(no subject)
an excerpt from blue like jazz by donald miller:
i read a book a long time ago about mother teresa. somebody in the book asked her how she summoned the strength to love so many people. she said she loved people because they are Jesus, each one of the is Jesus, and this is true because it says so in the Bible. and it is also true that this idea contradicts the facts of reality: everybody can't be Jesus. there are many ideas within christian spirituality that contradict the facts of reality as i understand them. a statement like this offends some christians because they believe if aspects of their faith do not obey the facts of reality, they are not true. but i think there are all sorts of things our hearts believe that don't make any sense to our heads. love, for instance; we believe in love. beauty. Jesus as God.
it comforts me to think that if we are created beings, the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. it would have to be greater than the facts of our reality, and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality, that it would contradict reason. but reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality, or it would not be reasonable.
when we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools with which to understand. if we could, God would not inspire awe. eternity, for example, is not something the human mind can understand. we may be able to wrap our heads around living forever (and we can do this only because none of us has experienced death), but can we understand what it means to have never been born? i only say this to illustrate that we, as christians, believe things we cannot explain. and so does everybody else.
so i pretty much finished this book. i liked it alot. if you wanna read the first chapter, click here. and if you want to borrow this book from me, i will gladly lend it to you, if you will surely not forget to return it to me :)