Making molehills out of Mountains

In the cartoon, an army of woodsmen furiously wield their axes, wood chips flying left and right, scattering the pieces that mean the death of a giant. They dance and celebrate as it begins its final fall. Loaded onto a train, transported to the mill, it enters one end of the long building. The wine and burr of saws and great blasts of steam and smoke reveal the energy expended in processing the behemoth. Finally, a baby carriage exits. Someone bends tenderly, peeling back the coverlet to show the face of a brand new baby—toothpick. It wails its entry into the world-the product of hundreds of years of growth and great gouts of energy. Created in the 1930s, when the forests of the Northwest seemed endless, the trees large enough to build a house in and man’s ingenuity seeming to stretch into the future forever. It was an allegory worth tending. I was probably eight when I saw it, having snuck away to my friend’s house-the one who owned a TV. A couple of years before my father’s death, I told him about the cartoon. He remembered it from his own childhood in which it was shown between movies in his local theater. I don’t know why the simple images of that cartoon stuck in both our minds, but it meshed recently in my mind, with something which, I believe, is one of the viruses weakening the body of Christ, His universal, across-all-boundaries church, His Ecclesia, His betrothed Bride-to be. Let me explain. For most of my life, I belonged to a denomination who held 27 doctrines to be the essence of Christian life and which were sacred to them as the portal of everlasting life. In the last couple of years, they have added a 28th—not quite sure how they missed it when they were formulating the original 27… A person convinced of the “Truth” would confirm their belief in all 27 (28) doctrines read with great solemnity by the pastor and then would undergo water immersion in a tank of water in the front of the congregation. This signified joining “The Remnant” church-the last gasp of humankind to be ready for Christ’s Second Coming. Whatever communion you hail from has some similar list of doctrines in whose belief or rejection, opens or closes the doors of admission and to salvation itself. Now, just how does one go about making a molehill out of a mountain? The aphorism from which I have inverted the title for this essayist, “making a mountain out of a molehill “putting into a pithy saying, someone’s actions or thinking which attaches to a small event or task a much larger significance. The reverse, as in the cartoon, takes great energy, many person-hours of study, and reflection; many days spent in selecting just the right text to create a chain of logical proofs to pare down the glories of god’s grace into a few rules of belief. For example, the Seventh-day Sabbath is one “testing” belief for my former denomination. Here’s how they put it on their web site (www.adventist.org): The seventh day (Saturday) is an extra-special part of the relationship. The Bible, from Genesis through Revelation, describes the seventh day as the one day God has set aside for focused fellowship with His people. God has named that day "Sabbath" and asked us to spend it with Him. "Remember the sabbath day," He says, "to keep it holy." The Sabbath is a whole day to deepen our friendship with the Creator of the universe! A day when we're together, Jesus with us and us with Jesus. As an aside, when reading this web page, I found that the doctrines have been completely rewritten into language that is very friendly and inviting. No more barebones statements of legal fact, but an inviting language of family, friendship and love. They have also not mentioned a few doctrines which are a bit less easily put into a family-friendly format, such as leaving pork, shellfish and buzzards off the dining room table. Another is the insistence that Ellen White be recognized as a recent-history inspired-of-God prophetess whose writing interpret correctly the Holy Scriptures. Interesting. Anyway, back to mountains and molehills. The concept of spending time establishing a relationship with God is condensed into a “day of worship” required by God as an entrance test into the denomination and into His Kingdom. The wonder and awe of coming to know Him, is compressed into a day. He who invites our worship in spirit and in truth is sandwiched between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday-He Who contains the universe within Himself, He Who died to break the chains of The LAW, portrayed (winsomely, no doubt) as a Being who demands 1/7th of our time as a special day. How the mountain of He Who is all, is pared down to one day, a bit more or less than 24 hours, depending on the season of the year. I illustrate at the expense of this particular denomination. But the truth is that all denominations, even most of the liberal, have some litmus test of fellowship and therefore entrance into the kingdom of God itself. We make a list of rules and point to the small pile of dust: “Here is the mountain that contains God. Worship here.” We settle for such small bits of Him, when a vast mountain range, a continent, an ocean, a universe cannot contain Him or all that He is. Blow away the pile of dust with a flick of the cleansing broom and turn to Him Whose vastness cannot, comprehended and in Whose vast heart we always have and always will find our peace, the true Truth who woos and wins and draws us to Himself. Less, less of that which I can write into rules, creeds, statements of belief; More more and still more of You Yourself, seen, experienced, touched and tasted in my spirit. Note: Here is the “official” doctrine (Number 20 in the list of 28(as voted by the denomination in session.: 20. Sabbath: The beneficent Creator, after the six days of Creation, rested on the seventh day and instituted the Sabbath for all people as a memorial of Creation. The fourth commandment of God's unchangeable law requires the observance of this seventh-day Sabbath as the day of rest, worship, and ministry in harmony with the teaching and practice of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day of delightful communion with God and one another. It is a symbol of our redemption in Christ, a sign of our sanctification, a token of our allegiance, and a foretaste of our eternal future in God's kingdom. The Sabbath is God's perpetual sign of His eternal covenant between Him and His people. Joyful observance of this holy time from evening to evening, sunset to sunset, is a celebration of God's creative and redemptive acts. (Gen. 2:1-3; Ex. 20:8-11; Luke 4:16; Isa. 56:5, 6; 58:13, 14; Matt. 12:1-12; Ex. 31:13-17; Eze. 20:12, 20; Deut. 5:12-15; Heb. 4:1-11; Lev. 23:32; Mark 1:32.) 11.24.12