not of this world

there is a beautiful analogy that can shed light on the many alternate and seemingly contradictory passages in the Old Testament and how they can be reconciled with the inerrancy the Church confesses regarding Scripture. Christ, the Word of God, in the Incarnation humbled Himself to take on our human nature, “becoming like unto us in everything but sin.” though He was without sin in His divine person, the human nature He took on was not one that failed to experience temptation, that was incapable of suffering pain in the blows directed towards Him, that would not experience hunger and weariness, not one that was above shedding tears of sadness. in a sense it could be imagined that He could have made it such that the nature He assumed could have been ‘upgraded’ out of such messy, human aspects of being, but then He wouldn’t have truly assumed our condition, wouldn’t have carried out the surprising defeat of death by His own condescension to weakness, the scandal that the wisdom of this world turns its nose up at, but which opens up the door to the anawim (the humble, lowly ones). the salvific work and message of Christ in his human incarnation accomplished all that He set out to accomplish, but its efficacy was not by flashy or superpowered antiseptic means, but by very humble, human ones.

likewise the Word of God so clothes Itself in the history and traditions of man in the written Scriptures. we’ve all either wondered ourselves or heard some one reflect on why God would choose to reveal himself to a grubby little tribe from mesopotamia, or why Christ would have come in the flesh during the ‘backward times’ of Palestine. if He had come now He could have reached so many more people, utilized mass communications etc. modern man, with the cartesian glasses he is born into, views the world only having an appetite for sterile facts, without which he fails to see anything true or worth his time pursuing. why would God communicate through the words of very human authors, second hand accounts which are clouded with mystery, endlessly circled around by poetry and epic narratives which those who follow in time find impossible to squeeze out precise and succinct facts? if the Judeo-Christian God was that of Mohammed, then it would suffice his having dictated the 5 pillars of piety, and we could carry them out mindlessly, resting in our knowledge that that is enough, that that is all we need to know; we could proceed passively in the very aspect of ourselves which is most God-like - and thus tending towards act - our minds. but the pedagogical incarnation of the words of Scripture are written both 100% by man, and 100% by God. just as Jesus Christ was fully man and fully God. Islam objects that such ‘mixing’ of the human and the divine offends the transcendentality of God. in this they actually show themselves to constrict that professed transcendentality of God’s nature. God as Creator is not another kind of thing: He Is; all else is only at His good pleasure. there can’t be a horse who is also man, or a tree that is also a blade of grass; in such creaturely beings the principle that two things can’t occupy the same place at the same time neceessitates such a union as being impossible. but it does not so apply to The Principle from whom all principles are granted their authority and truth. He didn’t have to speak to us at all, as He didn’t have to walk amongst us as one of us. in His benevolent love He willed to do so, in each case, in ways that were both entirely human, with all the messiness and potential misunderstandings that such means necessarily entail, but which are only ultimately stubbling blocks to those proud who have not the time nor inclination to tarry a while, to sit at His feet with their questions, pondering the answers they as yet don’t understand in the private intimacy of their hearts.

the patience and trust which allows one to so tarry are both the easiest and the most difficult tools for modern man to master, for they evince to him that he himself is not the Master. and that seems the one sin modernity is unable to tolerate.