The Ultimate Unknown: God as Mystery
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
“And the wilderlove is hidden within us
And we reckon with it
And we wrestle with it
The wilderlove is hidden within us
And we wrestle with it
We wrestle with it…”
Oh John Mark McMillan, oh how you get the interior landscape of a man addicted to longing. Long before this Enneagram fad, long before I stumbled upon the “Highly Sensitive Person,” long before I went full wayward prodigal son, the singer/songwriter’s songs spoke to me. Filled that God shaped hole, if only for a few moments at a time. Way better than any of those corny youth group games or guilt-laced sex talks.
The question then arises; is it the songs themselves that fill the hole? The feelings elicited from the songs? The realizations drawn from the feelings?
Where in the world does God fit into this? How do I know He is speaking and not my super-charged big feels? What happens when we worship Him? Pray to Him? Curse Him? Lament to Him? Seemingly hear nothing from the guy?
To answer, we know what happens. The Bible tells us so. We also don’t have the foggiest what happens. Sometimes the Bible doesn’t have answers for 2020 problems.
For as much as God is definitely love, definitely slow to anger, definitely extending forgiveness for wickedness, rebellion, and sin, He’s also definitely totally Other than. He definitely does things that are super politically incorrect. People can spend their entire lives studying His word and act nothing like Him, while others might only have a few verses memorized but smell a whole lot like Him.
For as much as we want certainty in our spirituality, I believe God is pushing me toward more and more uncertainty. It’s almost as if the more I’m not sure about circumstance, about life variables, about anything remaining “always the same,” I’m able to more fully rely on Him. I’m able to keep Him in the place of the Ultimate thing in life. As I wrote about before, God really is the main thing, and so the main thing in life is to keep Him the main thing.
One thing that might help us believe that? Pondering God as the most mysterious thing.
I’m reckoning with my idols. Cliche though it may be but I am definitely a work in progress. The deep and nonstop longing I mentioned earlier is part of the package deal post the exit of my mother’s womb.
But my longing always evolves, if generally fixated on one topic. I wrote on it yesterday but I’m a “codependaholic.” I perpetually look to love and romance to get my fix of big feels, to quell the huge longing, to fill the God shaped hole in my heart.
And then one of two things happens: the Ms. receiving my affection is either like “holy &%$#, this guy is way too intense” (ok, maybe not that colorful) or “yes, yes, gimme all that longing and affection he should definitely be giving to God instead.”
Putting romantic love on the altar where only God should belong has laid waste to plenty of otherwise healthy relationships, along with sidetracking me from pursuing myself and my own goals in life. Further, this has put me in a place of alternating between ecstasy and agony; ecstasy because my codependent partner is reciprocating the “God” like status in each other’s hearts and validating my inner feeling of “lack” or agony because I ponder and commiserate and resent and frustrate myself by repeating the same sort of mantras which have imprisoned me for so long of “not being enough.” Ian Cron, the Enneagram wizard and personal hero of mine, also a type 4, has stated multiple times that looking at a famous list of the type (or who they suspect to be the type) is not encouraging. Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Sylvia Plath, Chester Bennington, J.D. Sallinger, etc.
Because of all the love songs, love novels, romantic comedies, romantic dramadies, and romantic dramas, all tinged with that intense longing that a self-aware 4 can see in all other creative 4s, I know I am in good company with mistakenly putting my huge longing in the embrace and arms of an ideal mate. Hell, Shakespeare has GOT to be a 4 for crying out loud. Romeo and Juliet? Yeesh.
I thought that finding love, my “soul mate,” “the one,” a wife, would give me the freedom to be who I always wanted to be.
But, with the help of therapy, way too many church groups (but not THOSE kind of groups), this blog, a lot of prayer, a lot of tears, and a lot of confusion met by a gracious and mysterious God, I think things are getting better. I’m beginning to feel free from the shackles I’ve placed on myself and that outside forces have placed there too.
Papa, in The Shack, says it like this:
“Or, if you want to go just a wee bit deeper, we could talk about the nature of freedom itself.
Does freedom mean that you are allowed to do whatever you want to do? Or we could talk about all the limiting influences in your life that actively work against your freedom. Your family genetic heritage, your specific DNA, your metabolic uniqueness, the quantum stuff that is going on at a subatomic level where only I am the always-present observer. Or the intrusion of your soul’s sickness that inhibits and binds you, or the social influences around you, or the habits that have created synaptic bonds and pathways in your brain. And then there’s advertising, propaganda, and paradigms. Inside that confluence of multifaceted inhibitors,” she sighed, “what is freedom really?”
For me, more freedom is more Papa. More of Her/His love. More of the affirmation from the ultimate unknown. More of the presence of the quintessential Christian paradox; more of the realization of what we for centuries have called the Trinity.
I remember when I saw Izaak for the very first time on my brother’s chest. I remember when I saw the little boy rest so completely in the embracing and gentle body of his father. The memory is lodged in my heart and will never leave. Honestly, this moment stands apart from many others as a clear example of God’s love, God’s care, God’s adoration of us.
But I still don’t believe in it. Well I do. But God, mid blog and midprayer, please, please, please help my unbelief.
God always engages with surprise, with subtlety, with never what we expect. This is why He is a mystery. That’s why they sing songs for Him to come but never tell Him exactly how to come. We pray for healing but don’t specify how He might heal. We ask Him to bear witness to our pain or the pain of those we care about, and He ALWAYS does, but He NEVER does it in the way we anticipate.
