It Is A Matter of Perspective: Thoughts from 35,000 Feet

I know that there of many people, because of business and other reasons, who spend lots of time as passengers on airplanes. It makes sense that those people would seeing flying as part of their day.  Because I don’t fly that often, I can get caught up in the miracle and adventure of flying.  I am still amazed that someone can devise a craft weighing thousands of pounds that can leave the ground, cruise at 35,000 feet for several hours, and then return safely (and sometimes gently) to earth.

How did they do that? For me, the minds that created this machine were more than scientists or technicians; they were dreamers and artists in the truest sense of those words.

Another result of my limited flying experience is that I don’t mind sitting at a window seat when I travel. I don’t see how I could tire of looking down at the scenes below from this place so high in the sky. It gives me a completely new, and often exhilarating, perspective. It gives me a completely new way of looking at the world.

Several weeks ago, while driving in my car from one city to another, I encountered the fierce violence of a thunderstorm. Brilliant lightning and roaring thunder.  Wind that threatened to take control of my car and sheets of rain that felt like they would shatter my windshield. 

But looking out the window of this plane, a similar storm is nothing more than an occasional dance of light.  It’s the difference between watching a storm from a distance and being right in the middle of it.  It is one thing to think of a storm’s terrifying power and know there is no way its power can touch you. It is quite another thing to think of that power when it is all around you.  It is a matter of perspective.

From here in the plane everything seems strangely beautiful. 

A scene that would never draw your attention otherwise is enchanting and magical.  On the ground it is a road that seems to go on forever, heading nowhere and surrounded by fields of grain that look just like the ones you’ve seen for the last three hundred miles.  From the air, it is a patchwork of delightful colors given shape by the ribbon of road that cuts through them and sets them apart for your viewing like frames around a picture.  A place that you wouldn’t look at twice if you were standing in the middle of it becomes a work of art. It is a matter of perspective.

Yet while strangely beautiful, the perspective from this plane is also strangely surreal.  There are so many things that you do not see and hear and smell and touch from your window seat. You do not see the delicate color of tiny blooms.  You do not smell dinner cooking on the stove. You do not hear the inviting sound of a lover’s voice. You do not feel the warmth of a roaring fire.

Looking down on the world from this perspective makes me realize what is missing when God and heaven are “up there.”  Certainly “up there” gives you a glimpse of the big picture, of the world’s grandeur. But when God is “up there” in God’s heaven, we wonder if there are some things that God misses.

The hurt of someone who hears another say, “I don’t love you anymore.”  The cold wind that pierces the cardboard residence of a homeless man.  Two friends in deep conversation over a glass of wine. The celebrative dance of deep joy. The knowing look of deep intimacy.  All these subtle but significant details of life are missed from this perspective of God’s heaven “up there.”

From the window of my plane, I try as hard as I can to see and to know, but I can only imagine what is going on in the hearts and minds and lives of the people gathered under each small twinkling light below that represents a home. The lights of a whole town, and the life that pulsates around those lights, from here, blend into a few tiny dots.

I want a God who does not look down from far away. 

I want a God who walks and lives with me, who knows my heart and soul.  From one perspective, a perspective far above me, you can look at me and you can label what you see as quaint and enchanting or boring and ugly. You may call it good or bad; you may call it light or darkness. But I don’t want a God who steps back, and, from a distance, labels different parts of my life. I was my God to walk with me in the middle of everything that makes up my life. That is the perspective I want my God to have.

In the prologue that sets the stage for the story he is getting ready to proclaim, the writer of John’s gospel struggles with this same issue of perspective. He tries to impress us with fanciful language like “the Word was with God and the word was God.” But even with this “window seat language”, we know it is Jesus he is talking about.  Even when he chooses to wax philosophically by calling him the “light against the darkness” and the “life that was the light of humanity”, it doesn’t hide the fact this it is Jesus about whom he is speaking. 

After all, this is an introduction to a gospel. The problem is that these words do not give us a picture of Jesus that says anything meaningful to us. Or as a parishioner says to his priest on one occasion, “Father, what you said to me was absolutely true but totally useless.”  It’s all a matter of perspective. 

John’s talk of the “Word that was with God from the beginning” is impressive, but it leaves us knowing little of God.  It does not speak of a relationship with God that is warm or inviting. It does not speak of the difference God’s power and presence can make in our lives. It does not speak of how God wants us to live. It feels more like someone speaking from the window seat about a God “up there.”

Fortunately, the writer of John comes to his senses and starts to feel the same way we do. 

And so, what begins as a high-sounding theological treatise gradually comes into focus like the lens of a camera.  It gives us the answers to those questions about God’s perspective.  It gives us the answers to those questions about how God wants us to live.  What difference, really, does God’s power and presence make in all the stuff of our lives?  God responds, “Well here, let me show you.”  Or to use John’s words: “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth…No one has even seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”

It is, after all, a matter of perspective.