Chasing Wonder

Somewhere in the transition from childhood to manhood I've lost something fundamental to who I am. I'm a believer in God, but I've seen the wonder slowly slip away. Somewhere along my journey I made an unconscious decision to set aside my heart and focus on the broadening of my intellect. This blog is an attempt to remedy this...

So here I stand, on the most important day of the Christian calendar, Easter, contemplating my relationship to the one Almighty God; Creator, Redeemer, & Sustainer of all. Without this day there is no divine Jesus Christ, and therefore, no "Christianity". There is something about this day that sparks a sense of wonder in me; a sense of wonder that has almost completely dissolved. The wonder a young boy has when he sees his first rainbow, or is startled by the sound of thunder, or feels his heart flutter from the glance of a girl.

Now, I don't want you to think that I've lost my faith in God because that isn't the case. How could I deny the existence of a God I've experienced? It's more of a struggle in relationship, than in belief. When I have a fight with my parents I don't stop believing in them, I just have a hard time seeing eye-to-eye... and so it is with my relationship with God.

The thought of God used to invoke in me a healthy fear, a passion, a curiousity, a desire to stretch beyond myself, a desire to be holy, God was my focus and my motivator. However, somewhere in my path to adulthood I have come to see God more as a puzzle with no solution. This is where the logician in me starts his journey towards insanity. In the words of G.K. Chesterton...

"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

The poet understands something that the logician fails to recognize; that God is something to be imagined, but not understood (at least in fullness). There is no materialist explanation of God's grace, no formula for his love, and no Freudian-psychology that can unravel the depth of His character. The poet takes comfort in this, while the logician shudders at the thought of something which is infinite and incomprehensible.

It is to this end that I seek to suppress the logician and reveal the poet. I want to see the wonder of God for what it is, and not for what I can explain it to be. I don't wish to shed my adulthood, and return to childhood; but I wish to be an adult who maintains a wonder for God. I want there to be a balance between the mind and the heart; between thought and emotion; between logic and poetry.

Part of my struggle is with the Church. There seems to be a dichotomy in what it is, and what it is intended to be. It's the frustration of getting advice when what you need is a shoulder to cry on, or having people present shadows of themselves to each other in the attempt to falsely exemplify the incarnate. I don't think God intended us to be spirits, awkwardly defiant of our bodies; but complete humans (body & spirit) motivated & empowered by the work of God's spirit.

If I'm going to have an impact on the Church, I need to be inspired by God, and this requires a wonder of God. There needs to be an understanding that God is the 'perpetual novelty' (as Ravi Zacharias would say). Not to say that God is new and different everyday, but rather there is never a shortage of things to learn or wonder about God. I leave you with another quote from G.K. Chesterton...

"One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance."