Mirror of the Light, Lead Me Out of the Darkness
Dear beloved of God, let me return to my own personal story that brought me to this place and out of that. It was a combination of revelations, single moment of sudden awareness, but also a slow unravelling of certainties and their premises. In this evolution, I took on Paulus’s words anew as not contradictory, as I had hubristically concluded in youth, but lifelines misunderstood in my imperfection.
Agnosticism, first accepted as an honest sense-based review of the material world, becomes a set of blinders and armour against the ferocity of all the unanswered questions which cannot actually be answered by the material alone. The armour is made of cardboard however, and the blinders are merely sunglasses. What if the very thing I avoided, faith, was the key to understanding the material and our place in it? Would I not have been trapped by the perspective?
I had become practised in destroying arguments and fighting with words in logic. I had also become practised in another talent, one taught by my preacher father but I put to even greater use: that of dropping presumptions of my own in order to better understand the positions of others. I used this special ability to more effectively attack these positions, because the scepticism could be turned back on again at any time, and I could easily pick my presumptions and biases back up again afterwards.
Paulus’s journey became a mirror held up to my own: a man who had once been consumed by his beliefs, only to find himself transformed by an absolute encounter with the true Divine. When I applied my special talent here in dropping my presumptions, what I came to find was a metaphysical narrative which explained the phenomena of reality better than any other. It was like putting on the old glasses and seeing reality as it was for the first time since I was a child. I have since had many other confirmations. When I reached back for scepticism (along with the ‘blinders’ of material explanations for things in all their cardboardy protection) I found it now cut deeply and forever on this side, on Paulus’s own. All the logic pointed this way, and it became my task to explain it in language the secular thinkers could comprehend, which is how Resurrexit Spiritus came about.
His beauteous words spoke of redemption not through resignation, but of progress in honour to the only Perfection, in submission to the greatest Goodness. Paulus offered a way to live through the pain or any doubt, and pointed to the path that was beyond doubt. Paulus showed how all could speak directly with Him. In Romans 8:35-39, he writes, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” This is not a rhetorical question. It is literal. There is no vulnerability for Paulus here. Paulus continued, “shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
It’s easy to commiserate with Paulus’s journey in many ways, reflecting the experience of us Christians born again to the Spirit. The initial rejection, the sudden bursts of revelatory enlightenment, the gradual as greater recognitions, and then the submission to truth. Paulus was a very well educated man along the traditions of multiple cultures, both Hellenic and Pharisaic at least, and this is plainly present in the language he used. Such a mastery is not easily won even accorded access to the appropriate education. He was educated and critical, as well he was won over in faith.
There was nothing on earth or heaven that could have changed Paulus’s undying faith, beyond resolute and firm. He was chosen for his abilities, tenacity, and care with which he plumbed the depths granted, to be then granted more as he was ready for it. Jesus’s power unlocked to him, and was gifted. Our humanity demands and our minds seek meaning correctly because it is there awaiting us. Paulus’s way of living offers a path to find purpose beyond the mundane in ceaseless connection changing even the routine into endless devotion. This is not about what you or I want or anyone else wants, it’s about what you, I, and everyone else needs.
Paulus confirms this by answering his above question, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Perfectly so. Be blessed.