a heap of broken images

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images . . .

T.S. Eliot - The Wasteland

I am told that a great deal of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland is Biblically allusory, and so it is entirely possible that there are Biblical references in the passage above (other than the "Son of man . . ." bit). This is not why I chose to quote the passage, though. I'm mainly interested in that last part.

I had the pleasure of attending our church's Winter Bible Conference these past two days. Our speaker was Dr. Vern Poythress, a man with a list of impressive academic credentials and an admirable (realistic) humility about them and their relation to his creator.

One of the things Dr. Poythress examined frequently over the weekend was the idea that we and all of our capabilities are images of God and his character. And so the constance of many of our natural processes (the rising and setting sun, for example) are echoes of the reliability of God and his unchanging nature. We, with our capacity for rational thought and our ability to communicate in sophisticated ways, are likewise reflections of the glorious God that created us.

Dr. Poythress was quick to point out that, whereas Christ, the son of God, is a perfect image of the Father, we and all of our God-derived attributes are imperfect reflections of the Father and his nature.

Why am I writing about this? I was sitting in church this morning, trying to get my son to listen to me. I found myself getting frustrated, because he was the model son yesterday, and it only took him a day to lose his respect for the authority of my wife and myself.

This got me thinking, though--the Bible tells us that Christians sin. 1 John 1:8 says: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." In Romans, Paul says that though we Christians ". . . delight in the law of God, in [our] inner being . . . [we] serve the law of sin [with our flesh]" (Romans 7:22,25).

Another image Dr. Poythress mentioned was the parallel between the God-Man relationship and the Man-Child relationship. We know from Scripture that the God-Man relationship is broken, and not what it was created to be (Romans 1), and that this is a result of man's sinfulness.

What makes me think, as a human father, that the Man-Child (human-to-human) relationship will be a more perfect imaging than the God-Man relationship? In other words, if I am bound to disobey the law of the perfect God in whose image I have been created, I should expect my son to disobey the law of his imperfect earthly father, at least from time to time (read: frequently).

We are rebellious creatures. We hate to yield authority to anyone or anything. This is why many nonbelievers are offended by the idea that they would be considered sinful because of the actions of one representative man. It is this faith in the self that keeps them from acknowledging Christ, as well--he, like Adam, is a representative whose actions are looked upon as the basis of judgment for a body of others. The difference between the two is in what we deserve. Adam was a rightful representative (or federal head) for the whole human race, because given the same circumstances, not one of us would have made the right choice--God over the self. I realize that would raise objections from a lot of folks, but I believe that, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that this is the case.

Christ, on the other hand, is our representative purely through the grace and love of our Father. Given his circumstances, we would have yielded to the Evil One in the wilderness. We would not have healed the sick--would not have bothered with them, even--and we most certainly would not have sought to bear the punishment for anyone's sins, least of all our own. And yet God in his mercy sent his Son for those very reasons--because we're not good enough to reflect his holiness on our own. Those who believe can hide themselves in Christ's righteousness, so that when God looks on us, all he sees is the perfect image of himself reflected back at him.

May he grant me the grace to look on my own son with such patience, grace, and humility. God the almighty humbled himself for our sake. May I seek to show my son that type of love as best I can reflect it.