Of Bears and Penguins

Advent, Day 19:

Several months ago, someone said to me, "It's not like you can hit the reset button."

Which is one of those platitudes that sounds somewhat profound, and inarguable, but once you scratch the surface shows up to be about as sensible as saying, "It's not like you can bottle the ocean," or "It's not like you can unring a bell."

All patently obvious statements. I'm curious as to when the concept of the reset button entered our collective consciousness - was it with the advent of video games or prior to that?

I had a Nintendo growing up, and was well familiar with the concept of the reset button - unhappy with how a game was going? No problem, hit the reset button, get a clean slate. It is so easy, so painless, nearly effortless, and mostly costs us nothing.

Which begs the question, why didn't the Lord just hit the proverbial reset button way back when Adam and Eve ate the fruit and fell from grace. Wouldn't that have been inifinitely easier, less painful than what we have all endured since then?

The situation I keep imagining if there were such a thing as a cosmic reset button is much like my childhood Nintendo experience - reach the same challenging point of the game, be defeated, cut your losses and reset, ad nauseum. I think that's what would have happened if God had done that in the Garden, Adam and Eve would have repeatedly encountered the same problem, and experienced the same result. And as anyone who's played a video game can tell you, not being able to get past a particular challenge is particularly frustrating.

If there were such a thing as a cosmic reset button that could be tapped as needed, then no unkind thing would be remembered, we should be at peace and no longer bear the burden of our human fraility, or of the mistakes we make, or the sins we sin. We would not be accountable for our actions. There would be no need for forgiveness or for grace as they would no longer be needed to pave the way forward among people's poor, broken hearts.

The Lord would be able to fellowship with us without gazing towards the cross. He should never need to bear the terrible sacrifice, Christ would not have to endure our mortal frame, or separation from the Father He adores. Jesus would never have to trod the path to dark Gethsemne if God in His omnipotence had chosen the course of the reset button.

Yet, this is not the path He chooses. To have a reset button presents a way without pain or loss to be sure, but a way that seems to have a shallowness that contains no room for the depth of God's love, or the miracle of His grace. A shallowness which does not ennoble or restore or heal the creation in a lasting way, but simply patches it up until it needs fixing again.

So God chose a way that contained great pain, but also great honor, freedom, light. A way that would not leave us stunted in our mistakes and never learning better how to love. A way of healing in us that which needed healing and wholeness. A way through which God could be reconciled to His creation, while not diminished in His holiness.

Mercy. Grace. Forgiveness. Passion. Redeemption. Love big enough to conquer all loss, all sin, all grievous hurt. That's the moving force behind Christ's incarnation.

It is humbling.

There is no reset button, but the Lord does give the ability and the tools to walk a path forward. Through Him, we too share in mercy, in grace, in forgiveness, in a love that believes the best and lifts up.

And overcoming that initial challenge is infinitely more satisfying then simply hitting that small reset button.

Still, how often do we keep trying to hit that button - sometimes we lose relationships because we lack the courage to see them through, we try to rebuild better, more perfect relationships with other people only to encounter the same challenges, the same failures. We keep thinking that we'll be able to do it all on our own, we love the myth of the self-made man, we love to imagine that the last lines of Gatsby are true, that someday we actually we will reach that green light, all by ourselves, cheerful achievers of our dreams. We so often build these clay idols for ourselves - the perfect relationship, the perfect job, etc., etc., etc. And in the end, as we tap our hammer to them once more the clay that they are made of crumbles, and we're left again with dust.

When I was a kid with my Nintendo, I could never beat the third level of the Mario game, but I knew that I could always ask my brother to do it for me. I can't imagine how many times he patiently sat cross legged beating that one level for me so that I could advance.

And that is a bit like Jesus, who conquers what we can't, who vanquishes that final enemy, satisfies the holiness of the Almighty, and places the conqueror's crown on are undeserving heads.

It's Jesus who admonishes us that if we remember that we have something unresolved with someone else, that we're to go and mend - not reset, but abide in the grace of God to find the path forward.

Jesus is the great reconciler. Praise be to Him.