Mysteries that do not need solving

Day one of my new Lenten discipline (an additional one – I did not cave and ditch the old one.) That discipline? A daily devotional of some sort, here in this spot.

I have spent a lot of time over the years observing the dialog between people of different religions, between people of no religion and those with, and people arguing about evolution. I am struck first of all by the poor quality of the debate. I took a course on logical argument in my first year of university, and in five minutes of reading a bulletin board debate, I can review an entire semester's worth of logical fallacies.

But what surprises me most is how the Bible would become a science subject. Both religious believers and non-believers want to put Genesis to the test, such that if the text can be prehistorically falsified, then the whole thing can be called off. And so the Bible, the most powerful didactic framework ever written in the history of the world, is dethroned – either as an archaic collection of scientific heresies, or by fundamentalists who won't grasp that the fundamentals are not about science.

And what are those fundamentals?

From my Catholic and Christian sensibilities, that the Bible is true. Not even just symbolically true. More even than mythologically true. In some way – literally true. It is hard to explain what I mean, and mystics have tried for centuries. But Feiler's "Walking the Bible" comes closest. Even if Genesis depicts the dawn of people in a way that can't and won't be reconciled with scientific fact, it depicts it in a way that is still in some respects more accurate than the world paleontologists can reconstruct from stone tools and bones. What was that dawning awareness that took people out of a natural paradise for which they are perfectly designed, and set us in a world where we toil for every little thing? Genesis may hold the answer, though it can take a lifetime to fathom what it says (just ask Milton.)

It would be nice to reclaim the Bible from the realm of physical science, where people argue about fundamentals not fundamental to it. The Bible is a great mystery of its own accord, nearly as vast as the universe in scope. This is why, in part, theology was once called the “Queen of the Sciences.” Someday I will know fully, and understand what all of those mysterious stories in Genesis (like Abraham's encounter with the three angels) are about. But for now, I cherish seeing through a glass darkly.