The Chimera

He’s the most isolated man on earth. The last surviving member of an uncontacted and undocumented tribe, he lives out his days in a remote swath of the amazon basin enwreathed by tens of thousands of acres of densest South American jungle. Like you and I, he is a human being. But, unlike you and I, he is alone, very alone, and that largely by choice. All attempts to make peaceful contact since his 1996 discovery have failed - the last memorably punctuated by an arrow in the vitals of a search party member.

It’s not often that we get to see or even dare imagine something like this, a man stripped of all of the props and trappings of the world until he’s just plain man. Of course, it wasn’t always this way. This now solitary figure had a family. He had a life. But, at this moment, he is the final live ember in a dying fire. Now the only voice he hears is his own. Who knows but that in the deafening silence of the rainforest he doesn’t still speak and sing to himself in a dialect that’s just a heartbeat away from extinction?

What a story! Thinking about this man in his extreme isolation sets a person to wondering what a man even is. It’s no secret that those of us in the civilized world are so over-civilized we’re prone to forget. So defined by the externals and our relationship to things, oftentimes it's hard to locate the person at the center of it all. If we can’t google ourselves, if there’s no electronic paper-trail proving that we’re alive and influencing the world, well, maybe there is no us!

It’s a strange situation, this. Caught fast in the whirlpool, we’ve allowed the incidentals of life eddying about us to obscure the essentials. As a result, without recourse to resumes and lists of things we’ve done or own, we wouldn’t know where to begin were someone to ask us the very sensible question: What are you?

This, you see, is a very important question. We’ve begun to take up the theme of what God has done to effect the redemption of man. But you won’t have any idea what this means unless you know what a man is. And so it’s not too much to say that the whole of the spiritual life rides on just this - Knowing what you are and what you were and what you may one day be.

So, how can we even begin to answer this question? For starters, any description of humanity worth its salt has to honestly countenance the total picture of what we are. And what we are is not easy to pin down. There’s a strange, undeniable duality here. I think Pascal got it right when he exclaimed: “What a chimera then is man! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and shame of the universe!”

The penetrating accuracy of Pascal’s assessment stems from the fact that he doesn’t lose sight of either of the poles of what it means to be human. His description does what it must do, capturing the essential paradox of what you are. Truth be told, you are a contradiction, a strange something, a being divided - You are Man, maker of lullabies and landmines, gardens and gulags, sonnets and spears.

And this is exactly what you would expect in light of the Biblical account of humanity. To locate man in the scriptural scheme of things is to find one who is both lofty and, by his own hand, laid low. Made by God, for God and even, in a manner of speaking, like God, we were fashioned to be kings of sorts over creation. But instead of ruling all things under God, we find ourselves enslaved to all things in a world inverted.

You are a piece of work, you. You’ve really messed this thing up. Of course, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Your every experience bears this out. You taste the glory and the infamy, the heavy savor of your identity. You are the image of God, but a fallen image, a marvel and a horror, a temple desecrated. It’s going to take a lot to locate you, to save you from yourself.

Ah, Man, you are the most isolated thing on earth. You are a human being, and you are alone, very alone, and that largely by choice. All attempted efforts to make peace with you failed, as they were destined to fail - all, that is, save one; That one was punctuated by an attempt to kill the one who came looking for you. But, then, that was the plan.

Cracking the Code of the World

Cast plastic resin, cobalt blue, glossy finish. Two mounted disks revolving about a fixed pivot. Concentric rings of letters and numbers in low relief. The Secret Decoder Ring - holy grail of cryptology, time-honored discloser of encoded mysteries, unscrewer of the inscrutable. Maybe you had one of these growing up. This was one I remember fishing out of a box of breakfast cereal once upon a time.

It’s a great toy. Why? Because it taps into that part of us that reveres mystery, that little pilot light in our souls that’s ever burning and flames high in the presence of veiled truth. It’s that thing in you that loves nothing more than learning the secret that reveals the concealed. This is the part of you that knows that you don’t even know you, that you are yourself a profound enigma moving through a reality that just crackles with hidden depths. It’s the soul-level thirst for something that will unriddle the riddles of life, something that can crack the code of the world.

