Standing outside the car this morning at home, I looked up at black clouds churning against a charcoal grey background. "Beautiful!" I exclaimed. "Threatening," another voice murmured in my ear, as I thought of lightning strikes and tornado warnings. A few minutes later, as I stepped out of the car on campus, the chill wind whipped tree branches and my fresh-washed hair. "Invigorating!" I cried. "Destructive," that other voice whispered, as I trod on pear blossoms and broken twigs littering the ground.
A "terrible beauty," Yeats called the martrydom of the Irish rebels. A "terrible gift," Byron called melancholia. The world is "terribly good," says Stanhope in Charles Williams' novel Descent into Hell.
Life is made of paradox and mystery. I want to accept it -- no, more than accept -- embrace it, run toward it, or at least not run from it and let it embrace me, as Pauline finally allows her most terrible fear to overtake her, only to find it is precisely what makes her most fully herself, most wonderfully able to serve others, most joyfully confident in a Power greater than any she could conjure or imagine, and which she now understands is indeed "terribly good."
Showing posts with label paradox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paradox. Show all posts
28 April 2008
09 January 2006
Paradoxes Again
My last post got me thinking about paradoxes, and circumstances have brought to the fore another couple that have caused me much struggle through the past many years. I know what the Scriptures say about these issues, I think, and I take certain intellectual stands -- by faith -- that get me through the day, and I am not going to question God’s love for us or His acting in our lives over my confusion. I think I know how to live with paradox, generally speaking, but some paradoxes are more frustrating than others, the ones, of course, that directly challenge my own comfort.
I know that God is sovereign. Scripture is quite clear on this point. Our Sunday School teacher quoted someone yesterday: “history unfolds according to His plan.” Okay, I accept that. I think. Intellectually, at least, by faith in the Word, I know it to be true.
My problem with it is simple: it appears to mean that sin, through which He often accomplishes certain things, is therefore part of His plan, which of course begs the question: why then is it sin, and why do we need to struggle so against it?
One definition of sin is not living in accordance with God’s law, acting against the standards by which He clearly says we should act. This is a bad thing. I should strive not to sin, because I wish to please and obey Him, who gave His Son that I might live.
But if “history unfolds according to His plan,” and sinful acts are used to accomplish that plan (and He doesn’t have a “plan B,” as the Sunday School teacher remarked, because He isn’t surprised at anything that happens), then . . . well . . . then . . . isn’t sin part of His plan?
But it can’t be, because He is sinless and He commands us to strive for sinlessness also.
To be less abstract: Say I yell at my son in anger. That is sin. One can point to the potential for my son to grow in character through my sin as he learns to respond in a godly manner to people who are unkind, etc. So my sin has given God a chance to grow my son in character, which is a good thing. (And I experience grace, through my repentance, which is also good, except Paul has dealt quite clearly with that in Romans, chapter 6 or thereabouts, I believe.)
But my sin is a bad thing. It has to be. It hurts both me and my son, me because I become less Christ-like every time I disobey Him, and my son because it violates his mind, heart, and soul, and also opens the option to him of bitterness instead of maturity in his response. And of course all sin is an affront to a righteous God whose Son died to save me from it.
So: how does man’s chosen sinful disobedience work into God’s sovereignty?
I presume it’s bound up in the concept of free will (which I don’t understand, either, when I think of the paradox of free will and election), and that He "uses," as we often say, bad to accomplish good. (That’s in Romans, too, of course.) But then I think of Pharaoh and his God-hardened heart, and those verses that say God creates the wicked for their time and His purpose, and . . . well, it all gets very mixed up.
And of course, the real mix-up for self-centered me is simply this: when someone else’s sin affects my life negatively, how do I say, “oh, it’s all right, it’s God’s will that I should suffer this”? It seems to me that it is very much the other person’s will that I suffer it, not God’s. And that God having to use the consequences of sin is very inefficient. Necessary, I do understand, because it’s a fallen world and He chooses to leave us the will to choose. But still . . . if somebody hadn’t eaten a certain fruit, would God will that I suffer? No, His purposes would be accomplished in perfection. (And please don’t get me started on the Fortunate Fall idea, though I may address it another day.)
