Category: Artistic Design

Irony of Christianity…

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In the movie Becoming Jane, the character of Jane Austen offers a wonderful definition of irony: “…the bringing together of two contradictory truths, but always done with a smile”. As an author, Austen is most praised for her astute observations and understanding of human character. The ability to understand the complexity of human nature must take irony into account. It is an incontestable component of life. We all have some  experience with navigating its paradoxes. Those of us who find happiness have learned to do it with a smile.

 
This definition of irony calls to mind many things for me, but foremost among them is Christianity. We are saved sinners; we’ve been made right with God, but live out our sanctification; God’s power is made perfect in our weakness (II Corinthians 12:9); we walk in faith, and yet by sight. The season of Advent is described as “the already, and the not yet”. Jesus, our Messiah, lived a life where He was fully human, yet fully divine. The apostle Paul described the irony of the Christian life in his second letter to the young Corinthian church: “…we are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but don’t despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed….having nothing, and yet, possessing everything” (II Corinthians 4:8-10). Paul cuts to the core of the irony of Christianity in that same letter: “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God, and not from us….Therefore we do not lose heart: Though outwards we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (II Corinthians 4:7, 16). The irony of Christianity is a God who continually offers Himself to fill the needs of humanity, through broken humanity itself.

The Inevitability of Hope: Esperanza…

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In her beautiful novel Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s protagonist astutely notes, “We are never out of light, we just turn around in it.” David said it too in the 139th Psalm:

 

“Where can I go from your spirit, where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depth, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me’, even the darkness will not be dark to you, the night will shine as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

 

Such statements would seem to describe our existence on earth. We cannot escape the light and love and presence of God, and yet we dwell in the valley of the shadow, where we cannot yet fully enter in. Though I cannot escape His love, I am also unable to avoid waiting for its full realization. To be able to enter fully into the presence of peace one day is our hope; hope is essential to life. I remember feeling caught off guard once as I read Paul’s observations on hope in Romans 5:3-5:

 

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance, character, and character, hope; and hope does not disappoint us, because God has filled us with His love by the power of His Holy Spirit.”

 

I was in my early 20’s, and processing several years of experiences that had been traumatic for various reasons. The passage struck me because I felt jaded, and in my cynicism, had begun to assume hope could only be the product of naivité, something generally found at the outset of experience, but not at its end. This verse asserts the opposite: Hope comes as the fruit of suffering, perseverance and character; if hope is founded on the true love of God, it cannot lead to disappointment. As Paul says later in Romans, the eighth chapter, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”
It encourages me to think that though there are times I might not always feel hopeful, I can trust that it is still a possibility of whatever process I am in. In Spanish, the verb for “to hope” is the exact same as both the verbs for “to wait” and “to expect”. Though in English, the terms are nuanced, when viewed as they are understood in Spanish, it seems true we cannot separate them. “Who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we cannot see, we wait for it patiently” (Romans 8:25). Paul also felt the terms and their practices were inseparable. Esperanza: hope and expectation, inextricably intertwined. If waiting is unavoidable, perhaps too, expecting and hoping are inevitable: “We are never out of light, we just turn around in it.”

“Looking for An Answer to a Question I Can’t Name”

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I learned a long time ago to stop asking questions of others if I don’t want to hear their answers. At least that’s the case most of the time, with most people. It’s definitely a different story when it comes to God; despite my best efforts to predict and control my circumstances, He always seems to answer in the most unexpected ways. Sometimes His responses takes my breath away with how wondrous they are; others, they can stop me in my tracks with how much they seem to wound. He’s hard for us all to comprehend. Mostly, it seems my questions have to do with the problem of pain, essentially asking why I and others must suffer. Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias points out that only a Western worldview would allow this question. Isn’t it funny that we frequently question why we deserve to suffer, but rarely consider why a just God has freely given us so much love and grace and beauty?

 

Just maybe, I’m trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Still, I can’t seem to stop wondering why things happen as they do. Why are we all living our lives as if we’re trying to tip the scales in our favor, when we have to know that’s not the way it works? Maybe, as Norah Jones sang, “I’m looking for an answer to a question I can’t name”. Author Marilynne Robinson reflects on this too:

 

“Things happen for reasons that are hidden from us, utterly hidden for as long as we think they must proceed from what has come before, our guilt or our deserving, rather than coming to us from a future that God in his freedom offers to us… My meaning here is that you really can’t account for what happens by what has happened in the past, as you understand it anyway, which may be very different from the past itself. If there is such a thing….Of course misfortunes have opened the way to blessings you would never have thought to hope for, that you would not have been ready to understand as blessings if they had come to you in your youth, when you were uninjured, innocent. The future always finds us changed. So then it is part of the providence of God, as I see it, that blessing or happiness can have very different meanings from one time to another. This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life on earth is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary. Its parts don’t add up. They don’t even belong in the same calculation. Nothing makes sense until we understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory, or like years and frailties. Instead it is presented to us by a God who is not under any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given constancy. Because I don’t mean to suggest that experience is random or accidental, you see. When I say that much the greater part of our existence is unknowable by us because it rests with God, who is unknowable, I acknowledge His grace in allowing us to feel that we know any slightest part of it” (Lila, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; pp. 222-223).

 

Perhaps it’s natural I don’t understand God’s working, when there’s so much about Him that simply can’t be known yet, and so much of what we do know defies understanding. I’m a spectator in a parade, and He’s the grand marshal, looking at His creation from a view up above. As C.S. Lewis says of his character Aslan, and in so doing describes and untamable God: “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”  Who could worship a god that was at our level, that didn’t defy our logic? What can we do but stand in awe? As Chris Tomlin sings, it’s good He’s “Indescribable”:

“Indescribable, uncontainable,

You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.

You are amazing God

All powerful, untamable,

Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim

You are amazing God”.

“O Joy that Seekest Me Through Pain” (George Matheson)-

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One of my favorite sights in Barcelona is the artist Antoni Gaudi’s Parque Güell, where mosaic tiles cover the longest bench in the world. There’s something so beautiful about mosaics, isn’t there? They strike something within us not only for the picture they create with complementary colors, but also for the stunning revelation of patterns and colors one wouldn’t think of as naturally belonging together. They are all simply pieces of vessels and structures that have been broken and neglected, whose original purpose seemed to lie torn in worn-out pieces. They highlight the beauty of fractured things coming together to create something new, something unexpected. When this happen in my life, as in this present season of reinvention, the new and ultimate picture being made by God is often a mystery. C.S. Lewis spoke of God as being the master artist in our lives:

“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted—i.e., keep fulfilling all the obvious duties of your station (you really know quite well enough what they are!), asking forgiveness for each failure and then leaving it alone. You are in the right way. Walk—don’t keep on looking at it.”

When I do catch a glimpse of God’s vision for what seemed fragmented and lost, it often takes my breath away. Submitting to His artistry, and to this mystery, ultimately seems to bring a surprising joy that can’t be ignored. Pastor and hymn writer George Matheson spoke of this too:

“O joy that seekest me through pain,

I dare not close my heart to thee.

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And know the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be.”

The Apostle Paul’s encouragement in Romans 8:28 is so comforting: “And we know in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, of those who are called according to His purpose”. One day will see the grand design: “Then I will know, even as [we] are fully known” (I Corinthians 13:12). That day will not only hold the revealing of His artistic design, it will be the completion of all our joyous victories, manifested in all their fullness.