Right now I’m living in east Asia and - let’s be honest - my best efforts notwithstanding, everyday I swim through swarms of symbols I can’t begin to understand. It’s true. Nevertheless, the fact that I can’t make heads or tails of much of it doesn’t keep me from perceiving that they mean something.

As we noted last time, there’s a sense in which the entirety of life is like this. There’s meaning to be had out there, and it’s palpable. And here’s the thing. If we genuinely want to live the spiritual life, the life we were made for, it’s imperative that we grasp, in some measure, this inner-logic of the world. The spiritual life is, after all, not a life of fantasy or make believe- as some may have it -, but one lived in concert with deepest truth. It’s a life that finds its individual meaning in conforming to the overarching purpose that guides all things.

In the second chapter of Colossians, Paul gives expression to his desire that his readers attain to “the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” According to the sacred text, it is Christ, the God-man, who is the key that unlocks the meaning of the world.

As we’ve observed, when God entered our world, becoming just like you, he came to bear and indeed be the meaning of history. But how are we to understand this? Are we just speaking in further riddles? What does it mean to be the meaning of history? Here we must tread lightly, because we’re dealing with ultimate truths. Fortunately, the New Testament doesn’t leave us in the dark on this score. Paul goes on to say: “In Christ all of the fullness of deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been given fullness.”

Fullness. It’s one of my favorite words in scripture. In Christ the vacuousness and vanity that marks the plight fallen man in a fallen world gives way to fullness. It’s a fantastic word. But how exactly does Christ take the shell of our lives and the hollowness of human history and bring fullness? He does it by welding our broken lives to the superabundance of his own. He does it by taking the wreckage that is you and fusing it to his own person, a person in whom God lives in all of his overflowing realness. This he does that he might swallow up all of your poverty and give you his richness. Not a bad exchange.

Paul goes on to expound a mystery that is at the vital center of scripture, that Christ is able by virtue of his infinite Spirit to unite to himself people like us so that his life becomes your life, his death your death, his resurrection your resurrection. Your storyline, which you have frankly ruined, is eclipsed and his storyline becomes yours. In this way his life becomes the life of the world, the life of all those throughout history who come to him, and coming, believe.

This is the God of scripture. This is the God who gives fullness. And, in the words of an old writer, “If God be not thus, he is less than the God we crave for and the world needs. This is the holy love that deserves to be almighty.” A truer word was never spoken.

The Hieroglyph

“You will have noticed that most dogs cannot understand pointing. You point to a bit of food on the floor; the dog, instead of looking at the floor, sniffs at your finger. A finger is a finger to him, and that is all. His world is all fact and no meaning.” ~ C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory.

Man’s best friend is not alone in finding himself confined to a world that is long on facts and short on meaning. Man himself, you've certainly noticed, is altogether capable of moving through a life that is all data and no conclusions. He too can inhabit a world that is basically shorn of any kind of real meaning.

But is this the proper way to read the world? As an answer to this question, consider the following: Suppose a man were to journey through the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Surveying wall after wall of hieroglyphs, his only conclusion is that the Egyptians were keen on miniature drawings of hawks and snakes and suns and so forth. In this case, would we not say, “Man, don’t you see that all of this means something? A hawk isn’t just a hawk. That beetle isn’t just a beetle. Those are symbols pointing beyond themselves. There is far more here than meets the eye.”

In much the same way, as we’ve spoken of the great narrative that encompasses history, it is exactly this kind of thinking that we're contesting. It's the notion that the world is all a lot of commotion signifying nothing we dispute. A story, you see, is not just the reportage of a sequence of brute, isolated facts. No, any story worth telling or being told has a plot, has meaning woven into it.

Ours is a hieroglyphic world. The things and events and people and great, forking networks of cause and effect mean something. And, as we saw last time, understanding the intensely personal nature of this tale is the first step towards discerning what this something is. The meaning of this story, you see, is inseparable from the key players in it. In addition to featuring the likes of you and me, it centers on a Person. And not just a person, but the Person, the One from whose absolute person-hood all others proceed like dim reflections or faint echoes. He is the one who broke into time from beyond it to become its center, to gather all of the strands of history in his hand and and lead it to a chosen conclusion, to be history’s meaning.

