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The Horizon of Mystery

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One of my favorite Bible stories is near the end of the Book of Job where, in the midst of Job’s incredible sufferings, after the misguided attempts of his “friends” to elucidate life’s riddles with their empty philosophical diddling, God shows up.

“Ah,” you say. “Now we shall get some answers!”

Wrong.

Instead, God asks Job a series of unanswerable questions in chapters 37-41. Questions like:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand.” 38:4

“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
    or shown the dawn its place?” v. 12

“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
    or walked in the recesses of the deep?” v. 16

“What is the way to the abode of light?
    And where does darkness reside?” v. 19

“Does the rain have a father?” v. 28

“Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons?” v. 32

“Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom
    and spread its wings toward the south?
Does the eagle soar at your command
    and build its nest on high?” 39:26-27

God doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions. Nor does He explain the causes or solutions for Job’s predicament. He just shows up.

Job is given a chance to respond and, well, is left speechless.

Point being: the Ultimate Answer to Human Suffering and Life’s Great Mysteries is… God.

That’s it.

It’s possible that when we stand before God, look back upon our lives and whatever particular crosses we were made to carry, God will not mount an apologetic. He won’t say,

“I did this because of ________” (fill in appropriate theological confutation), or “I allowed you to suffer for _________.”

It’s entirely possible that God will not answer ANY of our profound theological questions.

He will, as He did with Job, just show us Himself.

Does this bother you?

It strikes me how much of our lives, how much of our art, stories, and theology, is about reducing and managing the “horizon of mystery.”

I recently finished reading The Grotesque in Art and Literature, part of some research I’m doing for a project on “Christian Horror.” Roger Hazelton in his essay entitled “The Grotesque, Theologically Considered,” writes this about “mystery” and how the “grotesque” — the weird, freakish, shocking, peculiar, horrific — is “an ‘appropriately odd’ disclosure of… mystery.”

[Mystery] is not merely a name for residual ignorance which will be dispelled when science gets around to it. Nor can it be equated simply with what is unknown or unknowable, though experience of non-knowing often alerts us to the presence of what is mysterious. A secular culture wants, of course, to minimize if not to neutralize the horizon of mystery in human life and so tends to regard it as threatening but surmountable. Theology and grotesque art, on the other hand, find a certain affinity in the common persuasion that mystery is a real and radical feature of our existing in the world, not reducible to technical management, and so compelling quite different kinds of human acknowledgment. (emphasis mine)

As much as I agree with this perspective on theology and art, it seems to me that many Christians, while professing the unknowable and enigmatic,  still attempt to “neutralize the horizon of mystery in human life.” In fact, we seek to accomplish this through the very things designed to heighten, not reduce, mystery.

Many Christians attempt to reduce mystery through the “technical management” of both art and theology.

I see it the other way:

  • Right theology should make God MORE mysterious, not LESS.
  • Good art should make life MORE mysterious, not LESS.

Does yours?

If the Book of Job is any indication, the “horizons of mystery” are vast. So why do so many professing believers embrace art and theology which minimizes mystery?

{ 5 comments… add one }
  • Tony May 31, 2013, 6:10 AM

    Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

    That is all.

  • Kat Heckenbach May 31, 2013, 6:17 AM

    I have never thought of it in those terms, but this explains a lot about Christian fiction. The stories that feel so tied-up in neat little bows, like a Sunday school lessons…That’s what they’re doing–trying to demystify God. The stories I love are the ones that leave me wondering at the end. The ones that don’t answer questions, but instead make me think long after I finished reading the book.

    I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I was at a speech by David Gerrold (the guy that wrote The Trouble with Tribbles) and he talked about his reasons to believe Christians have no business writing science fiction. (I nearly walked out on him, but that’s another matter.) He basically said that Christianity claims to give answers to everything and encourages people to “look no further.” But secular science is constantly asking new questions and seeking new answers.

    My thoughts were that he had it all backwards. That secular science claims to at least have the *ability* to *eventually* find “all the answers.” But Christianity sees God’s power and creation as infinite and there is no way we could ever fully understand it, much less fully understand Him. To me, that is what makes God so awe-inspiring.

    BTW, Job is my favorite book of the Bible for so many reasons, and you’ve just given me another one :).

  • Tony May 31, 2013, 6:37 AM

    “. . . but this explains a lot about Christian fiction. The stories that feel so tied-up in neat little bows, like a Sunday school lessons…That’s what they’re doing–trying to demystify God.”

    And now there’s a solid argument against the current state of the CBA market. As it is, is it actually harming Christians and Christianity? Possibly. I’ve always had a deep concern about how normalized Christianity has become, even to Christians.

  • Carole McDonnell May 31, 2013, 6:48 AM

    You wrote: “Point being: the Ultimate Answer to Human Suffering and Life’s Great Mysteries is… God.” Did you — in a blog about mystery reduce the point of God’s talk with job to ‘a point’? I suspect, if we are to really honor mystery, the best thing to write is a humble “one of the points is.” The discussion between Job and God is an individual discussion and that is what i really like about it. The answers God gives to Job may or may not matter to me or to the suffering folks in the world…but they matter to Job who had asked for a personal talk with the creator. God may answer others in another way but the blessing of this God-Job conversation is that Job was ANSWERED . The mind may not have been satisfied, but the heart was. The rational mind looks in the Bible for things the rational mind can talk about…but truth is something in the heart..and one of the truths of this conversation is the love…God actually showed up personally to Job to show Job that Job was nothing.. a divine paradox the heart understands, a paradox that changed Job’s spirituality and showed him his worth for all that demeaning speech. God had condescended to talk to him. Is it possible that one can bear any kind of suffering without knowing the reason…if one feels loved and known to God?

  • C.L. Dyck May 31, 2013, 10:14 AM

    That’s the Scripture passage the pastor’s wife read to me, that finally broke my heart and made me ready to accept Christ. I went back the next night and we did the Romans road, but that too was a mystery to me, coming from a totally secular life. Accepting Christ was throwing myself into the arms of mystery.

    These are things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…therefore I repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42)

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