And all of this leads me to that other perennial paradox: if “history unfolds according to His plan,” whether I sin or not, no matter what I do, then why bother to pray, either?
Yes, yes, I know we are commanded to pray, and I do. But if my yelling at my son accomplishes good, helps to bring about His plan, why pray to stop doing it? Well, because it’s sin . . . and I’m back at the beginning.
Prayer is the hardest of the disciplines for me. Not because I actually think we shouldn’t pray against sin (in ourselves or in others), but because I really don’t know how to approach God about anything really important, sinful behavior or ill health or whatever it be. What does one pray for when one sees loved ones hurting? If it will accomplish God’s plan for this person to die, or this person to go through a divorce, or that person to be handicapped, or . . . well, you get the idea.
Some days I am merely a bundle of confusions. But thank God, He doesn’t stop loving me because of it. I probably need to read Job again, because the “answer” God gave Job is the one I think He keeps offering me. Some days I am able to cling to it. Other days, like this one, I can’t see it. But He’ll bring me where He wants me, eventually. I just wish I could find it in me to make it easier for both of us.
I know that God is sovereign. Scripture is quite clear on this point. Our Sunday School teacher quoted someone yesterday: “history unfolds according to His plan.” Okay, I accept that. I think. Intellectually, at least, by faith in the Word, I know it to be true.
My problem with it is simple: it appears to mean that sin, through which He often accomplishes certain things, is therefore part of His plan, which of course begs the question: why then is it sin, and why do we need to struggle so against it?
One definition of sin is not living in accordance with God’s law, acting against the standards by which He clearly says we should act. This is a bad thing. I should strive not to sin, because I wish to please and obey Him, who gave His Son that I might live.
But if “history unfolds according to His plan,” and sinful acts are used to accomplish that plan (and He doesn’t have a “plan B,” as the Sunday School teacher remarked, because He isn’t surprised at anything that happens), then . . . well . . . then . . . isn’t sin part of His plan?
But it can’t be, because He is sinless and He commands us to strive for sinlessness also.
To be less abstract: Say I yell at my son in anger. That is sin. One can point to the potential for my son to grow in character through my sin as he learns to respond in a godly manner to people who are unkind, etc. So my sin has given God a chance to grow my son in character, which is a good thing. (And I experience grace, through my repentance, which is also good, except Paul has dealt quite clearly with that in Romans, chapter 6 or thereabouts, I believe.)
But my sin is a bad thing. It has to be. It hurts both me and my son, me because I become less Christ-like every time I disobey Him, and my son because it violates his mind, heart, and soul, and also opens the option to him of bitterness instead of maturity in his response. And of course all sin is an affront to a righteous God whose Son died to save me from it.
So: how does man’s chosen sinful disobedience work into God’s sovereignty?
I presume it’s bound up in the concept of free will (which I don’t understand, either, when I think of the paradox of free will and election), and that He "uses," as we often say, bad to accomplish good. (That’s in Romans, too, of course.) But then I think of Pharaoh and his God-hardened heart, and those verses that say God creates the wicked for their time and His purpose, and . . . well, it all gets very mixed up.
And of course, the real mix-up for self-centered me is simply this: when someone else’s sin affects my life negatively, how do I say, “oh, it’s all right, it’s God’s will that I should suffer this”? It seems to me that it is very much the other person’s will that I suffer it, not God’s. And that God having to use the consequences of sin is very inefficient. Necessary, I do understand, because it’s a fallen world and He chooses to leave us the will to choose. But still . . . if somebody hadn’t eaten a certain fruit, would God will that I suffer? No, His purposes would be accomplished in perfection. (And please don’t get me started on the Fortunate Fall idea, though I may address it another day.)