Knowing this, knowing that the story finds its center and culmination in him, is crucial to understanding the vast sweep of history in all its branching enormity. Miss this and it all looks like so much frothing chaos, from the large movements of civilizations down to the tedium of your own life. Then again, if we were to miss this, we would certainly not be the first. Even when Christ was among us, there were many who failed to grasp what they were witnessing.

Do you remember what Jesus used to say when he would set a parable before the people? “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” I used to think that this was just rhetorical flourish, a catchy way of saying “Hey, if you’ve got ears - and I know you do - listen up.” But I was wrong. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying, “If you have ears that can hear this, then understand.” Or, more properly, “If it has been given to you to perceive the truth of what I am now declaring, then understand these things.”

There were certainly many in the teeming masses who only heard stories about fish and wheat and cities on hills and did not perceive that he was wielding these symbols to speak of something infinitely greater. He was pointing to food, true spiritual food, and many were content to look at his hand. To them we can only say, “Man, don’t you see that all of this means something. A fish isn’t just a fish. That lost coin isn’t just a coin, it’s you. Living water isn’t just a drink. Those are symbols pointing beyond themselves. There is far more here than meets the eye.”

Even now the words of Christ hang in the air. If you have ears to hear, let them hear - let them hear that God in all of his fullness dwelled in the man Jesus Christ. Let them hear that in him God was both disclosing himself and reconciling a lost world.

Willing Suspension ~ Part III

Paranoia - In its more exotic flavors, it is taken to be a species of madness. You’ve observed the man, in fiction if not in life, who walks through the world with a heightened sense of his context, who seeks to discern hidden meanings in the trivial details of living. Why? Because this man believes that someone out there has designs on his life. Someone, he is convinced, is out to get him.

On the other hand, we who are sane know better. We understand that the happenings of our daily lives are largely arbitrary, that there really is no one at large choreographing the dancing particulars of our days. We are certain that nobody is behind the scenes steering us toward some great end.

Yes, that is the way the world works.
Or does it?

Ah, the clarity of madness! Is it not possible that the paranoid man in his delusion has cornered an element of truth that escapes you? Might it not be that the apparent soundness of mind you enjoy is masking a deeper reality? The answer, I’m afraid, is yes.

The further we wade into the great backstory of the world, the more apparent it becomes that the world is lit from behind with the light of a mind. Nothing is incidental or arbitrary. The long arc of history, of which your life is a part, is bending to some chosen end. Of course, contrary to the dark suspicions of the madman, neither the design nor the designer is sinister. (Then again, just between you and me, there’s a good chance he is, in point of fact, out to get you. Yes, I’m quite sure of it. So, go ahead, be appropriately paranoid.)

Now, if it were simply some kind of impersonal principle like fate at the rudder, you might be able to just shrug it off. But this is personal. This ship in which you find yourself as a stowaway isn’t being driven by the wind. There is a someone at the helm. Ours, you see, is a world that is shot through with intentionality, a world shaped by deliberation. Purpose plays across its surface and lurks in its depths. It is emphatically, intensely, unmistakably personal.

What bearing does this have on our conversation? We’ve spoken about the nature of the spiritual life, knowing and being known by God. And we’ve examined the call to believingly enter into the great story of redemption. This personal dimension is the connecting piece. You see, knowing God and owning this story are one and the same. For, believing and embracing this narrative is not simply a matter of assenting to the specifics of a plot - as vital as these are - but in entrusting yourself to a Person.

In John 10, where Jesus speaks of himself as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his people, he says something that, understood, is perfectly haunting: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them,” declares the Christ. If you ask me why, in the final analysis, I believe, it comes down to this - I recognize his voice. To be certain, I have looked at the evidence and do find it quite compelling, but, at the end of the day, it’s his voice that I cannot not hear and hearing believe.

To a certain extent, I think the magnitude of what Christ is can be felt even by those who do not finally come to him. Einstein once remarked: “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No one can read the gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

Examples of this could be multiplied endlessly. Augustine, who did come to believe in midlife, once said he had read all of the great men of antiquity, yet not one of them ever said, as did Christ, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.” He was right. No man has ever spoken like this, and no other man credibly could.

