We Should Not Be Amazed

From the beginning of Genesis God is concerned with the structure of the material world and all that’s in it.  The question arises—are there structures appropriate to the love of Christ? In what sense, for example, is forgiveness a structure?  This involves the structure of the dynamic of human relationships. In this dynamic Jesus asserts the importance and necessity of a non-countervailing response to be in harmony with God’s law of love.  Another aspect of appropriate structure is the lack of pretense and selfish pride.  The architecture of Jesus has little use for grandiose facades.  Truth and beauty are indeed fundamentally linked as is a reliance on God and not ourselves.  When considering Gothic cathedrals vis-à-vis the simplicity of the Quakers’ meeting house—both are harmonious since both are based on this reliance on God.  The validity of these contrasting structures gives us a warning however, diversity of expression and structure is readily possible within the realms of the true and beautiful.  In short, secular structures are justified by their source in the worship of God.  Both cathedral and meeting house would phony if not based in such worship. The soundness of the structure is in this sense alive and derivative. Thus we come to one of Jesus’s ultimate insights—there must be congruity between structure and allegiance to God.  When this link is severed, weak structures result. 

 Print Page