Not a tame lion -- Ezekiel 14

I've been watching "Ken Burn's National Parks: America's Best Idea." They had a chapter on George Melendez Wright who was one of the National Parks first scientific naturalist. He stressed that the parks should provide a venue for the animals, especially predators, to be left alone. The parks in the 1920s and 1930s allowed tourists to feed the animals.

Year after year, bears—black and grizzly—were treated like pets and circus attractions in America’s national parks. They ate from the hands of camera-toting tourists, snared fish from artificially stocked streams, and were allowed to rummage through trash dumps while spectators gawked. “It takes time to teach the visitors to our national parks that they are the ones who are short-sighted in feeding candy to a bear,” Wright went on. “After all, the average citizen expects more intelligence from a bear than he, as an educated person, has any right to expect. He goes on the assumption that if he feeds a bear two sticks of candy and does not want to give it a third, he is the one to say, ‘No, no.’ And he believes that the bear is to be accused of an unforgivable breach of etiquette and lack of appreciation… if it takes all the candy out of his hand and takes the hand with it, perhaps.”(Mike Thomas writing about George Melendez Wright, Naturalist)

The problem is that bears are not tame, they are wild. They do not exist to please us and do our bidding. People make the same mistake about God. C. S. Lewis reflects this truth about Christ in his Narnian series of books. Lewis emphasizes that Aslan who is the embodiment of Christ in the series is wild and good, but not safe.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe).

Here is another quote from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe about Aslan being wild.

“He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

In Ezekiel, the exiled, elders of Israel forgot who God is.

Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols. (Ezekiel 14:1-5, ESV)

The nation of Israel had been exiled. The elders of Israel practiced syncretism: they practiced whatever religion or religions that were convenient or accessible in the city where they resided. They sought out Ezekiel, the prophet of Yahweh, as another option. They treated God as a vending machine. They worshiped idols, performed evil, and ignored God, but expected God to give them guidance in times of trouble. God was saying through Ezekiel that God required repentance from those who sought Him. The prophecy continued and God threatened to judge them. He wanted the whole man. One should not approach the living, holy, and omnipotent God by treating him as a trained puppy. God demands worship from those who seek Him.