God as Mystery

Judith 8:14 You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart or understand the workings of the human mind; how do you expect to search out God who made all these things and find out his mind or comprehend his thought?

In my quest to read the Bible through "in order" I have decided to include the Apocryphal books, which are canonical in the Jewish and Catholic traditions, but not in most Protestant traditions. We'll see how I do once the main Old Testament books are completed; that is, how long I am willing to delay my entry into the New Testament. So here I am at Judith, the story of a woman who defeats the army of Holofernes, who is holding siege to her town in Judah. Her wisdom is in evidence in this statement she makes to the leaders, who have made a rash promise to the people that they will surrender if God does not come to their rescue within five days. She takes matters into her own hands.

She is scolding them here for putting God to the test; what do you know of God's ways, she asks them. If human beings are a mystery -- and despite many advances in the area of psychology, I think it is fair to say that ultimately they remain very mysterious -- how much more so is God, the Creator of all that is. If he is the potter and we are the clay, as Jeremiah tells us, how can we even begin to understand what God is and what God is about? I often think this is a factor that is missing in our public conversations about God and religion these days. It seems to me that sureness is an enemy to entering God's presence and submitting to God's workings.

I make a distinction between this sureness, which is a sense of factual knowledge of God, and the conviction held by all people of faith. A conviction is a heartfelt truth informed by spiritual knowing, but is not a fact in that sense. It pretends no understanding of God, or who or what God is, simply the conviction of faith that something (or no thing) called God exists and is worthy of our honor and praise. That God's ways are far beyond human ways and are ultimately unknowable to us is implicit in that humbling awareness of having been touched by God. This is knowledge, but it is of an entirely different kind than that espoused by people who are convinced that God is seeking this or that outcome, that particular words of scripture mean one specific thing. To me is like saying, "I know what God is thinking." God as Mystery humbles us all before It. "Knowing" what God is thinking exalts our knowledge to be equal to that of God.

Perhaps what's missing in these discourses is humility, and maybe that's the point. If God can be figured out, that makes me the clever one, not God. Then I have the power. Humility reminds me of my true position in God's Creation: one humble element looking to find my proper place.

Prayer: Dear God, You show me humility in both my spiritual and professional lives. Show me when arrogance threatens my relationship to truth, and let humility in the face of life's mystery always inform my teaching and reaching out to others, so that they will not be impressed by my knowledge, but by Your Presence. Amen