Contrivance Types

The elements of existence as we know them can only be considered by us to be infinitely elastic.  That is, when the divine is in view, everything else that we know is rendered void of any intrinsic proportion.

The “world” that we know can be as much as a virtual pantheistic God-expression, or as little as a speck of insignificance in the mind of God.  This is not intended to be flippant or impious, but rests rather on the substance of the scriptures.  Jesus in the preface to John is interlaced inscrutably with Creation—for if Creation is his, then it is beyond us to opine what facets of Creation are irretrievably beyond the divine—and yet Jesus in the temptations treats the glories of Creation as nothing when seen against the worship of God.

The importance of the “elasticity” consideration cannot be overstated.  When Jesus is crucified, he prays, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do”—yet, when the question of the individual person's salvation is at hand, it is precisely the opportunity to consider the selfless sufferings of Jesus that ought to be most likely of all things to convict lost souls.  The confession of the Good Thief hinges precisely on this consideration (as does his reproof of his comrade).  The churches have had to settle for the entirely presumptuous notion that “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” was meant by Jesus to apply only to the soldiers of the execution detail.

This presumption is ridiculous.  Across the gospels, Jesus is at one moment lamenting the lost and unfortunate lot of the masses, and at the next castigating the entirety of humanity for unrighteousness.  In one sense—in the crucial sense, if the salvation of humanity is in mind—every man or woman who has ever lived has crucified Jesus, and has borne the guilt of knowing and willful and damnable transgression.  Jesus being lord of all, it ought to be no surprise that he might speak of humanity either as his pitiable children, or as the spawn of the devil.  It is to the glory of God, not to any intrinsic proportion of culpability among God’s children, that the prayer “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” is most likely addressed.

The volatility of proportion ought always to be kept in mind.  Jesus tells Pilate that Pilate’s power comes from above, and then Jesus tells Pilate that the one who turned him over to Pilate is guilty of the greater sin.  Our minds might turn directly to the High Priest, but we cannot forget that the power of the High Priest came likewise from on high.  We run the risk of turning Jesus’ searing words to Pilate into a weaselly argument on Jesus’ part—Jesus seeking to curry the favor of the gentile official who might release him from his fate.

No—while the power that Pilate wields comes ultimately from on high, the “one” who turned Jesus over to Pilate is—ultimately—all of us (including Pilate).  We all—in our dim searching of the reality of the situation—must reckon that we contribute to the power structures that nonetheless exist in our world originally through the design of God.  Worldly power is a contrivance of God, and we turn it into innumerable contrivances of our own.  God makes for us a world of interlocking and interplaying powers, and we turn that world—through our conceits and contrivances—into a battery of machines (a grand, more-or-less cohesive Machine, really) that we put into the service of our wills.

God branded the malefactor Cain to be a restless wanderer on the earth, and Genesis has Cain straightaway proceeding to construct a contrivance: a city.  Cain will not be a restless wanderer on the earth, for God so contrived to create a world that would allow permanent settlements.  It is left to us to consider whether Cain might have been ultimately successful in quashing his restless wandering, or whether his punishment would have persisted nonetheless to haunt his thoughts and dreams.  Undoubtedly the latter scenario would have served him better in the long run.  Cain could not expect to find true refuge in the Machine of the city, and yet he could build it, and it could operate.

Noah, esteemed though he was of God, had not the knowledge or the control of the Machine of his body to handle the chemical that his vintage produced.  Shem and Japheth had not the control of their individual selves, or of the two-man work crew they comprised, or of the family of which they—during Noah’s incapacitation through inebriation—were the heads, to handle the awkward situation properly.  In short, Noah need never have known that he had lain naked, or that anyone but himself had covered his nakedness.

Instead, Noah is confronted upon awakening by what has happened, and he seizes upon a vengeance almost diabolical.  He constructs a Machine.  By instituting a curse of slavery on a son of Ham, he turns the interplay of a family into the interactions of a contrivance—a hideous, merciless contrivance.  No “the Law provided protection and dignity for slaves” argument will suffice—Canaan is to be “the lowest of slaves.”  It is quite logical to ask at this point what other kinds of “slaves” there were.  Was Japheth a tent-dwelling “slave” of Shem?  And why was Canaan singled out, rather than his father, and presumably singled out among other sons of his father?  Was Ham still needed to perform the functions of a patriarch?  Was the “Canaan strain” of Ham’s blood enough to provide all the “lowest of slaves” types that were needed?  Inescapably, one must use the logic of the machine.

And down on through the Dred Scott decision (and for generations after) the logic of the machine was used.  The African was a device.  The Noah and the Curse of Ham Story was a device.  Scripture itself (as so often through history) was turned into a machine, used to serve the possessors and arbiters of power.  If Scripture is not a machine—a source of power magnifying the status of the possessors of power—then why do the churches not ask for more Scripture?  Forget arguments about how new Scripture would be validated (remembering that nothing is impossible for God).  The churches do not want more Scripture.  Scripture as it stands has been relegated to the status of the Machine—a “salvation machine” at best (if such is really possible), and a power machine at all times.

Only when the Machine of Scripture is stressed beyond its tolerances—when this or that element (or the totality) of existence is viewed as everything or nothing (such as Jesus rejecting the Law or requiring absolute adherence to the Law)—only then can we have any hope of seeing the organic reality of God’s creation (and of his creative power) rather than the real or conceptual machines of our own contrivance.