On Mystery

Part 5, "I Don't Know"

This series has focused on two sorts of mysteries, the mystery of God's own being and the mystery of God's relation to the world. Both of these concern the contrast between Uncreated Being and created being.

But another location where mystery shows up concerns God's will. Most of these questions concern why God does or does not act in the world. God's will is inscrutable. This is particularly dismaying in relation to pain and suffering, questions of theodicy. Why does God allow horrific things to happen? Why is God not answering our prayers?

At these moments, Christians often appeal to mystery. Texts like Isaiah 55 are regularly invoked:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

In my first post, when I described my allergic reactions to mystery, this particular appeal was the most galling. Appealing to mystery in the face of suffering struck me as calloused, an easy dismissal, a failure to fully face or recognize the pain. In the face of horrors the statement "It's a mystery!" struck me as not very helpful and smacked of indifference.

Plus, the questions here are hard and the challenges to faith significant. To avoid this difficult reckoning many resort, a bit too quickly, to mystery. Such an appeal can look like an existential defense mechanism, a way to cling to a comforting illusion.

Here's what was happening inside of me, for many years, during my allergic season in regards to mystery. I was so afraid that my faith was a defense mechanism that I refused to be consoled or comforted in the face of pain and suffering. As strange as this may sound, I wanted my faith to hurt. I wanted God to be a problem, a thorn in my side and a stone in my shoe. This pain, I believed, was evidence that God was not consoling me. My guiding Bible verse was Job 13.15, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." God was causing me to suffer. God was killing me. And I took that as evidence that my faith wasn't a fearful grasping at a comforting fairy tale.

I went on to use this faith configuration to judge others. I had rejected mystery to squarely face the pain of life. Others appealed to mystery in the face of suffering and seemed contented. And I judged that contentment, suspecting it of timidity and superficiality. As a Winter Christian I stood in judgment of the Summer Christians.

Over the last twenty years, though, a thaw occurred. In current parlance, deconstruction gave way to reconstruction. The icy winter Christian years gave way to a warming. No longer Arctic I'm more autumnal, with some intimations of spring. Having banged my head on the problem of evil for decades, I eventually realized that, well, it's a mystery. This isn't a nut that can be cracked. At the same time, my fear that my faith was a defense mechanism faded. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, spirituality sits at the heart of human flourishing--gratitude, joy, meaning in life, mattering, love, reverence, moral beauty, wonder, awe, and hope. None of that seems to be due to a furtive neurotic delusion.

Given all this, my posture toward mystery has turned toward the pastoral. I continue to think that a too quick appeal to mystery in the face of grief and loss can be blithe and dismissive, deployed to provide a bandaid or to escape our own discomfort. We can use mystery to obfuscate and avoid. So, while I've come to recognize the place of mystery in the life of faith, even in the midst of suffering, I believe we should be careful and discerning in how to verbalize this truth aloud. For example, if a suffering person asks about why God is allowing some pain to happen I think it's better to say "I don't know" than "God's ways are higher than our ways." "I don't know" steps into mystery while bringing us into solidarity with the one who is suffering. We stand, together, perplexed and unknowing. A mystery is experienced but not offered to explain.