Mystery as a Gateway to Meaning

We can recognize, for one thing, that mystery need not mean sheer incomprehension. Mystery may, in fact, be the gateway to a deeper understanding of life than would be possible without the element of mystery.

For example:

Here is your best friend in high school. Up until a couple of months ago he has been very attentive in class and has never been known to get behind in his assignments. (As a matter of fact, you have sometimes wished he would, just to show that he is human.) Now, with final exams almost upon him, he doodles in class, and sits for hours with a book in front of him and never turns a page. His greatest interest has always been mathematics, and after school you find him furtively writing poetry! Ask him a question and he doesn't hear you. Ask him what the matter is, and he looks at you glassily, and walks out of the room. Later that evening he returns starry-eyed and goes to bed without a word to anyone. You can't understand what's come over him. He's a mystery to you. And then somebody says: "Didn't you know? He's in love." And now you can understand him-at least, you can understand him better than you did before.

Now "being in love" is a mystery, something you can never fully explain or understand. And yet, by means of that mystery you can now understand your friend better than you could before. The mystery of "being in love" has helped to clarify your comprehension, rather than clouding it. Mystery can be a gateway to meaning, in other words. It need not lead you up a blind alley.

The mystery of creation is not something you can rationally explain, but by means of that mystery you can understand that God's world has purpose and direction, and that you have a job to do here.

The mystery of resurrection is not something you can rationally explain, but by means of that mystery you can understand that a victory has been won over sin and death, and that you are the inheritor of that victory.

The mystery of forgiveness is not something you can rationally explain, but by means of that mystery you can understand that God loves you for yourself, and that he calls upon you to love others in the same way.

And so on. In the case of all the affirmations of Biblical faith, we are confronted by an element of mystery, of something that cannot be reduced to a neat formula-and yet each of those areas of mystery can be the means to a fuller understanding of the meaning of life.