Of Osmosis And Autobiographies

I was going to write about osmosis but it got me thinking about autobiographies. I think the concepts are linked.

An autobiography is like a parable. If you focus on the details you miss the point. A parable uses the details to frame a concept. It is a fiction that is constructed to make a comparison or bring out a deeper truth. The reader doesn't know the people described or the setting or the time. Those things may mirror something in the readers life so there is recognition but the details are fictions in that they are someone else's story or perspective. True or untrue they belong to someone else and that person is using them to describe something to the reader that would be invisible otherwise.

A person writes an autobiography for different reasons. They want to communicate something about themselves. It could be certain lessons they have learned. Perhaps they want to dispel myths or preserve a time that only they are keeping alive. autobiographies are often used to write history but are not the best source of information because people lie in them or they just exaggerate because they have lied to themselves.

God commissioned four biographies about Jesus. The Gospels. In truth they are four autobiographies from four different perspectives. God can't and doesn't lie but a separation must be bridged in order for His mind to reach ours.

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." - Philippians 2:5-11 ESV

That brings us back to osmosis. If liquid with a higher concentration of salt comes in contact with liquid that has no salt in time they will mix until the two have the same amount of salt. There just needs to be a gap large enough for the salt molecules to get through. The two liquids need a point of connection.

Jesus is the gap where God can mix with man. Philosophy can describe the glory of God but gives no way for a person to access God's goodness. There is no way to tastes and see that the Lord is good by philosophy.

Grace opens the membranes between worlds. Once opened the infinite nature of God will fill an area of less concentration until it is full and the same. It will equalize but with infinity there is no end... no limit. There is an overflow.

"On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.' " - John 7:37-38 ESV

To many people the Book is closed. It is just words on a page. It is just morality and human history. But to those that know Jesus it is a floodgate of glory. It is God telling us the story of His life and of ours in a mystery.

Parables must be heard in humility in order to be understood. Grace gives the divine meaning. It unlocks the mystery of Christ that God wants to reveal... He just needs to bridge the gap to do it.

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