Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

We Look To No Other - Kenneth Tanner

Birth of Jesus by Georgian artist David Popiashvili

It must be apparent to anyone that there’s no religion or ideology that in the name of progress, in the pursuit of power, with the goal of “winning,” in perfect assurance of its rightness, will not sacrifice the human race or the creation in exchange for its self-justifiable ends.

It makes no difference if a culture is in its origins atheist or Islamic or Buddhist or Christian or whatever.

We have seen that unconscious or conscientious hatred or indifference toward humanity and the material world, that any number of well-meaning but ultimately lethal do-goodisms, will lead us to destroy ourselves and the eternal habitat God intends for us.

The Christians leading America now believe that this world ends in a cataclysmic destruction from which Christians escape.

This “vision” (God help us) informs their policy and governance. It seems in this respect that it matters little who holds public office in our democracy. History teaches us that human religion and ideology leads to self-destruction.

Only the humanity of the God we find nestled in the wood of the feed box, only the divinity of the human nailed to the wood of the cross, is able to save us and the world the triune Life loves.

This Love is made perfect not in power but in weakness. This Love reveals that humility and vulnerability are stronger than death. The weakness of this God is stronger than all worldly principalities.

Those who are baptized into the life of this human God, buried in his sacrifice, and raised from death by the Spirit renounce “winning,” renounce “power,” renounce “progress” and every other worldly euphemism for death.

They understand that the Life we encounter in the manger and on the cross and in the resurrection is the true strength that holds the universe together, that gives breath to every creature; that all other political and religious systems of power lead to dissolution and lifelessness.

Wood of the feed box, wood of the cross, wood of the Tree of Life, we look to the God whom you hold, the God whom you bear, the God who makes your leaves the healing of the nations, your fruit eternal life, for rescue, restoration, and reconciliation. We look to no other.

“Bethlehem has opened Eden: come, let us see” — Andrew Klager

“Bethlehem has opened Eden: come, let us see.” (Orthodox Kontakion of the Nativity)

After his brief historiographical preamble, St. Luke begins his gospel account in verse 5 with, “In the time of Herod king of Judea…” and his account of Jesus’ birth with, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria).” These are signals that the birth of Christ will take on political dimensions as alternatives to this world’s political status quo.

Our confidence in empire today is only a continuation of the worship of empire in the time when Jesus was born.

The world’s political status quo in first-century Palestine tried to kill the new meek and humble king whose birth was meant to usher in the kingdom of God. And when the world’s political status quo tried to arrest him as an adult, he refused to call down his legions of angels to defeat his enemies, he told Peter to put away his sword when he tried to rescue Jesus through violence, and he told Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place” (Jn. 18:36). And before he forgave his executioners while hanging on the cross, he told us to take up our own crosses too as, in the words of St. Paul, citizens of heaven (Phil 3:20).

Or put in today’s nomenclature, the political status quo tried to kill a new meek and humble President whose birth was meant to usher in a new country founded on divine virtues that permeates the world while transcending its political borders and machinations. He has no military at all and dissolves any militias that his wayward followers try to assemble to protect him and his country. And he tells us to participate in this new peaceable and compassionate divine country as citizens who inherit the earth through meekness and who eschew violence of any kind.

Bethlehem has invited us into Eden; the new Adam born of the new Eve has invited us out of the world whose political priorities and standards have Adam and Eve’s fear, pride, and disobedience as their foundation.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

 

John MacMurray's "A Spiritual Evolution" - Review by Brad Jersak

Review: John MacMurray, A Spiritual Evolution: Rediscovering the Greatest Story Ever Told (Open Table Press, 2018).  

https://www.aspiritualevolution.com

John MacMurray's Spiritual Evolution is a uniquely accessible account of his own spiritual journey from anxious and arrogant dogmatism into a beautiful and living faith. Embedded within the narrative of his quest for the Christlike and trustworthy God, readers will be introduced to some of the best Trinitarian / Patristic theology available today.

