Higher Laws

The foundation of the Christian faith is that the basis of human life is redemptive, and on that basis, God performs His miracles. – Oswald Chambers from The Shadow of an Agony

For those who are perishing, the message of the cross is foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is God’s power. – 1 Corinthians 1:18

I wonder if, at the time Chambers wrote those words somewhere around a hundred years ago, they met with more agreement than they would today. I suspect a great many people view that statement – provided they don’t pass right over it – as quaint and naïve, if not ridiculous. The question is raised: What is the basis of human life? Dawkins says it is the replication of selfish genes, which washes out free will and makes a mockery – not just of religion, as is intended, but of all human culture including science itself. If I’m going to be a puppet, I think it is better to be a marionette guided by a possibly loving higher being than to be a sock puppet of mindless, irrational genetic forces. Putting aside the Dawkins crowd, we might see a thinker with more respect for humanity give a different answer – something along the lines of “self-realization”, and it is self-realization that Chambers goes on to speak about in that passage.

Self-realization can mean different things to different people, but it is a convenient term for a pragmatic approach to life. We don’t know how we got here or why, but, hey, let’s make the most of it. The idea of self-realization can run from the truly spiritual to the criminally hedonistic. It echoes in innocuous and even positive phrases from “be all you can be” or “the pursuit of happiness” to more selfish ones like “get it while you can”, “you’ve got please yourself”, or that notorious anthem of the ‘60’s “if it feels good, do it”. In its highest form, self-realization is a pursuit of authenticity and contentment within the accepted moral and rational bounds of society. It makes for a good person, someone we’d like to have for a neighbor. Often the better class of practitioners will accept, either openly or tacitly, the tenets of Christianity or some related moral system. In fact, I have found that many people who think of themselves as Christians are practicing self-realization within the framework of the Ten Commandments or perhaps the Sermon on the Mount. They go to church. They give money to charity. They do good works, and so on.

No matter how good we are, if we never turn aside and take the time to understand that the central point of Christianity is the Cross and with it the redemption of man by God, we are bound to be disturbed by all that assails us in life. But if we will walk up that hill and stand at the foot of the Cross, gazing up at Christ as He hangs suspended between heaven and earth, between God and man, we can begin to understand what God thinks of redemption. At that point, there can be no question about the fact of His desire to rescue us and embrace us, even if the why of it remains elusive.

Paul says it himself – it is foolishness to the perishing. A vast universe, eons of time, billons of years of life and death and mud and blood, millions of species passing into oblivion, and it is all to bring us to an insignificant little knoll beside a dusty road on the edge of a squalid town in a backwater country. It is laughable. Yet the alternative is not just that Jesus died for nothing, but that man lives, in anything more than a purely physical way, for nothing. Either we are sons of God being redeemed from enslavement to the material and temporal, or we are self-deluded animals driven by forces we cannot control even if we should understand them.

…[B]ecause God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom… -- those who accept the redemptive basis of human life find that there has been an amazing pattern running through their lives. Like pieces of a puzzle falling into place, what made no sense suddenly fits in the picture. There was an accident that seemed to be a mere inconvenience but revealed a truth about myself. There was a chance meeting with an old friend that reinforced a good decision. There was a disaster that opened many hearts to God’s comforting presence. Some will question: Does God allow death and destruction merely to get people’s attention? Why doesn’t He just speak directly to us or give us a sign instead? Not attention, redemption.

This is one of my common themes, and though I am far too repetitive, it is one of those things I have to work through for some reason. I watch myself – and others sometimes – but mainly me – and when I can step back a little, I see God is answering my questions so loudly and clearly that I have trouble hearing it.

But I don’t want to get so far down my typical track that I forget the end of the sentence: …and on that basis, God performs His miracles. The miraculous serves the redemptive. I believe in miracles, but I do not believe that God ever violates the laws of the cosmos. It is that the law of redemption is higher than any other law, even in this world. Turning stones into bread at the devil’s behest is a conjurer’s trick, and Satan’s hand must be in it. But feeding a multitude by multiplying bread is the hand of God operating through the law of redemption.

”It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. …”