Existential Christian Musings Part II

The other day in my reading I came across an argument that the Semitic languages, Hebrew and Arabic, are very much 'verb-oriented' and so tend to focus on action. The Indo-European languages, by contrast, and in particular Greek, are very 'noun-oriented', thereby focusing on the name-ability of life (yes, I just invented that word, no idea if it exists, sorry!).

The argument went on to point out that for this reason, words which were originally used to describe an actuality--christanoia, meaning those who seek to be like the Christ, and islam, meaning submission to God--began, through the subtle influence of language and how it shapes our thinking, to be used as nouns describing groups of people, rather than as verbs describing how certain people oriented themselves existentially.

I had no idea that languages had impacted evolution of thought about religion to such an extent, and more troubling, that language could have impacted our very experience of our life lived in faith, in such a way as to make it an entirely superficial ordeal. But consider the very real experience that many of us have had in encountering 'Christians' who in no way act like Christ, and 'Muslims' who show no interest in islam. The fact that we continue, untroubled, to use these words throughout the world in a way that designates identity groups rather than an inner posture shows the schism that we have come to take for granted in our thinking.

Some time back, the discussion touched on 'types' of faith. Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, describes four types of faith: assensus, where we give our mental assent to a proposition or doctrine (and he maintains this is the most common type of faith both within the church and without), fiducia, meaning a radical trust in God (not in statements about God, but in God), fidelitas , meaning faith as a fidelity to our relationship with God, the commitment of our deepest self, and visio, the way in which we see the whole picture as determined by our faith in God. This broadened vision of faith as needing to mean more than a mental 'assent' has been invaluable to me in my own understanding of why so much of what is commonly called 'faith' seems insufficient to many people in dealing with the reality of life.

Where Borg's book led me, but didn't follow through, (I was instead met by the likes of Emil Brunner and Paul Tillich) was down to the existential 'ground of being'. The place of original encounter with God. And at the ground of being is where the great theologians meet us with our own existential realities. With the truth of our desire to defy God, even escape God. These are not thoughts I would ever have lightly entertained. It had seemed to me that God was the answer to so many of my heart's questions, so why should I ever want to escape God? And yet, at some level, I came to see that I do. Emil Brunner writes of Man in Revolt, an entire tome on man's inherent predisposition to this effect. And Paul Tillich, in one of the most devastating sermons I have ever read, Escape from God, writes that "Man tries to escape God, and hates Him, because he cannot escape Him. The protest against God, the will that there be no God, and the flight to atheism are all genuine elements of profound religion."

I have come to believe, with the help of these profound men of faith, that this occurs at a profoundly existential level because at that level, or perhaps especially at that level, God is the undeniable Witness to our lives, whose presence is unchosen and yet inescapable. And at this, we falter. We want to have chosen God, rather than have Him to have chosen us. We are comfortable with a God who exists for us, rather than an 'us' or a 'me' who exists because of God. And in the world we live in, and perhaps even because of the language to which we are accultured, this sort of wrestling is almost never spoken of. We speak of a a loving God, a gracious God, and perhaps we debate about omniscience and omnipotence, but rarely do we allow ourselves to be brought to that place where we are forced to accept and truly experience that, ultimately, God is not ours to define. Compared to this realization, it would be more comforting, at times, to stand with the atheists and proclaim that God is a man-made invention, an 'opiate' of the people. Perhaps some have even argued that that is the more courageous route. But I am coming to see that faith takes a courage I never imagined. I would begin to argue, as Tillich did, that "the Man who has never tried to flee God has never experienced the God Who Is Really God". For to encounter that God is to at once realise the defeat of our own most cherished illusions about ourselves. To be quite blunt, this is an appalling state of affairs for the ego. It is no wonder that the instinct is to flee. And yet, to encounter 'That God Who Is Really God' is the beginning of the possibility of being reconciled to Him, and therefore to our deepest existential reality.

And it is here where Christianity shows something perhaps unexpected about God; that even as He created us and sees us clearly in our rebellious nature, He understands this rebellion better than we ourselves do and did the only thing He could do to reconcile us to Him without crushing our already appalled egos. Again, Paul Tillich leads us through the depths of our rebellion to the redemption of reconciliation and says the following:

"Yet when the Divine is rejected, It takes the rejection upon Itself. It accepts our crucifixion, our pushing away, the defence of ourselves against It. It accepts our refusal to accept, and thus conquers us. That is the centre of the mystery of the Christ. Let us try to imagine a Christ Who would not die, and Who would come in glory to impose upon us His power, His wisdom, His morality, and His piety. He would be able to break our resistance by His strength, by His wonderful government, by His infallible wisdom, and by His irresistible perfection. But He would not be able to win our hearts. He would bring a new law, and would impose it upon us by His all-powerful and all-perfect Personality. His power would break our freedom; His glory would overwhelm us like a burning, blinding sun; our very humanity would be swallowed up in His Divinity. One of Luther's most profound insights was that God made Himself small for us in Christ. In so doing, He left us our freedom and our humanity. He showed us His heart, so that our hearts could be won." (from He Who is the Christ, in the book The Shaking of the Foundations)

It is, indeed, the only way. No other action that I can conceive of would be able to speak so eloquently through our defenses, so tenderly honor our humanity, so greatly pierce our hearts. For it seems a certainty that the only thing that would be able to convince the frightened ego to let go of its resistance to the overwhelming reality of God would be the utter conviction that not only did God create us, but that He loves us, and that that Love which threatens at first to take away our 'lives' is a Love that will ultimately give us true life, unconquerable life, with the peace, joy and freedom we so deeply crave. The only way it would all come together is if we could overcome our fear because our love for God, in response to His great love for us, became greater than our fear. In Christ, God makes us this offer and this promise. Our existential choice, and God's blessing of us with free-will, is that it is we are free to accept it, or free to deny it (and to take the consequences that come with both choices). But we can not change it. The offer, promise, reality and Love of God will stand regardless.