The Unhewn Hero

Exodus 20:25

And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

"The hero is the one who knows from top to bottom that he is not a hero. The hero moves through his days not only aware of his moral failures, but of his dependence on the grace of God in all its manifestations. He must know, increasingly, how weak and needy he is." —R.C. Sproul Jr.

R.C. Sproul Sr. in Reformed circles is the authoritative voice in the Pantheon of modern theologians. His son is actually twice as hard-core as he is. I find him him (Jr.) harsh and heavy. Maybe Solomon to Rehoboam type of thing. No one else even gets close to Sr. in his biblical knowledge and general training in philosophy. Plus. he digs Kierkegaard. I wish more Reformed people had sharp minds and soft hearts. Why is it so difficult to have both? 

Yet, I agree with Jr.'s assessment above. Unlike the Nietzschean Uber-Man (Superman), heroes recognize that they are flawed. For if they are human, it follows that they are flawed. The Syllogism of the Sin nature. They fight external enemies but also the enemy inside of them. We are jagged, broken, unpolished, and unhewn. Any attempt to make us more before God makes us less. Only the Lord can sculpt a soul. It is wise to step aside as the self and submit to the hammer and chisel. 

In my reading through Exodus, I came across this Scripture verse. Calvin didn't speculate on what the significance of building an altar of unhewn stone meant. He dismissed all inquiry as fruitless and perhaps even folly, maybe even fiendish. But, I have to think that God had a purpose for so doing and it doesn't seem unproductive to ponder why, for all Scripture is given for understanding. Otherwise, why tell us? If it was to be in the secret counsels of God, He would have remained silent.    

Unlike the current post-modern Neo-Evangelicals who distance themselves from the Old Testament like one would from a crazy uncle at Christmas who utters hard sayings informed by strong drink, Reformed types like me ground our faith there. Christ is the central character of the Bible but His incarnation starts in the first chapters of Genesis, not Matthew. When I became a Christian, I was actually surprised by how harsh Jesus could be. "Twice the Son of Hell as you are" and "Better to be thrown into the deep with a millstone around your neck" just to mention two sayings. That didn't square with the meek and mild Jesus I thought I knew. Peace man!     

The heroes of the Bible, outside of Jesus, are hardly holy 24-7. It is probably one of the leading proofs of the authenticity of the Bible. In Islam, one loses his head by deriding the Prophet. The Bible takes that away from the critic and this disarms skeptics--or at least it should. It is a given that biblical characters are broken vessels. Par for the course, nothing new under the sun. How a central book of a society (Israel) would preserve the unhewn biblical story is an odd exception to the all too human tendency to portray ourselves better than we are and to suppress the truth , which is particularly prevalent among the powerful, the prideful, the prosperous. The 1% have never been fond of confession and self-recrimination. That blows holes in the Marxian and Freudian thesis that Christianity is a contrived belief system fabricated by the rich to control the herd of humanity and force compliance to authority, which is backed by the threat of eternal damnation. It just doesn't add up. 

James tells the rich to howl because of the miseries that are to come upon them. He also rails against unfair wages, preferential seating in the assembly for the wealthy, and so on. These words are dynamite, not sparklers of all light and no heat. Explosive power under the thrones of the Elite. Which is probably more me than not. I shouldn't so easily quote these verses without seriously considering that he is talking to me. 


I am going to make an Unhewn Tee-Shirt. With a big U on the front. Something like this:

U    

Not Ubermensch, Unhewnman