Glorious Strangeness

The gospels immerse the reader in the strangeness of a relationship with Jesus where those who are gentle inherit the earth, enemies are embraced, strength resides in the broken places, second miles and second chances are the norm, and people live nothing that resembles an ordinary life. Christianity needs to be defamiliarized to make room for this strangeness. Much of what we think we know about the Christian faith we need to forget, or at least to set aside for now, so we can be converted by the glorious strangeness of the Godlife relationship.
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The spiritual quest is an adventure in the unseen world of the spirit. Moderns want to know more about God and to “think God’s thoughts after him.” Postmoderns suspect there is more God to get to know than moderns ever imagined, and they want to get to know that unseen, queer, and strange God.

Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong speaks for modern theologians when he claims, based on long-defunct physics, that “our world is not one of miracle and magic in which virgins give birth, wise men follow a wandering star, or resuscitated bodies walk out of a tomb three days after burial.”

Postmoderns reply, “Oh, but it is!” To say “theism” is to say “supernatural.” You can’t have one without the other.

…Christianity is a world to be explored, not a puzzle to be solved. If there is not dazzling mystery to the doctrines and dogmatics, they are not Christian doctrines and dogmatics. In the words of Gregory Wolfe, “Dogma are not so much efforts to give logical accounts of the mysteries of revelation as they are a process of creating a tabernacle for the shining mysteries within.