Our Puzzling and Repellent Faith
Digging for reality when we don't yet understand.
I recently reread CS Lewis’ The Weight of Glory.
And by reread, I mean I read it over 12 years ago and frankly just wasn’t ready for it. So when I reread it the other day, I understand now why it’s the classic that it is.
Several of the classic Lewis quotes we know come from it, but there was one line that stood out to me that I’m not sure why I don’t see quoted right alongside the others.
“If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.”
The assumptions that this quote makes and the logic it takes is astounding and I believe is a word for the cultural moment of deconstruction, therapeutic expressive individualism, and consumerism that we’re living in.
1. “If our religion is something objective.”
Our religion is increasingly seen as something that is not objective.
In our therapeutic culture, the marks of truthfulness are based on emotional pragmatism. We believe things are true if we see evidence that they “work.” And by work, we typically mean things that provide some level of emotional well-being, safeguards against all abuse, and pleasure. I believe Christianity does provide all of those things and “works” in that sense, just maybe not in the way we expect in our cultural waters.
But what Lewis is talking about here is not subjective feelings of well-being or pleasure. He’s talking about an objective reality. The reality behind the system that provides the therapeutic benefits we use to test the validity of something.
Things like:
There either is or isn’t a God.
If there is a God, he must be like some things and not like other things.
If he is like some things and not like other things, he is either good or he isn’t good.
If he is good, he either does something about evil or he doesn’t.
If he does something about evil, he has to do it in a way that is coherent to his nature and creation.
And so on.
These are all questions that lead you to forks in the road about the nature of reality. It’s not all true. There is an objectiveness to it. It is or it isn’t. If it is, then our task is to attempt to stay as close to the objective reality of the thing as we can.
The reality is all of the things that get you to the therapeutic notion of something actually “working.”
The first thing we have to wrestle with is not, “does it work?” but “is it true?”
Tim Keller said it this way,
“Christians seek spiritual renewal of the church not because they see religion as having social utility, nor because they just want to shore up their own institutions.
Rather, we believe Christianity is relevant to society because it is true—it is not true because it is relevant. Christians do not believe in and promote the faith because it brings so much hope (though it does) or because it fills you with joy (though it will) or because it creates deep and strong community (though it can) or because it can heal our society of many ills (though it might). Rather, Christians seek renewal of the church as a way to love and serve the One who saved us.”
If it’s true, then it does work. But it probably doesn’t work the way we would expect it to.
2. “Then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent.”
Lewis doesn’t assume that just because something is true that it will be self-evident.
He assumes that there is a baseline we can get to where we can affirm that our basic beliefs are objectively true, while still finding particular parts puzzling or even repellent at first.
This flies in the face of the notion that I—and I’m sure many others—were raised with which said that things that are true are obviously true. And if we didn’t recognize it as true, then it was because of our lack of faith.
Instead, sometimes the truth is just complicated. It’s not self-evident. It requires searching, questioning, and digging. I should expect that if there is an objective truth that is beyond me that it would clash with things that are my natural sensibilities. In that sense, I might initially find something objectively true to be repellent. And I might find it repellent not because I don’t have faith, but simply because I don’t yet understand. And I don’t understand because I’m looking at it from the wrong angle. The coherence—and even beauty—of it is hidden from my view and must be found.
And this is where the part about “we must never avert our eyes” comes in.
The conservative environments I was raised in would say to avert your eyes from it by either avoiding it entirely or providing easy answers that didn’t actually get to the truth. It might have been right in some sense, but it wasn’t coherent with the whole story.
Progressive environments avert their eyes by saying, “Easy. It’s simply not true. Let’s just move on.”
But both of these approaches avert their eyes from reality by waving it away in one way or another. This is how anti-intellectualism, misinformation, and even conspiracy seep into both ideologies. They try to box up the puzzling and repellent pieces of our faith to store them in the attic instead of examining them in the light to see how and why they fit in with the larger picture that is reality itself.
Which brings us to the last part of the quote.
3. “It will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.”
There is always a thing under the thing.
It’s never just about shellfish or meat or war or drink or sex or head coverings or money or marriage. It will always be about a deeper reality we don’t intuitively see because we’re grasping at a reality that is beyond us. What Lewis called in Narnia, the Deeper Magic.
The moment we read something that puzzles or repels us, it should be a clue that we’ve struck upon a treasure that’s under the surface that will require us to dig and dig and dig to find.
The dirt will get under our fingernails, our clothes will get dirty, we will sweat and smell worse off than we did before. We might even get a few cuts and bruises along the way. And it will probably take a long time. But after enough digging, there will be a treasure under the earth for us to open and see more into the beautiful heart of God than we did before.
This should free us from needing to have all the answers. This should open us up to the possibility of wonder and mystery in our faith. You can live in ambiguity while searching for the meaning, trusting that it’s there even when you haven’t found it. Our trust in God is free to be what Anselm called, “faith seeking understanding.”
A Mystery Hidden and Revealed
I’m reminded of a passage that revolutionized my faith, 1 Corinthians 2.
In verse 7, it says, “We declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.”
A mystery that has been hidden.
But it’s a mystery that God destined for our glory.
And for those of us in Christ, it is ours to find. And it is possible to find it. The chapter goes on to say, “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.”
We are actually able to understand because we have the Spirit of God himself in us to help us understand.
We must have a patient faith. One that’s resilient when we come across puzzling and repellent truths. We don’t need an answer today. We don’t need an answer tomorrow. Or next year.
Faith is trusting that God is good while we don’t understand and working with him so that one day we might.
Because God is either good or he isn’t.
Our faith is either real or it isn’t.
And if we believe that it is, we’ll be patient and curious when we’ve lost a piece of the puzzle.
It has to be around here somewhere.
It’ll turn up eventually.