The Unknowable Becomes Known

In 1995 the pop singer Joan Osborne released a single in which she wondered, “What if God was one of us?” Many Christians reacted to the song with cynicism, or even decried it as blasphemy. While, based on the lyrics, both of those reactions are reasonable, it is also possible to hear these lyrics, sung to a plaintive melody, as an honest question from someone without any sense of who God might be, just a sense that God might be.

While the percentage of Americans who hold traditional Christian beliefs continues to decline, nearly 90% of Americans say they believe in God. For many of these people (including, unfortunately, many in the church – but that is a subject for another day!), God is often, to use the words of St. Anselm in his famous ontological proof of God’s existence, no more than, “that of which nothing greater can be conceived.” In other words, God exists, but is largely unknowable.

At Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation – the moment in time that the God who is, in a phrase made popular by several twentieth-century theologians described as neo-Orthodox, “Wholly Other,” took on the frailty of human existence. Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of John 1:14, writes, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” The God so many people faintly intuit has come among us. The answer to Joan Osborne’s question is simply, “In Jesus, God has become one of us.”

The challenge, however, is sharing this good news with people who are longing for God yet have, to some degree, rejected Christianity. A revealing moment in “One of Us” comes in verse two, when the singer asks, “would you want to see [God’s face] if, seeing meant / That you would have to believe in things like heaven / And in Jesus and the saints, and all the prophets?” Once something has been rejected, it is often hard, on multiple levels, to come back. On this, I’m reminded of something that the twentieth-century French mystic Simone Weil wrote concerning Jesus as “the Truth.” She writes, “If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.”

It could be that our best hope for helping our friends and neighbors come into a relationship with God is learning to accompany them on a journey toward the reality of the God that they almost certainly intuit, yet often dismiss as unknowable, and definitely not like the God in whom they think Christians believe.

This Christmas, may we each rediscover the scandal of the unknowable God becoming known. Let us heed the exhortation of Charles Wesley in his great hymn: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the Incarnate Deity!” As we do, let us also be mindful of our friends and neighbors (and even enemies!) who have a sense God’s existence, and even a longing to know God, yet have rejected what they think of as Christianity. What would it look like to come alongside these dear divine image-bearers for whom Christ was pleased to die, accompanying them on a journey toward this God they long for, trusting that, eventually, they will fall into the arms of Jesus, as the God who became one of us?

Peace,

Chris