I approach spirituality as a social scientist who believes that whether or not God exists, spirituality is a deep part of human nature, shaped by natural selection and cultural evolution, and central to human flourishing and self-transcendence. – Jon Haidt
The above quote is a sentiment that I see more and more often these days. It is the discovery (by many) that spirituality/religion/transcendence is actually beneficial and even necessary for human well-being. On the one hand, it is a profound confession of someone who is waking up to a greater reality. On the other hand, it can also be a statement that is utterly empty and without meaning. I offer a simple observation: you cannot transcend yourself by your own bootstraps.
I recall the words of an old-timer in AA to a young man who was troubled about AA’s talk about “God” and a “Higher Power”: “Son, the only thing you need to know about God is that you’re not him.” It is, perhaps, not the only thing, but it’s certainly one of the first things.
A desire for transcendence can be quite vague. In a culture whose most fundamental drive is to commodify everything, our desire for transcendence leaves us as easy prey for those who would sell it to us. America has long been a hotbed for spiritual commodities. However, a spiritual commodity is not the same thing as God.
A fundamental question in the hunger for transcendence is fairly straightforward: Is there anything greater than myself? It is frequently the case that we settle for ourselves-with-a-compartmentalized-notion-of-transcendence. It’s not transcendence if it’s not bigger than you.
Of course, the difficult part of having a God who is other than a subset of my own head is that “I’m not Him.” It comes complete with all of the complications that normally accompany a relationship. It is little wonder that people are sometimes hesitant about such a thing.
In the course of my life, I have felt particularly blessed when that hesitancy has brought me to a full stop. Consider this wonderful paragraph from Archimandrite Maximus Constas’ The Art of Seeing:
Paradox and contradiction seem like negative values, they make us uncomfortable. But this is precisely the point: only things that contradict the mind are real, there is no contradiction in what is imaginary. The exertion of human rationality to vitiate paradox, to suppress contradiction, is ultimately an exercise in self-delusion. It is the failure of true attention, the refusal to experience a change of mind. In the classical aesthetic tradition, harmony in music and symmetry in the visual arts were considered the primary characteristics of the beautiful. But this view did not go unchallenged, and later thinkers maintained that these qualities were attractive chiefly to souls mired in sensuality, who are disturbed by and so avoid dissonance and contradiction. Freedom from the tyranny of the senses, however, does not mean that our aim is a kind of detached, distanced looking, for this would be to commit the error of Zacchaeus (Lk. 19:1-11), who wanted to see Jesus without being seen by him.
“Contradiction” is an interesting way of thinking about our hesitancy regarding God. Some have observed that there is a “bulwark of unbelief” in our contemporary world (cf. Joseph Minich in Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age, 2023). This is to say that unbelief is the default position in a secular world. But, it is more than unbelief. There is a wall (bullwark) that seems to stand between the individual and belief in God. Some of described this as the “supernatural claims” of Christianity and belief in God.
Well, of course. Transcendence inherently demands something greater than the modern rules of our understanding.
The contradiction that is bound up in our hesitancy is a signal that we have reached a significant boundary. Is there anything greater than myself? Can that which is greater than myself make demands that take me out of myself?
Moments of crisis, of brokenness even, and especially the threat of death and dying are probably the most common points of this hesitancy. These are places where the world that we have constructed is threatened with annihilation. We see that we live on a razor’s edge rather than a broad plain. That which is transcendent is, by definition, beyond us and greater than us. At such moments (particularly in death and dying), our whole existence is judged. Is this (what has been) all that is? Is there a meaning beyond the materiality of commerce?
I have been privileged in my ministry through the years to stand with hundreds of others as they encountered death (particularly in the time I served as a hospice chaplain). Conversations tended to reach beyond the trivial and the mundane. It is said that the most common topic in the last days of the dying center around family. It is in those relationships that the sacrament of the transcendent is most visible. I believe that this is true throughout every day of our lives – a truth and a reality that is obscured by our busy-ness, our distractions, and our mistaken assumption that such things can wait.
During my years as an Orthodox priest, I have had visitors to my parish who sheepishly told me that they had visited for a number of weeks but had never gotten out of their cars. They came to Church, but could not go in. When I’ve been told such a thing, I understood that I was speaking with someone who had, at last, found the courage to cross the threshold, to take a step beyond the bulwark of unbelief and to risk an encounter with God. They already understood that the consequences of such an encounter would change their lives. That this has been a not uncommon story across the years speaks volumes to me about the perception of Orthodox Christianity.
In Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver says this about Aslan (the Christ figure) when asked, ‘Is he safe?’:
“Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”
The great contradiction in Christianity is the claim that Jesus Christ was crucified, dead and buried, and has risen from the dead. It is a supernatural claim that echoes through every sentence of the New Testament. It was the contradiction voiced by every martyr standing before the flames, the sword, the lions, and every wicked form of torture. The tomb was empty. Christ rose from the dead…
“and was seen by Cephas [Peter], then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James [the Brother of the Lord], then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me [Paul] also, as by one born out of due time.” (1 Corinthians 15:5–8)
The instinct within us that hungers for the transcendent is not a fluke nor a mistake. It is a whisper (or a shout) that calls us to stand face-to-face before the contradiction of our age. It says, “You are known. You are loved. You have purpose. You have meaning. I’ve been waiting for you.”
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