Adam Hankins
  • read my mind
  • Landscapes
  • portraits
  • Brainstorm
    • LAZARUS
    • The Fisherman
    • The Zealot
    • Henrietta Bloome
  • Contact
Picture

becoming Idols

1/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Psalm 115:2-8
Why does the world say, “Where is your God?”
“My God is in heaven—the perfect place—his actions are always in alignment with his perfect will: to make his dwelling place and mine become one—which requires the borderlands and gates of his heavenly domain to expand; ever coming up against my earthly one.  Where heaven meets earth—at this burning fissure, this ever-moving sword of flame, this ark of life, this pillar of stone, this burning bush, this cross on a hill— a battle rages, blood is shed, transformations are the rule.  Transformations to continuously bring life out of death; to make the tyrant let go; to set the captive free; to shine light into the wilderness; to make safe paths out of the wasteland; peace out of conflict; perfection out of imperfection.”
“No,” the world says.  “I cannot see that. I only trust in what I see.”
Yet, because compared to all there is to be seen, one sees almost nothing; then, necessarily, one is almost entirely blind.  Therefore, what one sees...is only what one chooses to see. Those places he cannot see—those giant, universe-sized swathes of blindness—become merely gaps into which he deftly and arrogantly inserts himself in success and resentfully inserts others in failure.  When one makes his own values—rationally—with his 4 bits per second of narrow thought and attention—he avoids the painful sacrifice of lowering himself in humility beneath every success and the equally painful sacrifice of elevating himself in responsibility for every failure. See what man does?  He takes something, and creates with it, manipulates and endows it with meaning; imbues it with a value it never had on its own (and one can do this with almost anything). And he prefers to do this far, far from any burning bushes; far from any crosses on a hill.
Those who make their highest value (their idol) something of their own creation, by their own reason, their own human hands; and trust in it—they eventually become it; their idol.  They become a parody of themselves—complete with eyes, hands, feet, noses and mouths; by all appearances—a successful human. Yet, a human who is rigid, unmoving and unmoved, unfeeling, blind, unable to utter a sound, unable to pay attention to Being itself.
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    ADAM HANKINS

    "Mmmm...donuts." 

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Abyss
    Bible Verses
    Blindness
    Connection
    Contempt
    Ego
    Emptiness
    Faith
    Forgiveness
    Freedom
    Home
    Idols
    Jonah
    Letting Go
    Living Dead
    Love
    Miracle
    Oneness
    Purpose
    Rationalism
    Redemption
    Sacrifice
    Seeing
    Story
    Suffering
    The Cross
    The Enemy
    The Unknown
    The Wizard Of Oz
    To Die Is To Live
    Transformation
    Truth
    Value
    Waking Up
    Wanting
    When Everything You Do Is Wrong

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • read my mind
  • Landscapes
  • portraits
  • Brainstorm
    • LAZARUS
    • The Fisherman
    • The Zealot
    • Henrietta Bloome
  • Contact