| Reflections in a hall of
mirrors
Humans
have a unique capacity for thinking, deciding and relating; they are reflective.
They can reflect on how they think, decide and relate. This is reflexivity. Humans
do this in various ways throughout life. In many circumstances, it is useful to
reflect on how thinking, deciding and relating have occurred or can occur. Reflexivity
or the capacity for self-reflection is inseparable from a sense of identity. Yet
this capacity also inducts us into a hall
of mirrors in which we can never finally identify the observer who observes
the self reflecting on the self. In quest of an essential self, reflection on
reflection is unable to be terminated at a self that is wholly present to the
self because humans are not self-standing entities. They exist otherwise than
to themselves. Observing
the phenomenon of the self in a maze of mirrors—of reflections on reflections—is
not new in human experience. It is the final default resolution for seeking the
self amid numerous cul-de-sacs everywhere encountered in quest of the human self. v God
is the source of human existence; therefore humans have inklings of depth to their
existence. This both haunts them and compels them to probe this depth in quest
of an essential sense of the self—in the world, among others and finally, in themselves.
Creation
is a gift in which exploration of inklings for God can be pursued in the experience
of wonder and gratitude. Yet without the giver being known, the passion for such
inklings turns into some form of idolatry in which the self becomes confused with
phenomena. Humans have a sense of being more than they can put a finger on in
the vanity of pursuing and exalting any number of activities under the sun. For
the writer of Ecclesiastes, these do not yield the self-affirmations for which
humans search. Humans
are conscious of being mortal and living toward a horizon of death. The flux of
natural phenomena everywhere reminds them of the struggle to survive in the face
of an inexorable but unknown time of death. With an ability to reflect on death,
humans are anxious to secure more time before losing to this looming event, the
self and any narrative coherence it has achieved. Life
in community is sought as a positive experience because humans are created for
relationships, responsibility and a sense of vocation beyond the self. Yet this
is also frustrated by the human propensity to compromise goodness, to prevaricate
over truth and in anxiety over securing a place under the sun, to scuttle relationships
in pursuit of a tribal or partisan perspective of the human self and its deputed
essential status among others. Religion
promises a stable perspective of the self as it utilises creation, community and
human life as sites of self-awareness. Yet religion conceals the constructed or
reflexive sources of its self-evident assertions in which an array of inklings
about the self are endorsed, either as divine decrees or as expressions of the
self as divine. Among religions, conflicting images of the human self—spiritually
concave and convex—generate endless reflections that are never stabilised to give
an accurate reflection. Advocacy
for religious equivalence merely endorses reality as a veritable kaleidoscope
that gives diverse perspectives but no truth and therefore grace. Ironically,
any possibility that life is coherent in truth and experienced as gift in grace
is terminated by religion. Aesthetic foci only intensify this as they multiply
perspectives. Within
the myriad resources of creation, culture and community, humans in search of an
essential reflection of the self within the flux of life are finally resolved
to scrutinize the one place where no phenomenon or person is duplicated—the self.
Yet we can become hopelessly lost in pursuing a durable sense of identity in this
ultimate hall of mirrors. Without community or creation that is qualified by definitive
grace and truth, the gaze within can become a nightmare maze of endless reflections
of reflections. In
the self, potentially the smallest space of creation, humans are caught in an
infinite regression of mirrors (mise en abyme), unless this reflexive spell
can be broken, decisively, as with a hammer. v Christian
testimony recognises that humans, in presuming
to be wise become fools, distorting any possibility
of seeing themselves in an integral profile of themselves. Focusing on themselves,
humans generate endless possibilities that effectively distend and eventually
destroy any stable or durable locale of the self’s coherence. Humans
cannot know themselves without being addressed otherwise than from their own presumed
possibilities. In In
order truly to know the self, illusions generated within the human maze of mirrors
are necessarily shattered; the conceit of self-determination without compromise
must be broken. This takes the initiative of God in Christ experiencing passion
and resurrection to demonstrate that the horizon of human existence is not death
but life and that the self is not the primary site of meaning. Through
the passion, God in Christ draws humanity into the orbit of death and resurrection
where mirrors of deceptive self-enchantment are smashed. The human self is encountered
in another, who, uncompromised in grace and truth, gives the possibility of experiencing
life beyond any quest to discover integral identity in projects of self-surveillance
and reconstruction. The
complexity of variegated reflections of human existence and their corresponding
illusions are so powerful that the human hall of mirrors cannot be shattered by
humans alone. Therefore, the way to self-understanding in Christian faith is a
paradox. Christian
testimony points to the definitive human form, Jesus Christ, who in self-relinquishing
love, invites us to die in order to experience life that exceeds deathly anxiety
in his risen life. Losing self to find a true self—to die in order to live—is
counter-intuitive for humans, yet central to Christian faith and experience of
integral human existence as a gift in the Spirit of Christ. This is the premise
for living out a cohesive narrative of the self as known and loved, with every
reason for joy amid the excess gifts of God. v Grace
and truth that speak definitively to human existence disclose the glory of God’s
character, which is given unequivocal expression in Jesus Christ. This does not
replicate the various reflections posited as points of reference in human self-searching
or religious perspective. Jesus Christ is the singular reflection of the character
and glory of God in grace and truth. This is not known in quest of the self but
in relinquishing the self as a necessary death resourced by grace, in faith that
Christ is the true image and dynamic source of integral human life and dignity.
This is only heard through the word of God and received as a gift in grace. The self as a hall of mirrors is necessarily assaulted and the possibility of looking elsewhere offered. This can only occur in the word of God’s grace and truth beyond any human aspiration to secure the human form amid myriad reflections—cultural, religious and political. In one counter-intuitive mirror of humanity, humans through faith can begin to reflect on their true possibilities in Christ. |
