A Herd of Bulls and Tigers

I've been reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy recently, and his amazing insight keeps flooring me. I don't agree with everything he says, but like Lewis I think he gets a whole lot right, and even when he gets it wrong it's healthy to think about why, because he raises excellent points.

In light of my previous post, I thought the following quote was particularly amazing. To give context, he's just spent a chapter arguing for why Christianity makes sense of the world by simultaneously affirming two seemingly contradictory premises, balancing them off each other to create one beautiful whole. He concludes the chapter by saying this:

It is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch, but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious...Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless. (101-102)

I encourage you all to get your hands on this book and wrestle through it. It will be well worth your while.

Tensions

I tend to be a reactionary person. If everyone is absolutely in love with something, my natural tendency is to avoid it and/or put it down. For example, when Lord of the Rings was massively popular, I did not even bother seeing any of them until just before Return of the King came out in theaters. Here at school, everyone is in love with C.S. Lewis, and so my natural response is to argue with them as to why C.S. Lewis is not really all that great, and to point out all the things he gets wrong, and its only when I sit down to read Screwtape Letters again that I realize, well, I may not agree with every word this man says, but he does have a lot of amazing things to say.

That being said, one of the biggest areas where this tendency shows itself is when talking about the nature of God. I have friends here who tend to emphasize the love of God to the exclusion of his holiness or justice or wrath, and so my tendency is to downplay the love of God and show them why his holiness or his justice or his wrath is much more important. Or I have friends who tend to emphasize man's free will, especially regarding salvation, and so my tendency is to go overboard defending God's sovereignty to the exclusion of free will.

But one thing I've been learning since I've been at school is that Christianity is all about tensions. It's all about paradox. As humans we want to go all the way to either extreme, but staying the middle course is one of the hardest things for us to do. So the temptation is to say "It's all about God's love" or "It's all about God's holiness," but it takes serious effort and discernment to say "It's all about both God's love and his holiness." You can't downplay one to emphasize the other, because they are both equally true. 1 John 4:8 says "God is love," but Revelation 4:8 calls God "holy, holy, holy" with the triple repetition that is the Hebrew equivilent of our superlative. Both are absolutely true about God, and elevating one over the other, or trying to pick one as God's defining characteristic, is defeating the purpose.

Maybe the two are reconciled in the actual nature of what love is. Love is sacrificially giving of yourself for others ("Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" John 15:13), and God's holiness is his set-apartness from his creation, his purity. Love is essential to God's being, because the three members of the Trinity love each other and give themselves for each other, and this love overflows to loving mankind. And yet God loves mankind because he loves his holiness, and loves his glory, and glorifies himself through acheiving our redemption, so even his love for mankind is an act of love for himself.

But the thing is, I often try to explain or define my uncertainties about God away. Thinking about the previous paragraph may be helpful, but the moment I think I've solved the paradox, that's the moment I completely miss the point. Christianity is all about paradoxes, and its all about mystery. Delve far enough into any doctrine of the Christian faith and you reach a point where you say "Well, I'm stuck. God is so much bigger than me." If you're not comfortable with saying that, I think you've missed who God really is, and you've missed the wonder of the gospel.

Don't try and explain things away. Learn to live with, even embrace paradox. God reveals himself to us in amazing ways when we are no longer convinced that we can learn everything about him, but surrender ourselves to his infinitude.