analogous scissors

I cut my hair today. I’m not sure how masculine it is to cut one’s own hair, but I do, and I like it. It’s saved me a lot of money over the past few years. In fact, when I was in the dorm at Briercrest it became quite a lucrative little business for me. In the end I was charging top dollar for Keith Kuts (no, I did not actually have a name for it). This probably had a lot to do with the fact that most people were too lazy to go into Moose Jaw, and I knew it. Sam Walton has nothing on yours truly.

Cutting hair is fun because it reminds me of those little pots that looked like faces that you could grow grass in. Eventually it got to the point that you could give them crazy green hair-do's, something I'm sure most of us secretly desired at one time or another.

It’s rewarding to see the dry, dead cells fall to the ground and the head regain a sense of symmetry and decency. I may not be able to order society, or bring justice to the people, but I can straighten a mop of hair. That is, if it falls within my specialized range of variation on the ‘Keith style.’

It’s like the sculptor, chipping away at a large rock until a beautiful marble statue is revealed from within, an exquisite work of art that was always there but took the master’s eye to reveal. It's like the way God chips away at our filthy sin and the dirt we cling to until he reveals us as a new creation, his beloved children.

 

Honestly, though, my hair cutting is nothing like that at all. Analogies are useful, but affirmative theology only goes so far. Analogy is the only language we’re left with when discussing the Person of God outside of reference to the revolution of Christ's humanity. Ana-logos: word beside word, or, in this case, word beside Word. Our linguistic tools are vain and pure artistry when left on their own to articulate spiritual substance. Their only redemption from pure mythology is in the reality they point to within our own spiritual experience. This is what gives our words truth in relation to spiritual matters. This is how we express spiritual truths in spiritual words. "He who has ears, let him hear." No wonder Jesus referred to himself as the Bread of Life, the Living Water, the Good Shepherd, the True Vine. No wonder he spoke in seemingly silly stories. Everyone who has will be given more, but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. You have to know him to hear him, so to speak. He who belongs to God hears what God says. The Spirit of truth guides us into all truth.

Praise God that his Spirit is at work in everyone, that his Word does not return void… That his Word through us and in us does not return void.