Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” (Mat 8:21-22)

Are you serious? How can the dead bury the dead? Those words call up some strange images, and taken literally, what Jesus said would be absurd. We need to take what Jesus said seriously, but no, we don’t take everything Jesus said literally. In fact, a lot of what Jesus said has to be understood as a figure of speech. After all, He spoke in parables so that the wicked wouldn’t get it. God wants us to seek Him diligently and those that want quick and easy answers of God’s ways will never get it. They will, of course, make all kinds of excuses, like, if God wants me to understand then why doesn’t He make it easy? Well - because more than anything else, our relationship to God is based on love and you should fervently pursue the things you love. Besides, saying something like “the dead bury the dead” is an attention grabber. It makes you stop and think. So, I think that Jesus spoke this way to get people’s attention, but also to force us to stop and think seriously about the things he said.

Most commentators interpret “dead” as a metaphor for a spiritual condition. In other words, the “spiritually dead” can take care of the “physically dead.” It is certainly true that those who follow Jesus have come alive spiritually and those who don’t are metaphorically already dead in trespasses and sins. But that interpretation has never really satisfied me completely because it makes it sound like those who follow Jesus can just leave all the nitty-gritty details of life behind. Kinda like, we can be a bunch of “losers” who never do anything but hang out here while following Jesus. I don’t think the idea is that we can escape the necessities of life, like leaving a bunch of dead, rotting corpses lying around! That would turn the saying of Jesus into an excuse for being a bum.

There is another figure of speech that might work here: metonymy. Metonymy is “a trope in which one word is put for another; a change of names which have some relation to each other.” It’s like when we use “The White House” to refer to the U.S. President. Treating “dead” as metonymy means we can replace “dead” with something associated with “being dead.” So I interpret “dead” as referring to worldly, or carnal, things in both instances.

Those who are still trapped in a carnal mind will focus on carnal things. Those who are worldly will worry about the things of the world. However, what those who are worldly are doing is not what the spiritually minded should be doing. Those who are concerned about spiritual things need to get serious about being spiritual and not make excuses or procrastinate because of worldly things. Really, it’s not so much one or the other, but the focus of your attention regardless of what others are doing or what it might cost you in terms of worldly things.

Think of the excuses people make for not taking spiritual things seriously. They might lose a job, or make a friend upset, or not be able to buy a new fishing boat. All of those worldly things seem to need immediate attention, and surely there is plenty of time later to worry about spiritual things. Jesus can wait, they figure, until all these necessities of life are dealt with. Of course, the excuse is usually something noble, like taking care of one’s family.  That’s the man’s response to Jesus. It wasn’t that his father was dead and waiting to be buried. More likely, his father was old and would soon die, so the man used that as an excuse for not taking the risk of following Jesus. But none of this excuse making is going to work with Jesus. When He calls, you better go. If we trust Jesus, we have to also trust that our needs will be met. There will be time available to deal with the necessities of life. But when Jesus calls, He means you to follow Him right then and there. No excuses. No delay. Seriously.

This week there were some interesting bits of news regarding Harry Potter. J. K. Rowling has been on a book signing tour through the United States. During the presentations, Rowling answers questions from the audience. Two statements by Rowling in particular have been very revealing. You have probably heard about one of them, but I doubt very many have heard of the other.

What has been all over the news this past weekend is the “Dumbledore is gay” statement. Typical of the sensationalist attitudes of the news media, this story has gotten a lot of attention. My attitude: Yawn. Who cares? However, this story will get a lot of attention, and I have already had some email asking my opinion about it. Very well…

First, we need to look at Rowling’s statement in context. Here is the question and Rowling’s answer:

Q: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

A: My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that’s how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair… [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, “Dumbledore’s gay!” [laughter] If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!

(Here is a report of the entire Q/A session: http://eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com/175955.html).

