Remember Calvin and Hobbes, the comic strip from about ten years ago (or maybe fifteen. I lose track of these things) -- the bratty little kid with his maybe-imaginary-maybe-not pet tiger? He's been making a reappearance at my house lately. Boogaloo discovered him on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in Mommy and Daddy's bedroom and has been dragging him all over the house. Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat is downstairs by the printer while The Essential Calvin and Hobbes is peeking out from under our dresser. Revenge of the Babysat occupies a permanent place in the diaper bag. There are enough pictures in it to get a cranky Boogaloo halfway through the grocery store.
So I've been refamiliarizing myself with the antics of this spiky-haired six-year-old. He's such a devilish little manipulator with such a huge imagination. I was a little like that as a child. The real world wasn't half as exciting to me as my imaginary worlds, and I would gladly have kept a pet tiger if my stuffed animal collection had afforded it (I did have a baby seal and a stuffed unicorn. They were exciting). The scary thing is that I can really see bits of him in Boogaloo. Not that I'm worried about Boogaloo picking up on any of his behaviors, but some of them might be there already.
It's such a treat to see my daughter picking up something I love and enjoying it on her level. Granted, she's three. She doesn't even read yet. She has to rely on the pictures and the facial expressions for her entertainment, but that's more than enough. Bill Watterson is such a talented illustrator that even a three-year-old can get something out of his pictures. She reads the books so studiously too. She doesn't laugh or comment. She just raptly turns the pages. I hope she isn't mistaking Calvin's world for reality. In a couple of years, she might be asking us for a tiger.
But the reason I'm thinking about Calvin tonight is that when I'm not picking up Calvin and Hobbes, I've been glancing through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion ( the former is named after the latter, you know). The Institutes makes a good break from Augustine and The City of God, and sometimes they even play off each other. I was just reflecting on Augustine's studied abhorrence of the pagan gods that were set up as rivals to Christ. Then I turned to Calvin and pick up his analysis of the Ten Commandments. It was a completely random justaposition. That's just where I happened to be. Calvin goes the same way. Anything is to be done rather than to set up a rival to God. As Calvin points out, everything we do is done in front of God's face, so setting something up in God's stead is like a wife cheating on her husband with him in the room.
Instead, Calvin encourages us to simply give God the credit for everything. His is a simple formula:
1. Adoration -- Recognize everything that God is, does, and had done. This includes obedience and submission of conscience because obviously, God being God, he's right.
2. Trust -- I like the way he phrased this one. "Trust, is secure resting in him under a recognition of his perfections, when, ascribing to him all power, wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth, we consider ourselves happy in having been brought into intercourse with him."
3. Invocation -- "the retaking of ourselves to his promised aid as the only resource in every case of need."
4. Thanksgiving -- because everything comes from Him, all of our gratitute goes to Him.
Calvin presents this formula with a "duh" sort of attitude that would have done his namesake credit. You can tell that the majesty of God and the following submission, trust, invocation, and thanksgiving, are all very obvious to Him. He understands that some people don't accept what he's saying, but that doesn't stop him relying on it. And yet his world was no less complicated than mine. Gosh, it was a good deal moreso. He had the reformation of a whole city, a whole continent, and the analysis and expression of the whole truth of the Word to worry about. I'm just trying to be a wife and mother. The winds of thought and whisper don't shake him; why do they wobble me?
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