{"id":326,"date":"2009-01-28T14:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T20:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtfulpastor\/2009\/01\/28\/326"},"modified":"2017-01-30T16:28:03","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T21:28:03","slug":"not-a-tame-lion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtfulpastor\/2009\/01\/28\/not-a-tame-lion\/","title":{"rendered":"Not A Tame Lion"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><strong><span style=\"color: #008080;\">When things aren\u2019t tame, we get hurt or sick or hungry. But without hunger, pain, or anguish, we lose the ability to appreciate the real good when it comes.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8807\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8807\" style=\"width: 419px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8807\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/667\/2009\/01\/Aslan-screen-shot-2005.jpg\" alt=\"Aslan, from a screen shot\" width=\"419\" height=\"274\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8807\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aslan, from a screen shot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><i>Mr. Tumnus: He\u2019s not a tame lion.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Lucy Pevensie: No\u2026 but he is good.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s not a tame lion.\u201d Anyone who has read <i>The Chronicles of Narni<\/i>a series by C.S. Lewis or seen either of the two Narnia movies would recognize that line. It\u2019s Aslan\u2019s description. Aslan, the great lion who inhabits Narnia, shows up periodically, generally to bring right a situation where great injustice is being perpetuated.<\/p>\n<p>Lucy Pevensie, the smallest of the four Pevensie children, recognizes that while Aslan is not a tame lion, he is good.<\/p>\n<p>Why is the distinction important? Because when we confuse \u201ctame\u201d with \u201cgood\u201d we lose a gigantic amount of power and creativity. Power and creativity are two of the most important ways we live out the image of God, stamped upon our souls.<\/p>\n<p>When we insist on taming everything, we lose the ability to live radically good lives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I\u2019ve seen much research on how our children need to eat dirt to build up healthy immune systems. One article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/01\/27\/health\/27brod.html?ref=health&amp;_r=0\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">is here<\/a> in case you are interested.\u00a0Spoiler alert: it concludes by suggesting we\u2019re all better off if some worms periodically inhabit our bodies. So, if you are squeamish about such things, don\u2019t read the article.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I liked it, however, because I\u2019m growing more concerned about the need to tame, i.e., make perfectly safe, \u00a0the world we inhabit. We risk robbing it of its goodness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Let\u2019s face it: \u201ctame\u201d tomatoes, those cultivated on massive farms with carefully metered chemical fertilizers, grown to a uniform size and washed in a bleach solution to remove all possible contamination by field workers, do not belong in the same world as \u201cgood\u201d tomatoes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Good tomatoes: grown in rich, well-composted animal manure and often uneven in texture, cracked and sunburnt, and then picked right off the vine and eaten immediately, a salt shaker in hand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The warmth of the sunshine, penetrating deep inside, enhances the rich flavor of the tomato. The juice drips down the chin, and heaven enters in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But it\u2019s not tame. It\u2019s not washed and sterilized and checked for any possible contaminants. It\u2019s just good.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">We\u2019ve lost the spirit of adventure by our need to tame the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">When things aren\u2019t tame, we get hurt or sick or hungry. But without hunger, pain, or anguish, we lose the ability to appreciate the real good when it comes. And we especially fail to recognize it when it appears in the form of Jesus who was also most definitely not tame.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Jesus called his disciples to leave everything behind, to live lives of radical goodness, to go all the way to death for their enemies. Jesus modeled exactly that for them\u2013and was resurrected to show us goodness, not tame safety.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It\u2019s just time to quit thinking we can tame our lives and starting living genuinely good ones instead.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When things aren\u2019t tame, we get hurt or sick or hungry. But without hunger, pain, or anguish, we lose the ability to appreciate the real good when it comes.\u00a0 Mr. Tumnus: He\u2019s not a tame lion. Lucy Pevensie: No\u2026 but he is good. \u201cHe\u2019s not a tame lion.\u201d Anyone who has read The Chronicles of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2704,"featured_media":8807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,186],"tags":[360,535,1506],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity","category-religion","tag-aslan","tag-chronicles-of-narnia","tag-not-a-tame-lion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Not A Tame Lion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When things aren&#039;t tame, we get hurt or sick or hungry. 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