I think the biggest rub I’ve had against conventional Christianity is the fill-in-the-blank, here’s a verse that solves this gaping hole/problem/issue/struggle in life. Even when I was young and immature and reckless and so much more manipulative unconsciously than I am now, I really disliked this notion. It seemed so clear that this leaves so many people outside of the embrace, outside of the adoration, outside of the understanding of God.
And the biggest thing I am choosing to believe, and which God confirms a little bit more everyday, is that He is a God who understands.
Misunderstanding has been a cornerstone of much of my life. I joked with friends recently (in a socially distanced way) that often I will speak of the interior rumblings of my heart, particularly in a group context… and then see a dustbin rolling by in my head as I see blank eyes and confused faces stare back at me. More than rejection, more than dissension, more than outright criticism, what keeps me up at night and scares me to death and what I dislike feeling most in life is not being understood.
Yet again, with time and patience and prayer and a lot of considerate heartspace of my friends and family, I feel more known than I’ve ever felt before. Thank goodness, because I’ve always worked damn hard to understand and know others.
But there’s a piece, this “wilderlove” John Mark McMillan describes, the “shadow of the cross” Sufjan Stevens describes, the “furious longing” Brennan Manning describes which only can be attributed to the divine, can only come about from the heavenly places, can only be filled by the presence of God and not drugs, not sex, not a soul mate, not career accolades, not an article republished on Relevant Magazine. I’ve had all of these things, but like the wisdom teacher in Ecclesiastes says, they are all smoke, all only a vapor.
At the end of the day, at the start of the day, it is me and it is God. Before I see any roommate, before I’d see the beautiful sleeping body of a wife, before I’d relish the abrupt waking up of an adorable child, before anything cool and wonderful and glorious and epic happens in my imagination, it is God as Father staring down at me, declaring, “this is my son, in whom I am well pleased.”
This reality is the only way to fill that longing. And it is my responsibility to hear it, believe it, and live from it.
We were fighting. Again. Like we did so often. Traveling northbound on the i5, per usual memory recollection, I don’t remember what the argument was about. Only that voices were raised, harsh words were said, and souls became all the more splintered and distanced.
The trip from Medford, OR to Portland, OR, to who I used to be to who I am now, is long, windy, and filled with green trees, grey skies, and ripe conversations. Road trips reveal where a heart or soul needs work. At some point post Albany but pre Salem, the grey heavens turned black and the muted withdrawal and turtling within already was in full force. I probably wasn’t listening well, wasn’t understanding well, wasn’t attentive enough.
But then, a song came on. No, not a worship song. Not, not even a love song. Per se.
Really fast sidebar before I start; hating Coldplay is stupid. You don’t like their new stuff? Cool. I get it. I don’t either. But you can’t pretend you don’t love to jam out to the hybrid of Radiohead and U2 in their earlier work. Get off your posh, pretentious elitist tower. I don’t and will never believe you.
Anyway… an Iggy Azalea song came on. Just kidding.
Lovers in Japan played through my radio. For whatever reason, still unbeknownst to me, this song, and a select few others, have been spaces where God has spoken to me so clearly. What’s strange, what’s odd, what so confirms God as “mystery,” wasn’t the lyrics. Wasn’t even something I can convey to you eloquently with words, even if I tried for a thousand more.
Something about the cheerful, hypnotic melody, something about the soothing repetition, something about the i5 that day, my heart withdrawing from my girlfriend, my soul being in such a gaping, desperate need of God confluenced with Him blessing me so richly for three and a half minutes.
She noticed it too. I was relaxed, I was calm, I was at peace. She talked about how she liked the song too. And for the next hour or so, we played songs similar to it, held hands, and, if just for only a little bit, forgot about what we clearly didn’t understand about one another.
It is when I have placed this mysterious longing, this perpetual desire for purpose, this yearning for more, more, and even more after that and put it on another person that I have gone wrong. I don’t care if Emma Watson played Overwatch and played Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I don’t care if Ana de Armas was a diehard NBA fan and was writing her own fantasy novel. Even if there was a time machine to bring back Penelope Cruz to when she was… twenty-five? Even if I could compel Hayley Williams to bring back her natural, beautiful, red hair… ooo, and have her play her music in her older style too. Yet even the most idealized of idealized soul mates would never fill the God-shaped hole in my heart because they aren’t God. They might be my fantasy, but even they pale compared to the ultimate reality. They might all be alluring, enticing, intriguing, and different from me and therefore wildly exciting, but only God continues to reveal new things about Himself for eternity.
If only I have the ears to hear it, the eyes to see it, the heart to receive it.
A mysterious being requires a level of intentionality and awareness we rarely have with another person, let alone an infinite God. Even then, that same infinite God is infinitely patient, infinitely loving, and infinitely more aware of our lack of awareness than we could ever reconcile.
It is trite, it is cliche, it is lame, but it’s true; we are all in process. Loving God, loving self, and loving others takes time. A lot of it. And the only way we can always be replenished to keep doing this hard, hard work is by returning to this mysteriously loving God who will always give ambition, give longing, give a calling.
Even after a zillion blogs I never quite know how to finish these ramblings others call “essays.” But hey, God works in mysterious ways.
Amirite?