Under the influence great teachers such as St. Athanasius of Alexandria, George MacDonald, T.F. Torrance and C. Baxter Kruger, John MacMurray guides us beyond the fearsome and retributive "monster god" of our nightmares into a glorious vision of Triune Love made incarnate in Jesus Christ.

MacMurray is vulnerable with his own struggle to embrace transforming grace but in his surrender, we se how Trinitarian love heals our hearts and empowers us to pick up Christ's Cross of radical forgiveness--for others and for ourselves.

As a patristic theologian, I was thrilled by John's orthodoxy in an era where so many deconstructionists find themselves moving on, not only from abusive theologies and church situations, but from Jesus Christ as well. My wish is that before such a tragic divorce, disillusioned Christians would pick up this book. Any truly spiritual evolution will take us forward and upward into the life of the God-man unveiled herein.  

 

   

Blessed Assurance of Divine Humility - Kenneth Tanner

There is a “blessed assurance” about the goodness of the One who knows every sparrow fall.

Yet this trust is on the far side of contemplating—no, experiencing—the cruel pointlessness of the death of even small things, the dryness of the avian corpse, the shocking disintegration of its wingéd power, feathers stewing in the mud, skeleton uncloaked, magnificence gone.

That God joins these tiny catastrophes, weds the indignity of tiny birds by his infinite empathy; beholds their sad undoing up close; impassibly suffers in the human flesh of Jesus for and with his creation.

Christian trust is not in denial. Christian trust is awake and aware in the dark, a trust forged in despair.

By this divine humility, by the drawing near of the Son as co-suffering servant, creation learns to hope in God’s promises to his beloved cosmos, promises of permanence.

Death is not the end of anything. This is the startling trust of the Christian.

Resurrection is the end of all things, the end of the earth, our end.

This is what Christians mean when we say we trust in the God who *knows* every sparrow fall. He knows their fall, their death, their descent into corruption and nothingness—from the inside.

He *knows* the material creature’s death as his own but it’s what he *is*—Resurrection and Life—that he freely has alone the power to grant to all, death plainly in the rear view of the universe.

This is what we mean when we say that we trust in the resurrection of the dead. The God who knows our death from the inside is the death of death and the defeat of everything that opposes our participation in eternal embodied, animate life.

The skies of the kingdom are a murmuration of resurrected sparrows and starlings, their undulations a praise to the God who does not abandon his creation to corruption.

10 Affirmations on Divine Judgment: An Inclusivist Perspective -- Brad Jersak

Hopeful Inclusivists believe in Divine Judgment

What they challenge is the unbiblical assumptions, accretions and emphases of those who hold that God’s judgments are retributive rather than restorative. What we know of Divine Judgment, we learn from the Scriptures. Rather than sweeping judgment under the rug, we can make the following assertions, rooted in Scripture.

1. An accounting of our lives: We believe that like the prophets before them, Christ and his apostles foretell a “Day of the Lord.” On that day, we will all stand before Christ and give an account for the one life we had to live and have to offer God. Facing the meaning of our lives could be cause for rejoicing or mourning, not unlike the “fearless moral inventory” upon which the recovery community asks all addicts to reflect with rigorous honesty.

2. An assessment of our deeds: Standing before Christ involves an examination of our deeds. I.e. Your life matters! This judgment of deeds is quite apart from the issue of saving faith in Christ for eternal life. The New Testament apostles (Paul, Peter and John) explicitly speak of a judgment according to our motives and deeds, resulting in reward or loss. See Matt. 25; Rom. 2:6; 1 Cor. 3:8; 2 Cor. 5:10; Col. 3:25; 1 Pet. 1:17; Rev. 20:12.

