Fan of simplicity

I'm a tough guy when it comes to simplicity. Some of my questions (about God, for instance) are indeed simple, although I would rather say rude, rough. How can God be so silent today, while throughout the Bible He appears so often as a speaking God? Is the sky closed or open for the prayers of the saints? What about my prayers?

Todd Agnew may have the Better Questions but I may have the ruder ones. On the other hand: most of my questions are rather complex. Answers that sound too straightforward usually leave me in the cold. I mean - even C.S. Lewis could not really deal with them (of course, that was in a discussion with a dead man and his books - he was in a disadvantageous position to discuss with me). I tried philosophers - Christian and non-Christian ones. And theologians - those I sometimes found least of all equipped for answering rude questions (that is not to say a bad word about Oxford-educated theologian-singer Vicky Beeching of course). What about Rebecca?

In her comments on the song Thank You, on the inlay of her If I Had One Chance To Tell You Something album, Rebecca wrote:

I’m a fan of simplicity.
I think our lives can easily get too complex.

So if there would be anyone who wouldn't agree with RSJ anytime soon, I think it would have to be me. Things are not simple with me, they are complex. And when they look like being simple, they are in reality rather rude. So what attracts me to this kind of simplicity?

Amidst of a chunk of books about philosophy I keep within reach, there is also "40 Days with God" and "40 More days with God" and some other books like that. These are basically books for Christian teenagers (and I'm no teenager). Recently on the rsjames site's news page I read two new articles from Rebecca, Oct 30 and 31: "DON’T BE A PRISONER OF UNFORGIVENESS!" and "LET GOD EMPOWER YOUR LIFE THIS WEEK!". What strikes me - for instance in the first story, about a friend who struggled with not being able to forgive someone - is not so much the problem, nor the (possible) answer, but the way between in:

Her complete healing didn’t happen overnight because she was dealing with years of deep pain. But gradually she felt the burden of unforgiveness lift!

Notice the exclamation mark at the end. Why being enthusiastic about an arduous healing from pain? After all, it still means a lot of pain, isn't it? It becomes even worse when Rebecca adds:

You will never be able to 'undo' the hurts or the wounds that others have willingly or unwillingly inflicted upon you.

One could misunderstand these words - but only if you generalize, or put too strict criteria upon another one's compassion. After all, we are not appointed and often little qualified to judge about how exactly someone approaches us when we suffer; while we suffer, we're usually little qualified to make proper judgements. But we do need each other - and that truth is quite simple in nature. There is no verb for 'I-need-someone-who-fully-understands-everything-about-my-pain'. When we suffer, life is by definition 'complex' in a sense, hence everything outside becomes 'too simple' in a sense. Even God becomes 'too simple' then. But maybe He should. Could simplicity be an inevitable part of the answer?

In reality, God can hardly be simple - he is the Extremely Complex One. He is ubiquitous - just try to understand that, then we will talk further about His next complexity. The Judeo-Christian God is all too clearly a lot more complex than the kind of god or gods we observe in many other religions. Most Christianity-unfriendly people won't easily admit it, but in reality, the plan from Genesis to Revelation, or even just up to Malachi (the Old Testament on its own) is complex enough, and has (obviously) been fascinating enough to be the source for an innumerable amount of commentaries, historical exegesis, literature studies, sociological studies, archeological reports and studies and so on. No other religion comes even nearby when it comes to the amount of intellectual attention attracted to it.

Then how can such a God become 'simple' to us? Would the suffering do this? Not necessarily. Will thinking deeply about the problem of pain do it? I doubt it. Suffering is a domain full of complexities - in psychology, someone can 'have a complex'. When you concentrate on that, it is almost like concentrating on the most complex problems of our world, meaning. You will soon find that you are ignoring all the signs that point to relief - there are too many pictures in front of you. 'Pessimism' is the name we give to this kind of approach. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to argue that the more trouble you're in, the more 'simplicity' you need. It seems that We there is no way out through complexity.

