Ware – 1.1

At the recommendation from a friend, I read the book The Orthodox Way written by Kallistos Ware. The first chapter is entitled 'God as Mystery' and it was my favorite chapter of the book. I wanted to cover the various points that Ware makes that really helped shape my view about God.

He starts by talking about the 'otherness' and 'nearness' of God. It's one of those grey areas about God… how can we really know anything about God? And yet, how does the incarnation fit into the picture? That God is both very, very far away and very, very near ALL AT THE SAME TIME is one of the great paradox's of the Christian faith. And it's one that I've become very comfortable with. Here's a great quote from Ware:

"God is both further from us, and nearer to us, than anything else. And we find, paradoxically, that these two 'poles' do not cancel one another out: on the contrary, the more we are attracted to one 'pole', the more vividly we become aware of the other at the same time. Advancing on the Way, each finds that God grows ever more intimate and ever more distant, well know and yet unknown – well known to the smallest child, incomprehensible to the most brilliant theologian."

The main point that Ware is trying to make in this chapter is that God is and will continue to be a mystery to us. There are things about him that we will never fully comprehend… there are facets in His existence that we'll never be able to completely dig underneath. So we must, as His children, grow comfortable in the unknowing. Ware goes on to say: "We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder."

This resonates with me a great deal because I am most familiar with conservative evangelical thinking… which in some cases… comes close to assuming that everything is settled and figured out… and if your experience is different or counters from what mainstream evangelicalism says… then you are the one in trouble. Since college, I've been struggling with a Christianity that had everything figured out and all the answers are quick, formulaic and easy. I'm learning what it means to live comfortably in the grey areas of faith and relationship with God.

Ware is urging us Christians into the 'mystery' and 'darkness' of God. Not an evil darkness by any means… but something that he calls a 'luminous or dazzling darkness.' I'll conclude this post with one last quote from Ware: "So, in the Christian context, we do not mean by a 'mystery' merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is REVEALED for our understanding, but which we never understand EXHAUSTIVELY because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God."