3. The fire of cleansing: Forgiveness for sin was accomplished at the cross. Period. Our guilt has been removed. But the stain of sin and all its consequences will also be purged when we meet Christ. Malachi prophesies that the Refiner’s fire will purge us of dross and bring out the gold of our true nature. He imagines a Launderer's soap that will cleanse us of every stain. Similarly, Paul says in 1 Cor. 3 that the fire of judgment will consume all the wood, hay and stubble in our character (probably our worldly and fleshly attachments, including idolatry, resentments, regrets, etc.). Paul says some will pass through the fire with nothing to show for their lives, yet he adds, “they will be saved as through fire.” That sounds ominous, but here is the surprise:

St Macrina on Soulish Attachments, the Second Death and Ghost Phenomena - w/ comments by Brad Jersak

Macrina the Younger (or the Teacher), old sister and teacher of Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa speaks to Gregory on her deathbed about the afterlife in Gregory's book titled "On the Soul and the Resurrection":

St. Macrina on the soul's lingering attachments, the second death as cleansing and alleged ghost phenomena:

I think our Lord teaches us this: that those still living in the flesh must, as much as they can, separate and free themselves from the attachments of the flesh by virtuous conduct, in order that after death, they may not need a second death to cleanse them from the remnants owing to this cement of the flesh, and, when once the bonds are loosed from around the soul, her soaring up to the Good may be swift and unimpeded, with no anguish of the body to distract her. 

For if anyone becomes wholly and thoroughly carnal in thought, such a one, with every motion and energy of the soul absorbed in fleshly desires, is not parted from such attachments, even in the disembodied state; just as those who have lingered long in noisome places do not part with the unpleasantness contracted by that lengthened stay, even when they pass into a sweet atmosphere. So it is that, when the change is made into the impalpable Unseen, not even then will it be possible for the lovers of the flesh to avoid dragging away with them under any circumstances some fleshly foulness, and thereby their torment will be intensified, their soul having been materialized by such surroundings. 

I think too that this view of the matter harmonizes to a certain extent with the assertion made by some people that around their graves, shadowy phantoms of the departed are often seen. If this is truly so, it proves an inordinate attachment of that particular soul to the life in the flesh existed, causing it to be unwilling, even when expelled from the flesh, to fly clean away and to admit the complete change of its form into the impalpable. It remains near the frame even after the dissolution of the frame, and though now outside it, hovers regretfully over the place where its material is and continues to haunt it.

From Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection. 

Commentary by Brad Jersak: to St. Macrina, the soul after death makes its journey from this world to God. What may impede that journey is our fleshly attachments to the material world. In our attachment to this world, we cannot help but try to drag our idols with us. These may include not only material possessions, but people to whom we are linked whether by obsessive love by unrelenting resentment, or to the past through regrets, remorse or any unfinished business. Their weight hinders us from letting go and torments us, necessitating “the second death” that cleanses us of them. The clinging that causes us to linger may explain alleged ghost phenomenon, which would prove the point. Rather than suffer the rigors of this cleansing post-mortem, Macrina believed that the fruit of “virtuous conduct” (unselfish love, radical forgiveness, abundant generosity, etc.) is that it releases us from our bondage to the demands of the ego (flesh) and the world [system].     

Inalienable Rights of the Incarnation - Kenneth Tanner

Art by Odolin Redon

This idea that humans are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights is beautiful, and that humans alone in all of creation bear the image of God is a mystery beyond description, but that God *is* human—this is nothing less than a revolution in human existence.

We often despise ourselves, our bodies, our limitations, our weaknesses. Humans are good at hating other humans, at loathing ourselves.

In the face of every human and demonic rejection of the image of God in human flesh, God sides with humanity against all that hates us, even our own hatred of ourselves, and becomes one of us (Bonhoeffer).

God becomes what he loves from all eternity. God becomes what they in the beginning of time made very good.

And God becomes not just one of us but a helpless, speechless, fragile baby born without privilege to a working family, a family under a cloud because of the circumstances of his conception, who when he was very little become refugees from political tyranny.

