Critical Christianity is hard. If by “critical” we mean a constant evaluation and reevaluation of every assumption we take upon ourselves in the life work of believing, then I’m tired of it. What value is there in my having questioned God’s existence or the effectiveness of my Baptism? Challenging these things makes them no less true—my questioning of truth makes it no less truth.
So why question at all? I suppose it is so that I might find and know the full essence of that truth. But are my questions sufficient to the task? I doubt it. I trust myself to fail far greater than I hope for success in this endeavor. That is if I am left to myself. Left to myself I will likely become lost, simply lost. If I were to rely on something else, the Church perhaps, I might have some hope.
But then there is this idea out there that we need a new understanding, a new idea about God that our culture can really latch on to, something that they can understand, something approachable. Hah! The Glory of God; approachable? That’ll be the day. In fact, yes, that will be the day, the day of days. But I digress. We want something new. Mach3 was great but now we have—Mach4! And this same sentiment pervades academia, the writing world, music, visual arts, dance, not to mention such fields as product design and marketing. If it’s not new, it’s old and that reminds us of our mortality. Our bodies break down and we die. So to avoid these unpleasant thoughts, let us have something shiny and new. Where’s my IKEA catalogue?
I just have to ask, what the hell is so damn good about a “new idea?” An “original thought?” If God was, is, and will be, then what for do I need a new “God?” Will not Creator, Infinite, Eternal God suffice? These are old ideas. I’m pretty sure Abraham believed the same God a long, long, long time ago and then modernity took over and dissected faith to pitiful bits. Once that’s out dated, post-modernity realizes the pieces are worthless, so they turn to the only thing left, the self, and glorify it. The only problem is that we die. Oops—no more self. Annihilation. Bummer.
This reliance on myself to ascertain a new and original and somehow substantial understanding of my ontology in light of my own understanding of theology is really frustrating. Why on God’s green earth would I trust the experience of my 23 years over the cumulative experience of the Church’s 2000 year history to lead me to the truth? An ant may carry six or seven times its own weight, but can it manage to move Mt. Everest?
My frustration is far from new. (I’m glad of that. I’d look like quite a fool if I went on to describe how new and innovative my existential angst was after having just balked at our all-pervasive “new” fetish.) F. Dostoevsky addressed the same frustration, granted with far more eloquence than I will ever hope to employ, through the words of Father Paissy to Alyosha, the young protagonist in “The Brothers Karamazov”.
“‘Remember, young man, unceasingly,” Father Paissy began directly, without any preamble, “that the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Did it not live for nineteen centuries, does it not live even now in the movements of individual souls and in the movements of the popular masses? Even in the movements of the souls of those same all-destroying atheists, it lives, as before immovably! For those who renounce Christianity and rebel against it are in their essence of the same image of the same Christ, and such they remain, for until now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create another, higher image of man and his dignity than the image shown of old by Christ.” The Brothers Karamazov 2.4.1
I think I’ve found that immovable whole. As long as I’ve searched, it’s been there before me, guiding me to itself. The image of Christ, the Icon of Christ, the Body of Christ, the Church, that universal mass of witnesses which surrounds us and of which we too may be part. When will we learn, as Solomon has long before us, that there is nothing new under the sun? But then, like the sun, God’s mercies are new every morning. Do you catch the irony there?
