Cracks, Light, & Sainthood

It is part of popular culture that our cracks let the light in. It is another example of the Christian legacy in western culture. It is not in strength that God’s power is made perfect but in weakness. People easily miss the point that talking about our sins is another way of talking about our cracks. God doesn’t start with any self-proclaimed wholeness or perfection. God’s love winds its way into our hearts through the cracks, or to use traditional language, our sins. God’s love won’t divide us up, ostracizing the cracked bits and just working with the parts that aren’t cracked (to stay with the metaphor) but works the cracks to bring about genuine wholeness. People ask me why Christianity is so sin focused. This is why. Our cracks aren’t meant to be ignored or covered over. The cracks are God’s way in. God works the cracks, not the uncracked. ‘The saints’ in the New Testament are those made holy by God, and why so many great saints don’t have a holy past.

Sometimes we forget it is not the cracks that are important, it is the light. No one wants to admit to wallowing in our problems. So it is more common to find the reverse of wallowing in our problems (cracks), such that admitting the cracks is in some way a noble gesture of great character. Or something to be proud of. That is really just the other side of the coin of wallowing in one’s problems. Wallowing in our cracks, or vainly parading the cracks focus on the cracks. The cracks are still a problem. The cracks remain unsettling, dangerous. The Christian tradition suggests a different path. A humbler path. Honesty, yes. Honesty, authenticity, lie at the heart of repentance. But the Christian path focuses on the light, not the cracks. It is because we are bathed in light that the cracks can be healed.

The cracks let the light in, but once the light is in, the whole vase is aglow. That’s the path to sainthood as most of us think of saints. The light shines through the saint. The cracks can let the light out, but the whole person is irradiated. While it is tempting to downplay ‘the saints’ because sainthood in the New Testament referred originally to being made holy, it is also important to remember the saints. They are, if you like, evidence of the power of the light.

Incomprehensibility and the Image of God

In theory, could human beings come to know everything about the universe? Putting aside the kind of human arrogance that thinks all is possible because they think they are God, is it at least theoretically possible to know and understand, to comprehend, the universe?

It’s too big. OK, agreed, probably a bit big. But, in theory, what would be encountered on the other side of the universe, could such phenomena be investigated and understood?

No, it is too complex. OK, but if we did have the right tools and equipment, the right technology, would it be possible? In theory, yes. Our intelligence seems mapped to understanding the reality around us. (If it were not so, it would be difficult to understand how and why the Western scientific method has been so successful.

And then, there is mystery. Mystery, in the Christian schema, is not the currently unknown, but that could be known under the right circumstances. In Christianity, mystery refers to the incomprehensible, beyond our understanding, even in theory. We can’t slice mystery into manageable bits, and we can’t wrestle it into shape and compare it to what we do know to therefore grasp it, at least partially. I’m talking about God. God can reveal Godself, in all God’s glorious incomprehension. God can become human in Jesus, but that does not mean we comprehend God. Jesus reveals the incomprehensible God, who remains incomprehensible. That is, God is not our plaything, and cannot be put to our use as we do with everything else we understand (even partially understand). When people of faith try to control God terrible consequences follow. Hence, the prohibition against idols and misusing God’s name embedded in the Ten Commandments.

And we are made in the image of this incomprehensible God. Attempts to identify the image in us with certain attributes or capacities abound. And whatever the benefits of such approaches, we should never think that somehow, we have made the image comprehensible. That would be to break the second commandment. Reductionism has its place in the study of our humanity, but the irreducible remains. Kathryn Tanner sees an imitation of God’s incomprehensibility in the plasticity of our nature. In comparison to other species, we are born with little hard wired in us. We grow, learn, change, exponentially so. Our nature is “in a sense unlimited, unbounded by a clearly delimited nature, in virtue, in the human case, of an expansive openness and initial indefiniteness.” This natural openness is a negative imitation in that God’s incomprehensibility is from complete fullness, whereas our imitation is a “lack, through an initial failure of predetermination, not by being anything in particular in any very concrete way to start.” (Christ the Key, p. 53)

If God is beyond our understanding, incomprehensible, what is an appropriate response to God? Awe, joy, bliss. Prayer, thanksgiving, faith.

Idolatry and Purity

Recently, on ABC Adelaide radio, prominent educationalist and author Kevin Donnelly was cut mid-stream from the broadcast for referring to or quoting from, Mark Twain. (Ironically Donnelly was being interviewed about his latest book on free speech in education!) I'm sure the purists of the ABC were satisfied. 

Purity and extremism often follow one another. Purity is important in a recent Sunday reading today. (Exodus 32:1-14.) The people of Israel make for themselves an idol, a golden calf.  When it comes to sins, it doesn't get much worse than idolatry. Idolatry is held execrable because, among other reasons, it leads to all kinds of inhumanity. The worst idolatry is to substitute ourselves for God, rather than maintain ourselves as made in God's image. This was Solzhenitsyn's criticism of the monstrous history of the Bolsheviks, and more and more the modern world. In response to the danger of idolatry, Christianity has sought to overturn idolatry wherever it is found. But while this pursuit is pure, purity, as I said, often leads to extremism. Purity has no grace, and no place for failure, or the sinner. And it easily becomes an idol.

It is ironic that the quest to prevent idolatry ends in all kinds of inhumanities. Purity makes new victims in its efforts to prevent the impurity. But let us not restrict such puritanical pursuits to Christianity or religion in general. It seems to be a general characteristic of human beings. Think of all the great movements of purity from the French Revolution through to the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, and Pol Pot. Good atheists the lot of them.

Irony abounds. The ranks of the new puritans in the West (including in the Church) are to be found in those who would claim to be dismantling old oppressive systems of purity or preventing their re-emergence. 

So, what is the antidote to idolatry? As I have said before, Christian faith does not develop by just trying harder. Purifying oneself of any skerrick of idolatry may have the opposite effect than the one desired. (By making an idol out of the pursuit of purity.)

Better to love God. Practice loving God, even if it comes hard, or we are imperfect in it. It is love that overcomes idolatry, not purity.