He assumes the one human nature all humans share. He is not a special brand of human but merely human. His purpose is to lend all of us—we who have fallen from the community of Love, we who have descended into hell and the grave, we who are infected with death—his divine permanence.

What it is to be human is now forever bound up in what it is for one particular human to be God. And our common humanity can never again sink lower than the throne in which he sits, still bearing the flesh Mary gave him.

Walter J. Burghardt's "Long Have I Loved You" - Review by Ron Dart

Walter J. Burghardt, Long Have I Loved You: A Theologian Reflects on His Church (Orbis Books, 2000).

There is, gratefully so, a movement afoot these days to return to the classical and Patristic form of contemplative theology (important to note the fact Hans Boersma won the theology book of the year award from Christianity Today, Boersma’s most recent books dealing with Patristic theology). There is, also, a counterforce towards a confessional and exegetical reformed and neo-Calvinist agenda (the recent publication by Iain Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, speaks its own telling message, Provan turning on Boersma). The danger, of course, when such cultural cross-currents occur is that one side of the tension is idealized and the other either demonized, caricatured or subordinated. There are books worth the reading many times on such topics, and a favourite of mine is Walter Burghardt’s Long Have I Loved You: A Theologian Reflects on His Church (obviously a riff off Augustine’s “Late Have I Loved You”).

There were few in the 20^thcentury that had Burghardt’s depth and range in Patristic theology (he studied with the best of the scholars in the area), but he never unduly idealized, romanticized or froze such a period in history as the golden age in which the purest and finest phase of theology was done (the rest of history but a commentary on such a high season of theology). The 14 chapters in Long Have I Loved You discuss, in much depth and detail, both the appeal and limitations of the Patristic vision and ethos and the need for a mature theology to be in conversation with each phase and season of the epic faith journey as thought and imagination seeks to know God and the relationship of God to humanity and nature. Burghardt knows of what he speaks given the fact he was front and centre in the revival and renewal of the Patristic vision of contemplative theology and his many publications as listed in the lengthy “Appendix” testify to such a fact.

Burghardt often lamented that many forms, types and intellectual interpretations of Christianity are not much more than “homiletic pap and bromides”. The turn to responsible thinking was at the core and centre of Burghardt’s many years of teaching and multiple publications, Long Have I Loved You a literary and theological overview, with decided pastoral implications, for contemporary Christians. Certainly, in this era of ours in which a certain approach to the Patristics is either idealized or denigrated (the past being the best and most mature from which a decline has set in or a more progressive notion of history in which the past is seen as a more immature) Berghardt can offer a more dialogical and interactive approach in doing theology as theology has been done through the centuries of Christian thought and life.

I am often asked if I was marooned on an island for a few years, what books I would want by my side. Long Have I Loved You is certainly on the upper shelf for me--a read of this full-bodied tome will certainly reveal a way of doing theology that is dynamic and critical, contemplative and pastoral, fully committed to the historic life of the church (midst many reasons not to be). Indeed, it takes a mature mind and soul to stay the course and do so in a loyal and critical manner, always being guided by love.

May you all have a meaningful Advent-Christmas-Epiphany season.

Amor Vincit Omnia

Ron Dart      

The "Real Whites" - Letter from the BC First Nations to PM Laurier (1910)

Memorial to Sir Wilfred Laurier, Premier of the Dominion of Canada from the Chiefs of the Shuswap,

Okanagan and Couteau Tribes of British Columbia presented at Kamloops, BC,

August 25, 1910

 

Dear Sir and Father,

We take this opportunity of your visiting Kamloops to speak a few words to you. We welcome you here, and we are glad we have met you in our country. We want you to be interested in us, and to understand more fully the conditions under which we live.

We expect much of you as the head of this great Canadian Nation, and feel confident you will see that we receive fair and honorable treatment. Our confidence in you has increased since we noted of late the attitude of your government towards the Indian rights movement of this country and we hope with your help our wrongs may at last be righted.