The important point made here was not “Dumbledore is gay.” The important point is that Dumbledore’s tragic, failed relationship when he was a young man has affected his character. In the story, another talented young wizard befriends Dumbledore. Together they develop a plan to acquire power over the wizard world and rule it “For the Greater Good.” Tragically, their relationship results in the death of Dumbledore’s sister and they become enemies rather than friends. Eventually Dumbledore must fight a duel with Grindelwald, defeating him and gaining possession of the Elder Wand. That’s what Rowling is getting at: a tragic love relationship. It was a relationship with another male wizard, and that implies it was “gay.” However, the fact that it was “gay” is almost irrelevant to the story.

If the gays want to make Dumbledore a poster boy for gay rights, be my guest. What comes out in Deathly Hallows is that Dumbledore is not the wise, all-knowing, benevolent protector of Harry that he at first appears to be. As Rowling has also stated, Dumbledore is a Machiavellian figure, manipulating events behind the scenes. Although Dumbledore is fond of Harry, he is perfectly willing to sacrifice Harry “For the Greater Good” if that is what it takes to defeat Voldemort. The realization that Dumbledore is flawed creates a crisis of confidence for Harry. Harry realizes that it is quite possible Dumbledore has gotten it wrong. He must decide whether to continue with Dumbledore’s plan or choose another course of action. In the end, Harry’s compassion and courage make the plan work despite Dumbledore’s miscalculations.

So, some will say, it’s still a bad example for a Christian to portray a “good guy” as gay. Well, that depends on what you expect from literature. Keep in mind that Rowling is not an evangelist or a theologian; she is a storyteller and her main goal is to tell a story that will appeal to readers of our time. If you want pedantic melodrama that only contains characters that can be held up as some standard of perfection, then I suppose you won’t like Harry Potter very much. All the characters in the story are flawed. That’s the way literature should be, in my opinion. Good literature must include an accurate portrayal of the fallen human condition if it is to reach us at some deep level. Less than ideal characters in a novel will offend only those whose desire is to conform people to an outward appearance of goodness and only accept literature that does the same thing.

Rowling’s inclusion of weak, fallible characters is typical of postmodern writing, just as it’s typical of postmodern writing to be inclusive. Rowling writes characters that accurately portray the society we live in, and our society includes “outed” homosexuals. If you need a quick intro to the elements of postmodern literature and how it affects Harry Potter, see John Granger’s article: “Postmodern Story Telling” .

There was another revelation by Rowling this week that was not widely reported. The only place I have seen it is an article on the MTV website.  Rowling makes it clear that she built the Harry Potter plot on a Christian theme of “love conquers death.” That story should have been headline news. Instead, it gets buried while a bunch of “Dumbledore is gay” sensationalism gets all the attention. That says a lot about the wackiness of the society we live in, but very little about the Harry Potter books.

Why am I not surprised? In Harry Potter, Rowling satirizes sensationalist journalism through the character of Rita Skeeter. The real-world characters are validating her portrayal with their sensationalist reporting.

So, I’ll leave this with one more quote from Rowling:

“Question authority. You shouldn’t assume the regime or the press is telling you all of the truth.”

Indeed!

P.S. - I had a “retired English Professor” go over my essays and make suggestions. The revised versions are available in book form at http://crosstimbersbooks.com/

“Lift up your heart to God with a humble stirring of love, and concentrate on him and not on his gifts.”

“[O]n the first occasion when you do it, you find only a darkness and, as it were, a cloud of unknowing: you don’t know what it is, except that you feel in your will a pure concentration on God.”

“Whoever hears contemplation either being read about or discussed, and thinks that it may be achieved by work in his mental faculties is dangerously deluded. He sits and searches through his mental faculties in order to work out how this can be achieved, and in this speculation makes his imagination, for example, work in an unnatural way, and invents a kind of activity which is neither physical nor spiritual.”

“When I say ‘darkness,’ I mean a lack of knowing, just as all the things that you don’t know, or else that you have forgotten, are dark to you, because you don’t see them with your spiritual eye. This is why the thing that is between you and your God is not called a ‘cloud of the air,’ but a cloud of unknowing.”

