Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Understanding Is Not A Weapon
Mike Russell takes a long look at the relationship between Frodo/Sam and Gollum and finds a message of Christian mercy in this truly eloquent post. Mike then goes on to take the lessons learned and apply them directly, naming names, in the Christian blogosphere. - his primary target - Reformed bloggers. Mike's right, but I hold my Reformed staus near and dear, why am I not subject to Mike's righteous indignation? (maybe I am, but I'm not one of the names he mentions) and I do, by the way mean righteous.
I want to take a stab at answering that question because, I think it is vitally important. Let's start with the real reason I am a Calvinist.
No system of systematic theological thought is without it's mysteries - those places where we have to sort of shrug our shoulders and say "Only God can know/understand that." One that we all share is the mystery of the Trinity - you can't explain three different beings being one God, I know you can't, no one can. In the end, the Trinity is a mystery, pure and simple.
I am a Calvinist largely because as a systematic school of theological thought it leaves all the mysteries in God Himself. The mysteries are not some loose end hanging out in space somewhere, they are all in the nature, character, and behavior of God. That to me is truly satisfying, I want a God that is incomprehensible for it places me in the proper relation to Him, it affirms my status as creature and His as Creator.
Now, that said, that means there are some doctrinal consequences that I can never be happy with. There will never be an explanation of the doctrine of election that will ever satisfy me about "fairness," but because I am so satisfied with the limited picture of God I have, I am able to trust Him to be "fair" in ways I cannot comprehend.
To me, holding Calvinism should drive us to true and deep and abiding humility, and yet, it seems, as Mike illustrates, to have precisely the opposite affect. This springs, I think from the fact that Calvinism is the most systematic of the systematic schools of thought. That is to say, it involves the greatest degree of intellectual rigor. I also find this quite appealing, but appealing in a way that can be most dangerous.
For years, my Christian life was a life of learning, but not a life of changing. I was the smartest Christian I knew, I was not afraid to demonstrate that, and I took that fact to mean that I was also the best Christian I knew. There is something about Calvinism that reinforces that. Maybe it's the very idea of election, that I can be "in" and you are not. Maybe it's just the fact that most people never put in the effort to really understand it, I don't know. Regardless, we can come to worship it as much or more than we worship that which it atttempts to explain. Been there, done that.
Well, through a series of events ranging from eventually meeting much smarter Christians to God circumstantially, and LOUDLY, telling me that I did not really know much of anything, I came to understand that the Christian life involved my whole being, even those parts of me, I didn't really know about.
The best analogy I can think of is marriage. There is so much I can tell you about my wife, and yet that knowledge is often useless when it comes to being a good husband. Heck, when I am really off my game, that knowledge becomes a weapon instead of an expression of love, then my shame is almost unbearable. Full, complete, and loving knowledge of my wife comes not from my analysis of her, but from my living with her - daily and thoroughly.
And so with our Lord. Calvinism can be an expression of our love for God as we struggle to understand Him, and to acknowledge our inability to do so. Or, it can become a weapon, and when it does our shame should be unbearable, for it means we are thinking about God instead of living with God - these things should not be separable.
You see the only proper response to the mysterious God of Calvinism is not a pride in understanding, but a humility in the face of mystery.
Somehow I think we need to spend more time being humbled by what we do not know than using what we do as a weapon.
Related Tags: Christianity, humility, love, Calvinism, Reformed, mystery
I want to take a stab at answering that question because, I think it is vitally important. Let's start with the real reason I am a Calvinist.
No system of systematic theological thought is without it's mysteries - those places where we have to sort of shrug our shoulders and say "Only God can know/understand that." One that we all share is the mystery of the Trinity - you can't explain three different beings being one God, I know you can't, no one can. In the end, the Trinity is a mystery, pure and simple.
I am a Calvinist largely because as a systematic school of theological thought it leaves all the mysteries in God Himself. The mysteries are not some loose end hanging out in space somewhere, they are all in the nature, character, and behavior of God. That to me is truly satisfying, I want a God that is incomprehensible for it places me in the proper relation to Him, it affirms my status as creature and His as Creator.
Now, that said, that means there are some doctrinal consequences that I can never be happy with. There will never be an explanation of the doctrine of election that will ever satisfy me about "fairness," but because I am so satisfied with the limited picture of God I have, I am able to trust Him to be "fair" in ways I cannot comprehend.
To me, holding Calvinism should drive us to true and deep and abiding humility, and yet, it seems, as Mike illustrates, to have precisely the opposite affect. This springs, I think from the fact that Calvinism is the most systematic of the systematic schools of thought. That is to say, it involves the greatest degree of intellectual rigor. I also find this quite appealing, but appealing in a way that can be most dangerous.
For years, my Christian life was a life of learning, but not a life of changing. I was the smartest Christian I knew, I was not afraid to demonstrate that, and I took that fact to mean that I was also the best Christian I knew. There is something about Calvinism that reinforces that. Maybe it's the very idea of election, that I can be "in" and you are not. Maybe it's just the fact that most people never put in the effort to really understand it, I don't know. Regardless, we can come to worship it as much or more than we worship that which it atttempts to explain. Been there, done that.
Well, through a series of events ranging from eventually meeting much smarter Christians to God circumstantially, and LOUDLY, telling me that I did not really know much of anything, I came to understand that the Christian life involved my whole being, even those parts of me, I didn't really know about.
The best analogy I can think of is marriage. There is so much I can tell you about my wife, and yet that knowledge is often useless when it comes to being a good husband. Heck, when I am really off my game, that knowledge becomes a weapon instead of an expression of love, then my shame is almost unbearable. Full, complete, and loving knowledge of my wife comes not from my analysis of her, but from my living with her - daily and thoroughly.
And so with our Lord. Calvinism can be an expression of our love for God as we struggle to understand Him, and to acknowledge our inability to do so. Or, it can become a weapon, and when it does our shame should be unbearable, for it means we are thinking about God instead of living with God - these things should not be separable.
You see the only proper response to the mysterious God of Calvinism is not a pride in understanding, but a humility in the face of mystery.
Somehow I think we need to spend more time being humbled by what we do not know than using what we do as a weapon.
Related Tags: Christianity, humility, love, Calvinism, Reformed, mystery
