God made every kind of wildlife, every kind of livestock, and every kind of creature that crawls on the ground. God saw how good it was. – Genesis 1:25
While sheltering in place, I’m binge-ing on some documentaries. One of my favorites is a Netflix series titled “Absurd Planet.” It highlights the strangest looking and most bizarrely acting creatures on the planet. In your free time you might Google the following creatures and enjoy the absurdity: mud skipper…trap door spider..toad fish…satanic leaf-tailed gecko…bird of paradise…Jesus lizard…bombardier and dung beetles.
Of course the list could go on into the thousands at least, but these creatures do get your attention. They also make you ask, “What was God thinking?”
If I were creating things, everything would have looked neat, tidy, and non-chaotic. Standard operating procedures would have made things streamlined, efficient, and predictable. If that meant overhauling the evolutionary process, so be it.
Come to think of it, I’d apply the same neat-tidy-non-chaotic principle in creating humanity. We’d all be pretty much the same in looks, viewpoints, speech.
But God doesn’t adhere to that principle. Instead, God chooses to follow the colorful, unpredictable, exotic, even absurd blueprint. Duck-billed platypus, anyone? And in creating each creature so uniquely, human and non-human, God sees how good each is.
The Gospel writer John said that “everything came into being through the Word.” If that’s the case, then we know why Christ related so comfortably to, and enjoyed, a huge assortment of people. He especially liked the ones the more uptight folks labeled absurd.
Considering things I’d consider absurd that God calls good, God’s idea of good differs from my idea of good. That’s very good.
And this is the greatest absurdity of all:
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
good reading, greg. miss you. heck, i miss everyone right now. glad i have my two dogs.
Thank you Greg, your meditation brings a smile to my face as I think of the “absurd” creatures.
Do you know the Ogden Nash poem which asks why God created the fly?
Clara
I just looked it up. How appropriate! Reminds me of what was attributed to Mark Twain: “God never made a mistake, but a fly comes close.”