"In that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." Isaiah 27:1
If there is one image of total malevolence known to all cultures across time, it is that of the dragon. No monster holds such nightmarish sway over the imaginations of the world. Even the Bible identifies them as a power too great for any man to crush (see Job 42). That is why the slaying of a dragon is one story that is etched in our minds: we know that something amazing and impossible has happened, that the extraordinary has occurred.
Now, Israel has seen its fair share of dragons: from Egyptian captivity to Babylonian exile to Roman rule to Arab attacks. The Church has also had its dragons, both from without and within. The Devil himself is identified as a great and dreadful dragon (Revelation 12:1-9). Dragons are an ever present part of our history, whether they have literal scales or no. This is just one of the many mythic elements that make up our lives.
Of course, we do not catch anymore the myth that we live in. The modern world has so destroyed our sense of wonder and romantic awe that our "Christianity" today is based on timetables and quotas: put in my prayer time here, my devotions here, get this many people saved this week and this many tracts handed out this week or the boss man won't be happy, punch in and out for church, etc. Goodness! One would swear we were part of some religion. Christianity is not a religion; it is a story. A religion is something you must keep; a story is something you are swept up into, i.e., it keeps you. We are not swept up anymore. Our minds seem geared against it.
Pray to God that He gives us mythic eyes again so we can see the chariots of fire around us; see the prince of this world fall like lightning from heaven; see the Godhead charging on a white steed, coming to slay dragons, and monsters out of the earth and sea; see the knife-edge we walk between heaven and hell. Perhaps (if you will permit me to say) Captain Jack Sparrow was right: the world is not smaller than it was, there is just less in it. The modern world is a vacuum that has sucked the numinous life out of everything, until there is no life anymore, just struggles to survive. Even mediocre days would be fraught with peril if we had mythic eyes to see with.
Life is about much more than survival; it is about the tale we have fallen into. Going out your door is a dangerous business; pray that God keeps your feet so that you are swept off and up into Him. Pray that the Lord of Myth gives you eyes to see and ears to hear the story He is telling, full of dungeons and dragons, monsters and mazes, good and evil, life and death, desolation and glory.
"What songs do you sing
That we do not hear?
What pictures do you paint
That we cannot see?
What stories do you weave
That we will not read?
O Lord! Such tragedy!"
-Jon Vowell
No comments:
Post a Comment