To Know It in Truth

I ended my last post with:

“The Good Thief throws himself across the void of his suffering and into the arms of One whose character is utterly alien to himself.  I think there is much to be found in examination of our duty to embrace likewise a reality in Jesus that is utterly alien to the reality we possess.”

The Good Thief is caught up in an episode of unimaginable torment—torment heightened perhaps by elements of his story that might make the characterization “Good Thief” seem as quaint as it is.  Whatever evil deeds he committed, they seem to him such as might be satisfied only by the loss of his life—perhaps the loss of his soul.

The Good Thief has all of his prospects—dismal though they be—before him.  He chooses in his agony to ratify a conceptualization of innocent suffering—and of unimaginably gracious forbearance of human frailty—presented to him by his witnessing of Jesus’ crucifixion.  The Good Thief imagines that he and his fellow criminal are similar in their misdeeds and their just punishments, yet the Good Thief reaches out to that which is alien to him.

We do not know what happened to the Good Thief—or to his spiritual life—in the ensuing few hours of his earthly existence.  Perhaps it is even the case (for who would wish it differently?) that he and his criminal fellow were insensate by the time their legs were broken.  What we do know is that—as we humans experience that which captures our attention—crucifixion is the last thing that happened to the Good Thief.

The Good Thief was not cast to the ground and released fortuitously from his bonds by the earthquake, nor was he allowed to escape with his life in the confusion that would follow.  He was not given a chance to feel his momentary connection to Jesus fade.  He was not given a chance to face again hunger or fear or any of the other travails that would hound him as an escaped criminal.  He was not given a chance to assume his old life, and he was not given a chance to wonder if his feverish petition to the doomed preacher was merely a blurring recollection.

The Good Thief, hanging in his last moments on a cross, was dealt as final a fate as that which seized Judas, swinging from the tree.  Yet just as the finality of Judas in the context of his treachery is to be contrasted to the drawn-out out agonies of Peter (and his equally undistinguished ten comrades) in the aftermath of their flight, so also the experience of the Good Thief is to be contrasted to that which might happen to any of us, seized as we might be in some mood with fervent conviction and then, in some ensuing frame of mind, overcome with doubts—doubts perhaps of even the most fundamental aspects of the “faith” that we had at once believed we possessed.

I say this not as mere conjecture.  Jesus dealt at length with the disciples on precisely this score.  The chief repository of this teaching is the Gospel of John—the gospel that includes almost at its very beginning Jesus needling Nathanael about his sophomoric notions of what might cause a person to hail Jesus as “the Son of God,” “the King of Israel”:

“Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou?  Thou shalt see greater things than these” (1:50).  Jesus is going to deal with his disciples about belief, and there are going to be hard lessons.

Indeed, it can be scarcely sufficient to say that Jesus teaches the disciples—and us—hard lessons about belief.  Were it not for our persistent ability to succumb to distractions or to let our memories fade—which ought to give us pause about whether we are serious enough about our eternal fates—we would really have cause to claim that Jesus administers to us not lessons, but tortures.  All one need do is gather—even for the heightened concentration of a few moments—the various parts of the ending of John, in order to perceive the architecture of that torment.

The first interaction that Jesus has with a disciple at the start of what is conventionally called The Farewell Discourses is an interaction with Peter:

“Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou?  Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.  Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now?  I will lay down my life for thy sake.  Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?  Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou has denied me thrice.”

And the Gospel of John ends with Peter in the agony of being asked—thrice—by Jesus if he loves Jesus.  Between the bookends of these two episodes is the text of Jesus’ most explicit teachings about belief.  The teachings are timeless, but their delivery in the text is punctuated by momentary and electric interactions between Jesus and the disciples:

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you . . .”

So the predispositions of the disciples, not just their experiences of Jesus’ ministry, can be understood as part of the understandings between the disciples and Jesus.

“And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.  Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?”

And:

“If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.  Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.”

And so Jesus is telling the disciples what they know, and yet they know not that they know it. 

A short while later Jesus says:

“Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works sake.”

And so Jesus is telling the disciples that they need to believe that he is to be identified with the Father—but, failing that, they can at least believe that he speaks with divine truth because he does things that human beings ought not—in human estimation—to be able to do.

It is no great stretch to contend that the disciples, for all the benefit they have had of three years of Jesus’ ministry, are little better off than the Good Thief.  They are presented with the opportunity to follow a leader who is too good to be true, and they must decide if they will venture into an alien experience-realm in which that which is too good to be true can yet be true.

No one can really do what Jesus is asking, and Jesus knows that no one can really do what he is asking.  This is revealed when he says to the disciples:

“These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.”

For his pains, Jesus has the disciples say to him a few moments later:

“Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.  Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”

And in reply, almost as though nothing of substance had been imparted since Jesus’ exchange with the credulous Nathanael:

“Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe?  Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.  These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.  In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

The believer in Jesus will believe, and then will not believe.  And then it will all happen again.  The believer in Jesus will believe in an explicit theology of Jesus, and then will believe in an untethered theology that flails and grasps at what seems like truth.  It is not strange that such things happen.  Indeed, they will happen.  Jesus knows they will happen.

What is really happening overall—if we are courageous enough to accept it, if we are courageous enough to conceptualize human “belief” in a manner such as Jesus attributes to us—is a continual recapitulation of the belief-experience.  We reach out to the unknown.  We draw back.  We reach out to the alien.  We draw back.

We have belief-experiences that we undergo through suffering and perhaps sacrifice, and we never want to face again the prospect of the journey to those belief-experiences.  And then we have to take again the journey to those belief-experiences.  That is what belief is, if we are ever to know it in truth.