I am back from vacation and working on some sessions I have been asked to lead at St. Francis Springs here in Stoneville, NC. This week a group of clergy are there on sabbatical, and the Friar who directs the center has asked me to lead some session on “Openness to Mystery.” As I have spent some time reflecting on the topic this phrase came to mind.
“In a world being ripped apart by violent fundamentalism, the most salvific element of faith in God may very well be mystery.”
Post 9/11 America has been an age of increased fundamentalism. Fear does that to a people. It is interesting as well when you consider that fundamentalism created that fear. Its a vicious cycle. The word fundamentalism gets tossed around a lot today, often unfairly. I think Pete Rollins describes it best when he says that, “fundamentalism can be understood as a particular way of believing one’s beliefs rather referring to the actual content of one’s beliefs.” Fundamentalism describes someones posture regarding their relationship to their beliefs.
This is true all over the globe. It is why people are [and have been for centuries] willing to kill others over their beliefs. This has been a long held criticism of religion by atheists and agnostics alike…and a legitimate one at that. As a follower of Jesus, I have shared that critique. But where most look for answers and a definitive solution, I have found “answerlessness” to be the greatest weapon against fundamentalism and its corollary; violence. Let me explain.
Fundamentalism as a posture is the problem I want to address. Not the beliefs to which such a posture relates. As a Christian, I have witnessed how fundamentalism has misrepresented and sullied the reputation of my own faith. A faith whose narrative consists of the in-breaking of a kingdom of peace, reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, emancipation, and friendship. A faith whose central actor, author, architect, artist, and articulator was a man of suffering, humility, compassion, peace, and nonviolence. Fundamentalism can take something beautiful and destroy it.
I believe fundamentalism is able to creep in and take root because of the absence of mystery. Mystery loses its place as a harmonizing force within the life of faith in the presence of fear. Fear demands answers, guarantees, and precision. When we are afraid our trust wavers and we grasp at perceived securities to shore it up. In this way, fundamentalism is a willful blindness to the necessary unknowns of the life of faith. More specifically, its a willful blindness to what is necessarily mysterious about God. Consequently fundamentalism creates a false confidence based on the assumption that it possesses the truth, or possesses God. As a result, all competing truth claims become enemies and the battle lines get drawn
Mystery tells us that we cannot posses all there is concerning God. That God is so much more than religion can conceive, define, and articulate. And rightly so. If we could capture God with our concepts, God would cease to be God. Fundamentalism does not want God to be more than what it conceives and sets down by decree. In this way, fundamentalists take God captive, making God a slave to its concepts. In the same way the concepts themselves, believed to possess God, become gods…used to exact obedience, and enforce control of its subjects.
Religions becomes sick and deadly without mystery. They become drunk with their own hubris and wreak havoc upon the earth. The acute reaction against religion that seems to permeate much of postmodern culture is a protest against a way of viewing the world that arrogantly presumes to have eradicated all mystery. Most realistic people understand that no individual nor group possesses all the answers. Yet fundamentalist expressions of faith operate under such a notion.
As one who works in the context of spiritual formation, I recognize that one of our greatest protections and attractions within the life of faith is mystery. Mystery protects us from ourselves and what we will do with the power of religious narrative. It allows us to be humble and hospitable to the other who is not like us. It invites awe and wonder at something that transcends us. Mystery invites pursuit and creates a necessary insatiability for what is of God. Most of all, mystery prevents the object of our desire from being possessed, dominated, and exploited. In that way, mystery is the birthplace of right relationship to that which we long for.
Far from being a cop-out for that which we cannot explain, mystery is a catalytic element built into the fabric of the cosmos that moves image-bearing creatures forward in their evolution as co-creators, life-givers, stewards, and blessings.