A Rational God?

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There'd have been no room for the child.
                              -Madeleine L'Engle

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten son of God, full of grace and truth."  John 1:14


The rationality, the reasonableness of the Incarnation. Not a strange thing for a Christian who is a teacher of philosophy to be pondering, wouldn't you say? But Advent is here and that means Christmas is just around the corner and I will soon be standing face to face, once again, with that event in which the Word became flesh!

Two things, which may at first appear totally unconnected, have moved my mind in this direction. One is a song sung by 4Him entitled "This is Such a Strange Way to Save the World" that Christian radio stations around the country are beginning to play again in this season. The other is a passage in Madeleine L'Engle's The Irrational Season. I'll begin with an extended quote from L'Engle and perhaps you'll begin to understand.

      "The enfleshing of the Word which spoke the galaxies made the death of that Word inevitable. All flesh is mortal and the flesh assumed by the Word was no exception in mortal terms. So the birth of the Creator in human flesh and human time was an event as shattering and terrible as the eschaton. If I accept this birth I must accept God's love, and this is pain as well as joy because God's love, as I am coming to understand it, is not like man's love.
       What one of us can understand a love so great that we would willingly limit our unlimitedness, put the flesh of mortality over our immortality, accept all the pain and grief of humanity, submit to betrayal by that humanity, be killed by it, and die a total failure (in human terms) on a common cross between two thieves?
       What kind of flawed, failed love is this? Why should we rejoice on Christmas Day? This is where the problem lies, not in secular bacchanalias, not in Santa Clauses with cotton beards, loudspeakers blatting out Christmas carols the day after Thanksgiving, not in shops fill of people pushing and shoving and swearing at each other as they struggle to buy overpriced Christmas presents.
      No, it's not the secular world which presents me with problems about Christmas, it's God.
      Cribb'd, cabined, and confined within the contours of a human infant. The infinite defined by the finite? The Creator of all life thirsty, and abandoned? Why would he do such a thing? Aren't there easier and better ways for God to redeem his fallen creatures?" (pgs. 17-18)

This really is such a strange way to save the world! Why Joseph? Why Mary? Why a stable near a small rural village of no importance? WHY???


And what good did it do? The human heart is still evil. God comes to save us and we still produce bigger and more terrible wars, slums, and insane asylums. Why? It is so unreasonable.

Oh, the rest of Christology has it right; God's Word bringing the galaxies to life, billions of flaming stars scattered across an unfathomable expanse. Here is an event worthy of a "reasonable" God; an event of power and grandeur beyond comprehension.

But what is this Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us? This man, this Jesus of Nazareth confounds my imagination. A God/Man? Unreasonable!!! Impossible!!!

Perhaps here lies the problem. So many philosophers and theologians wish to make God "possible," reasonable, comprehensible to human intellect; domesticate God so that God is easy to believe in. But what kind of God would that be?

Here then is the heart of the matter. "The wisdom of God is foolishness to this world." God is not a cold naked intellect, an impersonal principle, a natural law, that governs the universe. God is a person, the highest person, "the" Person, beyond all our comprehension. And God is that which naked intellect knows not, God is love.

In the long run, maybe it is not God who is unreasonable, but us. Our limited human abilities demand that God be like our understanding of things. But maybe true reason is bound up in love incomprehensible. And who wants a "comprehensible" God anyway?

So, is Christianity irrational? Maybe from a human standpoint. But that is not the standpoint I desire. If the wisdom of God is foolishness, then count me the greatest of fools!

A strange way to save the world? You bet, and thanks be to God!!!