We speak to you more freely because you are a member of the white race with whom we first became acquainted, and which we call in our tongue "real whites" to the latter (viz., the fur-traders of the Northwest and Hudson's Bay companies. As the great majority of the companies' employees were French speaking, the term latterly became applied by us as a designation for the whole French race.)

The "real whites" we found were good people. We could depend on their word, and we trusted and respected them. They did not interfere with us nor attempt to break up our tribal organizations, laws, and customs. They did not try to force their ideas of things to us to our harm. Nor did they stop us from catching fish, hunting and so on. They never tried to steal or appropriate our country and treated our chiefs as men. They were the first to find us in this country. We never asked them to come here, nevertheless we treated them kindly and hospitably and helped them all we could.

Download the full PDF of the Memorial to Sir Wilfred Laurier 1910 from various Interior Chiefs

Friend of Foe: Orthodox Christianity and Historical Criticism - Philip Maikkula

This morning I was listening to an excellent interview with Dr. Brad Jersak on The Bible for Normal People Podcast. Towards the end of the interview, Dr. Peter Enns asked Brad how Orthodox Christians relate to the tools of Modern Historical Criticism. In short, are historical-critical methodologies valuable, useful, wrong or otherwise?

Brad’s answer focused on his experience with his spiritual father and he admitted that he wasn’t sure the Orthodox are producing historical-critical research, but in his experience, the Orthodox are reading and usefully engaging that research. In many ways, I agree with Brad’s assessment, but I wanted to nuance his perspective a bit and look at some of the factor influencing the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and historical criticism.

1. The Orthodox Church is Diverse.

The Orthodox Church is not monolithic. She is comprised of a family of churches including not only historic Orthodox jurisdictions like the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople or the Churches of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, but also Churches delineated according to the boundaries of modern nation-states, such as the Churches of Russia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Georgia, Cyprus, Albania, Poland, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia. On top of this, there are Orthodox Churches of the so-called “Diaspora” in North America, Europe, and Australia among other places. While these Churches share a common worship and faith (Orthodoxy can mean both right belief and right worship), we must recognize that the Orthodox Church is diverse. There are questions where opinions differ.

2. The line between those who accept “critical” scholarship and those who reject it runs through every religious body.

We cannot delineate those who accept “critical” scholarship and those who reject it simply according to religious denomination. In every denomination, people differ on this question, even in those Churches where there are official teaching positions on the value of critical scholarship.

3. The Orthodox has no official position on historical-critical scholarship.

As perhaps both a blessing and a curse, the Orthodox Church doesn’t have an official teaching office like the Roman Catholic Magisterium. This leaves many questions that do not directly bear upon the Dogma of the Church up for debate among the faithful. For Orthodox Christians in the United States, there are some who engage modern historical-critical methodologies and some who decry it as unhelpful, unnecessary or even un-Christian and heretical. My own Alma Mater, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, values and teaches a critical engagement with the Orthodox tradition which includes, among other hermeneutical approaches, the reading of Scripture through the lens of historical-critical methodologies. Other seminaries might not see a value in the historical-critical method. I know at least one faculty member at another Orthodox seminary in America who rejects the use of historical-critical methodology outright, preferring to simply read the Church Fathers. Both positions exist in the Orthodox Church.

