During the month of April, I am sharing some brief excerpts from my new book coming out May 3 about how encountering mystery in faith and life actually helps us grow as human beings and followers of Jesus Christ.
——–Excerpt from Paradox Lost: Rediscovering the Mystery of God, chapter 2, “Fog”———
I love backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As I’m climbing a steep ridge, the horizon beckons me onward, until it looks to be only yards in front of me. Just a few more steps will reach it! Yet after those few steps, do I finally meet the horizon? No, those steps to the top of the ridge open up a far greater vista. More ridges and valleys come into view, with the horizon again far in the distance.
We can seem on the verge of having God figured out. Yet when we reach what looked like the summit, a grand new perspective greets us. The climb has increased our knowledge of the terrain (we know God better than we did before), but we now see all the unknown territory reaching outward to the distant new horizon.
Theologian John Leith reflects about never reaching that horizon: “Human knowledge may fill the gaps in our knowledge and in our power. Yet the more knowledge and more power we have, the more the horizon recedes. There does not seem to be any escape from the mystery that encompasses us.”
When I speak of God’s mystery, I have this horizon in mind. Where God is concerned, what we do not know far outweighs what we know. As we have seen, E. L. Mascall provocatively calls this conscious ignorance. Swiss theologian Karl Barth describes it in a no less memorable way:
“God remains a mystery even as he reveals himself, for it is as a mystery that he is revealed. Our Christian situation is not that of ignorance or not knowing alone; it is the predicament of knowing what we do not know, and of calling mystery by its right name, God.”
If “knowing what we do not know,” sounds paradoxical, it surely is!
As we penetrate deeper into knowing this mysterious God, we discover that often when we think we have things nailed down and say, “God is this,” we must quickly go on to say, “But God is also that.” God is transcendent but also immanent. God is sovereign but also creates humans in his image with genuine freedom. God is perfect love but also is perfectly just. God is three but also one.
As we drive into the fog, our headlights extend our range of vision and illuminate things previously unseen, but at the same time we recognize that there is a vast, obscure background we cannot yet penetrate. God is mystery. Knowing God means growing in both knowledge and, at the same time, conscious ignorance.
Most people are quick to seek knowledge. Few clamor for conscious ignorance. Yet in knowing God, we cannot have one without the other.
Question: Have you ever considered that “conscious ignorance” might be a good thing? Please share your thoughts below. (If you’d like to learn more about the book, follow this link to Amazon)
