The Blackberry Walk

In the moment, changes in opinion and changes in view occur over long periods of time, as evidence builds and builds until you can no longer hold your current views. But when looking at the past, there's a moment where a switch flicked, and everything clicks into place. Whilst the process of coming to believe in God was for me in reality a slow and gradual one, when I think back there's a point at which everything clicked. I was on the train to Lincoln to visit Lincoln cathedral reading C. S Lewis' Mere Christianity. The specific chapter was Book 4 Chapter 5, titled 'The Obstinate Toy Soldiers', where Lewis discusses theosis and participating in Christ. I remember looking up from my book to gaze at the warm summer sun radiating through the train's car window, with the wispy, fogged grandeur of the cathedral posing as a backdrop; I felt a feeling of new-found freedom from being released from Pharaoh's lockdown legislation. Why are memories of the past so often rosier than events in the moment! Today we'll zero in on Lewis' idea of the toy soldier, through my own metaphor of the dollhouse. We are all part of God's dollhouse; we are all animate dolls, with wills of our own, created by Him: the Dollmaster. To begin, we'll start with Creation. Why is there evil in this world if God is all loving? This question posed by atheists has no easy answer, but I'll begin with an attempt. The Dollmaster loves His dolls, and makes them in His image. He wants His dolls to experience that love also: the sense of loving out of one's own free will, rather than forced love from oppression. Therefore, the Dollmaster gives his dolls free will to act as they wilt. In Eden, the dolls are immortal because they are allowed to eat from the Tree of Life. But once the Dollmaster's first two dolls, Adam and Eve, break the single law given to them and eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they cannot help but sin. The Dollmaster bans them from Eden, cutting them off from the Tree of Life so that the dolls do not live immortally in sin,¹ guarding Eden's gates with an angel. History continues with the dolls becoming further and further depraved, becoming stoney and incapable of love by their sin. Dolls breed with fallen angels,² creating abominations in the Dollmaster's eyes (in the dolls' fallen state, they are easily infatuated by spiritual beings³). The Dollmaster's plan, therefore, was to make a covenant with a doll named Abram, and then dwell amongst His dolls in the Tabernacle of Moses. However the Dollmaster saw His dolls fail to understand the laws He gave them; the dolls took the laws far too literally, failing to achieve the Dollmaster's original intent: to teach love. And, from hardness of heart, He divorced Israel. Despite this apparent failure, the Israelites had learnt of the Dollmaster. There was a kind of fourth wall breaking where the dolls recognised the Dollmaster as having watched over them all along. The dolls learn to worship and pray to the Dollmaster watching over them, and request He aid them in their times of need; for the Dollmaster has wide control of His dollhouse. All this acts as the seedbed for the Dollmaster's plan. The Dollmaster decides to send down His Son (also the Dollmaster, confusingly - but what can us dolls understand!) into the dollhouse to teach the dolls by His words and His life of the Dollmaster's love, and how to love in return. Because the Dollmaster's Son is also the logos⁴ - the programming code underpinning the laws of the dollhouse, whether physical or moral - He is one who is both a doll, and able to 'move mountains' within the dollhouse, a feat only the Dollmaster watching over the dollhouse could achieve. And through faith - that is a trust and the yielding of one's will to the Son - the dolls can also perform such miraculous feats.⁵ Through the Dollmaster's Son's death on the cross, dolls may find deeper and deeper truths for the rest of their lifetime; the Dollmaster, as smart as He is, gave an inexhaustible message to the dolls to contemplate (and hopefully not fight over the meaning). What's key is that He died around the Passover: the same time of year the Dollmaster saved His people from slavery in Egypt. Therefore, the Son's death on the cross is akin to the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, saving mankind just as the Dollmaster saved the Israelites from Pharaoh at Passover. And then, through His resurrection, the Dollmaster's Son shows how all the dolls who follow Him will be resurrected with immortal 'spiritual bodies'⁶ also, reversing the original doll's sin. For the Son has defeated death. The Son also promised a 'Helper'⁷, who will work through a doll via their faith. Here, a doll may let the Dollmaster guide a doll from within in how to act so as to teach the doll how to stand on their own through feet and love. My narrative analogy might seem quaint, but miniaturising the biblical narrative has a potent effect. Instead of seeing events solely from the perspective of the Israelites and the 'cruel God of the Old Testament' pseudo-Marcionite critique, you can see the world from a 'God's eye view'. The New Testament as well can be recontextualised through this God's eye view. It's harder, after all, to understand what it's like for God to become a person than to understand what it's like for a person to become a doll. When attempting to understand what a 4D object looks like given we live in a 3D world, the first step is to try and imagine what a 3D object would look like in a 2D world; for we can imagine both 3D and 2D worlds, but not 4D worlds. In that same vein, whilst we can't imagine what it is like to be God, because we are not all-loving, all-knowing, nor atemporal, we can access the lower order being of a doll - a being made in man's image - to pose as a reference. Beyond the theoretical, the vision of God's dollhouse is useful for one's everyday life also. Phrases such as 'God is always watching you' are difficult to comprehend, because you can't imagine the '4D' space in which God inhabits. Instead, imagine you are a doll, and the Dollmaster is watching you in the dollhouse, watching your actions, listening to your thoughts, and loving you. The Dollmaster loves you dearly and wants the best for you, but sees you repeatedly cut yourself off from the loving your neighbours and loving Him back, struggling with sin. Imagine now that you were the Dollmaster, and had a dollhouse. Suppose you love the dolls of your dollhouse dearly: how would you want them to behave with each other? Simply, as Christ says, you want them to love their neighbours, fellow dolls you love, and you want them to love you, their creator, even if their love for you can't match your love for them.⁸ The morality of the bible and the teaching of Christ all seem to fit into place when you assume to mindset of the Dollmaster. Laws that may have once seemed arbitrary now point like a compass towards a destination. Scripture is a narrative after all, a story written by God with the quill of men. And only by appreciating this great narrative through a variety of lenses, whether they historical, symbolic, or allegorical, do we begin to construct a textured 3D - nay, perhaps 4D - image of understanding. 1. Genesis 3:22 2. Genesis 6:2 3. Genesis 19:5 4. John 1:1 5. Matthew 17:20 6. 1 Corinthians 15:44 7. John 14:16 8. Matthew 26:36-40