4. The Orthodox Church is just beginning to answer the questions of Modernism.

Roman Catholics began to face the questions of Modernism well over a century ago, with the Vatican ultimately approving the use of historical-critical methodologies in the middle of the 20th century. Yet the triumph of critical methods was not always a smooth road. Roman Catholics were initially on the cutting edge of modern biblical scholarship in the late 19^thCentury when French Dominicans established a school of archeology and biblical research in Jerusalem, known as the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem. Yet, in the early 20^th Century, the Roman Catholic Church entered a period of anti-modernism. Pope Pius X, published the encyclical, Pascendi dominici gregis, which condemned, among other things, “rationalist” interpretations of scripture, resulting in a great freeze on the freedom of Catholic biblical scholars. It wasn’t until the publications of Divino afflante Spiritu, in 1943, and Dei Verbum, at the 2^ndVatican council, that the historical-critical method was given official sanction by the Catholic Church. Together these documents opened the door to the great flourishing of Catholic biblical scholarship seen in the second half of the 20^thCentury—perhaps best exemplified by the towering figure of Fr. Raymond Brown.

The Orthodox Church has largely been shielded from the questions of Modernism, either because of Turkish domination or the rise of communism. As a result, much of the Orthodox world has only recently begun to face the problematics presented by modernism. In my own view, this has given rise to our own brand anti-modernism within the Orthodox Church. The increasingly widespread rise of neo-traditionalism is best explained as a reactionary response to the challenges modernism presents. Increasingly, the Orthodox Church is going to have to wrestle with these questions as globalization brings the challenges of modernism home to roost for more and more Orthodox Christians.

5. The Orthodox Church both uses and produces historical-critical research.

While it is true that the Orthodox tradition provides many valuable scriptural resources beyond the scope of historical-critical research, it is simply false to claim that the Orthodox Church doesn’t produce any historical-critical scholarship. I think a big reason for this misunderstanding is because the Orthodox Churches in the English speaking world haven’t produced a great number of prominent biblical scholars. The Orthodox tend to be known for Patristic scholarship or liturgical theology, but not biblical studies. We are small and thus we don’t have a large voice. Yet, there are many Orthodox biblical scholars who do engage in thoughtful and positive research with the help of historical-critical methodologies. For instance:

Fr. Eugen Pentiuc is a well-established scholar of the Hebrew Bible and professor at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. Fr. Eugen has published several monographs which engage both historical-critical methodologies and patristic interpretations of the scriptures (see: The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Jesus the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible, and Long Suffering Love: A Commentary on Hosea with Patristic Annotations).

Fr. George Parsenios is a respected Johannine scholar and associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. Fr. George has written, among other things, a commentary on the Johannine epistles, as well as two academic works on rhetoric in the Gospel of John (see: Rhetoric and Drama in the Johannine Lawsuit Motif, Departure and Consolation: The Johannine Farewell Discourses in Light of Greco-Roman Literature). 

That just names two Orthodox scholars who are currently fruitfully engaging with historical-critical methodologies in the English speaking world. More could be named such as the now-retired professors Fr. Theodore Stylianopoulos, Fr. John Breck, or Fr. Paul Tarazi. The list would be enlarged even further if we broaden our scope to include Orthodox countries like Greece or Romania where many of the professors in the faculties of theology were trained in German universities in modern historical-critical methodologies. For Orthodox biblical scholars, there is little debate about the usefulness of these methodologies.

6. Debate still exists on how to best incorporate modern methodologies with the Orthodox Church’s rich history.

In my view, the biggest debate facing the Orthodox Church is how to incorporate these modern historical methodologies into the life of the Church in a way that is fruitful for research, yet respectful of our interpretive history. I would want to see an Orthodox hermeneutic that was big enough to encompass both ancient and modern readings of scripture. The Fathers of the Church offer invaluable insights into the text, and it would be impossible to reject their interpretation of scripture and still remain Orthodox. We have to find a way to live in both worlds. We must find a way of reading the scriptures that is both faithful to our past and yet faithful to our present. We need a reading of scripture that can hold together the best insights of the ancient and the modern world. Articulating such a hermeneutic of double fidelity will require a great deal of courage and creativity. I believe that is exactly what the Church Fathers themselves would do were they in our situation. The Church Fathers always engaged the best of the intellectual life of their time while remaining faithful to the Gospel. We must do the same.

