Symbol and Reality

Recently, out church has begun a study of Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. For those of you out there who have never read it, it is a book that deserves every ounce of the praise that has been heaped upon it over the years. Having read very few of Foster's other books, this study immediately inspired me to purchase another, simply titled Prayer, which is every bit as good as the other. Amidst the wealth of insights provided by these works, one single point seems to jump out at me time and time again, an insight into one of the prime downfalls of my spiritual life. It is this: Often I spend too much time getting to know things about God rather than actually getting to know Him. I write this in the belief that I am not alone in this failing.

By nature, I am a man of words and thoughts. I enjoy few things more than a good idea properly defenced, and take an almost visceral pleasure in friendly discourse and reasoned debate especially as it applies to Theology and Scripture. "What's wrong with that?" you might ask, and the obvious answer is nothing. It is good to care about the nature of God, the Universe and Mankind. It is good to discuss spiritual things in an intellectually rigorous fashion. And yet there is a danger here, for it is far too easy to stop at the level of the discussion itself, and to confuse the concept with the reality.

As we humans think, we construct words to serve as pictures for what we are discussing. The word "bread" represents a oblong chunk of baked wheat and yeast. The word "chicken" represents a common barnyard fowl used as food. This becomes even more necessary in the sciences, for here many of the realities are so small or so far away that direct experiential knowledge is impossible. After all, who is able to see a "quark," or "neutrino", who is able to look up from beneath the rings of Saturn or swim in the fiery surface of the Sun? For these, the symbol itself may be the closest we can draw to the reality. When we reach the realm of Theology, however, this progression quickly becomes dangerous, for as the hymn says God is "Immortal," and "Invisible," and this invisibility can induce us to unconsiously place him in the same category as subatomic particles. We reason that because his attributes make him unperceivable by our own efforts, then the best we can do is discuss him in the symbolic abstract. This is a lie.

Our Creator is not an inanimate thing, nor a mere concept; He is a person. (Three Persons in One Being to be precise) Even more than this, he wants to communicate with and relate to us. In the words of Francis Sheaffer, "He is there and He is not silent." Beyond all of our symbols is a Reality that wishes us to be filled with himself in a present commmunion, and all of our discussions about God, all of our long treatises on the Incarnation and the Trinity avail us nothing if they do not assist us, or pave the way for others, to enter this present experiential relationship of intimate communion. It is this truth that Foster's works have reimpressed on me, for in the realm of experiential Christianity, he stands as a giant in the faith.

It is easy to fall back. It is easy to leave that place of divine presence and power and settle again for the concepts we have made to speak of Him. It is easy, in short, to "have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof." And yet the results are worth the effort. What Physicist would not give anything to be able to directly perceive the subatomic world he has so long studied? What astronomer would not sell all her goods to stand for one hour on an alien world, basking in the light of a star that until then she has only seen as a faint dot of light? These may be impossible wishes for the scientists, but the Christian is in a different position. He has been invited to taste and see the Divine Subject of his studies, invited to a real mystical communion with the life of the Trinity that he has so painstakingly defined. In the end, this is why we were created, this is what our life is for and about, yet so often we stand in our own way.