Paradox
and Mystery
One day, some of the brothers came to
see Saint Anthony, and among these was Father Joseph. Wishing to test them, the saint mentioned a text from Holy
Scripture, and starting with the youngest, he asked what it meant. Each brother explained it as best he
could, but to each one, the saint said, “you have not found the answer
yet.” Last of all, he asked Father
Joseph, “What do you think the text means?” He replied, “I do not know.” Then Saint Anthony said, “Truly Father Joseph has found the
way, for he said: I do not know.”[1]
The Sayings of
the Desert Fathers
To encounter God—and through encountering
God to therefore follow Christ—means to encounter the twin pillars of mystery
and paradox. God is mystery.
He is both known and not known.
He is One and yet Trinity.
He is immanent, and yet He transcends all. He is fully human, and fully divine. Because of these things, He is also paradoxical.
To be Christian also means that we cease
following a religion, for the truth is that Christ is the end of religion.
This is why Christianity is not a religion, and a “religionless
Christianity”[2]—to use the
words of Boenhoffer—is the only way to fully follow Christ. Religion implies a belief system. It is the pagan impulse that is so
prevalent in our human, fallen condition.
If it is not a belief system, then what does following Christ mean? Unfortunately, “following Christ” today means “studying” the
Bible on a regular basis, becoming a “prayer warrior”, or engaging in any of
the many clichéd “experiences” you can have or groups you can belong to at any
number of fundamentalist churches.
But this is not the way to truly follow
Christ.
Following Christ means, first and
foremost, encountering the God of mystery and paradox—the God that is Mystery and Paradox—and then to live this encounter in the world, and through living this
paradoxical encounter, to be
paradox and mystery. It is only at
this point of being—a being that embraces and yet transcends all that is paradox
and mystery—that we can be true to Christ, and it is at this point that he
becomes our savior. He saves us
from an idol of God that we have made for ourselves, and he saves us from the
philosophies that attempt to usurp this pagan idol-worship, but in the end only
mire us in an attempt at life that ultimately rejects Christ.
By embracing paradox fully, an ironic
thing happens. In a sense, it
ceases to be paradox, for it no longer presents us with a problem that needs to
be solved. But it never ceases being mystery. In fact, the further we enter into an encounter with God,
the deeper the mystery tends to be—utterly and forever fathomless.
And this Mystery that we encounter, and
then live through and in, pervades everything that is our life, and
everything that Christianity offers to us, and to the world that Christ has
saved.
This happens at many levels, and in many
ways.
The first way—and perhaps it is not the
first way for everyone, but I think it tends to be—is that mystery pervades life, and by this I mean that it
pervades our human existence, an existence that we would have previously
encountered as an existential angst and pull. When mystery enters into our existence, we cease searching
for answers, or searching for satisfaction, or searching for meaning that we thought we would find in Christianity to begin with.
In this encounter with mystery and
existence, we are free to be ourselves, we are free to finally be human. (And to be fully human is to enter into
Christ’s way, and to become divine.)
We are free to not know. We
are free to be broken, and not pretend
that we were ever anything else.
This is the true salvation that Christ offers.
Our brokenness is not something to hide
from. It is not something that
prevents us from “achieving” salvation—although I understand this is often how
it’s presented. In fact, our
brokenness is the very thing that saves us.
It is often thought that Christ loves
us—and therefore God loves us—in
spite of our brokenness. But I don’t think this is true. Our brokenness only doesn’t save us when we don’t admit it, when we don’t
embrace it as the very fact of existing.
This failure to admit brokenness—and
therefore fail to encounter the God of seeming paradox in this instance—was the very sin that the Pharisees are
guilty of in the gospels.
Repeatedly in the gospel stories, our savior hangs out with sinners of
the worst sort, but he never berates them for what they are. In fact, it seems that he is almost
lackadaisical about just how broken they truly are.
Personally, I never really thought enough
about this as a path to salvation until
I was reading a passage from the Russian martyr-saint Pavel Florensky[3]:
“Why did Christ love so much the society
of harlots and publicans? Just
imagine—these were real harlots who
would fight, conduct indecent talks, and swear… and Christ preferred their company to that of the
Pharisees. Just think, why is it
said that the ‘power of God is performed in poverty’? Poverty is not only weakness, not some poetic sickness like
tuberculosis, but sinfulness, defilement.
