The God of Christians is not a God who is merely the author of mathematical truths and the order of the elements—that is the point of view of heathens and Epicureans. He is not simply a God whose providence watches over the lives and possessions of men, so that those who worship him will enjoy a long and prosperous career—that is the Jewish idea. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians is a God of love and consolation; He is a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses; he is a God who makes them inwardly conscious of their wretchedness and of his infinite mercy; who unites himself with them in the depths of their soul; who fills it with humility, with joy, with trust, with love; who makes them incapable of any other end but Him. All those who seek God outside Jesus Christ and who stop at nature, or who do not find any form of light which satisfies them, or who succeed in finding a means of knowing God and serving him without a mediator, end by falling into atheism or deism, which are two things that are almost equally abhorrent to Christianity. Without Jesus Christ the world would not continue to exist; it would either be destroyed, or would be a sort of hell. If the world existed in order to instruct man in the knowledge of God, his divinity would shine everywhere in a manner which was undeniable; but since it only continues to exist through and for Jesus Christ, and to bring men a knowledge both of their corruption and their redemption, everything is bursting with the proofs of those two truths. What can be seen is not a sign either of a total absence, or of the manifest presence of the divinity, but of the presence of a God who hides himself. Everything bears this character.
~ Blaise Pascal
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing… Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things… Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known… So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
~ 1 Corinthians 13
Oh beloved, it is true. We have been given a universe inside of our skulls. We have minds that are amazing in the breadth and depth of the things they can consider. We can begin to contemplate the truths of the universe. We are finding and discovering truth that has been there to be found. And the beauty of the things we can craft from the truth that we find is truly stunning.
And here enters our problem. Two of them actually.
First, we begin to think that the truth we have found is something that we have developed or created. We believe we are actually constructing the truth that we find from the piecing together of data. It is childish, and churlish… but we do it.
Secondly though, we (if we are willing to admit something true) realize that some of the things we need to consider cannot be constructed from a purely human mind, or even group of minds. There are problems and realities so lofty that our enormous brains cannot even begin to process the problem.
And it is here that we, as fallen humans, completely lose our bearings. For, in holding to the first tenet problem, we think that we can scaffold ourselves up to the capacity or capability to meet the really big questions one day.
However, as humanity has tried – and mostly failed – to find an answer to the deep questions of our origins and design and morality and meaning and destiny, we have fallen into a horrible series of logical fallacies wherein we come to believe that because the truth we are beginning to see was ‘not invented here’ (read: inside my own brain), that we must now test a truth as though it were a hypothesis subject to the rules of reason that we have created as humans.
Oh yes, reason is vital, and logic is an exceedingly powerful tool. But, both are limited. They do not have the capacity to measure whether all the items put up against them are subject to their limited reach. However, when we keep trying to believe the lie of the first tenet listed above (that truth comes from inside our brains), we come up on some deep cognitive dissonance.
So, we make things even worse.
To try and avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from not being to reconcile that our minds cannot comprehend those things that intersect with the infinite, we double down and start to claim that they are not even there. We have then, in this childishness, given up our childlike wonder and even the path to finding things out that we do not yet know.
Can we see it? This is all above Love. Love is something we give away. Love is humble enough to rejoice when truth wins. Love does not force its own way onto anything. And Love does not lock out possibility. Love embraces reality beyond itself.
For, Love is the only thing that is bigger than forever. Love is the substrate of reality itself. And, our supposed attempts at ‘scientific’ enquiry into the universe are really nothing more that a reflection of our selfishness and balled up little fists, attacking anything that will not come into compliance with the rules we have designed.
So, are you feeling frustrated at your lack of ability to understand? Maybe it is time to add a little Love to your enquiry. Open your mind to Love, and let it inform your thinking – and stop limiting your answers to what you think you already understand.
Tonight is your night. Time to let Love flow into your thinking.
