On Living With Mystery
From Liberating
Christianity, Revised Edition
I was just rereading my book Liberating Christianity,
Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New Millennium, Revised Edition. I
read this paragraph. My own writing sometimes surprises me with how good I
think it is. That’s how I reacted to this paragraph, so I share it here.
The most profound, the truest
varieties of religious experience do not make that error. They live not with
dead form but with living mystery. They live not with smug certainty but in awe
before the grandeur and enormity of God, knowing all the while that that
grandeur and enormity eternally transcend all human knowing. They know that we
can and are called to live with wonder and humility before and with that which
we can never fully understand but toward which we are inexorably drawn and with
which our souls long to connect. Mere facts do not draw us. Longing to connect
with dead facts is not part of being human. Transcendent mystery draws us.
Longing to connect with spiritual reality that is so much more than fact inheres
in our very nature as created beings. It is not possible for us finite
creatures ultimately to know the fullness of God. It is possible for us to
allow symbol and myth to draw us into the wonder, majesty, and mystery of God.
To live in wonder and awe before the ultimately unknowable God is to become
more fully who God created us to be, mortal creatures whose fullness lies in
connection with the immortal. We are finite beings created to live intimately
with ultimate being. Mere fact will never make us who we really are.
Understanding God as so much more than mere fact can. The mythic and symbolic understanding
of the faith therefore has not only the potential to save the faith for
non-Christians. It has the potential to save the faith even for a great many
Christians. It can allow those Christians to give up untenable literalist
positions without giving up their faith
No comments:
Post a Comment