The Raindrop Analogy for Jesus 


Jim the hard-headed science and Jim the mystic find common ground. 

I had a flash of insight this morning waking out of a deep sleep: Jesus is a lot like a raindrop.

Still with me? Ok, then let's explore the analogy. First, a word about raindrops. Scientists now tell us that some tiny, solid speck floating in the air—a dust mote, a bacterium or cluster of bacteria, a fragment of earth thrown up by some violent storm, a carbon particle from smoke–such a speck may become a nucleus around which water vapor in the atmosphere condenses. Eventually, if the conditions of humidity, temperature and wind are right, the continually accumulating water from the water vapor becomes too heavy to float any more and falls earthward. Once again on earth, the water from the rain may soak into the ground, may stand in pools, or may run off into streams, lakes, rivers and eventually oceans. All along the way, when the conditions of sun, wind, heat, and humidity are right, the accumulated water may evaporate and rise again into the air, where the cycle is complete, only to begin again. Oh, and one last thing: when the sun and rain are positioned just right in relationship to some person, a rainbow is seen by that person.

Now, let's have a word about Jesus. Biblical literalists, you can hang up now. I want to talk about the stories that are told about Jesus. It is, as it must be obvious to some, only through stories about Jesus, told and retold over centuries, that anything at all is known about this Person. Anyone who has seriously studied the Bible and how it was formed also knows that there is a sequence of writing about Jesus that can be placed in a time order. In other words, the stories about Jesus grew and evolved. Our earliest writings may be the Gospel of Thomas and some of the writings attributed to Paul, followed in sequence by Mark first, Matthew and Luke second and third, and John last. These written-down stories grew over a period from about 40 years after the death of Jesus to well over 100 years after the death of Jesus. Bear in mind; there were no cameras of any kind, no CNN, ABC or NBC, no "scientific" point of view. And since the canonical Bible has been redacted, theologians and philosophers at every level of society have continued to elaborate on the so-called "Greatest Story Ever Told." Oh, and one last thing: when God and the theologians are positioned just right in relationship to some person, Jesus Christ is seen by that person.

It may have become clear that I am drawing an analogy between the hydrologic cycle and the history of theological ideas. Like any good analogy, it immediately breaks down upon closer examination. For one thing, the hydrological cycle is stuck, just because rain doesn't evolve—rain is rain. By contrast, our ideas of and stories about Jesus Christ continue to change and grow, hopefully in the direction of the Divine. And in the end, perhaps the idea of comparing the historical Jesus to the speck of dust that formed the raindrop, the rain, and eventually the Rainbow is, well, silly. But perhaps not. Can one be a Christian and think at the same time that "ashes to ashes and dust to dust" is probably even true of the historical Jesus of Nazareth? Being the unrepentant scientist that I am and also the committed Christian that I am, this is a question that has constantly engaged me for most of my lifetime.

It seems to me that the honest truth about Jesus of Nazareth is that his living body, through which his actions were seen and understood on this Earth by the people of his time, that living, praying, acting, healing body was very much like the cluster of microbes or the speck of dust around which the water vapor coalesced. What the Living Water was, was an ever-evolving still-evolving Concept of the Divine, not only shining through the eyes of Jesus of Nazareth, but also shining through the eyes of the converts to and the believers in this point of view. A point of view that sees love and forgiveness as the centerpiece of right living, love of that which created us and is greater than us, and love for any being in which this Love and Forgiveness can possibly dwell. And when anybody REALLY gets this, when someone REALLY sees that love for God and others and forgiveness of ALL the others is the Way, the Truth and the Light, well, then that person sees a Holy Rainbow, Jesus Christ.

Now, I know that some of you (the few that haven't yet hung up on me, and starting from a very small number, well, how discouraging) are getting VERY nervous right now. Because I am definitely near to touching on that subject of the Resurrection of the Body. Ya know what? Other than that SOMETHING VERY IMPRESSIVE AND HOLY must have been in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth at various points in his life, I really DON'T KNOW whether Christ's Body, or Mary's, for that matter, was assumed into Heaven. These stories that such is true were written by pre-scientific, and probably desperate-to-live-forever people. I'm not totally cynical here, there were Saints of God, but most of them and most of us were pretty ordinary. So I don't know. I am literally going to die in the HOPE of the Resurrection, in some sense, because I just don't know.

And, it's not exactly that I doubt. My faith is firm. I believe in God. I experience God almost daily in my reality; anyone who has read some of the stories in the blog will know this. I'm just OK with this uncertainty. It's good for my humility, trusting in this God in which I believe to dispose of my body, mind and soul properly when I leave this mortal coil. I'm happy in my half-baked Christianity. I mean—rain is rain, right, even if it is evolving rain. Love and forgiveness I can get at a lot of filling stations. I just happen to like the one at Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Louis and at my meditation center in my home.

Now, some True Believer is sure to think that I am really damned here, because I am leaving out a really big hunk of the Nicene Creed here–which Creed I, by the way, say every Sunday. But as I told our Bishop, I say it in solidarity with Christians past, present and future, in honor of the long and treacherous history, and mindful of Constantine's rather political outlook and great power. It's a nice story, and some of it is true. So am I burning in Hell, then? Your word against mine, baby. You might be right, but I don't think so.

If Jesus Christ is like a raindrop, and we all are like raindrops by analogy, then it isn't so hard for me to imagine that Sons and Daughters of God populate this Earth, and some of them may even not call themselves Christian, like I do. Nevertheless, they are all my brothers and sisters in God, and in that constantly evolving Concept of Love and Forgiveness as the Core of Life, Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile

Raindrops keep falling on my head,
And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed,
Nothin' seems to fit.
Cryin's not for me
'Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain from complainin'
Because I'm free.
Nothin's worryin' me. 

Posted: Mon - November 10, 2008 at 10:25 AM          

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