God

Do you remember Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” — the story of the great white whale? Most people used to think of it simply as being a great sea story, an adventure story. But the critics in recent years have begun to say that this is one of the greatest theological novels ever written. Whole books have been written to describe and to analyze the religious symbolism on every page of “Moby Dick.” Melville portrayed “Moby Dick,” we now understand, as the God symbol. The unbelievable whiteness of Moby Dick symbolizes God’s omnipotence. And there is always a mystery about him. You remember, his pursuers would sight him and then he would disappear, sight him again, and again he would disappear. And they became obsessed with the elusiveness, the awe and the wonder, of that whale. Captain Ahab, the whale’s chief pursuer, symbolizes man, from Adam on: man shaking his fist at God; man trying to subdue God; man striking out at God, trying to “catch…