Article April 13, 2020 Issue

The silk-purse perspective

Barb Goodspeed Grant

The saying “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” is a self-evident truth, and the reverse is equally true: You can’t make a pig’s ear out of a silk purse.

The first chapter of Genesis introduces us to man (each of us) made in the image and likeness of God, Spirit, and therefore spiritual and immortal. This is something fine and beautiful, like a silk purse. And yet humanity rallies around the opposite concept—let’s call it the sow’s-ear viewpoint—man as earthly, material, and mortal. We’re educated to believe that “I’m made of matter; I’m sitting on matter; I’m looking at matter. Everything is matter!” But this model would resign us to disease and deterioration. The Bible offers a much more hopeful and healing perspective, which begins with a truer concept of God.

Throughout the Bible, the fact of Spirit’s infinitude is woven like a silken thread. God’s words in the book of Isaiah, for example, ring out: “I am God, and there is none else” (45:22).

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Leave the ruminating to the cows