By David Faulkner
Following Aslan’s resurrection in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there occurs what Lewis describes as a “romp” on the hilltop. The three characters involved are Aslan and the girls, Susan and Lucy (who had witnessed Aslan’s execution). Lewis says the girls could never explain very well what this romp was like, except to say that it was, “a little like playing with a kitten and a little like playing with a thunderstorm.” In that simple phrase Lewis captured what may well be the greatest paradox in God, one that we must understand if we are truly to know Him through His Son and Spirit.
I’ve never been much of a cat fancier, but there are few things as entertaining as playing with a kitten or two. I once spent a night at my brother’s house. He and his wife had two milk white, green-eyed kittens they had rescued when their mother got hit by a car. Those kittens would have played all night with the ball of string I had. Indeed they did try to keep me up all night. Whether running after the string or pouncing on each other they were a joy to watch. And with no claws yet they couldn’t hurt me or each other. They were a riot.
Not so playing with a thunderstorm. When we lived in Nebraska we got real nasty ones. I recall running inside to escape a black wall of blowing dirt as one approached, and cowering in the basement when a tornado went over our town. There’s not much fun to be had playing with a thunderstorm. Indeed I know several people who have been struck by lightning and survived, though in varying states of health; some just fine, some with lifelong disabilities.
There needs to be a balance in our understanding between the kitten and the thunder-storm. I have met a lot of people who like very much the idea of God as a kitten. Even if they don’t necessarily think of God as being playful they focus on such divine attributes as love, mercy, kindness and gentleness, often to the exclusion of anything else. I know a pastor in a nearby church whose God is a kind of warm, fuzzy kitten. To him, that there should be justice or judgment in God is anathema. As we have discussed in an earlier edition of this column, if that is all there is to God, then do as you please because nothing you do has any meaning anyway.
I also know people who approach God with a kind of entitlement mentality. We live in an entitlement culture. Most Americans think the government owes them not only protection, but also a job, a guaranteed income, medical care (we often hear people talk as though state-sponsored medical care will guarantee health!), an education or any number of other things. I recall hearing, back in 2008, a lady from Chicago proclaim confidently that if her candidate for president were elected, he would make her house payment for her. Too ofteh we approach God with the same mentality. Many today preach that, if you just have enough faith, God owes you health or a big house or any number of other good things. Paul’s question, “Who has ever given anything to Him that God should repay him?” (Romans 11:35) gets lost in the cacophony of all those preachers telling the entitlement church all the things God has to give to them.
Spring used to bring many things to the campus of Ohio University when I was a graduate student there. One of them was a guy who called himself “Brother Jed.” He would stand on the college green and harangue the students passing by about the dangers of hell and the horror of the punishment that awaited them because of the heinous sins he assumed they were regularly committing. There was no gentle kitten in Brother Jed’s God: He was all thunderstorm. He was a vengeful, condemning, guilt-sowing, vindictive deity who hated those sinful students. Brother Jed actually thought he had attained personal perfection and so had the right to preach in such a way to the students. His God was not al all gracious, patient or appealing.
Paul wrote, “But because of His great love for us God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive again in Christ Jesus–it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4, 5). Hebrews 10:28, 29 says, “Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” Both texts are true. If we just had the first, then nothing we believe or do is really that important: God’s love will compel Him to save all of us, a thing the Bible decidedly does not teach. On the other hand, if we just had the second, all we would have is a God who threatens and condemns, and so we’d have no hope.
C. S. Lewis had it right: a kitten and a thunderstorm, not one without the other but both. Any lesser conception of God is totally inadequate.
One other thing needs to be said. Look at who Hebrews 10:29 threatens with jugment It is not that famous bugbear, ”those who have never heard the gospel.” Instead it is those who have willfully, deliberately, determinedly “trampled under foot the Son of God,” treated Christ’s blood as common, and called “liar” the Spirit who testifies to God’s gracious salvation. The people the writer of Hebrews is talking about here are those who have heard, yet rejected, God’s truth, and in America today that’s a lot of people.
The God who has done all the things for us that the Bible says He has done deserves to be the very center of our lives. If we put other things ahead of Him, or if we think we can have God-and-money, God-and-learning, God-and-sports, God-and-health, God-and-family, or God-and-anything else as equally or more important than just God Himself, are we really sure we too are not trampling God’s Son under foot? Is anything in your life equal to or more important than Jesus? If I met you, how long would we have to talk for me to find out what it is? If the God of the Bible isn’t the center of your life, are you sure you’re not playing with a thunderstorm?
About the Author: Rev. David R. Faulkner has been a pastor in the PCUSA for over 30 years. He recieved his Bachlors in History from Michigan State University, His Masters of Divinity from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and Did Graduate Work at Ohio University. He is currently preaching at The Harrisonville Presbyterian Church in Harrisonville Ohio. He is also married and has four kid
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