Children are excellent at opening boxes. They approach them with great expectancy. There is no inhibition to experiencing new things. Perhaps this is why scripture speaks so gently and reverently about children. They not only accept new things, but also anticipate them. Brennan Manning, in The Ragamuffin Gospel, addresses our inner child and its former openness to new things: “When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments, and the surprises of the Spirit.”[1] Contrary to this tendency, he asserts, “If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own.”[2] How wonderful it would be if we approached our theological boxes as children do, opening them with excitement and without hesitation.
If I were to paraphrase Jesus’ words to the religious leaders of his time, it would be this: “Think outside the box.” This message permeated his words to those who were convinced they knew the law, for they were also ignorant of it. If we think we absolutely understand, we probably do not! The most enjoyable thing granted to us is the permission to think creatively, imaginatively, spontaneously, strangely, and outside of the box.
As a child I delighted in the story of Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), a German mathematician, who as a youngster supposedly got into trouble with his teacher. He was held after school and, as punishment, was told to add all the numbers from one to one hundred. After a few seconds of pondering, he blurted out, “Five thousand and fifty!” The teacher, in doubt, proceeded to take quite some time to add up the numbers himself. Much to his amazement, he discovered the student was correct. He asked, “How did you do that?” The student, thinking outside the box, was sure that there was more than one way to solve the problem. He realized that the first and last numbers in the sequence added up to 101. He then realized that the second and next to the last numbers also added up to 101. There were fifty such pairs. Hence, his quick response of 5,050! Who taught whom in this scenario? Whose box was opening?
I doubt there are many religious peoples out there who enjoy Richard Dawkins (a very vocal atheist) as much as I do. Granted, I have to overlook what I think are illogicalities and contradictions, but his ability to poke fun at the pitfalls of religion is much needed. It would behoove us all to have a sense of humor about some of the absurd things we believe and do. He and I do not end up at the same place, but he offers a valuable look at the humanness of religions: our rigid boxes.
My rigid box experienced a crack soon after my mother’s death. During that time, I received little to no recognition of my mother’s death from the Christian community I was a part of. No cards. No flowers. There was a rare, “Hey I heard your mother died. Sorry.” I must admit that I was quite offended by my Christian brothers and sisters. I rationalized that I was making too much of it and shrugged it off. That is until I received a dissonant phone call after returning to work. It was a gentleman I had become acquainted with while doing some computer programming. He is a Buddhist.
He asked, “What has happened?”
I replied, “What are you talking about?”
“Something has happened. I haven’t been able to get you off my mind this whole last week. What has happened?”
I shut my office door and broke into tears. I told my friend of my mother’s death. He offered consoling thoughts and caring words. After I got off the phone I sat pondering the beautiful dissonance of that conversation. It was dissonant because it was so far out of my Christian experience. It was beautiful because, unlike the silence of my Christian associates, it possessed harmonics of love and concern. My friend helped to crack open my box that day. He heard what a know-it-all faith had failed to hear. He was listening while others were not.
Are there limits to such an open box? Yes. Our neurophysiology does not welcome change. John Cobb, Jr. explains that our “bondage to the past and conformity to human expectations have inhibited (our) response to new possibilities of growth and service.”[3] Change can be painful. Avoiding such pain is a natural response. Sometimes it is easier to sink our heads into the sand than to go through the pain and labor of thinking outside our comfort zones. We tend to prefer sand in our nostrils to fresh air in our heads.
If we believe we have an adequate understanding of the meaning of life and the cosmos, then we comfortably reside in small and tightly sealed boxes. However, there is too much mystery in life to settle for such encasements. Our boxes not only keep out the mystery, but the grace as well. Remember the manhole cover question in the post titled, “I See It All?” What if the manhole cover question was, “What does a child of God look like?” or “Who will fall through the hole into the great abyss called Hell?” Our round/circular theologies, with right-angled ledges may in fact keep us out of such an abyss, but they may also be false exclusionary criteria! Who besides God knows what other shapes and ledges will suffice. After all, do we truly know what grace looks like? Perhaps it is those of us who are convinced we do not need grace (or the ledge) that will fall through, regardless of the symmetry or perfection of our lives and theology.
If we move out of one box only to find ourselves in yet another box, the best choice is to open up and move yet again. The beautiful thing is that when one box opens, others will as well: “When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.”[4] Look for the violets. They are bursting open all around us! Join them. Open up and bloom! It is a call to process.
-Sam Augsburger
[1] Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel (Sisters: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2000), 64.
[2] Ibid., 65.
[3] Cobb, God and the World, 62.
[4] Farkas Bolyai in Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, 92.
