Show Notes
Grandpa scared me. He drank beer and constantly smoked White Owl New Yorker cigars which he kept in the front pocket of his overalls. And Grandpa said all the words I wasn’t supposed to say, including the worst of all: “God damn,.” I’d been told that this phrase was the definition of “taking God’s name in vain,” which I now understand to be something far more subtle.
But if you ever do spend some time in “hell,” you may discover that it’s filled with broken farm equipment from central Nebraska. I heard him say it time and time again. “This tractor... God damn it to hell; God damn it to hell—these damn irrigation pipes.” I thought: “Grandpa is going to hell.... and no one seems to care.”
I honestly did not know what to do with Grandpa, but he seemed to always know what to do with me. In the summers when we’d stay at the farm on family vacation, in the morning or at bedtime, Grandpa would say, “Peter, you get in here, crawl up into bed with me and Grandma and let me give you a squeeze.” He’d pull me into his “kolpos” (in Greek), his “bosom” (in English), and hug me so tight that I’d say “Grandpa, I can’t breathe.” He’d say something like, “Ah hell, you’re just fine,” and squeeze me even tighter until Grandma would say something like, “Ralph, let Peter go to bed.” I honestly didn’t know what Grandpa saw in me: the neurotic preacher’s kid from the “big city.”
Many years later (1978, I believe), Grandma had died and Grandpa was staying with us in Colorado recovering from a broken hip. I was now going to Young Life and youth group and had recently re-dedicated my life to the Lord. And, I felt the need to save Grandpa from God . . . our Father. I knocked on his bedroom door. He was sitting on the side of the bed, his dentures in the front pocket of his overalls, a cigar in his mouth, playing Solitaire on a TV tray.
He listened to my reasoned presentation, followed by its logical implication: He needed to make a decision to save himself from the decision (Judgment) of God our Father. Surprisingly, he listened most intently, took a breath, and said, “Ah hell, Peter. The Presbyterians say one God damned thing, the Methodists say another damn thing, and the Baptists another, and then they fight over it.” And I didn’t know what to say. I had read enough of my Bible to realize that Jesus agreed with Grandpa.
In John 17, God the Son (from the “bosom of the Father”), speaks to God the Father. “Holy Father, keep them (the twelve) in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one... I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that all [pas: everyone] might be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world [cosmos] may believe that you have sent me (vs. 11, 20-21).”
If Jesus is praying “in Jesus’ name,” then it would appear that their will be a “oneness” in the twelve that would be so appealing that all people would see it, want to enter it, and all creation would be transformed..., as if the New Jerusalem were coming down, and so “all creation will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
“Make them one as we are one,” prayed Jesus. And he was praying for Grandpa.
Oneness is what we all want. It’s why Nazis wear uniforms, march in uniform, and scapegoat Jews. It’s why people get drunk together — to lose themselves and find themselves in another. It’s why people hang out in the red-light district. We all want to belong, for “it’s not good for Adam to be alone”; it’s evil. And yet, saving ourselves from aloneness in the wrong way is even more aloneness, evil, and damnation later on.
Oneness: It’s what we all want more than anything, and yet it’s the very thing that terrifies us more than everything or anyone.
It all reminds me of “The Borg” (on Star Trek). The Borg is a giant alien cybernetic organism that possesses other life forms, dissolving all
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