Mystery and wonder

These pages are an exploration into mystery. The word "mystery" in this context doesn't mean a puzzle, as in a murder mystery. It is not a thing to be solved, but an adventure into wonder, with each wonder that we encounter leading on to the next and greater wonder. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I've shared this quote before, as the conclusion to another reflection, but haven't really reflected very much on its implications in its own right. It seems appropriate to be reading this the day before we hear the story of the fall from grace.

Wonder, it seems, has become not nearly enough for us anymore. We insist on fully knowing and understanding for ourselves, and insist that things must be as we have come to know and understand them. It is not without reason (excuse the unplanned pun) that the original sin was to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and it is not without reason that we are told that we have all inherited this sin. Indeed, our reliance upon reason is often the very reason we are susceptible to so many other temptations. Unless we understand the harm for ourselves, we refuse to acknowledge that there could be any. Of course, even when the harm is undeniable, we still have our rationalizations, greater fears, lack of trust in God's providence, overwhelming desires and countless other motivations to outweigh and overcome any consideration of the harm of our choices.

But in focusing on our fallen nature, already I digress from mystery.

It is our insistence on knowing and understanding that prevents us from entering into the mystery of Christ as anything other than a puzzle to be solved, a truth to fully get our minds around and completely figure out. "If I'm not smart enough to solve it, dammit, it must not be true." I've heard a variety of people express the opinion that God is not necessary to explain anything; perhaps the non-necessity of God is an essential part of the free will which is a central part of our nature. "Since everything can be physically explained without any need for a god, I will do just fine without." Some go so far as to add, "and anybody who doesn't is making the world worse."  But the Good Friday mystery, which is part of the Jesus mystery which by Christian understanding is an eternal part of the God mystery, rather than a mystery to be solved until it is known, like Rubik's cube, so well that we can carry out the solution in world-record time, is to be embraced and entered into, a relationship with a person.

Consider this for a  moment: what human person can we ever know completely?  And yet, too often we approach our human relationships the same way we approach God: as soon as there is a change that doesn't fit our understanding of this person, we terminate our relationship with them. Now, in human relationships there may be the element of needing to make physically and emotionally healthy choices, but too often we are quick to reject someone to whom we should be committed rather than entering into the mystery that they are.

If it is true that another finite human person might be the sort of mystery that we can never solve, but only enter into relationship with over the course of a lifetime, how much more does that apply to an infinite God? Only by entering into each wonder God reveals to us can we begin to know God at all, and as Fr. Neuhaus suggests, each one leads us to another, deeper, more inscrutably mysterious wonder.

I don't know that I believe what so many say about the substitutional atonement: that Jesus' death was necessary to pay the price for our sin in the eyes of God, and only thereby could he remain both fully just and fully loving. I am willing to consider that mystery, though, to accept not having that issue settled in my mind once and for all so that I never have to revisit it again. I most certainly believe that, necessary or not, the Father has used his Son's death to restore us - me - to relationship with himself, that (again from tomorrow's readings) Adam's sin is mine - have I not seen it evidenced over and over again? - and that Jesus' victory over sin and death is mine as well. I do not fully understand why that is, except that God's infinite loving grace is greater than my finite sinfulness. I certainly know that I would be forever unable to stop judging myself if I did not believe that Jesus has paid whatever price is required for my sin. What a wonderful mystery, and the more we willingly we enter into it - free from the insistence on solving it - the more we know it and wonder.

The wonder that God has wrought from Jesus' suffering is mystery worth entering into, and  my conclusion from two years ago still rings true: it falls to each of us to enter into the mystery of Jesus Christ for ourselves.