might even consider that, in a culture obsessed with personal self-improvement on the one hand, and material wealth on the other, a heightened awareness of God as holy mystery might not go astray. It could go a long way toward checking some of the absurdities of contemporary life, such as new age yuppies wearing specially shaped crystals to enhance their harmony with the earth at the same time as carrying on protracted, vituperous arguments with neighbors about the placement of new outdoor decks and swimming pools and rooflines. It might also make us more realistic about the abysmal conditions of life for most people on our planet, more cautious about plunging headlong into the environmental unknown, more hesitant to claim understanding of everything we try to control, from genes and atoms to societies and economies. God as Holy Mystery may be a message tailor made for our situation.
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You can see how this line of thought would unfold. There would be an essentially moral message about how properly appreciating the holy mystery of God leads us to reappraise our lives and our societies in a truly radical way. Fine. I think there is nothing wrong with any of that. But it seems faintly diluted, perhaps a little trivial, and certainly over-confident. I think the passages from Job and Revelation take us in another direction. God is Holy Mystery, yes, but in a profound, unsettling, even terrifying way.
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How grateful we should be that there is preserved in the Hebrew Bible this insight of Jewish wisdom literature: “For he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause; he will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness.” The Christian tradition is dominated by the themes of sin and salvation, by biblical images of God as Creator and Father, Mother and Lover, Redeemer and Friend. It is jarring, then, to encounter Job’s description of God as overwhelmingly awesome, as crushingly powerful, as violent and capricious, as unaccountable to any moral standards: “If it is a contest of strength, he is the strong one! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?” Job’s innocence and righteousness offer him no protection from the divine fierceness. Nor is there any refuge for us from the destroyer. We are prone, naked, exposed, endangered, helpless, and hopeless in the divine presence. There is no higher court to which we can take our complaint about God’s merciless power. There being no recourse, then, we must suffer and be crushed with no consolation; nothing can protect us.
We might enlarge upon the divine destructiveness by considering that about us which is destroyed. Indeed, we might try to excuse God with clever distinctions. Our evil natures, our pride, and our sloth are destroyed, we might say, but our redeemed natures are increased. Our self-assurance and willfulness are smashed, we might speculate, but our responsible and mature instincts are strengthened. If there is truth in these distinctions, it is a premature truth. The deeper truth is that we are completely, utterly, exhaustively annihilated by the Holy Mystery that is God. Any sense of ourselves is lost in the divine presence. We exchange our joy and sadness for desolation beyond language, our pride and goodness for inconceivable emptiness, our concepts and desires for tears of hopelessness. Nothing of ourselves survives the encounter with the divine destroyer: “Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and their riders—flesh of all, both free and slave, both small and great.”
How we trivialize the divine Holy Mystery! We manage and control it, with an even greater degree of ignorance than plagues our dealings with each other and with our world. We hide from it with every ounce of energy we possess, as we deny our common humanity, our biological rootedness, our death. We even dare speak of the Holy Mystery in a measured way, systematically purging it of offense, morally purifying the divine character lest it be besmirched by our complaint against its capriciousness. In so doing we dance with ignorant anxiousness amongst the teeth of the dragon; we dance and sing together for illusory comfort. There is no comfort to be had. There is no escape. If God be immoral, if God hate us, or what is worse, if God be indifferent to our struggling for the very breath of life under the crushing weight of the storm, then what is to be done? As Job suggests, to whom may we appeal? The Holy Mystery transcends every moral category, and is a law unto itself. While ever we fail to grasp the dismaying possibility of divine neutrality and indifference to our pain, to our sense of outrage at life, to our ravaged societies, to our traumatized planet, we also fail to appreciate in even the most basic way the terror of the divine presence. There is no knowing with God. All of our wisdom, all of the assurance of salvation in Christ, all of the trusting in the divine benevolence—all of these are of no avail when God “fills me with bitterness” and “multiplies my wounds without cause.” At that moment, every expectation is shattered, every pattern broken, every security irrelevant. We are at the mercy of God as the bear with its claw to our throats.
It is no wonder, then, that atheistic objections to God can have some moral momentum; that the histories of paganism and of sadism and masochism have religious aspects; that the mana of the shaman in tribal religions is respected despite its amoral, capricious quality; that women who are especially submissive have been worshipped in our culturally confused way as especially pure and holy; and that religion is rightly regarded as a protective haven, not from the world, but from God.
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We may not recognize God as our refuge, “our ever-present help in time of trouble,” until we have first understood in the depths of our being that we have no refuge from the divine terror. For it is only in the moment of surrender, in the immediate proximity of death, under the claw of the bear, that the proper relation between us creatures and God is fully realized. God may indeed crush us to death, or rip us apart, but we are God’s creatures even as this happens.
How easily do we presume upon the divine grace! How brazenly we approach the civilized courts of Holy Majesty to lay our case before a manageable God, tamed by divine promises of salvation. How cavalierly we dismiss the divine wildness, as if love were not wild and dangerous, as if grace were not every bit as much fiendish foe as familiar friend. We have no rights before God and no claim upon the divine compassion. Again, deliverance cannot be understood even faintly until we realize how proper it is that we should relinquish even our divinely assured claims to it.
So how is it that the Holy Mystery is cognizant of us, mindful of our lives, tolerant of our attempts to love, even loving us in our confusion? How indeed. To answer that this divine interest has been revealed, or that it is evident in the effusive glory of nature, is often to retreat from the mystery once again, to seek refuge in assurance of the divine love when there is finally no such assurance. It is prematurely to batten down the hatches when what is required is the stinging salt air. Michael Leunig, an Australian poet and artist, puts it well:
When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken,
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open
Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting
Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring
In this state of surrender, deliverance may or may not occur. When it happens, it is entirely at the instigation of God. This is the meaning of salvation by grace. Too often our interpretation of salvation by faith corresponds to an incursion on the divine freedom. While trusting the divine promises has its place, it must be founded on the awareness that we may not presume upon anything in the presence of Holy Mystery; not even what we take to be the divine promises. The supposed necessity of some atoning sacrifice to justify the divine decision to forgive can likewise be pressed into service as a way of controlling the freedom of Holy Mystery. What we learn from Job is that the Holy Mystery will not be controlled, not by nations or governments, nor by revelations or theologies, nor by worship, or praise, or promises, or faith, or hope, or love. And yet, we are not always crushed, and deliverance does find us. This inexplicable act of capricious love—of free divine grace—is the miracle upon which our continued survival depends every minute of every day.
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