Secular science and anti-religious philosophies are not the largest threats to Christianity. Too often, Christianity is to be blamed for its own defeats. Nothing has dulled the effectiveness of Christianity like its attempts at pinning God down with a dogma or collapsing God into a formula. Instead of learning to live under God, Christianity has repeatedly tried to manage God.
This inability to contain the mystery of life and God is true of all religions and even non-religions, which have their own simplistic answers, settling the eternal questions into dogmas, institutions, and formulas of their own. Fortunately, sooner or later, the mystery of God finds a way to spill out of our categories, like living water gushing from a well.
We can disagree about anything and everything. But there is something none of us can deny: there is a transcendent sweep over our existence. We are all stunned by the fact that we simply are. We understand that we derive our existence from something greater than a product of our own hands. We are all here, and in spite of all of our unanswered questions, this mystery of life is larger than us and reaches deep into every one of us, whether religious or not.
Everything in this life—a child, a cloud, a quark—holds part of the great secret. And certainly none of our schools, governments or churches can credibly claim to be able to contain and parcel out this mystery we live in. This ultimate reality cannot be hijacked. It is deeper than Christianity, larger than any container such as religion can ever be.
But it is folly to give up on Christianity. Making Christianity serve a good larger than itself is the only way Christianity can be redeemed today, transformed back from a world religion into the global revolution it once was.
And remember too that Christ never wanted anyone to add “–ianity” to His name and invite the world to join it. Instead, He not only died for, but also lived for, this Mystery so deeply, so thoroughly, and so selflessly that for me, like millions of others through history, turned this mere Mystery into The Mystery That Can Be Known, and—for short—called it God.
Somehow, in Christ and through Christ, this Mystery has revealed itself to us. And not only revealed, but reached to us, mending our brokenness and inviting us into participation in life greater than our own.
We have this one life to live, without all the answers we look for. The Bible—an accumulated account of the interaction between humanity and the Mystery—says, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror [mirrors of the time were very dim, made of polished bronze]; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:12, 13).
So, we walk on by faith, hope and love. Faith and hope sustain us through finding or yearning for the answers to our questions. They help us prize uncertainty on our journey to God more than any other certainty on a journey to any other destination.
This inability to contain the mystery of life and God is true of all religions and even non-religions, which have their own simplistic answers, settling the eternal questions into dogmas, institutions, and formulas of their own. Fortunately, sooner or later, the mystery of God finds a way to spill out of our categories, like living water gushing from a well.
We can disagree about anything and everything. But there is something none of us can deny: there is a transcendent sweep over our existence. We are all stunned by the fact that we simply are. We understand that we derive our existence from something greater than a product of our own hands. We are all here, and in spite of all of our unanswered questions, this mystery of life is larger than us and reaches deep into every one of us, whether religious or not.
Everything in this life—a child, a cloud, a quark—holds part of the great secret. And certainly none of our schools, governments or churches can credibly claim to be able to contain and parcel out this mystery we live in. This ultimate reality cannot be hijacked. It is deeper than Christianity, larger than any container such as religion can ever be.
But it is folly to give up on Christianity. Making Christianity serve a good larger than itself is the only way Christianity can be redeemed today, transformed back from a world religion into the global revolution it once was.
And remember too that Christ never wanted anyone to add “–ianity” to His name and invite the world to join it. Instead, He not only died for, but also lived for, this Mystery so deeply, so thoroughly, and so selflessly that for me, like millions of others through history, turned this mere Mystery into The Mystery That Can Be Known, and—for short—called it God.
Somehow, in Christ and through Christ, this Mystery has revealed itself to us. And not only revealed, but reached to us, mending our brokenness and inviting us into participation in life greater than our own.
We have this one life to live, without all the answers we look for. The Bible—an accumulated account of the interaction between humanity and the Mystery—says, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror [mirrors of the time were very dim, made of polished bronze]; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:12, 13).
So, we walk on by faith, hope and love. Faith and hope sustain us through finding or yearning for the answers to our questions. They help us prize uncertainty on our journey to God more than any other certainty on a journey to any other destination.
But love is in a category by itself. Christ and His cross do not give all the answers, but they show what love is. In the mystery of life, love is the answer that matters more than any other, because learning to love well is the greatest achievement of human life.
No comments:
Post a Comment