in medias res

Sunday Thoughts - Not My Own

This used to be much easier...

"Perhaps the only thing that anyone can be absolutely sure of is that he will never be able to prove it either way--with objective, verifiable proof. We can know that in the beginning there was God and not just some cosmic upheaval that brought light out of darkness only when [emphasis mine] we have experienced him doing the same thing in our lives, our world--bringing light out of our darkness.

To put it another way, unless there is some very real sense in which the Spirit of God moves over the dark and chaotic waters of this age, these deeps of yours and mine; unless God speaks his light- and life-giving word to me, then I do not really care much one way or the other whether he set the whole show spinning x billions of years ago. Unless I have some real experience of it myself, then even if someone could somehow prove to me objectively and verifiably that it all happened just as Genesis declares, I would be tempted to answer him with the two most devastating words in the English language: so what?"
[...]
"But notice this: that love is not really one of man's powers. Man cannot achieve love, generate love, wield love, as he does his powers of destruction and creation. When I love someone, it is not something I have achieved, but something that is happening through me, something that is happening to me as well as to him[...] So the power of God stands in violent contrast with the power of man. It is not external like man's power, but internal. By applying external pressure, I can make a person do what I want him to do. This is man's power. But as for making him be what I want him to be, without at the same time destroying his freedom, only love can make this happen. And love makes it happen not coercively, but by creating a situation in which, of our own free will, we want to be what love wants us to be. And because God's love is uncoercive and treasures our freedom--if above all he want sus to love him, then we must be left free not to love him--we are free to resist it, deny it, crucify it finally, which we do again and again. This is our terrible freedom, which love refuses to overpower so that, in this, the greatest of all powers, God's power, is itself powerless."
[...]
"faith here is not so much believing this thing or that thing about God as it is hearing a voice that says, 'Come unto me.' We hear the voice, and then we start to go without really knowing what to believe either about the voice or about ourselves; and yet we go. Faith is standing in the darkness, and a hand is there, and we take it."
-Frederick Buechner, The Magnificant Defeat

...but I'd rather throw out the old boxes and wrestle for every inch of understanding and hold a hand in the darkness and grow through my doubt. On most days, at least.

posted by tara @ 11:41 AM