“We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world. And if we cannot picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not going to be able to picture this. Indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be - the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightning.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, “The Perfect Penitent”

Indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it . . .

This gets to something I've been rolling around in my mind (and unsuccessfully trying to communicate to people on occasion) for awhile. It's the realization that God is an "other".

In other words, I think that often times people's disappointments with God stem from the fact that He acts very differently from the way the god they have imagined in their own mind would act. You can see this throughout history, and in our own lives often as well. Jesus confounded the people of his own time; he came as the Messiah, but not the Messiah that they had imagined.

Of course, from our perspective this side of the Resurrection, the Messiah Jesus was (and is) is far higher, above, beyond, and more eternal than the Messiah they imagined and wanted. The Redeemer of their imagination was as far as they could reach, which wasn't very far; they could not imagine, they could not fully understand, and they certainly did not anticipate the Redemption that Jesus brought.

If God were imaginary, what he did and does would be imaginable. He might even be what we consider "tame".

What we have, instead, is a God who is an other, who does audacious, confusing things - things such as the Incarnation. He is not us, he doesn't live in our imaginations. He is above us, with ways higher than our ways, and thus often times he is absolutely confounding. Because he acts in ways that are higher than the little god of our imagination.

And thank goodness for that!

[Thanks to Trevin Wax for reminding me of this C.S. Lewis quote today]