Mystery is an Embarrassment to the Modern Mind

Mysteries captivate our attention.  We stay up until the wee hours of the morning consumed by a page-turner which will not let us go. Television programs begin with a “hook” that compels the viewer to say “I’ve got to see what happens.”  Mystery is dependent upon an ending, a purpose, what the New Testament calls our telos. Telos is a Greek word to denote “meaning.”  Teleology is the study of finality.  How we get to our final destination answers the daily question, “Why should I get out of bed in the morning?”  But teleology forces us to consider ontology: the study of origins.  If there is an end, there must have been a beginning.  Here is mystery.  Where a story ends depends on how it begins.  Ontology and teleology depend on each other.  Our beginning and ending are inexorably linked.[2]

“In the beginning God created” establishes our link to mystery.  Mysteries may be solved by the end of the book or TV program.  But the ultimate answer to “Whodunit” is Who did it.  Mysteries will always be with us because mystery is built into reality.  Our world is premised on the unknown.  Creation is the first and continuing mystery.[3]

“She took of its fruit and ate”[4] extends our mystery to the grotesque.  Bent, gnarled, twisted, and ugly, humans will never run out of mysteries to solve.  The ugliness of sin begins in Genesis and runs right through us.  The mystery of creation now includes deformity.  Our ability to understand solutions to problems is skewed by our broken mirror Image.  Mystery is confounded by our duplicity.

So we are caught in the great in between: creation seems chaotic.  When we meet Frankenstein’s Monster or Dracula or Wells’ Beast Men we are repulsed.  We recoil.  At the same time we are drawn.  The mystery beckons us.  We run away by running forward.  We want to see but we cover our eyes.  We revel in the works of creation yet are shocked by its Eden ugliness.  Still, we want to know the mystery.

Mystery stories are a result of sin.  There is a need for One Mystery to solve the other.  The Mystery of salvation needed a human face.

“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”[5]

There is a current, cultural belief that because life is mysterious, nothing can be known for sure; we must not make authoritative comments about anything in life.  A general sense exists that justice is elusive.  No one is in control.  God’s providence (in evidence throughout the book of Dracula, for instance) is absent from our vocabulary.  What has replaced a personal, caring Sovereign?  With no ethical boundary, anti-heroes arise liberated from authority and morality.

Perhaps Flannery O’Connor’s comment, “mystery is an embarrassment to the modern mind,” comes closest to our understanding.  Using words like “infinite,” “mystery,” and “wonder,” Maria Spiropulu, a University of Chicago experimental physicist, says,

We are being totally surprised by what we observe in nature . . . something unknown that exerted a great gravitational force was keeping galaxies bound together . . . Scientists call it dark matter.  We can measure its presence but we can’t see or feel it . . . [it is] invisible . . . [string theory] could explain all the particles and forces we see…We don’t know whether it really works yet.  But it has this wonderful feature of unifying everything.[6]

Unity “assures the wise person that the universe is comprehensible, and thus encourages a search for its secrets.  Furthermore, creation supplies the principle of order that holds together the cosmic, political, and social fabric of the universe.”[7] Order, logic, energy, postulates, meaning, and morality exist because God Is.

Truth and mystery is a central component of God’s work.  “You cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” The creature cannot comprehend the wind’s origin or the intricacies of the human body.  Scripture plainly asks, “Who can straighten what he has made crooked?” and “Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its [‘what goes on under the sun’] meaning”.[8]

So people must take seriously God’s activity.  “It was your own eyes that saw all these great things the LORD has done”.[9] The existential experience of the observer is crucial to mark the objective reality of action.  Only revelation brings understanding.  Human activity apart from divine proclamation “amounts to nothing.”  The idols created by Frankenstein, Dorian, or other horror novels “are but wind and confusion.”[10]

“Mystery is an Embarrassment to the Modern Mind”[1] An Ecklian Introduction to Classic Horror Literature was first presented to a group of Christian school literature teachers spring, 2010.  This piece was part of a much larger compendium of notes for that seminar.

[1] Flannery O’Connor. 1957, 1969. Mystery and Manners. (Reprint, Farrar, Straus, Giroux): 124.

[2] See my article entitled, “GENESIS: License Plates” first published online at mahseh.org 9 September 09.

[3] Many passages of Scripture come to mind as I contemplate creation and mystery.  I suspect, however, it is Yahweh’s words—His response to Job’s question “Why?”—that place an exclamation point on the intertwined essence of mystery and creation.  See Job 39-41.

[4] Eve’s response to the serpent’s temptation, Genesis 3:6.

[5] 1 Timothy 3:16.

[6] Ronald Kotulak, “Seriously Weird Science,” Chicago Tribune Magazine, 11 January 04, pp. 12-16, 27.

[7] James L. Crenshaw. 1995. Urgent Advice and Probing Questions: Collected Writings on Old Testament Wisdom. (Mercer University Press):126.

[8] In order, the quotes are from Ecclesiastes 11:5 (cf. 3:11); 7:13; 8:17.

[9] Deuteronomy 11:7

[10] Isaiah 41:29.  Idols are models or theories which set themselves up against God.