The following is a summary of a very interesting realization I came to while listening to a friend of mine: God’s glory is a practical issue.

An important question for any culture: what are the abiding values among us? What do we work for? What do we sacrifice ourselves for? Countless societies have insisted upon religion as being able to reveal what is ultimately significant: “There’s glory out there! How you live now impacts eternity.” We are unable to appeal to this now.

Modern wisdom says “We don’t need God; we don’t even know if there is a God or not.” Implications? If there is no God, there are no moral absolutes, the earth will eventually burn up and all of human history will be utterly trivial- forgotten. It matters little whether one lives in kindness or violence- everything is weightless. It becomes impossible to even have any distinction between a life of glory and a life of froth.

To God be the glory- is this irrelevant? I would suggest that it is central to our society’s crisis. There is no way for us to decide what is of lasting worth; we’re caught up in a sea of hesitation. Humans yearn for glory and often live in increasing anxiety: “Do I matter to anyone? What have I really accomplished?” We are desperately afraid of inconsequentiality. This is the stuff of daily living- it can be seen everywhere, from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. Yet when we fail to live up to others’ standards or even our own, where do we look?

This is sucking the life out of us; we’re worried sick! And perhaps for good reason; the doctrine of hell has to do with being cast out, of Jesus saying: I never knew you. To be perpetually ignored- to be peripheral- there is no greater horror than that. We crave to be substantial, everlasting.

Have you ever stood before the mountains or the sea? Such bodies are so massive that one begins to feel, comparatively, quite small. Have you ever felt the glory of the sun? It is dazzling in its beauty, the source of light, inescapably hot and dangerous- present, yet somehow untouchable- humbling. A similar effect happens when our minds venture into the realm of God’s glory. He is holy, loving and strong beyond comparison. All other beauties are derived from him. Beside him all other wisdom is idiocy, all other goodness is filthy rags and wickedness, all other purities are squalor and all other grandeur is garbage- all the stars in the universe are like a dewdrop falling off a leaf.

Something profound happens when we cease to treat God lightly, when we wake up to reality and grasp the magnitude of who he is- what he did for us. We see the Son of Man lifted up- the quintessence- the full sun-blaze of glory. Never has there been such a fusion of justice and mercy; the explosion was so great that it shook the most mighty being in the universe. Jesus on the cross is at once formidable, intense, terrible and agonizing; the weight of sin, the wrath of God on his head! Eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani.

To lose a spouse or a mother or a son is an enormous loss; Christ’s was infinite. In the most ghastly yet radically real way, Jesus came to the place where he was without God. He got what we deserved; he was absolutely disregarded, overlooked. We know how much this hurts even in a social setting; the cosmic loneliness he faced was far greater- Christ the Outcast, our hells upon his back, piercing right into his heart where unfathomable joy once dwelled.

To meditate on this is to see that it is without a doubt the greatest thing about you. You are redeemed. In John 17 Jesus says that Jesus has given us the same glory that the Father gave him. 2 Corinthians boldly states that God has “made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” In Galatians 6 Paul exclaims: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The more we glorify God, the more we ourselves will encounter glory. We are awash in Christ’s glory; we now have before us the difficult journey of consciousness- of daily defying the world and taking in spiritual truths the way we would gulp down water in the heat of the desert.

I have gone on excursions to the river, stunting off rocks and laughing childishly in the middle of a water fight, constructing a makeshift shelter using tree limbs and a half-torn tarp, cooking rice and chicken in a huge pot and playing chess cross-legged in the sand. I have, in the midst of a dry spell, run after the fire truck with five gallon buckets in each hand, pushing for position among a desperate crowd, wrestling to get my share of water from a wildly gyrating hose, getting soaked and not minding at all.

I have observed an hour-long political argument in the street, being entertained by Dominican culture as neighbors hopped fences and came to screeching, dusty halts on their mopeds to join in the chaos, raising their arms and attempting to shout above everyone else- furiously pointing fingers and pacing forcefully up and down the street, grabbing friends and waving flags and even bringing plantains out of the kitchen to get their point across.