Christ was with sinners not because they needed him more, but because,
for Him, it was more pleasant to be with them; he loved them for their
simplicity and humbleness.”[4]
It
was more pleasant to be with them; and it
is more pleasant for Christ to be with us—in a real, palpable sense; mysterious
yet utterly real—when we too admit our brokenness, actually get in touch with
how broken we are.
When our brokenness becomes real to us, so
does God become real to us, and so does Mystery become real in ways that no
words can ever do justice.
For Mystery to pervade our life, and for
God to become an ever-present state of being, I think that something else must
occur: we must often enter into our faith slowly through a process of doubt.[5]
Now, I’m not saying here that conversion happens through a process of doubt. In fact, I think that true conversion
has little to do with weighing all of the rational arguments for and against
God. No, our initial conversion
when it is true—and by true I
mean that it is not contrived, but rather it is a deep pull, a longing of the
heart—is centered in the heart, when we encounter things such as truth, beauty,
love, and mystery.
When I think about initial conversion[6],
I am often reminded of the story of how Russia was converted to the Orthodox
Catholic faith. To those who are
Orthodox, it’s a common enough story.
For others reading, I think it bears repeating[7]:
Prince
Vladimir of Kiev and of all of Rus wanted to find a religion to unite his
imperial court. Any religion would do. He just wanted to find the right one. So
he did what a good ruler would do—he took emissaries from the royal court and
sent them out and said, “Find out about all the religions out there and come
back and tell me which one is best, and that’s the one we’ll use.”
They went out and visited many
different religions, many different forms of Christianity. Christianity was not
yet firmly divided in the way we think of it today, but there were already
longstanding schisms by the time of the conversion of Russia. We often think of
the Great Schism as being the schism between the Roman West and
Constantinopolitan East. But this was a late schism, much sadder. More divisive
schisms had happened long ago—schisms, for example, at the time of Chalcedon
(451 A.D.). Schisms which, lest you think history is all in the past, still
divide us today in 2010. Lord, have mercy.
So he sent out his emissaries and they visited
here and there. By one tradition, they went to the Islamic court, asked about
Islam, and wrote back to Vladimir and said, “It’s a nice religion, but they
don’t allow alcohol, and this would never go over with Russians.” They went to
Germany, Europe and throughout the world.
One group of envoys went to
Constantinople. This is what they wrote in their own words, “When we stood in
the temple [this is Hagia Sophia where you can still go today, the Church of
Holy Wisdom], we hardly knew whether we were in heaven or on earth. For in
truth it seems impossible to behold such glory and such magnificence on earth.
We could not possibly relate to you what we saw in that place. But one thing we
know, there God dwells among men, and all the worship of other countries is to
us, forevermore, as nothing. We cannot forget that beauty which we saw. Whoever
has enjoyed so sweet a sight will never be satisfied with anything else; nor
will we consent to remain any longer in paganism as we are now.”
We cannot forget that beauty.
It was not some system of catechesis that
converted the Russian people, nor was it some long-winded diatribe—as you might
find at your average fundamentalist church on any given Sunday morning—but it
was beauty.
But after that initial, genuine
conversion, then what? This is
where entering into faith slowly through a process of doubt comes into the
picture. This is where a process
of doubt allows us to deepen our conversion experience by making it constantly experiential.
We must encounter doubt as a path of not knowing that is deep, abiding,
and never settles for shortcuts.
[1] Adapted from
“The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” by Benedicta Ward.
[2] By
“religionless Christianity” I certainly don’t mean a “Churchless
Christianity.” What I mean is a
Church that loses all sense of paganism (see my previous post on Christianity
as a way of being).
[3] Florensky
was a martyr that was killed under Russian communist yoke in 1943. His thoughts should have a wider
readership, but he is little known to the Christian world outside of the
Orthodox Church.
[4] From “Salt
of the Earth,” pg 16.
[5] I am
borrowing this phrase from the Czech—and Roman Catholic—priest Tomas
Halik. He writes of this in his
book “Night of the Confessor,” chapter 5, entitled “Discreet Faith”.
[6] I say initial
conversion because we must not think of
conversion as something that happens once, and then is done. (As is so common among “born-again”
evangelicals who speak of “being saved” or “knowing our Lord Jesus Christ as
our personal savior”.) Rather,
conversion is an ever ongoing, ever deepening relationship with the Triune God.
[7] The story as
told here is quoted from Archimandrite Irenei’s “Orthodoxy and Mysticism” which
you can find elsewhere on this blog, or you can listen to his series of the
same title on Ancient Faith Radio .
For a more in depth account, see Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s book “The
Orthodox Church.”
