Was, is, and ever shall be

I once heard someone say, ‘Jesus cannot be the Son of God. How could God have a wife?’

It’s incredible to me how vain the human intellect is—anyone’s, mine as well—to challenge others when one’s only armor is ignorance. In my youth I have done the same. Perhaps I still do, even now, without knowing it. Nonetheless, it still astounds me how we humans take on as adversaries immense truths while we are armed with only unbridled ignorance. Perhaps deep down we feel we’re David sent forth to lay Goliath low. Too bad metaphors can’t be cheaply applied, nor indiscriminately. We do this too, cheapening not only the quest for truth, but—if it were possible—even the Truth itself.

Well, how to respond to such a challenge, ‘Jesus cannot be the Son of God. How could God have a wife?’

Words like misaimed arrows elude their mark or, too shallowly shot never reach the target at all. What meaning can be found when, casting questions that cannot be asked, we seek answers that cannot be grasped by the human mind?

A man asks, ‘Why do ants move so quickly?’ An ant responds, ‘Why do shadows move so slowly?’ The ant doesn’t know that men exist. It sees only the gaping shadow and then, perhaps, nothing at all as it is crushed beneath the shadow’s weight. A man can’t see the world of the ant as it moves with reasonable rhythm and speed, not (as he imagines) in ‘fast forward.’

We are all caught in the grip of congenital blindness, made worse by voluntary deafness. In our natural state we are worse than dumb beasts, because at least their lack of language enables them to praise God without argument, whereas we, blind and deaf except for the Light of Christ and the Word of God, seek to slay each other spiritually and even physically as our ‘praise.’

And to what or to whom is our praise offered? 
To God, or to ourselves?

If the Jew could only know and accept who Jesus of Nazareth was, there would be no need for Christianity. If the Christian could only know and accept who Jesus Christ is, there would be no need for Islam. If the Muslim could only know and accept who Jesus Son of Mary ever shall be, there would be the threshold of the Parousía.

Yet we luxuriate indolently asking such questions as, ‘How could God have a wife?’ so that, not listening for an answer even if there were one, we can ready ourselves for our next attack. Since God has tired of blasting the Babel Tower and scattering the nations, we prove ourselves by our wanton, ruthless monotheism to be His partisans, defending what it is we think of Him not who He is, self-blindfolded and numb to His touch.

He sees, hears, and knows all of this, all we do, all we do not do. He knows why we are here, who we are, and how He has entered His creation as one of us. Though He speaks His Reason—that is, His Word—to us in every moment and place, we will not hear it. Though His Light shines on the eyes of every man that enters the world, we blindfold ourselves. I say this to myself as well as to those who pose unaskable questions: Unblindfold your eyes, and see. Jesus was, is, and ever shall be, not only Son and Word of God, but Pantokrator, Lord of all.