairy] kingdom itself, whoever would recognize him? he has no form or comeliness. his clothes are what he picked up at a rummage sale. he hasn’t shaved in weeks. he smells of mortality . . . but the whole point of the fairy tale of the Gospel is, of course, that he is the king in spite of everything . . . and it is the task of the preacher to proclaim that not only has this happened, but it is happening still . . . that once upon a time is our time, and here is the dark wood that the light gleams at the heart of like a jewel. Frederick Buechner, 20th C American writer, inTelling the Truth We are the ones who get to live happily ever after. We are the rescued princesses and the ennobled peasants. We are the ones who have received our courage, our brains, and our new hearts.

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And why is this? Because Jesusâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; strong and mighty, alive and wondrously and magically sensationalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; is in us, teaching us how to live, how to be brave, and that we are worthy, protected, loved, and powerful. I wrote Monsters to remind you that Christ is greater than your fears, and your inadequacies, and your worries. He is crucified upon your misgivings, but resurrected over and above your failures. he is tortured by your paranoia, but shines more brightly than the dark thoughts you nurse. Let him be Christ in you. Be Christ. The power of Christ compels you, reminds you, that you are worth more than many sparrows and that Jesus keeps the monsters away. When the darkness comes, and the shadows deepen, remember this: you are worthy, protected, loved, and empowered.

dr. david mcdonald, September 13, 2009 Renaissance hotel, Dallas TX

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Resources On Monsters, Stephen T. Asma Religion and Its Monsters, Timothy K. Beal Telling the Truth, Frederick Buechner Monsters, David D. Gilmore Conquering Fear, Harold S. Kusher Fearless, Max Lucado Lifesigns, Henri J. M. Nouwen The Flowering of Old Testament Theology, edited by Ben C. Ollenburger, Elmer A. Martens, Gerhard F. Hasel Sacred Monsters, Nosson Slifkin Extreme Fear, Jeff Wise

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128

dr. david mcdonald

available now through amazon.com

d r d a vid mcdo n ald ISBN-10: 0982612443 ISBN-13: 978-0-9826124-4-6 Christian Living/Spiritual Growth

David weaves deep theological truths with sharp social analysis and peculiar observations on pop culture. He lives in Jackson with his wife, Carmel, and their two kids. Follow him on twiier (@guerillahost) or online at shadowinggod.com.

Easter is about something so mysterious it cannot be reduced to trinkets and charms and still feel like Easter. Easter is about something so incredible it cannot be appreciated properly without incredible study and devotion. Easter is about something so transcendent it cannot be gotten hold of – not wholly, even with an understanding that it concerns a past action, with present context, and future consequence.

bleached hope for the desolate

DYING FOR A FIX

Easter just isn’t as big a deal in the malls and on the dazzling screens as other holidays, perhaps because the mystery of Christ’s death (and the brutal and wonderful way he reunites us with God) is simply too powerful to be co-opted by the media and capitalized on by investors.

bleached

Dr. David McDonald is the teaching pastor at Westwinds Church in Jackson, MI. e church, widely considered among the most innovative in America, has been featured on CNN.com and in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Time Magazine, among others.

d r da vid mcdo n ald

easter and resurrection

Sound too weird? Too fantastical?

DYING

That’s fine , you’re welcome to continue petting bunnies and sucking on eggs, but I have to caution you not to suspend belief before you willingly suspend disbelief.

Trust me when I tell you we’re just scratching the surface here, But we live in an itchy world And I think this may bring some relief.

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FOR A

westwinds.org dr. david mcdonald

Read this book – the first few chapters explore the historical and archaeological proofs for the resurrection, as well as the social and interpersonal ramifications of Jesus’ return. The next few chapters explore bits and pieces of the giant significance that the resurrection contains for every lover and follower of Jesus.

FIX