A reader, Mark Kelly, sends along these reflections on the question I raised in a recent First Things column. The remainder of this post is from Kelly:

“If you ask any modern to visualise the earth, or draw the earth, you will without exception evoke an exterior view of our planet, outside it looking in (or, to be perfectly honest, above it looking down, which is true from whichever direction you look at it if you are outside it). We are used to this mental image of the earth, it is in all our school textbooks, on every television show and in every graphic image of the earth we’ve ever seen, and it is the first image that occurs to us when asked. It is, however, not a human perspective of earth. neither is it one which has been physically glimpsed by all but a handful of men. How interesting that the primary image of the earth in the mind of every modern is actually God’s perspective on the earth not a distinctly human perspective. I find myself wishing that there was a character from Greek mythology who stole the perspective of the gods so I could name this concept after them. how is it that all moderns have an ingrained perspective of the earth that is technically not properly a human perspective? how is it that we instantly imagine ourselves outside the earth looking down on it without thinking?

“This idea seems very much in keeping with the human antagonism toward being underneath, and the desire to ascend beyond human restriction . . .

Just as with the desire to be God, so also with this mental perspective. Scripture, I think, was written with the assumption that we SHOULD have a distinctively human perspective, no matter how much of the cosmos we apprehend, and for good reason; Because humans have their proper place, and it is hupa, even if they are aware of a higher perspective, recognition of our rightful perspective could be considered a litmus test of humility. This is perhaps why the sun must rise. Because my sinful heart needs to acknowledge that I live on terra firma, it is where I was put and it is where I belong. Not, in my mind, putting myself outside it or above it, rubbing shoulders with God. unless of course He should utter the words “come up here” in which case, I’m all about that! Biblical language and pictures are not merely condescending to premodern ignorance, they are so constructed because no matter how smart we think we are, our rightful place is a human place (ON the earth) with the perspective proper to it, which modern discoveries have allowed us to discard, believing ourselves to be conceptually above the earth looking down on it.