I have ventured to the coast and danced on the beach and- somehow- avoided a tornado that swept through La Vega, tearing off roofs and toppling trees, leaving the school stripped bare and forcing the community to come together. I have seen and done many things: this is what comes to mind as being immediately lucid; clear as the sun in the sky; concrete and sensible. Yet there is something more real behind it all, something more meaningful and true and silent, something of peace and love and great rest, something we were built to encounter.

Our inner eyes often fail us. Vision is physical; interpretation is spiritual. Perspective, in a sense, is reality. Circumstances are perhaps not as significant as our understanding of them. I do not say this in an attempt to dumb down suffering to a simple question of changing one’s point of view (whatever you believe, loss is painful) nor do I seek to assert that there is no Ultimate Reality. I simply wish to point out that Allah is just as real to the Muslim and Unity to the Buddhist and Jehovah to the Jew and Vishnu to the Hindu as Christ is to me.

Perspective is reality. Reality, in turn, is perspective. Relativism, though in its full-blown form can turn into an awful sort of superiority and contradiction, does have something to say. “From my perception, this is what seems to be. The blind men are feeling the elephant: some feel a trunk and others a tail; some a tusk and others a round, muscular leg, all of which are very real, yet all of which fall ultimately short. We can no more grasp the fullness of truth than a man can see the whole of a sphere at once.”

Now, what happens when the Elephant steps out of the unknown and speaks to us? What happens when the Author walks on stage and says: “this is what I meant by it all”? What happens when the Socratic Seminar is interrupted by a tide of sovereign truth? The claims of Jesus are so radical- so seemingly megalomaniacal- that it would literally take a life of miraculous fulfillment, perfect moral beauty, and victory over death to convince anyone that what he said was true. This, breathtakingly enough, is exactly the puzzle we find ourselves in. The Word became flesh- Logic revealed its design. Now it is our choice to decide which sort of reality we will live in: his or one of our own making.

God has died and made us perfect and holy, so that his very Spirit may take root inside. We have been completely freed. As Paul writes in Colossians: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” This is the larger, subtler, more solid certainty that I have felt to be, in a way, even more authentic than what is visible. This is the foundation that has begun to be poured within, replacing my old, weak structure. In all and through all, God’s glory literally does fill the earth, and surely my perception of Jesus does not capture the fullness of who he is. Yet I am grateful for the few glimpses he has given me of himself, for they have been sweeter than honey and fresher than the morning dew. What can I do but give thanks?

Recently I realized that I have encountered a sort of freedom here in Maria Auxiliadora, which in turn has flourished inside of me. I am not simply referring to the culture or the people or the experience- though all of that has played its part- I am talking about Yahweh. He is so big and real and pervasive- behind all this poverty there is peace and a deep, secret comfort so profound that it somehow causes men to sing for joy and women to welcome any and every stranger in for coffee.

Yahweh fills heaven and earth. He is both near and far away. He is working inside of us and outside of us; his Holy Spirit wells us like a spring of living water inside, yet at the same moment his Word is holding the cosmos together. He is boundless, unborn, undying, unchanging, immeasurable, invisible and infinite. All these negatives crash together to form the ultimate positive, for this same transcendent Deity who is beyond all understanding has made his home in us, revealing to us wondrous truth and liberty, such as we have never known.

I often have to slow down to see this. In the same way that a headache distracts me from doing my work on a physical level, so my ego distracts me from focusing on God at the spiritual level. C.S. Lewis puts it like this: “All your wishes and hopes for the day come rushing at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”

There are several things that I immediately feel when I find a silent place and welcome God to speak to me. First is satisfaction: it is accomplished. I can rest in the fact that he lived the life I could not live and died the death I should have died. Second is trust: he guided Joseph through what seemed like a series of losses and failures into a transformation of character and enormous blessing. All the harm the world means to do me, God means to use for his good purpose. Third is thankfulness: He has showered me with a rain of grace, though I am wicked. Fourth is humility: I can embrace him as my shield and refuge, reveling in bliss as my self shrinks and God begins to surround me. Such a feeling is adequately described in Habakkuk:

“The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on the heights.”

