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O Life, where is your victory? Where, O Life, is your sting?
Posted: Friday, November 11, 2011 by Morgan inI talked to a good friend today about many things. We stumbled upon some incredible statements during our hour-long discussion. I'll list some of them and then do my best to recount the thought process behind them.
The entirety of existence is a paradox.
This one came out of talking about God. I have been struggling with the purpose in creation and existence. Why did God create all of this? For His glory? For our good? Maybe. My friend suggested that maybe God was telling Himself (the Trinity) a story about Himself. I've heard it said that God created the universe so that He could completely express Himself and fulfill needs in ways that He could not within the permanently-existent Trinity. God is complete in his Trinitarian existence. He needs nothing. He is holy. He is perfection. But He is also sacrificial and wrathful and just and merciful. He can't be wrathful toward Himself because He is perfect and holy. He can't sacrifice Himself for Himself because He needs nothing. He needs not get glory because He has it all.
The theory is that He made creation to show His love and wrath and sacrifice and justice and mercy and faithfulness and holiness to beings who needed it. He created us so He could fulfill needs.
He made creation to express the entirety of Himself to Himself.
Ok so once you've wrapped your mind around that, here's the paradoxical part. The focal point of earth's history is Christ's sacrifice on the cross for our sin. God created mankind and gave us all of creation for our own. He gave us perfection in the garden of Eden, and then Adam and Eve went and screwed it right up. God knew just exactly how grave this mistake (if you want to call it that) was. He knew that it would require Him, the holy, perfect, righteous, all-powerful being in charge of the entire universe, to give all of that up and come down to earth and pay the ultimate price, both in the context of humanity and in the context of the Trinity. He would have to give up some or all of his deity and take on a created human form. He knew that the life in that human form would be brutally wrenched from Him. He knew that He would be utterly separated from Himself. He knew that He would pour out all of His unbearable wrath upon Himself.
The result of that ultimate sacrifice is that we are forgiven the sins we commit every single waking moment of our lives and that we get to spend eternity in a place that is exponentially better than the best possible place anybody could have thought of. He sacrificed Himself to Himself for us so that we could experience the best thing ever for all eternity.
He made creation to bless us with blessings beyond measure.
So basically this doesn't make any sense to me. I'm pretty sure those two big bold lines are true. I'm also entirely convinced that they are in a sense mutually exclusive. In one case, God is completely selfish and cares only for Himself and His glory and satisfaction, so He creates the universe. In the other, God creates the universe to bring other creatures into the blissful paradise that is His presence and sacrifices everything to do that. The coexistence of these two things are impossible, but they are also impossibly coexistent. Thus, the entirety of existence is a paradox.
Which brings me to the second incredible statement we made during our conversation:
Maybe eternity exists to explain what was going on in the short time we have here on earth.
Maybe when we get to heaven God will say something like, "So remember those 80-odd years you guys spent on Earth? Well, here's what was really going on there," and proceed with the explanation that would last an eternity.
It makes my head hurt.
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I'm an incredibly logical person, so I essentially refuse to accept any theology that is based on feeling and I have a hard time accepting a theology that is based on experience, which leaves me believing in either a logical or biblical theology (which I think go hand-in-hand). A theology that I've been in contact with for a long time is grossly overgeneralized as the theology of John Calvin, which is full of logic and biblical arguments and such. I fear that if I think too deeply about this kind of theology, my brain will take it to its logical end of a sort of Christian nihilism. Why nihilism you ask? I would tell you, but I think an equation will do the talking better than I ever could.
This is the expression for God's glory:
Where s is the number of sins we have committed, d is the number of days we've volunteered our time and gone to church, σ is whether or not we have been saved, θ is the state of our spiritual walk, t is the amount of love we have shown others, and $ is the amount of money we have given to the church.
For the non math- and science-oriented people among you, the thing about this equation is that no matter what any of the variables listed are, the result will always be infinity. If you divide infinity by any number it will still be infinity.
Basically this equation says that nothing we could ever do can add to or detract from God's glory. If I murdered every person I saw until the police caught me, God would still be just as glorious as He was an hour ago. If I sold all my stuff, quit college, gave all my money away, and lived in a monastery for the rest of my life, God would be no more glorified that he would have been otherwise. BECAUSE HE IS PERFECT. So essentially nothing I do matters.
That's where I would end up if I thought about it too much, and although I believe in the basics and essentials of the theology from which that conclusion is birthed, I refuse to delve deep into it because I know where it would lead.
A wise man once told me to embrace the mystery or I would destroy myself trying to figure it out. But I see the mystery and am completely overwhelmed by it. It seems that the solution is almost within my grasp. It seems that with just a little more manipulation and deep thought it would all come together and make sense. But I'm pretty sure that's never going to happen.
The same wise man told me something else that has been incredibly helpful as of late:
Thinking is good, but overthinking is not. Once you have steeped yourself in thinking about something good, you need to stop thinking and start doing.
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This is the kind of stuff we talk about most of the time.
Good friends are essential. They stretch you. They encourage you. They matter. So glad you have some good ones.
"So essentially nothing I do matters," would be more accurately stated as, "So essentially nothing I do contributes to who God is."
What you do matters, deeply. That kind word encouraged the heart of someone who needed a kind word, that explanation in chemistry clarified a mystery to someone who was confused and felt stupid, that gift of time or money or friendship pleased God and blessed that person, that outburst of anger hurt the recipient, that wicked thought offended God, that reception or rejection of the gospel sealed your future.
What you do matters, deeply.