The Grace of an Incomprehensible God

Acts 17:22-27

Getting your mind around God is always a difficult experience. God is the Holy Other. God is utterly transcendent. God is only known through the witness of those who experience God’s interaction with us. More than a few preachers are more than willing to proclaim a God easily understood, manageable, and a product of our wants and wishes. We are left behind, struggling to figure out whom it is we worship. 

And, of course, there are the skeptics who find reason to throw doubt on every tenet of faith. And the truth is there is one stubborn issue they raise ad infinitum that no practitioner of faith can or should sidestep—if God is the transcendent good at the core of all that is; i.e., God is love, then why is human suffering so stubbornly pervasive with untold millions lost in poverty, oppression, violence, mindless insanity, and abject hunger? Could a good God not create a cosmos without pain? 

When that pain touches our lives—a kindly saint in the pews falls ill for no reason, bringing death too soon; a child is killed on the eve of her honors graduation; a family is torn asunder by a mindless crime; a storm sweeps a beloved home away in fifteen minutes—on go the catastrophes—we become the Athenians Paul encountered—we build churches, attend worship, engage in the practices of a faith rooted in an unknown, incomprehensible God. 

“From whence cometh our help?,” cried the Psalmist (cf. Ps. 121). 

Look back to those witnesses. Especially look to those from whom sprang scripture—the Word written. They offer us a way to dwell faithfully in the presence of God who transcends everything that we are without avoiding the inherent mystery and pitfalls of life as it is in contrast to the God who is. They give us the grace of an incomprehensible God.

Step 1 — God is

We encounter the transcendent and the holy on a  daily basis, but are often so distracted by life that we miss these sacred shadows descending all around us. The Word emphasizes the wonder and glory of creation—they see the rising sun and behold the glory of God, something you can see on a morning walk near dawn as the sun passes behind the early clouds, shooting glory all through the sky; they endure the rumble, roar, and torrent of a thunderstorm and hear the voice of God thundering through creation; they behold the birth of a child and see the mighty work of God quickening breath, instilling miracle in flesh, and continuing the glorious work of making things. 

In short, the encounter the Creator on a daily basis. We can, as well. The wonder is all around us. Look for it. Look at your own being. Your skull contains a miracle of creative imagination, consciousness, and the throne of love—that beautiful mind with which you think, ponder, wonder, ask, seek, and all else. Your body works, moves, breathes, and does so many different tasks. For a woman, there is the truly miraculous ability to bring forth life into the world, something no man should ever forget. A man has the power of life in his own being, something no one should take for granted—half of what we are comes through fathers. 

And never, ever forget God’s assessment of all that is—“He saw that it was very good.”

Step 2 — Grace is

Too often when suffering comes, we look for a scapegoat—someone to blame, and God gets a heaping helping of criticism, rejection, and outright denial. Some of the strongest of those anathemas come when it is clear that human beings are the root cause of the suffering—war, poverty, oppression, rape, pillage, etc. are all human creations. So, like a teenager nailed by a parent in an act clearly forbidden, we cry out, “Well, why didn’t you stop me?”

God made us free, ergo, able to choose what we do and how we do it, and, ergo, responsible for the times when something goes horribly awry with our choices. In short, we make a mess of things, sometimes existentially so—the Holocaust, for example. These are not problems wrought by God, but by us. 

God abides, though. God enters our misery, taking it into his own being. God enters full communion with the lost, broken, and forgotten. Here we encounter the world and work of the Son. God is present with redeeming grace for every circumstance—God is omnicompetent—there is no context beyond God’s ability to manage. This promise is fully contained in the Resurrection—not even death can thwart God’s will that all be well and all manner of things be well. There are no hopeless causes. Christ met the broken, lost, and forgotten, claiming them as God’s own children, but with the call to change directions—repent—alter our existence in response to grace, letting go of actions, words, and thoughts that generated them so as not to repeat the cycles of pain, suffering, and emptiness that result. That is the truest expression and praxis of faith—to transcend and transform one’s own life in response to God. 

But what of truly innocent suffering—that which comes solely because of the incomplete nature of creation itself; i.e., stuff breaks without warning? 

Grace is there, too. One day Christ and his people met a man born blind. The disciples did what we all do—looked for that scapegoat to blame. Christ waved them off—in the face of innocent suffering, such muddling of things saves no one—FOCUS! The man needs to see—make it so, says God. Some suffering is inexplicable and trying to make it comprehensible gets us nowhere, so let it go and focus on the problem at hand—what can be done? who can help? Get it done. We see this work in the face of diseases, handicaps, natural disasters, and all else—when we stop trying to answer “Why?” and move to “What next?”, wondrous things can happen. That is grace. That is embodying the presence of the Son for all we meet. 

Step 3 — Open up

There is a final step—opening to the ineffable presence of God. Ecclesiastes is the best witness we have at this point, for here is an entire book rooted in the inscrutability of God and living with that truth. The writer knows all too well that a lot that is around us all the time is beyond belief and beyond comprehension. So, rather than cursing God and moving on, he, instead—and rather ironically—completely affirms and accepts the presence of God. 

How?

The Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is no less than the presence of God with us. It is the source of affirmation in the face of the unspeakable. It is the source of comfort, direction, and illumination as we blunder about in the world. It continually reminds us to return to the witnesses—listen to them again and again—check the story again and again—as long as it takes and as many times as it takes. The Spirit will fire acceptance. The Spirit will fire our imaginations to claim the story, make it ours, and act accordingly. 

But to be there—to be with God—we have to be open. Like Ecclesiastes, we have to see through what is to see God. The Spirit will open minds, hearts, eyes, and ears to make it so. Let him be. Let him come. Let him in.

So, the witnesses tell us gently, directly, and assuredly that we will never fully comprehend the being of God, but even so, we can reach a place of trust, commitment, and fidelity to God that sees us through the morass that is existence as we know it and live it.

There is grace in mystery.

Accept it.