So, as events and feelings come and go, God continues to become my firmness and my center. Such belief leaks out into every area. Giving a drink to a young girl, scorned and looked upon as worthless- unable to speak- and watching her face light up with happiness; sitting wide-eyed and grateful at the table as Carolina recounts to me how Jesus has recently fueled in her a passion to seek after him; almost losing all the data on my external hard drive and reflecting on how attached I still am to “things”; studying John 15 with a friend, asking the big questions and being freshly inspired by Jesus’ love: however small these things may appear to the observer, they seem to have taken on a hidden significance. I imagine that one day we will, together united, all recount such things in paradise as wonderful tales- moments that impacted eternity- sharing endlessly with indelible excitement and great laughter.

A four-day trip to the coast made the Resurrection come close and become newly intertwined in my perceptions. I was struck by the incredible facets of who God is, who Jesus is and who I am in and through him. As the three of us walked along the beach, Darin drawing Trinity symbols in the sand and Tracy searching for sea shells to decorate her mirror, I came as I often do to a place of silent reflection.

It was Sunday- the day we look upon as having changed history forever- and as I watched the waves washing in I thought I caught hold of some image of hope, as if God were trying to say: there is tremendous potential, not only for you, but for all of creation. The gospel of Jesus is an event so big that our relation to it is inescapable; it is fitting that our understanding of the two great eras of humanity revolves around him, as his coming ushered in the beginning of a revolution; a rising crescendo of redemption, bringing us into a hot-from-the-oven, unpolluted glory. The gospel means that there is a new force at work, something wild is afoot and new possibilities have been awakened- the key to eternity has been revealed. In a catastrophic victory the door has been opened and spiritual saturation has begun.

Jesus, the Eternal Logos, Creator of all that is, the Kabod Yahweh, touched down and strode upon the waters, stronger than a titan yet gentle and controlled. Men saw in him a balance and moral magnificence that was unparalleled and unprecedented, eventually coming to see him as the Virtue. He drew in the sand, he ate, slept and breathed among us, he fished along our coasts and crossed the countryside, he ascended our mountains and walked among our gardens, enjoying his handiwork in the cool of evening.

We refused to accept his radical message, that he was the Source of all Prophets and the Author of Time, the Ultimate Judge and Forgiver of Sins. We spit on him and mocked him, we nailed him to the cross and as his body withered on a tree the universe held its breath as God gave up his last. Was he dead? Was he in revolt? It was terribly frightening, yet just as mind-blowing is what came to pass, recorded in Luke 24. He shows up again, in a mysterious an ecstatic series of encounters, displaying that something titanic had been accomplished- that the ominous sea we call death had been parted, and we are free to cross into life.

An inexpressible joy has dawned, eye-widening and awesome and all-encompassing; at the heart of reality we find love, and within that love, more power than we are capable of imagining. We are engulfed by grace, pervasive and inexorable, and as the worldly mist begins to clear, we see that the ground on which we stand is merely a desolate island surrounded by a river of mercy. A seed, a sort of yeast or salt, has been released- a new Kingdom and a new King, the Hero of Heroes gathering unto himself an army.

These realizations have impacted me in a strange way. The tests I face have not become smaller- children who live up in the hills on Maria Auxiliadora are still starving, my patience and trust is still being tried by fights and brokenness and disobedience and wrath that seem to be all around. Young women are still being lost in insecurity and unhealthy obsessions, young men are still falling into traps of pride, being taught that it is alright to mistreat and take advantage of others; disease and failure and destitution are as prevalent and ever and sometimes it seems like everything is barely hanging on by a thin, frail thread.

But somehow I have discovered a new blessedness; that beneath the dull surface lies color bursting at the seams and restoration upon the brink of explosion. Christ is so inconceivably big that everything seems to be covered by the shadow of his cross. He came and achieved the greatest coup of all time, binding evil and commencing a movement that will be the end of our suffering; his light is unshakable, and not even the darkness of hell can hold it back forever. When it breaks through, we shall see the fulfillment of all our deepest longings- that the Savior has broken in to rescue us, that Christ is Risen.