What's in the box?

Here’s a confession.  Here at The Manse we have just finished watching four series of the rather ‘geeky’ Channel 4 comedy show The I.T.Crowd which aired on TV between 2006 to 2010. 

It’s set in the fictional London offices of Reynholm Industries and focuses on the haphazard I.T. department located in the basement. Moss and Roy are the geeks whose answer to almost any technical problem seemed to be, ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again’! (Which actually most of us find surprisingly effective!)  They are overseen by Jen who is technically illiterate but has the grand title ‘Relationship Manager’ which, in reality means she draws a salary for not doing very much at all.

We thought it was a fantastic comedy and loved every show. 

One episode has Jen having to give a seminar upstairs on behalf of the I.T. department.  She panics about this because, of course, she knows nothing at all about I.T.  So, Roy and Moss set her up with a shiny black box, about shoebox size, and convince her that the Internet is in it.  That’s right, the World Wide Web that touches just about everyone’s life, was locked away in Jen’s box! 

She believes them and presents this box to the seminar – where, surprisingly, she in turn is believed.

Moss and Roy cannot understand how gullible people are and how their ‘joke’ has delated because it was taken seriously.

Jen’s box, ‘housing’ the Internet, crops up periodically throughout the series, until at last the penny drops and even she realises the absurdity that the World Wide Web has its HQ in a box at her office!

This week the lectionary OT reading takes us to the 10 Commandments and I’ve once again been drawn to the first one about having no other gods or carved images, idols.

Since dawn began I suspect we human beings have been trying to put God in a box.  If we carve an idol we might control God and if we write a creed we can surely define him.

But isn’t that just as ludicrous as Jen thinking the Internet lived in her box.

God is more fluid than a carved piece of wood and no creedal statement could ever define him.

Of course we use words, images and ideas to describe God.  But we fool ourselves if we consider ourselves ‘Keepers of the Truth’ because we box God up in our favourite theological paradigms.  Surely better to be an ‘Explorer of Truth’, open up the box and throw away the key!