And all of this leads me to that other perennial paradox: if “history unfolds according to His plan,” whether I sin or not, no matter what I do, then why bother to pray, either?
Yes, yes, I know we are commanded to pray, and I do. But if my yelling at my son accomplishes good, helps to bring about His plan, why pray to stop doing it? Well, because it’s sin . . . and I’m back at the beginning.
Prayer is the hardest of the disciplines for me. Not because I actually think we shouldn’t pray against sin (in ourselves or in others), but because I really don’t know how to approach God about anything really important, sinful behavior or ill health or whatever it be. What does one pray for when one sees loved ones hurting? If it will accomplish God’s plan for this person to die, or this person to go through a divorce, or that person to be handicapped, or . . . well, you get the idea.
Some days I am merely a bundle of confusions. But thank God, He doesn’t stop loving me because of it. I probably need to read Job again, because the “answer” God gave Job is the one I think He keeps offering me. Some days I am able to cling to it. Other days, like this one, I can’t see it. But He’ll bring me where He wants me, eventually. I just wish I could find it in me to make it easier for both of us.
05 January 2006
Living in Tension
for Pamela
On LuCindy's recommendation, I ordered Mary Oliver's collection of poems called House of Light. I read the whole thing twice yesterday after it came. A number of the poems play about my mind today, and I will be thinking many of her lines for many days. "I think I will always be lonely / in this world," she writes in "Lilies," meditating on what it means to live unselfconsciously in the world as the lilies do; can we live in such a way, let the self go as the lilies and the hummingbirds do, just live?
But the lines that especially struck me yesterday open "The Kookaburras": "In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator. / In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting / to come out of its cloud and lift its wings."
A dear friend (and former student) dropped by yesterday to chat for awhile before returning to her ministry of teaching in a foreign country. She shared with me a lovely piece she had written, and I was struck by the tension in it between knowing that at some level what we have here is enough, and yet longing for a "something more" that we only glimpse and never really grasp.
I thought at the time of C. S. Lewis's autobiography Surprised by Joy. In it he describes the stab of joy that he would, on rare occasions, experience, and how his whole life was spent in trying to find that experience again -- until he came to know Jesus Christ and to understand that those glimpses are meant to draw us towards the "something more" that we can't have now but awaits us when we enter into eternity and leave all this time-bound necessity behind.
My friend's piece mentioned her "coward heart," but I saw in it also "a god of flowers just waiting / . . . to lift its wings." Acceptance of the "enough" that we have -- not demanding and expecting to have eternity now and finding ourselves content in the world we've been given -- is part of what it means to walk uprightly with Him. But we sell ourselves -- and our God -- short when we say this is the all and the end of it. We must always be content? we are in sin if we are restless, if we seek for more or other than what we have? No, I reject that, because we don't have enough; we don't have everything that properly belongs to beings created to live with God in eternity.
I am thinking this through as I write, and I hope I am not suggesting some odd heresy, but I am seeing more and more the longer I live the paradoxes of faith. Here is one: "be content" but "seek Me." How, if we are seeking, can we be content? We must live in that tension in this fallen world, not resolve it. That, it seems to me, is what our greatest artists keep trying to tell us. That is a predominant theme in Oliver's poems in this particular collection.
In "The Ponds" she describes the beauty of lilies in the light and from a distance, but then on close inspection the imperfections of each one. The poem ends: "I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -- / that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum / of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do."
So do not fear your "coward heart," my dear. We all have one. Rather, do not deny or try to escape the tensions you know, but accept them as part of the lives we have all been given and give voice to them, lifting your wings above the clouds through the gifts given you, and reminding the rest of us of the beauty we desire and can find in one place only.
On LuCindy's recommendation, I ordered Mary Oliver's collection of poems called House of Light. I read the whole thing twice yesterday after it came. A number of the poems play about my mind today, and I will be thinking many of her lines for many days. "I think I will always be lonely / in this world," she writes in "Lilies," meditating on what it means to live unselfconsciously in the world as the lilies do; can we live in such a way, let the self go as the lilies and the hummingbirds do, just live?
