revealing the absurd: removing the mystery

I invite Christians to begin to understand revelation as a means of making what is perceived to be mystery less mysterious and more concretely intelligible to the world through the practice of particularly (or peculiarly) contingent behaviors. While the “problem” as we understand it may avoid scrutiny from the non-believing world, Christians know that the problem is sin, however that may be defined by various Christian communities. We might not solve the problem of sin.

Yet, when radical sin emerges in apparently unprecedented ways, what is revealed is not a mystery, but an indicator that the church must find new ways of responding to radical evil or brokenness through understandings only available to the church of faith, through the witness of both Scripture and Christ, which will not make sense to the rest of the world. The church can consider history an opportunity.

Such revelation can only occur—indeed, it is a mystery only to non-Christians—specifically to a community that has a distinctive and unique means of interpreting and reorganizing historical events in a manner that inaugurates a new manner of living. Christian ethics only begin to make sense when they are embodied in a manner that then reveals their value to those who voluntarily seek redemption from participation in radical sin. While revelation is certainly an act of grace, it is also undoubtedly an act undertaken by the church in tandem with a God who provides the church with the means to recognize new and subversive truths. Revelation is one of those means.