I recently came across a commentary on the life of influential mystic and author Evelyn Underhill in which the author suggested that central to her thought and writing were two questions: who is God, and who am I.
Most of Syzygy’s readers will know God… to a certain extent. We will know about God, have our understanding of the Trinity honed in good churches or Bible Colleges, we will have a personal relationship with God, and probably a sense of calling to what we are doing now. Though none of us can say we really know God. What mortal soul can truly plumb the depths of the infinite Deity? We can only know what God graciously self-reveals.
We will probably know ourselves well. We may have done Belbin, MBTI, Enneagram, Birkin and many other self-awareness exercises. Hopefully we know ourselves well enough to tell which of our buttons are being pushed, and emotionally intelligent enough to respond in a measured and godly way when under pressure. Yet few of us can truly know ourselves – we are so complex that when we think we know ourselves, we probably don’t.
Philosophers have spent lifetimes trying to answer these questions, but with respect to both them and Mrs Underhill, those two questions only lay the foundations on which a third question rests. This question is “Who are we?” Who are God and I together, or – even better – who are God and our community, team, or family together?
We have blogged before on the concept of symbiosis, to illustrate the Pauline doctrine of Christ in me/I am in Christ(Colossians 1:27/2 Corinthians 5:17). But what does it really look like for two beings, one eternal and omnipotent, and one transient and feeble, to combine in one frail body with the result that glory is brought to the One without extinguishing the individuality of the other? This, surely, is the big conundrum for all of us in mission: how can we become so united with God that we are transformed sufficiently for the outcome to be striking to those we minister to? How does ‘our’ ministry become God’s ministry through us? How are we involved without interfering?
We see glimpses of such transformation in the lives of some of the Apostles, or later saints like Francis, or maybe even contemporaries like Mother Teresa. What they show us is how to walk away from all worldly attractions so that we are truly free to abandon ourselves to the Lord. As we do so, we are filled with him in a way that we cannot be when we keep our hands full.
Or to rephrase that in a more contemporary way: how can we live in such a countercultural way that those around us find their preconceptions about life and Christianity so undermined that they have to find out more about what motivates us. Perhaps that is the key to 21st century mission: not changing the message but changing the messenger.