Fourteen centuries later the eccentric and brilliant Danish writer Søren Kierkegaard spoke famously of belief as a kind of leap. In one place, he recounts his own experience saying, “I leapt from the precipice only to find myself caught - caught by a nail scarred hand.”

Kierkegaard was right, you know. Entrust yourself fully to this one, and you will find that your trust is well placed. For we who willingly suspend our disbelief find that there is one who willingly suspended himself between heaven and earth to reconcile God and man. It is he who permitted himself to be transfixed to the fourth wall, the boundary between our world and eternity, to the end that it might be done away with. And even now from behind the world he speaks.

Listen closely. You might just hear a voice you recognize.

Willing Suspension ~ Part II

“I charge you, you who have this book in your possession, whatever you may do, do not speak of this work to any other man.” An old medieval text I happened across some years ago prefaced itself with these words. Which book? Don’t ask me. I can’t tell you.

Of course, the simple fact that I was forbidden to tell you means that I very much want to. That’s why if I ever write a book I’ll open it with a similarly grave injunction. It leaves you feeling like you’re in on some kind of secret and makes talking about it nigh unto irresistible. Genius, I say! Marketing genius!

There are some things that sound terrifically simple - like not talking about that book - which are in fact extraordinarily difficult, some commands that are easy in the hearing and difficult in the execution. So it is with the willing suspension of our disbelief. It is the simplest of things, and yet the hardest, impossible even. Yes, impossible.

There’s a poignant scene in the gospels in which Jesus is brought to a man whose son suffers greatly from violent seizures. Encountering Christ, the man says, “If you can do anything, have pity and help us.” Jesus seizes upon these words, “If you can? If you can? Everything is possible for him that believes.” Hearing this, the man utters something that is confusing, sincere and remarkable all rolled into one: “I believe! Help me in my unbelief.”

Well put. Very well put. Help me in my unbelief! I believe, or at least want to. So, help me. Please. It’s honest, human. I like it.

Returning now to the matter we took up last time: What is it that accounts for your believing some things and disbelieving others? “Evidence,” you will perhaps reply. “It all comes down to evidence.” But, not so. If you think it’s merely a matter of weighing evidence and deciding accordingly, I have to seriously question whether you have ever met another human being and paid any attention. If we learn anything from history, it’s that absolutely staggering amounts of evidence can be marshaled before men and they may leave with their eyes all the more tightly shut. Not only do some come away none the wiser, they are more steeled in their resolution not to believe, galvanized in their resistance. The Bible is thoroughly riddled with examples of this.

Scripture speaks of a world that is positively over-brimming with evidence regarding the reality and nature of God. You may disagree, but you at least have to ask yourself this simple thing: Why? Is it really the kind or quantity of evidence, or does it have something to do with you? Just think about it.

Whether or not there is a God and the Bible is his book, is for you to decide, and decide you must. But, what is it that prompts you to decide one way or the other? Or, to frame it differently, how is it that two men can look upon exactly the same evidence and arrive at very different, even antithetical conclusions? This is the real question.

Here’s a thought: It’s not just about seeing, it’s about perception; It’s not just about what you see, but how you see. See?

Speaking now personally, as someone who has considered these things for my entire adult life, I do think there is a terrific amount of corroborating evidence clustered around the Christian story. In fact, from where I stand, nearly everything conspires to demonstrate its truth. To paraphrase what another has said: It’s like the sun. It’s not just that I see it, but that by it I see everything else.

Nevertheless, in the hearts and minds of men it doesn’t ultimately come down to this, to sheer evidential weight. According to the scriptures, whether or not we believe is ultimately a spiritual matter, something having more to do with our hearts than raw data. For this reason, quite often the first step on the path of the spiritual life is uttering the cry, “Help me in my unbelief! Help me see aright. Help me discern the meaning behind this world swirling about me. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear.”

But we’re just getting warmed up. If you think the most difficult things to swallow in scripture are seraphic visions, darkened suns and tongues of fire, then you haven’t seen anything yet. Ha! The true difficulty lies not in believing that men have seen visions of God or rise from the dead. If there really is an infinite and eternal Spirit who called the world out of nothingness, then believing those things are possible is not a function of gullibility but stark realism. It almost goes without saying. You would almost be surprised if it didn’t happen.