That is not to say that complexity must be avoided or ignored at all cost. I think it is more a matter of knowing the priorities of life. More complexity means moving more and more towards the edges of life. You take the risk of completely missing the nucleus. You need to get back to your senses. That is, back to the One who makes sense - in fact who created all sense in the first place. The whole journey of the Israelites is much different from all other religions not because of a different knowledge, deeper wisdom, more courage and heroism, more or better laws, or even more love for that matter - but because of the discovery, and fundamental acceptance, of the fact that sense must be derived from the One source, the Only God, the Creator of heaven, earth and all living beings. This is the Source which, time and time again, 'saddles us up' with a kind of fundamental simplicity behind all complexities. It is the soul of monotheism if you want. There may be a million answers to the best questions and none of these necessarily being unimportant, but there is only one real Source where answers ultimately abide.

Wasn't it the great apostle Paul who wrote down one of the most 'simplistic' phrases ever? "The message of the cross is ... to us who are being saved ... the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18, NIV). The cross? The cross of Jesus is no symbol of success or spiritual elevation, it is suffering and pain, it is shame, it means scandal (Jesus was crucified with a couple of murderers, real criminals). Which is why the apostle admits in the very same verse that this cross also means "foolishness to those who are perishing", that is: to the world. I think we can hardly find more 'simplicity' than here in these words. It doesn't really mean anything 'simplistic' - it may only look like that if we don't understand the Source of this wisdom, if we are missing the capacity to put our hope and trust in a God who is complex beyond our imagination.

Don't understand God: hope upon Him. That is probably where we must start. That is what we basically do with regard to friends too, when we are in trouble. We usually won't start by measuring their psychological stability or things like that - we just hope they'll be here when we need them. 'Need' is something very simple. 'Help' (support) is, therefore, necessarily a matter of simplicity too. Nothing on earth is simple in itself, and even God looks 'complex' in Christian religion (not all God's fault by the way). But it is in our hearts that we somehow realize that when God's heart speaks, the message tends to have a 'simple' nucleus. Just like a friend, even though he might have three doctors titles, will just be 'friend', not 'professor', when you are in need. God emits Love in the very first place, and that is what basically attracts us as Christians.

Rebecca's next short message: "Let God empower your life this week", is another example of this principle. After telling about a windsurfing experience in Australia, Rebecca concludes:

Give it all you’ve got this week - read the Bible daily for instruction, apply what you’ve read with prayer, and continually ask God for strength in all your efforts - in short - let the power of God's presence in your life propel you into His very best for you!

Having thought it through a little bit, I think it has indeed begun to dawn on me. It appears to me that Rebecca usually has the focus less on 'the solution' and more on the way towards it. In other words: not so much the 'all your problems are solved in Christ' kind of message (although I don't want to criticize solution-mindedness in itself); more the 'let us go to God with all these problems' message. I guess this is also the reason why an RSJ song usually sounds like a Psalm, or words of Jesus - where else to go for better wordings? Or King Solomon for that matter, because with all his knowledge and wisdom, he too ended up in a 'improved' kind of knowledge - a more 'simple' one:

Don't wish for a better day
Be glad and use the one you're in

(Not a quote from Ecclesiastes 12:13 but from RSJ 2:07 - the 7th song from the God album, That's What Matters).

Inwardly, I may not always like this. Sometimes, deep inside, I wished someone would come one day and tell me that my problems are really over (and then shows me exactly 'how to feel that' of course). Wouldn't that be the real 'simple' way out? There must be - there should be a trick. In reality, I don't know for how many others the trick exists and works, but for me it did not, it does not, not yet, and probably never during this life - not that kind of trick anyway. That's why the 'your problems are solved in Christ' message is not simple for many of us, but rather complex: it confuses. The 'simplicity' of Rebecca appears after all to be the more real-life kind of simplicity. It may sometimes sound like 'easy said', but isn't that always the case when you start to consider all the ins and outs of any good advise? Remember the complexity of all the investigations that have been done about the Bible: that is true - but is the nucleus of Christianity in these things? Or is the nucleus in the fact that NOW, today, and tomorrow, always I can fall to my knees and adore God, call Him my God, even my Friend? And if I don't feel too much this Friendship - I keep asking him all the time, day after day. I don't let Him go.

So, considering it all, I decided I could go for it yet another week, and then probably yet another week, and then ... we'll see.

Keep talking, Rebecca. Because you're authentic, you're being listened to - it's that simple.

 

Update Dec 16, 2007: With regard to the subject of this posting, check out the video No Secrets: Who can you trust? on the rsjchannel. Notice the moment of silence - hesitation - when questioned about the problems of our generation: no easy-go answers here. (You may also like to check the intro to this video: the No Secrets Biography).