Opus 2025-534: New Lego Pieces

One morning my grandson, who was spending the night and most of the day with us, called me in because he was having a problem.  There was no note of crisis or panic, but obviously he needed my great wisdom and insight to deal with a difficulty.

I proceeded into the living room and sat down beside him and asked, “What’s the problem?”  He was playing with his Legos and he pointed down into the box and asked a question, “What’s that?”  Legos now come in so many variations it could have been a real mystery.  Now my first vision was to see a piece that looked like a corner of a castle, but he would know that.  So I looked closer and there was this dark shadowy object beside the castle corner.  When I got even closer, it turned out to be a hornet.  Fortunately, it was a dead hornet.  Fortunately for us, I’m not sure the hornet appreciated his condition.

I proceeded to extract the carcass, check to make sure that the boy didn’t want to keep it for something, and then took it to the trash can.  Mission accomplished.  I had removed something that didn’t belong there.  I fulfilled my purpose for the morning.

Of course you know I’m going to make some kind of spiritual application out of this.  It seems to me that often times there are bits of theology or tradition that exist in our basket of Legos.  To anyone who is paying attention it should be obvious that they don’t belong.  Sometimes people aren’t paying attention, or should I say most of the time.  When they do notice a problem, they tend to feel they need to call someone else to work it out.  Could my five-year-old grandson have removed the hornet?  Probably. If it had been my granddaughter she probably would’ve picked it up with some tweezers and run around and chased her brother with it.  But he wanted to sit by and let me take care of it.  Since I’m a grandfather and need to be needed, I was OK with that.

But what happens when the person who should be removing dubious material on their own refuses to take that step?  What happens when you read something in Sunday school material or a book somebody lent you or on some kind of billboard?  Too many people just automatically accept it and work it in as part of their world view.  What often happens also when they call someone else to come and straighten it out?  That person is part of the conspiracy and tells him no, that belongs there.

So when you have someone questioning the physical resurrection of Jesus, you need to quickly get rid of that hornet.  It doesn’t belong in any Christian’s library.  When you hear them talking about a divine spark within them that they need to reach on their own effort to raise themselves to divinity, after you get through looking at them with that look, tell them you’ll pray for them in their misguided thinking.

You don’t need the professionals to tell you what the Bible says.  And with a good dictionary, you won’t need them to tell you what it means either.

God gave us the word so that we could learn and research on our own.  He sent the Holy Spirit to help us tell the difference between a dead hornet and a castle corner in our spiritual Lego world.  You make the application.

homo unius libri