I often tune into Public Radio
programing on my XM radio during the early morning hours when traveling back
and forth between Florida and North Carolina.
On my last trip I came across the This
American Life. The host’s voice
wasn’t pleasing to my hearing and I was about ready to change stations when I
became captivated when he began a special report on a certain sub-culture of
people whose prize possessions are their car stereos. They are called
"decibel drag racers" and people flock across international borders
to join them in competition. Like actual drag racing, cars line up across the
track, except in this competition they will not be going anywhere. The winner
is the owner of the car stereo that can play at the loudest possible decibel.
Oddly enough (that is, more odd than the fact that these systems are too
powerful to play music), most of the cars that win this competition are not
even drivable. From what I understand, the world record holder has 900 pounds
of concrete poured into the floor of his van. Wind shields usually only make it
through three competitions before cracking (and these are not normal
windshields). Yet one competitor still seems to entirely miss the irony that
there is no longer any room for himself in his car, stating, "We need more
batteries, but that's all the room we have."
To anyone outside of this
extreme audio sport world, "irony" is perhaps a generous word to
describe the phenomenon. The host seemed more articulate when he said
something like: "Everybody wants to be the king of a hill in the United
States, but the number of want-a-be kings always are smaller than is the number
of available hills, so we build more hills."
I’ve found a Greek word in my
vocabulary maunderings that captures my imagination as much as undrivable cars
and manmade hills. Cheiropoietos is a combination of two other Greek words, the
first meaning "hand" and the second "to make"—thus, the
rough translation, "made with hands." The word makes one of it’s appearances
in the early Greek version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, where the prophet Isaiah’s account
questioning the effectiveness of Bel and Nebo, the gods of the Babylonians and the
god of the Chaldean's. Isaiah 46
Isaiah describes a procession
out of the city and into exile where Bel and Nebo only burden down donkeys.
They "stoop and bow down together," Isaiah writes "unable to
rescue the burden, they themselves go off into captivity". In calamity,
the people who serve these gods are not bowing before them. Idols made with
hands must be carried out of the city gates by the very hands that made them. In verses 6 and seven, Isaiah is
perplexed by the irony they fail to notice:
Some pour
out gold from their bags
and weigh
out silver on the scales;
they hire a
goldsmith to make it into a god,
and they
bow down and worship it.
They lift it
to their shoulders and carry it;
they set
it up in its place, and there it stands.
From that
spot it cannot move.
Though
one cries out to it, it does not answer;
it cannot
save him from his troubles.
More than ever, I am noticing
the irony of things worshipped are often lost in the worshipper. The prophet
Jeremiah called it a "discipline of delusion." Much like a prized
vehicle that cannot carry anyone home from the competition, idols that cannot
answer the cries of the worshippers who made them are not worth crying to in
the first place. Whether building idols or building hills, anything that can be
fashioned by my own hands is not worth worshipping.
Yet after trying and failing
for years anyway, there is yet hope for me. The book of Isaiah is not the last time
cheiropoietos appears in Scripture. In the New Testament, cheiropoietos is
contrasted with the word acheiropoietos—that which is "made with
hands" is set in stark comparison to that which is "made without
hands." I found, a few weeks ago, in a letter to the Colossians, the
apostle Paul encouraging me to see that I
am not a self-made man, but transformed by something entirely different. "You have come to fullness in Christ,
who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised
with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh in
the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were
also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the
dead."
Father, God, I confess that I,
as a self-made man, standing on a man-made porch, am of no comparison to You, who
made these mountains I reside in at the moment. It was Your begotten hands that fashioned mine
that I might pick up a spade to turn the soil or chisel to craft a place to
rest or care for myself and family. Far more worthy of wonder than any work, accomplishment,
or possession that must be carried, are You, Father, through Jesus, who takes up my infirmities and carries my
sorrows, who was wounded for my transgressions, crushed for my iniquities, and
bore my sins in his hands.
