Jai and I are watching our weekly dose of news on television. Some mother stabbed and killed her son. The report gives every bit of detail, except for the motive. I hurl my arms up in the air and warble my frustration. “Maybe they don’t know why dad”, says my calming son. “Oh they know…”, I reply in my best disgruntled geriatric, “…but they often withhold the motive, because…”, and before I could finish my sentence, Jai adds, “…so they can run the story longer?”
So they can run the story longer.
My clever little man.
As one does, it was roundabout this point I got to thinking about the race of Giants that once galumphed on the earth since the time of Adam – when the ‘Sons of God’, a phrase only mentioned five times in the Old Testament, always in connection with angels, and in this case ‘fallen angels’ who married human women, to produce the Nephilim – came into being for the sole purpose of contaminating the line of the Saviour, and all that scripture really is, documenting the genealogy of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, which when you think about it, the whole Bible becomes the Genesis for every generation ever since, placing more and more of us into that same genealogy, is some mind bendy inception shee-at right there.
Our adversary was of course trying to get out from under his curse a few chapters earlier, which is why after the flood during the time of Noah, which was sent by God to wipe out the Giant race, Satan’s vipery brood were at it again, producing more Giants which became the ‘ites’ and ‘ems’ we’ve come to know as the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perrizites, Hivites, Jebusites, Rephaimites, Zamzummim, Emim, not to be confused with Eminem and Anikem, not to be mistaken as lord Aniken.
After He made the promise to never flood the earth again, the Lord had to now find some other way to genocide them giants, so He went and fetched the Israelites from Egypt and gave them strict orders that when they entered the promised land they were to obliterate the Ogres, which they mostly did, the most famous being the last of the Rephaites the Amorite King Og of Bashan, whose bed is described as being 13.5 feet long and 6 feet wide, which you can read for yourself in the Holy Bible. Thirteen feet, that’s like me and brother Ben teetering on my shoulders in Australia’s tall poppies got talent. And then of course there was the ten foot pain in the arsenic Goliath from Gath, whom David, King of Rock, brought down with a rolling stone.
Throughout the centuries archaeologists have accidentally dug up the bones of Giants – I feel an Indiana Jones number five coming on- and even Josephus, the first century historian mentions that Giant bones were on display in Jerusalem during his time. Since then the bones have been sent to the Smithsonian Institute where they remain either under lock and key or – tin foil hats on – destroyed under instructions of the ‘conspirators’, which completes Nicholas Cage’s National Treasure trilogy.
The literal translation of the word Nephilim is ‘bully’ or ‘tyrant’, called the race of ‘renown’ in Genesis these Giants were likely to have been seen by the Egyptians and many other pagan nations as the terror deities of their times, and subsequently worshipped. How does the knowledge of Giants help you in your pilgrimage? Apart from no longer having to agonise over who exactly built the pyramids of Egypt, and why Israel and its Protector is still today a force to be reckoned with, it adds little else. Why is it suppressed? So the BBC can run another documentary and the pyramid mystery can run a little longer as behoves any idol-worshipping culture built on commercial decisions, and perhaps so the Lord can build faith.
Where was I?
Withholding the motive, so the story can run longer.
That might work in the nationalistic golden calf world all around us, but it has no bearing or value in God’s economy, who crafts and places our individual salvation stories, each with a beginning and an end, underneath His overarching narrative, which has no beginning nor end, which is encompassed in, and summarised as the Gospel – both story and narrative – which can only be found in the death (story) and resurrection (narrative) of His boy, sealing us in that special relationship which leads us through suffering on into eternal life.
It’s a wonderful narrative because it has a transparent motive, and it is the longest running and most robust narrative the world will ever see, of which we all have an invitation to be a part of it.
Potayto potahtoh, tomayto tomahtoh, aubergine eggplant, zucchini courgette – I should have said that John Hagel writes extensively on the difference between story and narrative, ‘story’ being complete pockets of vapour each encompassing a beginning middle and end, while ‘narrative’ is the timeline that lives on in perpetuity.
“In my Father’s house are many rooms.” (John 14:2)
I used to think that love and eternal life were external tenements out there in the world, which floats in and out of our grasps and largely remained unattainable, because we foolishly proportion it to our fluctuating righteousness, when love and eternal life are in fact already in us, housed safely in a secure vault, but which needs a key to unlock, a key held by the only one true adjudicator, and so while the nihilists purport death as the end, and fundamentalists as the beginning, it is only Christ who demonstrates how life now is already not only tethered to the eternal – in other words we have already stepped into eternity – but with Him, we run infinitely longer.
If Jesus came to destroy the world’s suffering and evil the first time around, like the Israelite nation hoped he would, no human would have been left alive, but instead he died on the cross in our place, taking the punishment our sins deserve, so that someday soon he can return to earth to finally kill the last Giant – evil itself – without destroying us all in the process. Who does not desire this?
When I came home last night Jai seemed very pleased with himself. “It was your cross country race today yeah?” He grinned as he nodded. “I came twentieth!” “Well done buddy. You finished the race!” High fives all around without poking each other in the eye, before he said this; “I was the last one to be written on the list dad! I made the list dad!”
My clever little man.
thankyoubackbone.com 