No, the truly difficult thing is believing that the God who comes through so vividly in the sacred text is capable not only of raising Jesus from the dead, but of raising you from the dead. True story. Infinite power is infinite power, wherever it is applied. Don’t you see that for God it’s just as easy to fashion a galaxy or give sight to the blind as lift a piece of straw? It’s one and the same. But, if you want to really feel the electric wonder of exercised omnipotence, train your eyes on statements like these:

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” ~ Romans 5:8

“He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” ~ Micah 7:19

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in sin - it is by grace you have been saved.” ~ Ephesians 2:4-5

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:11-12

These are the commanding heights of scripture. This is what all of the rest - lost paradises, transfigurations, and blazing mountains - is all about, God manifesting his illimitable goodness and surpassing glory in the redemption of a world.

Willing Suspension

Suppose I told you that as I was writing this the floor beneath my chair gave way. As a result, I found myself atop my desk careening down an earthen corridor, laptop and HP Officejet Pro 8000 tumbling behind. Coming to rest some distance below, my eyes met with an astonishing sight - a cavernous subterranean realm peopled with a race of day-glow semi-humans dwelling undetected beneath our world. And, having taken to the place, I’ve elected to stay. In fact, I’m sending this communique from my new netherworld flat where I can still eek out a solid Wi-Fi signal.

Now, unless I miss my guess, you don’t believe me. The claim itself is so far-fetched, so beyond the pale, that it would take a great deal to convince you that this had, in fact, taken place - a great deal I’ve not provided. But, why don’t you believe me? And why, in general, do we believe some things and disbelieve others?

It's an intriguing question. What’s more, in light of the story we’ve been discussing, it's a question of some importance. This is, after all, a story set apart. It’s unlike any you’ve ever heard. Why? Well, among other things, this one has a very singular mandate woven into it. It can be summed up in a single word - Believe.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, its not. I mean, who are we kidding? The story of the transcendent Creator breaking into our reality from beyond it, breaking through the fourth wall of our world, is the picture of far-fetched. Let’s just say, as uncanny goes, it’s several orders of magnitude beyond anything else that comes to mind.

And we’re not just talking about a single unusual event. What we’ve got here is a whole sequence of wildly implausible happenings in connection with this central fact. And there is a book - not just a book, really, but a kind of anthology, a whole collection of books written over a millennium and a half cataloging these unearthly goings-on. You know: emancipated slaves following a column of fire through the wilderness, people walking about on lakes, dead men rising, and on and on.

To sum up, swallowing this stuff is no small feat. Nevertheless, difficulties notwithstanding, you are entreated, even commanded to believe this story. And what’s in view here is more than a bare assent to the facts of the plot. You’re being summoned to - get this - entrust yourself body and soul to a figure within the narrative. And, to top it all off, you’re told that the trajectory of your entire existence hinges on doing just this. It’s a curious thing, is it not?

Those who study the mechanics of belief speak about what are called “plausibility structures,” the network of largely unquestioned assumptions we make about what is possible and what is not. These, they say, are based on culture, experience and a million other factors. But in this case, what exactly is going on? What about my personal “plausibility structure” allows me, and many others who seem to have a fair foothold on reality, to buy stories about split seas and the self-sacrifice of a God?

The British writer Samuel Coleridge spoke of something he dubbed the “willing suspension of disbelief.” It’s a simple concept really. He said if a story is sufficiently rich in human interest and possesses a semblance of truth, it compels the hearer to temporarily suspend judgement about things they would otherwise rule out as impossible - things like supernatural events.

So, is that all this is? Is this just some kind of literary device that has burst its banks and spilled into the real world? I don’t think so.

To be sure, something akin to this is in play here. We are being summoned to willingly suspend our innate disbelief and embrace the narrative. We are invited to lay aside our notions of impossibility, and all for the sake of the story itself and its Teller. Like the stories Coleridge had in view, this one is suffused with the greatest possible human interest. However, unlike what he had in mind, this story claims in the soberest possible way to blow past any mere semblance of truth. It claims, rather, to report something that is finally and absolutely actual. And you’re being invited to abandon yourself to believing, not merely for the length of the telling, but forever.

More on these things next time. But, I’ve got to run. There’s a pick-up basketball game in the next cave in 20 minutes.