Religion

Surprised by Joy*

One of my favorite CS Lewis quotes is about the ever-so-mysterious concept of truth: "If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

I believe everyone in this world is searching for an absolute truth to believe in and hold on to. I am a scientist, but there is nothing "true" in science - when I was a kid, Pluto was a planet and no one ever thought that would change. Science at its roots demands a natural cause for everything. It continually questions and experiments and revises and re-explores until an absolute truth can be found.

But there are no, there can be no, "truths" in science - because Truth is not a theorem or an idea or an explanation: Truth is a Person. Truth is not something that can be taught in textbooks or found in a petri dish, because Truth requires an intimate relationship with Someone. There is only one Thing is this whole existence that is changeless and absolute, and that is the Person who once, 2000 years ago, proclaimed Himself to be Truth.

I believe that, because we as humans are created in the image and likeness of God, we cannot help but try to form weak shadows of truth. And, as the aforementioned quote intimates, we hold onto these mediocre fashionings of what we imagine to be truth, and try to use them to make ourselves happy, only to end up in despair and confusion.

Sometimes we experience things in our earthly lives that are so beautiful, so wholesome, so magical and transcendent that we feel it must be a signpost on a road leading to an as yet unknown but truly glorious experience. Lewis said it best:

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." - The Weight of Glory 

"If I find in myself a longing which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." - Mere Christianity

We are now in the Nativity Fast, the season of the Incarnation of our Lord, a season of joy - of experiencing true joy. I believe the only way we can experience true Joy, and here I am referring to "joy" as one of the gifts of the Spirit, is by first experiencing, or at least accepting and resolving to live by, Truth. When we realize that living by Truth is the only path by which to have a real life - only then can we finally begin to experience true Joy. When we stand before Christ, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, then everything else falls away, everything we have been filling our lives with to try to find happiness just disintegrates into dust. And only then, when we let go of petty shadows of happiness, can we be surprised by Joy.*

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*"Surprised by Joy" is the title of CS Lewis' autobiography, chronicling his conversion to Theism.

PS - I realize this is one of my more esoteric posts...I promise it won't happen again.