The Dung Paddle

Thou shalt have a place also without the camp,

whither thou shalt go forth abroad:

And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon;

and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad,

thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back

and cover that which cometh from thee

.

Deuteronomy 23:12-13

As the Israelites marched through the Wilderness of Sin, YHWH dictated a special command to the Israeli soldiers when they reconnoitered enemies or marched into battle. Among their weaponry and tools, YHWH instructed the warriors to carry with them a dung paddle or spade. If a soldier needed to relieve himself, he was to go outside the camp, dig a hole for his dung, and then cover it with dirt. No doubt this command implies both practical and ethical meaning, the former hygienic and the latter symbolic. In truth YHWH's army still marches through the Wilderness of Sin, and we still need our dung paddles.

When I was a headmaster, I used the dung paddle as an illustration to teach my faculty and staff how to get rid of, well, let's just call it "dung," anything that polluted the school environment: gossip, unkindness, criticism, anger, triteness, foolishness, superficiality, wasted time, foolish words, bad ideas, and anything else that "stunk": "If its dung," I would tell them, "get rid of it, bury it, cover it up, and certainly do not bring it to me." This applies to all professions, and everyone who works with other human beings knows how one's own and others' "dung" fouls the environment. "dung" also pollutes every imaginable setting: families, churches, social networks, etc. We might not always understand it, but we know it when we smell it (:>).

So let every soldier remember - that strange contraption hanging by your sword, the dung paddle, is there for a reason. You will need it often, probably every day, so use it. Get the stuff out of your camp, get rid of it, bury it, forget it, and march on.

Hope, the Forgotten Grace

Of the three Christian graces delineated by Paul—Faith, Hope, and Love—Hope is least explored and most misunderstood. Appropriately, though seldom accurately, preachers preach much, and Christians think much, about Love. Love is the apex of triangular grace, faith and hope in their proper places as subordinate co-equals.

After Love, Faith is oftened preached and discussed, unless one is a holy-roller, and then Faith is perverted and proffered in a thousand wicked ways. Even more orthodox settings contemplate faith at only superficial levels, viz, faith is an ambiguous wish that things will get better, or faith is something I do. The truth is that Faith, as a transformative experience, is a miraculous and sovereign “gift of God” or, as Paul calls Faith, “the fruit of the Spirit,” the Holy Spirit being the root and branch of the fruit, Faith. Theologically, genuine Faith is objectified by divine revelation, “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God”; that is, one errs to think of faith as a wishful want or a wiggle of the will. Faith is neither ambiguous nor mysterious but rather always illuminated by “thus saith the Lord.” The Word objectifies Faith, to which legitimate spiritual experience tangibly attests. Faith as wishing and willing is probably the byproduct of confusing Faith with Hope.

Unlike Faith, which may always be objectifed in light of divine revelation and certifiable spiritual experience, Hope is more ethereal, transcendent, and mysterious. Faith confirms revelation, and revelation confirms Faith, but Hope arises in the heart and reaches beyond the known into the unknown, “hope that is seen, is not hope.” But Hope does not reach into a void. While Faith embraces the Word of God, Hope embraces the nature of God, particularly the Goodness of God. Hope may not have “a word from the LORD” about this or that, but Hope knows that God is Great, and that God is Good, and therefore Hope is like “an anchor of the soul,” securing and stabilizing the soul, especially in dark tempests and stormy waters. Hope may not see a guiding star or harbor light, but Hope knows her Captain’s hand is upon the rudder no matter the gale.

The Spiritual Intellect

All the duties of the Law, and all the beauties of grace, hang upon two commandments: love thy neighbor as thyself, and love Yahweh Elohim with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Ironically, not only the duties and beauties of the law and grace hang on those commandments but we hang on them as well, or should I say we’re hung on them, hung because we perpetually fail to love as the law and grace demand. The only person who ever loved perfectly, Jesus Christ, proved His love by actually hanging upon a rugged tree, the law and grace hanging with Him there in Love.

Daily we fail ethically and emotionally at the duties and beauties of Love; infamously, we fail even worse when we acknowledge that both the law and grace command us to love Yahweh Elohim with all our minds. From both psychological and theological perspectives, “the mind” refers to volition (will), sanction (conscience), and contemplation (intellect).

Although the concept of “mind” as rational intellect is not immediately obvious to the original instance of “love Yahweh Elohim . . . with all thy heart,” but rather implicit to the word leb, usually translated “heart,” nonetheless, leb does comprehend rational intellect and, therefore, inherent to the commandment is what one might call an implicit duty to love God with one’s mind. The LXX translators either did not choose to emphasize this intellectual dimension of love or perhaps overlooked the intellectual aspect of leb, but all three synoptic writers amended the insufficient LXX rendering to include an intellectual responsibility to love God with one’s mind; for instance, both Matthew and Luke add the term dianoia, and Mark even more emphatically employs the term suneseos, “understanding” or “comprehension.” Hence, despite the LXX oversight, both the Masoretic text and the GNT strongly emphasize the importance of loving God with one’s “mind” or “understanding,” viz., spiritual intellect. That begs the question, “How does one love God with the mind or understanding?”

To answer first, to love God with one’s mind, one should use his/her mind. It sounds like a cliché, “use your mind,” but St. Paul instructs that, whatever we do, should be done passionately, and that includes thinking. We might add that serious thinking usually requires some external stimulus to the brain. A really good book, not necessarily an entertaining one, is perhaps the best external source for intellectual stimulation.

Secondly, to love God with all one’s mind includes a high responsibility to sanctify the mind from the vulgar, mundane, and commonplace, and ennoble the mind through aesthetically transcendent contemplation. Of course, most of us do not live in a monastery so that we can devote 18 hours per day to the study of scripture, but rather we find ourselves thrust out into the cruel streets of secular chaos as cosmic orphans; in that sad estate, we must learn to look past the sewage in the streets, through the polluted atmosphere that surrounds us, and find roses among thorns, lilies in the thickets, and rainbows in the thunder. Art, literature, and music, especially of the classical and secular sort, are like beams of light through the darkness that, although they will not take us to heaven, certainly can make us feel (and think) that we are on the way. This duty to transcendence also demands that we learn to turn every conversation heavenward, not that we should aim to quote a Bible verse every time we engage in conversation, but rather that we should endeavor to make every conversation more meaningful, always leading conversants away from discussion of persons and events to interesting ideas and, hopefully, some affirmation of absolute truth. The ability to converse in a meaningful manner is both a science and art, learned by very few, and one that every thinking individual, Christian or otherwise, should endeavor to cultivate within himself.

Of course, the highest ennoblement of the mind derives from meditation upon Holy Scripture, whereby the will is restrained and redirected to absolute good, the conscience enlightened with righteousness, and the intellect charmed and transfigured by contemplating “things above.” This dimension of loving God with one’s mind necessarily demands intensive study of Holy Scripture, the only completely reliable source of our knowledge of the Divine. The study of Holy Scripture augmented and energized by the didactic ministry of God the Holy Spirit, actually reveals to us the person and nature of the Godhead whom, if we know, we shall adore, that is, love. In addition, if we love God, we shall love those made in his image, even if they, like ourselves, are damaged and scarred by the ravages of sin. Again, Jesus Christ is our example, “a friend for sinners.”