25th
A Confession of a Functional Christian Gnostic
I have a confession: I don’t know what to do with my humanity. The doctrine of original sin is so central to how I reflect on my identity that the possibility of the doctrine of original righteousness is beyond my grasp. The existence of suffering in the world also creates some pretty big problems for me. I have over-identified Christ with His divinity and downplayed His humanity. Thinking that “spiritual” is a concept only relating to things that are divine, I’ve missed out on what’s actually quite “spiritual” about the gift of my humanity. Functionally, I’m a Christian Gnostic.
Gnositicism was an ancient Near Eastern philosophy that translated Platonic dualism. The early Gnostics rejected all things material and physical as inferior, determining that only the heavenly or spiritual reality was good – more than just good, but true. Technically, Gnosticism wasn’t anti-humanity but pro-knowledge (to the extent that knowledge was spiritualized) and, therefore, was anti-material.
The Gospel of John speaks into an environment of pre-Gnosticism. John’s first chapter is loaded with statements that trigger assaults on what was becoming the Gnostic heresy. John’s first chapter is where we find some of the richest biblical material to help understand the incarnation of God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.” (John 1:1, 14a)
John 1:1 actually is an echo of Genesis 1:1 that also starts with the exact same phrase, “In the beginning …” What are the implications of this echo? Why would John reference the creation narrative as he’s introducing incarnational theology?
My understanding is that the Incarnation is a restoration of creation. Genesis 1:27 reads, “So God created human beings in God’s own image,” and verse 31 concludes, “God saw all that God had made, and it was very good” (emphasis mine). Of course, this statement was made before sin entered human reality. But still, humanity, very good? Seriously? I have a hard time seeing anything “very good” in my humanity. The world is full of real suffering, pain, oppression and exploitation – is that fruit of a “very good” humanity?
I think what John is pointing us to is a recovery of goodness in creation. Humanity in its best and purest sense, before sin was introduced, embodied what Reinhold Niebuhr popularized as original righteousness – not just innocence, but faithfulness in relationship to God. Of course, the introduction of sin defiled our original righteousness and set us spinning out of control. The woundedness in our humanity needed redemption, and God’s Incarnation through Christ was the possibility of that redemption.
When God became human, the goodness in humanity was restored in Christ, and with the possibility of restoration came the hope for redemption.
Christ submitted to the sacrament of baptism (John 1:29-34), not just to locate His identity in the community of faith, but also to recover original righteousness: “It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).
From His baptism, we see Christ move toward community. Immediately after the baptism of Jesus, John recounts the legitimate human need for relationships experienced by Christ. Jesus, the source and essence of love, needed relationships. Andrew, Simon, Philip and Nathanael (John 1:35-51) responded to this extension of love by becoming the first disciples. Love by its utter nature is self-giving; it cannot objectify its recipient. Love centers the other, making the object of its love the subject, the focus. Love – one of the ways we understand God (“God is love,” 1 John 4:8) – became embodied in humanity and was incarnated in Christ.
The rest of John continues to point to the humanity of Christ by illustrating things like Christ’s need for human relationships and community; Jesus’ affirmation for human celebration and appetites at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-12); the recognition of passion and anger as genuine human expression when Christ made a whip and cleared the Temple in Jerusalem (John 2:13-17); and when Jesus faced the limitations of His humanity by experiencing fatigue and thirst, “tired as He was from the journey” at a well in Samaria (John 4:1-26). Thirst in this early reference foreshadows the thirst Christ experienced as He suffered on the cross (John 19). These glimpses of Christ’s embodiment are celebrations of His humanity, and they become graces to us.
Understanding the humanity of Christ helps me to embrace my own humanity. Seeing Jesus validate things that don’t seem divine becomes an invitation for me to grasp the implications of the Incarnation. I’m coming to understand that “spiritual” doesn’t merely mean divine, but in some ways becomes the hinge between what is human and divine – and sometimes it’s expressed in very physical things. We have “spiritual” experiences like love and fear, hope and sorrow – these are indisputably human experiences, yet there is something sacred and mystical in them.
Exploring what John’s gospel has to say about the theology of the Incarnation has helped me understand how suffering is truly a spiritual experience.
Suffering is an invitation to unravel my functional Christian Gnosticism. Suffering as a human experience provokes a re-reading of my incarnational theology – in a theological recovery that affirms real human suffering as a spiritual experience and an invitation to come to terms with the gift that my humanity truly is.
In our community we have named “Suffering” as one of our nine Lifestyle Celebrations, or core values. It is central to our collective vocational identity and guides our intentional spirituality. Why did we choose “Suffering”? How can we call “Suffering” a “celebration”?
First in humility and solidarity with our friends who are poor, we attempt to embrace their suffering. We consider it a gift to suffer with those who are exploited, repressed, oppressed and marginalized. We acknowledge our shared human experience and recognize that suffering is one place where we can find common ground. Love compels us to suffer with and for our friends.
Second, we realize that standing for righteousness and justice invites persecution. We set ourselves up to be assaulted by those who put their own security, comfort, survival, need to control and “rights” to consume above those of the rest of humanity. We invite suffering in the naming of the structural sins of the empire, calling unaccountable democracy and capitalism to account, and insisting on the affirmation of human dignity for all.
Third, in our love for God we are invited into the suffering in God’s heart, accepting the consequences of that as a gift and a grace. We seek the courage to face the pain of God for a world that exploits the vulnerable by trafficking human beings and commodifying their sexuality. We pray for the ability to bear witness to hope in hopeless neighborhoods, believing that what has stolen their hope breaks God’s heart. We attest to the possibility of a good God in lives that have legitimate reasons to question God’s goodness – recognizing that these realities are an assault on the character of our God who promises justice, defense, provision and restoration for the oppressed. God’s heart certainly breaks throughout the world today. We locate ourselves in these broken parts of God’s heart, hoping that our service and submission are healing balm to these pains.
These activities are not merely forms of activism or social work, but thoughtful movements against functional Christian Gnosticism. They have become a form of prayer in service. In our community’s engagement of human suffering, we discover the relevance of God’s suffering on the cross. In our relationships among friends who are oppressed, we discover that establishing justice is something divine and human – spiritual.
In these forms of worship, the sinfulness and woundedness of my humanity are validated as real opportunities to practice the restoration of creation in my life. Christ affirms this by embodying humanity and showing me the way. And his way goes so far as to embrace suffering, embracing even the horrors of the cross. In the gift of the cross and the crucified God, those who still suffer today are given the possibility of restoration and redemption.
In its truest sense, celebrating suffering is not only a divine grace or a sacred mystery of our faith. It’s a real human need for very human people – essentially, it’s discovering what’s “very good” about our spirituality.
