Not The Same

“'See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his people,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.'
And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See I am making all things new.'”
- Revelation 21:3b-5a

I Believe I'm a Walking Contradiction

Today's post is long, but I think it's worth it, and, if you're feeling lost, be sure you read yesterday's: Same Old Thing.

Today I started class by challenging my students with the quotation that began yesterday's post. I asked them to tell me one thing that had happened in the last 2500 years that would have surprised the writer of Ecclesiastes - one entirely new aspect of humanity that he never could have dreamed of.

First came answers like “the microwave” and “the internet,” but I pointed out that the microwave and the internet are just new ways to cook and share information, things humans have always done. After more thought they put forth “the moon landing” and “the atom bomb,” and again I reminded them that death, suffering, and pain, the discovery of harsh and alien landscapes were very old experiences, and that the atom bomb and moon landing differed from their antecedents only in magnitude, not in kind.

Finally, two students kicked the discussion up a notch by posing two important questions: “What about miracles?” and “What about individuals?”

Honestly, they had stumped me, especially since I teach at a public school and am therefore relatively limited as to what assertions I can make.

While the laws of nature are universal in every time and place, I believe, if I believe in the gospel, that at some point God utterly violated those laws and changed everything, forever. That much I had to admit, as well as that while human nature itself might be entirely universal (we are all born, we all learn, to love or desire family and friends, we labor, we fall in love, we reproduce and we die) the individual is just that: unique and therefore of inestimable value.

When the author of Ecclesiastes composed this passage he neither had a conception of the spiritual transaction that would take place during the crucifixion of Christ, nor did he have the fullness of the gift of the Holy Spirit that we experience now. In a sense, those things are entirely new, but I'd like to consider them in light of the comment Katie made on yesterday's post. She suggested that somehow, even if we weren't privy to the knowledge, the nature of God has always been the sole factor in determining what constitutes reality. God was always three persons: Maker, Redeemer, and Advocate.

Moreover, God doesn't look at time like we do, he doesn't see a linear progression in human knowledge. In the same way that we can't see or conceive of a mono-dimensional object (with only length, width or height), I doubt, except insofar as he condescends to our own time-based minds and senses, that God really notices a thing like time at all.

I love Catholicism, and Christianity in general, for a number of reasons, but perhaps the foremost among these is the fact they not only accept, but embrace as doctrine, and even worship, contraries which blatantly oppose logic.

For example: that God is one nature and three persons, that Christ is 100% man and 100% God, that the Eucharist is actually the body and blood of Christ despite having every discernible-by-sense-data quality of bread and wine, and most importantly that God was just when he accepted the life of an innocent man as a ransom for those worthy of death.

While Christ did come at a specific time for a specific purpose, and in doing so totally changed our conception of human nature, in many ways his coming is so absolutely perfect that we can't imagine history without it. He seems to be the deus ex machina, but could we really make sense of anything that had happened before or after Christ without him? We were always the redeemed people. We were always children of God, but he decided, in true heroic fashion, to let us lose him, so that he might win us.

But, is the beauty of the thing an adequate justification for believing it to be true? Can I rest assured that because God did what appears to be the most beautiful thing, that the facts of the matter can defy logic?

Let me know what you think, and listen to today's song; it's by Ben Folds and describes an especially strange story of conversion.