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The jigsaw puzzle of religion
The frequent assertion that in their diversity, religions are really concerned about the same things is blithely assumed but mistaken. Religions differ markedly and without possible reconciliation in the distinctive perspective each religion has of human life. Religious perspectives on salvation, ethics and society are related to certain views of human life and how these are given tangible expression. Religious views on fostering human wholeness range from eliminating passions to legislating love; there are significant differences between tolerance, contractual justice and love for enemies. Religions express a wide range of opinions on social order and authority, which in turn have diverse tangible effects in human life. Primary ideals, how the divine is involved and what part humans play in giving specific values tangible expression are vastly different and often in conflict between and within religions. Religious interpretations of phenomena and sacred demarcations within life generate further differences. Is Christian faith construed from the diverse but relative ways in which humans give religious expression to spiritual aspirations? Christian faith is testimony to new possibilities in grace that are otherwise than the assorted values and positions presented, even as reputably sacred, within religion. Christian faith does not locate the quality of personal life or community with the quality or accuracy of any religious view of humanity forged from specific traditions, cultural values or sacred demarcations within natural phenomena. v Religion suggests that there is a direct ratio between specified acts of piety and specific possibilities for people. The phenomenon of religion exists to enunciate and to monitor an assumed ratio between certain practices and their effects. By contrast, in grace, as life given by the Holy Spirit, cause and effect are seamlessly one. Grace is given without human cause; it is registered in human life by reception as gift. In the Gospel of John, Nicodemus thinks in terms of religious cause and effect possibilities and not in terms of Spirit, which is seamless, like the wind. Humans are born again or from above, eluding source and cause apart from God. This is not a chain of cause and effect surveyable by humans, though humans can receive and respond to its tangible reality. The gift of grace makes no sense within human perceptions of cause and effect, ancient or modern, secular or religious. Grace is given otherwise than anything traded within economies of cause and effect. The Spirit’s work cannot be encompassed by reason or experience, even if the Spirit can transform human thought and engagement with life. Coming to faith is a miracle that defies our grasp, even though the decisions it provokes and the thought it invokes are very real and appealing as life in the Spirit of Christ. Christian faith is reception of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit’s presence and reality. As triune, the Spirit is not an amorphous or impersonal influence in the world. Christian faith is specifically shaped as life in the Spirit, with the love of God poured into our hearts, in testimony to Jesus Christ as the explicit face and tangible character of this gift. The Spirit is not meted out here and there in diverse religious possibilities, so that fragments must be gathered in order to gain a glimpse of the whole across an aggregate of religions. The Spirit is not meted out in fractions over time, to be retrieved in increments that will finally accrue to the revelation of God in the evolution of religion. The Spirit is not sprinkled like sequins throughout phenomena, as if the world shimmers with its own divinity to the spiritually discerning. The Spirit is not divvied out among comparable religions or in a million shards of phenomena, or yet as the changing shape of a spiritual kaleidoscope construed merely from diverse human experiences. Any spirituality that consists of gathering fragments of the Spirit, like children gathering confetti after a wedding, can only assume that the Spirit is given by measure—some here, some there or anywhere we might look within human culture and natural phenomena—in endless fragments and conjectures of an as yet unknown whole. By contrast to a focus on fragments and fragmented human aspirations being a source of faith, spirituality of the gospel consists in grace flooding human experience with a reality beyond our possibilities, yet giving genuine freedom for these possibilities. There are not spiritual fragments to be gathered, as if God is only vaguely felt and ambiguously known. v In the often recited parable of blind people encountering an elephant for the first time, each fumbles about the elephant’s body for the truth of the unknown thing they have encountered. Each only has an aspect—an ear, the trunk, a tusk, a flank, a foot or the tail. Each part of the elephant feels different and violently they squabble over what it is, yet it is the one elephant. The parable is cited as supposedly enabling us to think through the vast array of human spiritualities in relation to one God or spiritual reality. Yet this parable has no correlation with Christian testimony. Blind fumbling is antithetical to the gospel declaration that I was once blind but now I can see. Christian faith affirms a transition from darkness to light. The meaning of life lights up in the revelation of God whose character is wholly disclosed in grace that surprises with intimacy and communion in Christ. The gospel shows that God is not veiled within the relativity of spiritual bric-a-brac, among which, we must grope for some agreeable but random conjecture concerning God. The fullness of God’s saving grace and truth is disclosed in Jesus Christ as gift. Christian faith is not an identity derived from the values and practices of any human tradition or tribe. Christian faith anticipates the future of God becoming present for humanity. Christian identity is eschatological—it exists in anticipation of God’s intent and future becoming a reality in Jesus Christ crucified, risen and present as new life in the Spirit. In any time or place, faith is the primary means of engaging this extraordinary reality announced in the gospel. By God’s initiative, people are sought as loved in every language and culture, yet apart from the commendation of any religion or tribe. Jesus Christ is the definitive expression of God’s love and the central focus of human identity and dignity as gifts given beyond human possibilities. Grace and truth for human dignity are disclosed eventfully, by passion and life, in self-giving love. This source of human possibility is now distinguished by indelible nail-prints in triune experience of human suffering and death. The love of God is given without reserve in testimony to Jesus Christ as the explicit face of God who can be approached in intimacy with freedom. As entirely a response to grace, Christian faith is not one among many religions as if we have a jigsaw piece to offer the great jigsaw puzzle of religion—a puzzle that continues to perplex people as it generates confusion and conflict. Yet where Christian faith assumes a religious status, it invokes confusion and tribal conflict. The gospel announcement of Glory to God and peace on earth means for Christians, proclaiming Jesus Christ as God’s source of delight and hope for humanity. This proclamation is always a potential scandal to any religious or tribal definition of humanity and its claims about reality. Yet as this particular scandal, the gospel articulates the unique possibility of grace and truth for all people. |