* * * * * 

Deacon Philip Maikkula is attached to St. John of the Ladder Orthodox Church in Greenville, SC. He has been married to his wife Whitney for eight years and together they have two children. Deacon Philip holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Central Florida and a Master of Divinity from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. He is currently completing the graduate certificate in religion, peace, and justice from the Institute for Religion, Peace, and Justice at St. Stephen’s University.

Does choosing faith make it less valuable? - Sarah Van Diest

I am in a constant need of saving. There is often a longing in me to step outside of the “things I know,” as in the way the Bible explains God and man, etc., and look at the plainer truth of what I see. When I study cultures, religions, and the histories of man I see many stories being told, often similar to our own.  I very much want the God of the Bible to cover my questions, doubts, and skepticism with himself; answering them all with his person. And he does, when I allow him to do so.

It is that small action of my own acquiescence that bothers my soul. Not that I do it, nor that I want to do it, but that it makes the difference. Why does it have to be that in order for me to experience the awe of an awesome God that I must submit to it? And why do I wish instead that it would overwhelm me? That his greatness would knock me off my proverbial feet and lay me flat on the ground in profound humility? Why must it be a choice? If it is defiance in me that causes me to struggle, then I am ashamed. If it is pride, also ashamed. If it is a lack of gratitude or self-righteousness, ashamed again. But must it be my own sin, my own fault, my own eyes which blind me from seeing his greatness, if it is indeed so great?

When I step into the circle of our familiar Christian stories and the music of scripture plays in my mind, repeating the truths I love, then I see once again. The God of the universe sits majestically on his throne and all that exists does so in such a way, in such harmony, that it can only be God who orchestrates it all. But one step outside the circle, one moment in my “other mind,” and that holy image disappears, blending in with all the other stories mankind has created throughout time.

As man worked to understand life and death, creation, and relationships, he made for himself stories to soothe his mind. Standing in his circle of stories he sees how they all come together and form an explanation for how we came to be and what will become of us. He has faith in his stories and he finds great comfort there. But what happens if he steps out of his circle, and looks at it from a distant vantage point? He may see it for the created structure it is. He may see other circles created by other minds, cultures, and religions and begin to wonder what stories he has not heard. He may wonder if his are not as true as he thought they were. His wondering, his questioning, could be endless and anxiety may rule his mind if he does not choose a circle to live in.

But perhaps if he climbs a very high mountain and looks down at all the circles below, he may once again find a thought that soothes his mind. Perhaps on the peak, he will begin to see something new. The circles look so much alike from so high a vantage point, each with its stories and structures, each with its explanations to bring calm to anxious minds. And there are so many circles, stretching out as far as he can see. Could it be that their consistency is the evidence he hopes for? Could the circles, in their similarity and volume, be evidence of pervasive truth? Could their cohesiveness be an indication of a greater structure-maker? Could it be this:  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20)?

Reality remains what it is regardless of man’s explanation of it. It is merely his experience which is altered by his chosen explanation. The story of Yahweh may be the one reality, the one story, the one great circle. The Father of Jesus may be the great structure-maker. I hope he is. My heart longs for what I believe to be true. But I cannot know. Faith is the confidence of things hoped for, but it is not the thing itself. When I stand in praise of the Father of life, I stand in faith and in hope, and nothing more. The love I have for him is based on my desire that he really is who he claims to be and truly does love each one of us. I hope for his love and seem to experience it when I accept it. What more could I ask?

Does choosing faith make it less valuable? Is there somehow inherently greater worth in the verifiable? How vacant that sounds! How sorrowful that feels! If only that which we can prove has worth, then we are all bankrupt. We are left only with the perishable and the temporal to comfort our minds. The irony sits heavily on my chest. The concrete aspects of this world are hevel, vapor, doomed to decay, while the ethereal remain untouched and unaltered. If choosing faith means finding God, then I choose faith. I do not wish to walk this world alone.