Philip Jahnke
Honors Directed Writing One
"Staring at the Sun"
"Staring at the sun" is a metaphor. It can mean many different things to many different people. When it is referred to a description of doing theology one can say that staring at the sun is like looking for God. When someone is "staring at the sun," that person cannot see the sun but he or she knows that it is there. The same thing applies to God. No person can see God, but all that believe in him know that he is there. There are even those who do not but still feel and know that there is something, some higher being if you will, out there. Concerning God's location, Christians believe that he "lives" in heaven. This is true according to Ecclesiastes 5:2, which says, "God is in heaven..." Since God is in heaven how does a person see glimpses of life after life after death as N.T. Wright puts in his book SIMPLY CHRISTIAN Why Christianity Makes Sense? People see glimpses of this life through the intersection and overlapping of Heaven and Earth because Heaven and Earth are not far apart as some people would have the world believe but are very near each other. Heaven and Earth have not intersected or overlapped just once but have done so on a number of different occasions. For example N.T Wright says that Mount Sinai is one of those places (64). He also says that the Temple in Jerusalem is another of those sites (64). From what N.T. Wright wrote about these sites and what they were used for one can conclude that Jesus Christ and his death on the cross was and is the most important intersection or overlap in Christian theology. Wright writes that, "His death would do what the Temple, with its sacrificial system, had pointed toward but had never actually accomplished. In meeting the fate which was rushing toward him, he would be the place where heaven and earth met, as he hung suspended between the two" (110). From this a person can conclude that God had or still has a plan for bringing his creation back to perfection.
With that conclusion a person must wonder, what God's plan is and who it involves. N.T. Wright writes, in his section on Israel and their hope for salvation, "There will come a new king, anointed with oil and with God's own Spirit (the Hebrew for "anointed one" is "Messiah"; the Greek is "Christ"), and he will put the world back into proper order. Based on Wright's words one can conclude that God has sent a rescuer and his name is Jesus (110). Wright also states that, "The time had now come when, at last, God would rescue his people, not from mere political enemies, but from evil itself, from the sin which had enslaved them. These evidences help to prove the value of this metaphor.
This metaphor is valuable for a number of reasons; the primary of which is that it takes something that almost any reader will be familiar with and relates it to something that he or she may or may not understand. That which he or she understands being staring at the sun and that which he or she may not understand being Christianity itself. Another reason that this metaphor is beneficial is that it easily leads into the telling what Christianity is about without making the reader feel like it is being forced on him or her. This being that God sent his son to die on the cross to redeem all people from their sins (86-87). In telling this basic truth of Christianity Wright helps lay the ground work of what could eventually become a firm believer in Christ.
This metaphor is problematic for a few reasons. The most important reason is that Wright assumes is several places that the reader is familiar with the Bible and in particular the Old Testament. A specific example is when Wright mentions the Passover and Jesus Last Supper without explaining very well what the Passover is and why it is significant to Jesus. Another odd reason that "staring at the sun" is a poor metaphor is that some people may assume that to be a Christian you must go through pain and suffering. This is simply not true though some Christians are made to suffer physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially because of persecution. Though this author believes that if a reader makes this assumption then that reader should probably not be reading books of this type of depth.
Wright does invite a person to consider Christian theology more deeply. He causes the reader to think more about what happen during the times that the Bible was written about. He also causes his readers to consider that the words in the Bible may have more meaning that just what the reader takes them for. Wright causes his readers to consider Christian theology more deeply so that they do not just accept his words. Wright wants his readers to question what he has written and then go back to the source, the Bible, and try to find out what God says.
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