Truth and a Song

"...great is the mystery..." I Timothy 3:16

The idea of "mystery" has gone foul for many and has been foully used by others, thanks mainly to the permeation and pontification of post-modern pundits. Many today take "mystery" (and similar terms, like "incomprehensible") to mean that which is irrational or unknowable or (what is more likely) both. Such a definition is an infection from our own corrupt culture, a culture fearful of and in denial of absolutes, categories, and certainties. It is an infection that we must strive long and hard to cure.

The old idea of "mystery" (an idea that is still the right and proper one) is the idea of "a hidden truth". Shouldn't such a thing be obvious, though? When we read a book or watch a film subscribed under the genre of "mystery," we never think that the solution to the initial conundrum is going to be irrational or unknowable. Both would destroy the very purpose that defines mystery: to discover, know, and comprehend an answer that is currently obscured. To steal the discovery, knowledge, and comprehension away from us is to make the story no longer a mystery but rather a comedy (which delights in the absurd).

A "mystery" is not irrational and/or unknowable; it has an answer that is rational and knowable and currently obscure. As Chesterton put it, one day we will see "the other side of the tapestry," and current mysteries will be solved, and perhaps new and exciting ones revealed; for mystery gives two things to the universe, two things that the human soul cannot live without. The first is joy, for we feel that we are in a great and exciting game of hide and seek, of search and discovery. Einstein said that it is as if we are small children stepping into a great library, vaguely sensing some sort of structure and order in the arrangement of all the books as well as a great wealth of substance within their pages. To make that substance irrational and/or unknowable is to kill the joy.

The second thing that is gives us is beauty. We sense great and momentous truths behind the veil of things, truths that the artist and the philosopher have sought (and occasionally found) words for, that the common man often lacks words for. Whatever these truths, these realities, are, we sense their numinous glow behind (and often through) the veil of things, though we often fail to articulate it adequately. However, those who assume that our failure of articulation necessarily means that such things are absurdities or non-entities are childish; their thoughts are cop-outs and naivete. The truth is far more exciting: we cannot speak the right words because we do not yet know the language, the language of real things. It to is a mystery, i.e., it too is rational and knowable and waiting to be discovered. We catch fragments of it now; one day we will be encompassed by the whole. Thus, the joy and beauty of the universe, caused by mystery, can be summed up in this: we find by our longings and searchings, whether in whole or in part, that all things are touched by truth and a song.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2009

Non Nobis Domine

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us; but unto Thy hame may all the glory be, for Thy mercy and Thy truth's sake." Ps. 115:1

"When Jesus heard [of Lazarus' illness], he said, 'This sickness is not for death, but for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.'" John 11:4

"[The chief priests and Pharisees said,] 'If we let Him alone like this, all men will believe on Him, and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.'" John 11:48

Psalm 115 gives us a comparison of God with idols (vs. 2-9), with the conclusion being that while God is the Lord of Heaven (vs. 3), idols are nothing more than "the work of men's hands" (vs. 4), and "they that make them are like unto them, and so is everyone that trusteth in them" (vs. 8). There seemed to be an understanding amongst the Hebrews that the comparison of God to idols was not a comparison of God to other gods but rather a comparison of God to man, which is no comparison at all (hence the foolishness of idolatry). Idol worship is the glorification, not of lesser gods, but of man over God.
This is why the Pharisee's sentiment concerning Jesus is so dangerous. Whereas Jesus continually stressed the glory of the Father in all things, the Pharisees were more concerned with the maintenance and exaltation of themselves and their country, their very own "work of their hands."
It is very easy to glide over idolatry when we view it as simply the worship of false gods. We are civilized (so we say); we no longer have pagan totems or temples. If, however, idolatry is actually more basic, if it is simply to worship the work of your hands and therefore is subsequently self-worship, then we all have blood on our hands. It is easy to love ourselves, and it is easy to love the work of our hands: our humanity desires expression and commendation of that expression. The problem is when we glorify ourselves by glorifying the work, when all glory belongs to God, a glory sought not out of egotism, but out of love, for only when God is glorified are we wholly human.
This does not mean that we must never create (if so, then why are the Psalms scripture?). What it does mean is that every creation of our hands, and our understanding of ourselves as creatures, must keep in mind at all times the supremacy (and majesty) of the Creator. It is "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28), and thus every work of our hand is really a work of His hand. To claim otherwise is idolatry, which is pride, which is sin.
Nothing falls outside the grasp of the glory of God, not even evil (John 11:4). Why then should we think that the works of our hands are immune? Let all things be done for the glory of God, for all things are done to the glory of God. Any assertion to the contrary is a delusion on our part of the way things really are. How foolish will be the one who worships a creation that, on the day when "every knee" will bow, it itself will worship the Creator? If the works of our hands could speak, they would mimic the words of the angels, who said to any that worshipped them, "See that thou do it not, for I am thy fellow servant.... Worship God" (Rev. 19:10; 22:8-9).

-Jon Vowell

Imago Dei (or, The Artistic Conceit of Man)

"My heart is overflowing with a good matter (I speak of my works to the king); my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer." Ps. 45:1

Man's capacity for artistic creativity is the surest proof of him being the image-bearer of God. As the Creator is, so is the creation, especially those who are made to be like Him. The human ability to reflect and reveal the deeper realities of the world and themselves will always set humanity apart. There are, of course, additional capacities that make up our "mannishness" (e.g., moral motions, rationality, etc.), but the creative imagination is perhaps the most fascinating. There are some fools who try to argue that other (and lesser) creatures have an ethical code of sorts as well as reasoning capabilities, but which of the animals ever wrote a psalm for their king (or their god)? Which sparrow painted the portrait of the eagle, or which antelope wrote a poem in the night about the lion on the hunt? Let all the fools be silent before the abundant creativity of man. Whether we reflect the glories of God or the depravities of our own fallenness, we are able to see the world different from other creatures; we can (in a sense) see them like God sees them, viz., their hidden quality and character that is (at the moment of perception) beyond words and expression and yet is capable of being spoken or expressed.
I wonder if God, existing before all finite things in the eternal dance of love that is the Trinity, said to His fellow Persons concerning the coming Creation, "My heart is overflowing with a good matter; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer," and then His tongue wrote those first words on the fabric of reality: "Let there be light." God has given us (on a smaller scale) the same ability and power, an ability that reasserts the dignity of humanity in all its variety, i.e., we are the image-bearers of Almighty God.

-Jon Vowell

"Art is the signature of man." -G.K. Chesterton