I am very tempted to repost the video from yesterday, but it’s better to link. Overnight, the corruption and intrusion in the states has come to the fore — troopers internally examining women, coercively, without changing gloves. This is disgusting: most if not all sex workers here know better, and any such examination (needed, say, after a sexual assault which is basically what the state police are doing inteh US) is done, with consent, by a doc. Which is one reason I have never wanted to be a police surgeon.
Locally, there have been contamination risks with milk powder. Since that is our primary export, the government has already called in the board of the Fonterra, the dairy cooperative.
And I am retreating into theology. If we accept that Christians are under attack, one of the demands we see is those who doubt demanding that we do something miraculous. This may be mythical, but apparently in the Victorian era there was an atheist street preacher who used to challenge God to strike him down dead — and when that did not happen, he said there was no God.
Without realizing that the logical error was as old as the Gospel.
11The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, asking him for a sign from heaven, to test him. 12And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” 13And he left them, and getting into the boat again, he went across to the other side.
14Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out — beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” 16They said to one another, “It is because we have no bread.” 17And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? 19When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to him, “Twelve.” 20“And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” 21Then he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
When you are talking Leaven around a bunch of Jews, they know that there is a period when they eat bread without a rising factor (yeast). During that period they eat flat bread. Yeast is seen, during Passover, as something that is banned for a season. They have to restart after that period. The bacteriologist in me thinks that this requisition of wild yeast and cleansing of any crock holding a starter (because most yeast would have been a sourdough) would be sensible. But Jesus is using this as a metaphor.
For Jesus was the sign to his generation. God was incarnate among them. He would die and then rise. And they want him to be some kind of sideshow, doing miracles on command.
As if man could tame God. A tame God is unfit for worship. He is gelded, he is a statue, he is safe. But let us praise God, for he is not tamed, he is good, but his very goodness is terrible and dangerous. And when I see the evil of this world coming out, as the very dashcams and videophones people have damn them, I’m reminded that Jesus said that which was secret will be shouted from the rooftops.
It’s time to cleanse our houses. For our God is akin to a roaring lion or a wildfire. Not mere yeast.
