The Problem With Mystery

“I think a man is known better by his questions than by his answers. To make known one’s questions, is no doubt, to come out in the open oneself.” - Thomas Merton

I turned on the TV last week and watched a certain well known and substantially published preacher put our current Middle East crisis in perspective.

“I’m going to take you through four thousands years of world and Bible history,” the Reverend boomed, while his packed auditorium of listeners listened raptly, and applauded as their preacher unfolded his version of the apocalyptic calendar.

And while the congregation clapped their hands and I wondered what it might cost a generous philanthropist to take such programming off the airwaves, a second thought occurred to me:

What is our problem with mystery?

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“We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions.” - Thomas Merton

Why is it that we allow television preachers and their ilk to teach us how to think, to reduce an interactive relationship with the Author and Finisher of our faith to the correct set of assumptions? We make a sacrifice when we reduce what’s complex for what’s convenient. And if like, A.W. Tozer once said, what we think about God is the most important thing that we think, then why do we put up with so much God-shrinking?

Maybe it is that we like resolution - whether in our sitcoms, soundbites, or stories, we tend to like what’s clear-cut. Maybe it is because, to paraphrase Pascal, the present is usually so difficult that we seem to have an insatiable desire to escape mystery, to have someone or something connect the dots for us.

Here’s the problem: there’s nothing clear-cut, nothing systematic about a religion that begins its story with the tale of an illegitimate Child born out back behind a motel, somewhere north of Jerusalem. And while we must certainly affirm that there is a place where the believer must come in line with the historic creeds and the great chain of saints, we must also accept that this life of faith will not always make sense. It is both natural and important that we desire a God who is interactive and personal. But we need God to be mysterious and transcendent and other - for we are so certainly not.

When we embrace the role of disciples we allow for the unexplainable as we bow to One who is greater than us all. The unanswered questions provide space for humility, and therefore, our need for grace.

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A few days after my television program, I stood atop Spruce Knob Mountain in West Virginia, some 4,863 feet above sea level. A New Yorker with a love for the high peaks, I had come to West Virginia on a hiking trip. There was something about the wind at the peak and the unregulated ruggedness of the backcountry that made me feel alive.

There are two things people always say when they stand atop a mountain and look out over the vast expanse.

“You can see for miles,” they say.

And

“I feel so small.”

These are not original sentiments. They are obvious and not poetic. But we need these glimpses of splendor, need to feel the wind of God cut across our faces and yes, we need to feel small and know that God is great and we are His and that is enough.

I believe that we are often like children - we like simple answers. But when children get older their parents try to muster the courage to say that actually life is more complicated. And sadly, in a world needy for deep wells, for spiritual people of substance, we have too many churches full of Peter Pans.

But what if we were brave enough to keep asking questions, to string the story across years and years? I believe we would find that the answer is not in our airtight conclusions, but in the Godhead alone.

“Then we discover what the spiritual life really is. It is not a matter of doing one good thing rather than another, of praying in one way rather than in another. It is not a matter of any special psychological effect in our own soul. It is the silence of our whole being in compunction and adoration before God, in the habitual realization that He is everything and we are nothing, that He is the Center to which all things tend, and to Whom all our actions must be directed. That our life and strength proceed from Him, that both in life and in death we depend entirely on Him, that the whole course of our life is foreknown by Him and falls into the plan of His wise and merciful Providence; that it is absurd to live as though without Him, for ourselves, by ourselves; that all our plans and spiritual ambitions are useless unless they come from Him and that, in the end, the only thing that matters is His glory.”

Now that would be a story.

Posted on October 1, 2006 12:00 AM