The Way of Pain and Truth

We do not know what the “Good Thief” of Luke really knew about Jesus.  All we know is that the Good Thief was willing to face the truth, and that the Good Thief was willing in his agony to call upon Jesus.  The Good Thief was beset by pain, and he was beset by truth.  Our own experiences are usually less acute and well-delineated than those of that anonymous sufferer, yet we are as bounded as he by the encroachments of pain and truth.

We do not really know what we think we know about Jesus.  The most exacting description we have of Jesus—at least insofar as theology is concerned—is in the preface to John.  Honesty will admit that the preface to John is not really meant to be “understood.”  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” is both evocative and deeply-grounding in that it indicates that there is a deeper and more ineffable content to understanding (the import of “Word”) in the mind of God than we can ever comprehend.  However, that is also to say that we cannot “understand” that divine word.

The most that we can hope to obtain from the preface to John is a baseline of notions about our relationship to God.  Where this portion of the gospel first reaches out to touch us, as it were, is in verse 4: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”  Much of our thinking about God would comport better with the idea that the “light” of Jesus would give “life” to humanity, in that the divine command of “Let there be light” (and the ensuing truthful and unerring creation) would result in our very being.

But “the life was the light of men” seems to indicate something altogether different.  This actual passage would comport with the notion that the Creation with which Jesus was intimately involved is a Creation emanating truth.  God’s creation provides us with truth—we are not to spend our lives following anything or worshipping anything under this or that notion to the effect that objective reality is instead a mirage.  We might have to search endlessly for the answers to particular questions, but we do not have to search endlessly for truth itself.  Truth impinges upon us constantly—though that fact is not always comfortable to us.

As the preface nears its end, we are confronted by its general thematic conclusion (verse 14): “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.”  We will see in the narrative of the gospels what torments await Jesus as he works out the implications of that grace—of his patience toward humanity and his final, excruciating self-sacrifice in graciously giving himself up for punishment as though he was a sinner.

Verse 17 echoes the theme: “. . . . grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”  I wrote above, “The Good Thief was beset by pain, and he was beset by truth.”  To an infinitely greater extent, Jesus himself was beset by pain and beset by truth.  Those two elements—pain and truth—characterize humanity’s experiences to the extent to which we embrace them straightforwardly.

Unsurprisingly, the greatest of evils that humanity concocts operate on precisely the opposite of those two elements.  Instead of pain and truth, great evil offers the notions, first, that the partaker ought to experience pleasure and, second, that any objections to such self-indulgence are justified by assertions (contrary to basic notions of decency) that “the world” is devoid of truth, or that the dictates of common decency can be set aside in recognition of “higher” or “hidden” truth.

In the most unsparing analysis (as I have used in this blog) humanity can expect to suffer because (like the newly-created Adam) we reject communion with God in favor of the distractions of this world.  Our plight, then, is all-consuming as far as our earthly experiences are concerned, and in fact at the most basic level pain and truth are one—we cannot help but be aware of our alienation from God, such alienation being both undeniable and acutely uncomfortable.

In our daily lives, however, we can find innumerable ways to blur the truth and to dull the pain.  Such are not the paths to salvation.  What we must do is take up our cross.  The way of the cross trod by Jesus is unattainable for us.  The way of the Good Thief is not.