Through a Glass, Darkly

"If the Christian way were simply an experimental spirituality loosely inspired by a dead foreigner, we should no doubt be spared a lot of trouble; we should also be spared the transformation of the human world by God’s mercy in Christ. As it is, theology remains hard, for theologians and for their public, but the fact itself indicates the occasion or unstinted gratitude, celebration and—as we have seen—wonder at the sovereign work of grace. ‘The wrath of man shall turn to thy praise’; so, too, should the complexities and the turmoil of theology."

Rowan Williams, "On Doing Theology"

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Dear Kate,

I've asked you to respond to my last letter, and you've tried for a few days to no avail.  I've promised not to write again until you had a chance to respond, the kind of promise you know I would never try very hard to keep.

Or you can say you did have your chance.

And I wonder what your difficulty is.  Maybe you can write about your difficulty instead of what you think can be pinned down by your pen with certainty.

Jesus did not die on the cross to give us a comfortable moral position.  He didn't die to give us a different way to look at things, easy on the eyes, ours, and, soft on our butts, well couched.  You're writing with blood; your ink clots when the blood isn't running.

Which isn't the same as your blood boiling.

I am sure your blood is boiling, even now, for something, probably someone, many ones, many things.  Telling your story is like opening up an artery: Splat!  What a mess.  You can clean up nicely, but don't expect to find a decent moral center in your busted heart.

We can't pin God down.  At the foot of the Cross we find no answer, nothing to satisfy our wrongheadedness.  Our judgement shall forever be unsettled by its moving shadow, casting on us fifty shades of red, all muted.  The luminous glory from behind we can't see eye to eye, except for what shines through the flesh on wood.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."  You must know what came before this line, the most famous "love poem" from the Bible.  After all the very quotable affirmations about love, Paul dimmed the light and cast a shadow before going for the jugular: "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

Paul was a writer who wrote with blood, sweat, and tears.  He wasn't in his easy pants penning a romantic poem for weddings.  He was talking about the Cross.

We can't pin God down but somehow He let us do it; and that's true romance.

Yours, Alex