Never Too Dark

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

― The Gospel of John

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Dear Kate,

When I said yesterday that sometimes even Christians speak and live like we are downright godless, I wondered if you thought I was being unnecessarily harsh.

"Light at the end of the tunnel," such is one of the most common metaphors we traded with each other during this pandemic.  "Light" has always been used to stand in for transcendence, but here we used it not to speak about what we ultimately long for but what we once had, think we should have, and will hopefully have again soon.

"God at the end of the tunnel," that's the least you would expect from someone who longs for communion with what is ultimately meaningful.  "God in the middle of the tunnel," is more like the authentic Judeo-Christian understanding.  To hope for God and hope in God, actions we take in response to God acting in history, that's the life of a person living in Jesus.

But have you heard any Christian around you speaking this way?  Do you speak this way in your hoping?

All of us are like the Prodigal Son, longing for the Father only when we have reached the end of our road.  Yes, the parable tells us the Father is waiting there at our road's end, for a long time already.  But it's still a pity, being "prodigal," to waste our life this way before learning to long for the Blesser, not the blessings.  Worse still, if, like the Older Brother, we think we've been on the right road built with our own hands, not noticing it's getting darker because we've built ourselves a tunnel, with a vision ever more limited.

Let's go deeper into this tunnel and take a peek, make out shapes and contours in our darkness.

"'Harmful, damaging' Burnaby exam question about Indigenous history under review," such was the headline about a national issue, happening right in my city.  I want to speak about it strictly within the context of today's topic.

"Did any First Nations people benefit in any way from any of their relationships with European colonizers?" is not the question I am trying to answer.  In fact, the question is whether such question should be raised at all.

Let's just say the answer is No, adamantly No, obviously No, that there has been no benefit at all, only harms done by the colonizers.  Yet if the answer is so very clear, why was the question asked by educators at all?  Or maybe the point is not whether the answer is Yes or No, but that it is simply hurtful to ask the question, now or ever.  Then I must ask, Why?  If someone has wrong ideas about history, don't we want to let them speak about their misunderstanding as a way for all of us to have a better understanding of what actually happened?  Isn't that what education is about?  If we all have perfect knowledge and are living according to it, then what is school for?  To eradicate the last remnant of wrong thoughts and bad actions, so that as a society we can be perfecter still?  But how are we to do that if the wrongness and badness cannot even be spoken about and addressed?  Where do we exile the wrong-headed and badly-behaving people?  Where are they going to find channels to relieve their pent-up frustration with the non-discussion and maybe, just maybe, the repression and misunderstanding of their views?

Much more can be said, but again, this is not the topic today.  Everything I said in the last paragraph is to lay the groundwork to speak about another offense of Christianity.

Last week I said the most repugnant aspect of Christianity has always been that forgiveness and reconciliation are available to all.  Today I am suggesting a second offense that actually goes before the first in logic: that the Judeo-Christian view of history is one of God's providence. And in particular, that what happened to Jesus on the cross is not only meaningful in all its detail but the key to the meaning of every personal circumstance and historical situation, past, present, and future.

How can such ludicrous claim be sensitively made, ever?  Not when we are speaking about the horror of residential school, and not when you are flustered by having cut your nail too deep either.  It is an affront to our good sense and good conscience, to say our destiny is somehow being given shape by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, when earthly events seem to be inestimably intricate and apparently accidental.  It's easier for me to believe a Happy Meal can make me happier in the next minute.  It is inevitable that we should see our "light" being something more effective and efficient, tangible and useable, like a vaccine, or a good meal, or a simple high-five from a friend.  And such a laundry list of useful things is exactly what we find ourselves praying for.

And it gets even more scandalous when the matter on hand is not my nail too deeply cut, but children dying, justice miscarried, tragedy sudden and thorough.  What is God trying to speak when no good can be spoken about my situation, our historical circumstances?  I would rather He has the decency to keep quiet.  I would rather He let me handle this one, no parental interference please, so that I can have the kind of closure that I need to face a new morning.

When we say "we hope" we really mean we want to stop hoping.  Instead of God, we want answers; not the Blesser, but blessings.  We want to close our book of longings, write our definitively rendering of history properly understood, justly chronicled, right here and right now.  Progress we think is not only possible but inevitable, and it's our human duty to make it to the end of progress sooner than later: for how else can we be moral beings without striving for good things to come more timely?  We are tired of hoping.  We are tired of anyone suggesting we will still need to wait.  We frankly can't see why we can't march right to the end of history and speak the final word about it, for once and for good.

Now you can go back to the headline above and see why I brought it up.  When we are in a hurry to write the final chapter of history as we see fit, can we possibly be at the same time crushing the possibility of hope?  To close a history book is to shut a face up, saying: "You are a victim, and that's as far as you will go"; "And you are an oppressor: let me tell you where you are going to go."  The dead died in chapter 2 will stay dead even as I am writing the final chapter however enthusiastically with my blood sweat and tears.  And if my rendering of history is ever truthful, it will necessarily speak about the togetherness of humanity (I am not writing my diary after all), speak for those I disagree with (especially them, to balance out my bias), and speak against meaninglessness (or why would I care about history at all?).

Who could write a book like this?  What kind of a Word is this to speak in and out of love without compromising justice, to speak about and speak for everyone without objectifying anyone, that in its utterance everything is clarified without being demystified, forgiven but never forgotten, made whole and made home?

These are genuine questions.  I ain't jumping to conclusion yet.  Religion doesn't necessarily follow.

Still, more questions I have: Can such a Word be spoken without God speaking it?  If all we see and experience on earth in our finite life is all we get, can we ever hope for a Word like this without being hopelessly naive?  And why is God becoming a man to hang on a piece of common wood His way to speak His most definitive Word about Himself and for all mankind, and render our checkered history a story of His providence?

Have a good night.  It never gets too dark.

Yours, Alex