Surprised by the man on the borrowed donkey: Ordinary Blessings. Denise Ackermann
a ragbag theologian is, in my case, not surprising. Not only do multiple identities reflect multiple affinities but, looking back on themes I have written about, it is clear that my theology does not constitute a neat corpus of concerns. The themes I have tackled are decidedly eclectic. Nevertheless, throughout I write from the critical experience of being a woman, bolstered by my view that our beliefs and actions should be held in creative tension with one another. This book reflects some of the different colours and textures of cloth in my ragbag – a pick-and-choose collection of interests with one binding conviction: my faith in the man who borrowed a donkey all those years ago, and whose life and teaching is found in the gospels.
The drawstring of my ragbag is spirituality, a testament to my belief that theology and our spirituality are inseparable. A profound longing for an ever-closer encounter with God has prompted all the byways I have pursued. In this quest, I have been filled with wonder at how my view from the margins has consistently drawn me to Jesus, the central figure of my faith. The widely divergent themes in this book represent issues that have challenged my attempts to live out my faith in a world that is increasingly unsettled, often violent, filled with poverty and human need, and yet awash with beauty and goodness.
I avoid calling myself religious. It smacks too much of something set in institutions, ritualised, consoling instead of transforming. The word “religion” is, in the main, useful when referring in general to the different religions in the world. Christian faith, however, is about an encounter with a person, not a religion. Jesus did not call us to a new religion, but to life. I prefer the vulnerability of the word “faith” – just that and nothing more. I have faith in Jesus Christ and my faith is expressed and nurtured by my spirituality. Unavoidably, this work is deeply personal for it is about what blessing has meant in my life. Because I also believe that conduct is more convincing than words, theology should focus on right actions, an emphasis that will be apparent throughout.
I write in a time when faith perspectives are often subjected to ridicule as self-deceiving, irrational, even deluded, and motivated by a deep fear of death. The woes of the world are often ascribed to religious beliefs and practices. In the case of Christianity, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the unseemly behaviour and ridiculous claims of fundamentalists are often mentioned. The God of the Old Testament is a tyrant, and discrimination against women and homosexual people proves the intolerance of Christian beliefs and practices. Moreover, the development of science, Darwinism, new insights by cosmologists and physicists who probe our enigmatic universe and make us aware of that mysterious phenomenon called dark matter, or neuro-psychology’s revelations of the working of the human mind accordingly prove how primitive faith perspectives are in the modern world.
Of course Christianity has done itself no credit when its adherents are intolerant, warlike, arrogant, unjust, unloving and unable to accept difference. Our history is muddied with dreadful, even barbarous acts in the name of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, scientists are offering new explanations of our world, and uncovering new ways of understanding the complexities of the cosmos and our place in it. All this is exhilarating and to be celebrated.
But people who find the discoveries of science riveting, while at the same time continue to believe in God are, with monotonous regularity, treated with what contemporary American writer Marilynne Robinson calls “a hermeneutics of condescension”. Self-appointed guardians of “scientific truth” pronounce judgment on the maturity and the intelligence of these believers. We do not seem able to allow others to be different, to be who they are without apology. We all make our choices. Thus any condescension on the part of Christians towards agnostics or atheists is equally unacceptable. I enjoy my untutored reading of Scientific American, while at the same time I accept Gregory of Nyssa’s (d.385/6) description of who God is: “That which is without quality cannot be measured, the invisible cannot be examined, the incorporeal cannot be weighed, the limitless cannot be compared, the incomprehensible does not admit of more or less.” Those who dismiss faith perspectives as simply a matter of false rituals and a need for social bonding must be somewhat dismayed by the persistence of the ancient and global truth that such perspectives give meaning to people’s lives that they do not find elsewhere.
This book is not an apology for having faith. It is an exploration of the fruits of having faith in one woman’s life. Human beings have the unique ability to ask questions of themselves and others, questions that matter and that can change our understanding. My theological reflections are prompted by questions. My bias is clear. It agrees with Robinson when she writes: “The voices that have said, ‘There is something more, knowledge to be had beyond and other than this knowledge’ have always been right.” My questions are about that “something more”.
I do not think that faith in God is diminishing because of the advance of science or because of the “death of God” theologies. However, I agree with Robinson that malaise in terms of faith can be caused when the “felt life of the mind” is excluded. This exclusion, she says, is attributed to “[…] accounts of reality proposed by the oddly authoritative and deeply influential ‘parascientific literature’ that has long associated itself with intellectual progress and the exclusion of felt life from the varieties of thought and art that reflect the influence of these accounts”. A cursory walk down the aisle of a bookshop affirms the popularity of “parascientific literature”, the authors of which may or may not be scientists. This kind of literature is a genre of political or social theory that makes a case by using the science of the moment to arrive at a set of general conclusions about the nature of the human being, from the beginning to the present, and draws political, social or anthropological inferences from such conclusions.
As the years pass, I am learning that the human mind is infinitely more complex than I can imagine; that human beings have the capacity to wonder as well as to comprehend beyond a positivist view of self and reality; that there is a longing for the beyond that will not easily leave us; that being human is not an argument but an experience; that our knowledge of the world is accelerating as is the universe itself, and that the learning of science is adding to our knowledge as it questions and probes. The source of this book is in what Robinson calls the “felt life of my mind” – the place where experience and reason meet.
For me, the one enduring certainty is the truth I find in the life and teaching of Jesus. I have no answers to questions of eternity: I know my limits; humankind is ultimately a mystery. I am happy to leave the exploration of our tiny planet, so fragile and blue in a universe that looks like a wavy compact disc dotted with exploding stars and quasars, to the scientists. I wonder at the discovery of dark matter, that mysterious substance that neither emits nor absorbs light. I cannot comprehend what it means that the Hubble telescope has captured some ten thousand galaxies in an area the size of the full moon. Now that the Higgs Boson particle, the so-called “God particle”, has been found, I am told it is the “glue” of the universe. What this all means I cannot comprehend. But I am happy that scientists affirm my belief that God is the glue that holds all together! I have only my experience of inexplicable encounters to guide my questions and to temper any assumptions of “knowing it all”.
This book is a further chapter in my biography of faith and my continuing surprise at its fruits. It is composed of nine chapters, each on a different topic. Although they can be read separately, there is a certain order in their sequence that makes sense to me and hopefully to the reader. The first, “Surprised and blessed”, seeks to explain the title and the role of Jesus in my reflections, and what it means to be blessed. The second and longest deals with the central truth of the gospel: in order to live the life of faith we have to embrace paradox and contradiction, and learn to live fruitfully with the questions. This is followed by the third chapter, which examines what the call to holiness means in the life of faith. The gospel promises us freedom. The fourth chapter looks at the meaning of freedom and is followed by a chapter that reflects on the indispensable character of discernment in Christian spirituality. Chapter Six focuses on the discovery that gratitude is indeed a blessing. Thereafter, I attempt to deal with what it means to live with “enough” in a world of want. This is followed by the unlikely theme of incongruity and laughter in the life of faith. It reverts back to the chapter on paradox – our beliefs, when laid bare by realities, are a kind of holy foolishness. We need to be able to chuckle at the unsettling and disruptive nature of our faith in