The Marriage of Opposites

Carl Jung defined god as "the coincidence of opposites".

God is all about marriage. Carl Jung defined god as "the coincidence of opposites". Now, while God (as my father pointed out to me) is much more than that, being the all-at-once (or all-in-all) is very true of Him. I see this at the farm all the time. In creation, land and plants and animals are wed.

This is why 40% of cattle that are moved to a new location die within the first year - they become acclimated (wed) to the climate, to the soil, to the plants that soil produces. The same holds true for us. Our bodies depend on the bacteria in our gut to derive and produce nutrients from the food we eat and ,when we move to or visit a new location that has different bacteria, we experience gut wars.

Sometimes those marriages don't seem to make sense - they require a lot of exhausting work and gut-wrenching commitment. You can get higher yields from hybrid corn (hybridization essentially divorces the corn genome from the climate - as long as you give hybrid corn the same fertilizers, same chemicals, same conditions it was bred for, it will produce the same yield) but the nutrition in those kernels is lacking. The end result is you have food that cannot provide you with health. '

On-the-other-hand, open-pollinated corn requires more work. You have to plant it in your soil; spend time weeding and watching it; find the best ears to save for seed the next year. And do this year after year, every year, if you want food that will give you health and life. The end result is you get slowly increasing yields and plentiful nutrition.

It’s about redemption. and That’s a beautiful Thing.

The marriage I'm currently struggling with (besides my own!) is that between God's wrath and God's love. God cannot lay aside His love and He cannot lay aside His wrath. They are not the same, they are different, but they exist in a unity (sounds a little trinitarian!). It has occurred to me that what the marriage of wrath and love looks like is the cross. The point is that there is nothing that is in God's wrath that is not in His love. His wrath is not about retribution, it's about redemption. And, as Dr. Mary Grace Pennella often says, that's a beautiful thing!!

Neal Reishus