Cake Ration
I've been reading a lot lately, no surprise, but with an unusually heavy investment in money.
Money theories, money policies, stuffs that I have a degree on, and I don't mind saying with honors at the best business school in this province, very high honors if numbers make a difference.
Numbers do not make any difference. Numbers report the differences.
A federal election is imminent, and we should be speaking about numbers as one of the most crucial ways to speak about our visions of human flourishing, our ascending to them, our falling short of them, not necessarily as a first or final word on our destiny individual and collective, but more like a pulse check along our charted course, a state of our union, flourishing together.
But we can't trust the numbers, can't we? First we don't understand them. Then those who seem to seem to be manipulating us with them. So give me the simple gospel truth, tell me if my pumpkin pies this Thanksgiving will smell just as good, and that is good enough for me to give thanks for another year and give you my vote every four or less.
Even if we do care about the numbers, even understand them a little, what good does our little do? Everything is so thoroughly politicized already that often it's about whether I have a grievance grievous enough to get myself off bed, join the charade and put a cross on that little strip--and God forbid if I should be grieved into the lunacy to speak publicly about my private feeling on public matters. Politics and religion, speak about anything but neither at a dinner party, any party, to keep the party going. I could have said stupidity but I said lunacy, because, you see, only crazy enough people would speak about either, and we are too well-adjusted to risk that sort of reputation.
Read today's quote again and imagine your father speaking the same to you, that he thinks about you so much, cares about you so deep, that he wouldn't let the numbers get in the way of his fatherly love and your childlike high-fives. There is no sheet to balance between us, he says, no ledger to keep, no income statement when it's all about him giving us what we want, when and how we want it (which is now and always), and that, is his way to humanize the rather dehumanizing business of keeping the family a going concern. This father is probably planning to leave for a younger wife in less than four years time, but when he hands out your birthday cake, you have yet to know forgiveness is needed for the recipe.
Imagine too he's a religious leader, speaking to you about the "simple gospel" of loving God (and neighbors, of course, but mostly yourself), no deep theology needed to bog ourselves down with, no hurry to go beyond the hand puppet, Sunday school rendering of Bible stories, talking snake and all, because, after all, our hearts are at the right place if our hearts say so, and God doesn't judge, least of all our good intentions, especially when we are busying ourselves with good, God works, all our life.
Remember the story about Solomon's wise judgment when two women came to him, fighting over who's a baby's real mother, and the fake one couldn't care less if the king is to do some common division and chop the baby in half and call that fairness? "The real mother of the living baby was overcome with emotion for her son and said, 'Oh no, master! Give her the whole baby alive; don’t kill him!'" The real Father, the true shepherd cares about us, now and forever, so much so that He gave up his Son. And His true Son knows the Father's heart and does His will, dies for our sins so what we could flourish. The false parents treat the wound of little children carelessly, saying, "Peace, peace," when there is no peace.
Numbers do not make any difference. Numbers report the differences. The Bible is full of numbers--actually with a book called Numbers. The original Hebrew title is Bamidbar, "in the wilderness."
Are we? Let's talk, but not with a mouth full of icing.
Yours, Alex
Comments
Post a Comment