But the lines that especially struck me yesterday open "The Kookaburras": "In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator. / In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting / to come out of its cloud and lift its wings."
A dear friend (and former student) dropped by yesterday to chat for awhile before returning to her ministry of teaching in a foreign country. She shared with me a lovely piece she had written, and I was struck by the tension in it between knowing that at some level what we have here is enough, and yet longing for a "something more" that we only glimpse and never really grasp.
I thought at the time of C. S. Lewis's autobiography Surprised by Joy. In it he describes the stab of joy that he would, on rare occasions, experience, and how his whole life was spent in trying to find that experience again -- until he came to know Jesus Christ and to understand that those glimpses are meant to draw us towards the "something more" that we can't have now but awaits us when we enter into eternity and leave all this time-bound necessity behind.
My friend's piece mentioned her "coward heart," but I saw in it also "a god of flowers just waiting / . . . to lift its wings." Acceptance of the "enough" that we have -- not demanding and expecting to have eternity now and finding ourselves content in the world we've been given -- is part of what it means to walk uprightly with Him. But we sell ourselves -- and our God -- short when we say this is the all and the end of it. We must always be content? we are in sin if we are restless, if we seek for more or other than what we have? No, I reject that, because we don't have enough; we don't have everything that properly belongs to beings created to live with God in eternity.
I am thinking this through as I write, and I hope I am not suggesting some odd heresy, but I am seeing more and more the longer I live the paradoxes of faith. Here is one: "be content" but "seek Me." How, if we are seeking, can we be content? We must live in that tension in this fallen world, not resolve it. That, it seems to me, is what our greatest artists keep trying to tell us. That is a predominant theme in Oliver's poems in this particular collection.
In "The Ponds" she describes the beauty of lilies in the light and from a distance, but then on close inspection the imperfections of each one. The poem ends: "I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -- / that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum / of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do."
So do not fear your "coward heart," my dear. We all have one. Rather, do not deny or try to escape the tensions you know, but accept them as part of the lives we have all been given and give voice to them, lifting your wings above the clouds through the gifts given you, and reminding the rest of us of the beauty we desire and can find in one place only.
14 December 2005
Blessed Christmas to All
My mother was born on Christmas Day. Her father, when I was a freshman in college, died on Christmas Day. We had always opened gifts on Christmas morning, but for some reason I can't recall we opened them on Christmas Eve that year. Granddad died at 3:00 a.m. We have opened gifts on Christmas Eve, after the candlelight service, ever since. Since that time, Christmas has always held a kind of dissonance for me: celebrating my mother's birth, remembering my granddad's death.
But isn't this part of the season's glory? Not just that the Baby was born, but that He died? Had He been born and not died, we would still be dead in our sins. And His death and resurrection remind me that the death that claims ever more people I love has been long conquered. Death's victory is hollow and temporal; the Son's is filled with glory and eternal.
John Donne said it long ago:
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
It is a wonder indeed that He came -- yet an even greater wonder that His mission in coming was to die.
As I travel to visit my parents and other family (taking perhaps a hiatus from the web), I pray for you who read a blessed Christmas, that as you celebrate with family and friends you will remember why the Baby was born and allow the wonder of His death -- for you -- to wash over all that you do.
But isn't this part of the season's glory? Not just that the Baby was born, but that He died? Had He been born and not died, we would still be dead in our sins. And His death and resurrection remind me that the death that claims ever more people I love has been long conquered. Death's victory is hollow and temporal; the Son's is filled with glory and eternal.
John Donne said it long ago:
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
It is a wonder indeed that He came -- yet an even greater wonder that His mission in coming was to die.
As I travel to visit my parents and other family (taking perhaps a hiatus from the web), I pray for you who read a blessed Christmas, that as you celebrate with family and friends you will remember why the Baby was born and allow the wonder of His death -- for you -- to wash over all that you do.
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