From The Cloud Of Unknowing

The Cloud of Unknowing is a 14^th century book detailing the discipline of a “contemplative” life. The author is unknown but believed to be an Abbot instructing a young man seeking to begin a monastic life. The ideas in the book will likely seem very strange to Christians today, and I’m not suggesting that we need to return to that medieval monastic lifestyle in order to draw closer to God. Nevertheless, the Abbot’s instruction has some important points for those who seek to know God more deeply. To summarize a bit, what prevents us from truly knowing God is that we think we know all about Him. Our supposed knowledge, arrived at through the intellect, is really a “cloud of unknowing” because it is not seen with “spiritual eyes.” Before we can truly comprehend anything about God, we have to come to see our blindness, in other words. Otherwise, what we think we know can prevent truly knowing God.

There is a parallel with chapter nine of the Gospel of John. This chapter contains the story of a man born blind who was healed by Jesus. The Pharisees would not accept it as a miracle because it did not agree with what they presumed to be righteousness. Jesus had, in their view, committed the “sin” of doing work on the Sabbath.

So the Pharisees asked him again how he had gained his sight. He replied, “He put mud on my eyes and I washed, and now I am able to see.” Then some of the Pharisees began to say, “This man is not from God, because he does not observe the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such miraculous signs?” Thus there was a division among them. (Joh 9:15-16)

Then they summoned the man who used to be blind a second time and said to him, “Promise before God to tell the truth. We know that this man is a sinner.” He replied, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. I do know one thing  that although I was blind, now I can see.” Then they said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he cause you to see?” He answered, “I told you already and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You people don’t want to become his disciples too, do you?” They heaped insults on him, saying, “You are his disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God has spoken to Moses! We do not know where this man comes from!” The man replied, “This is a remarkable thing, that you don’t know where he comes from, and yet he caused me to see! We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is devout and does his will, God listens to him. Never before has anyone heard of someone causing a man born blind to see. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They replied, “You were born completely in sinfulness, and yet you presume to teach us?” So they threw him out. (Joh 9:24-34)

Yes - they threw him out. Standing in front of them was a miracle that most of us would give almost anything to see for ourselves. Yet the Pharisees cannot see what is right in front of them. Why? Because what they think they know has blinded them to the truth.

Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that those who do not see may gain their sight, and the ones who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and asked him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, but now because you claim that you can see, your guilt remains.” (Joh 9:39-41)

This is what the “cloud of unknowing” is about. We must recognize our blindness before we can be made to see. If you desire to draw closer to God, you have to put aside your preconceptions about God. You have to humbly admit to what your don’t know before you can come to know. And, most importantly, you must be willing to walk into that cloud of unknowing trusting that God will be there. That’s not easy, especially in this modern “scientific” age. We assume that the more we know the better things will be. Yet what we know blinds us to the truth. Thus, the Abbot tells the young man, you have to learn first to push your ideas into a “cloud of forgetfulness” and enter into a darkness before you can know more about God. This is a difficult and frightening thing to do.

It involves pushing into the background any and all concerns of this world. If you attempt to meditate solely on God, what will continue to creep into your mind are all the problems of life. The bitterness, anger, and fear of the evil of this world may drive you to seek God, but to truly know God means pushing all of those things out of the mind. Otherwise, you mind will be filled with your own desires to be rid of your problems. Likewise, a desire to know God will lead a person to study the Bible, read commentaries, or seek out the understanding of mature spiritual teachers. Yet, those things will never give you a deep communion with God. They may lead you to seek a deeper understanding, but in and of themselves, they do not give you a direct knowing of God.

To have the deepest encounter with God will require you to put away all expectations and desires other than the desire for God alone. This is what most people, including most Christians, will never do. They seek something from God, not God alone. Thus, you must get rid of any demands on God. We usually go to God only to get answers to what we want to know, never stopping to consider that we may not even know what the right questions are. You must accept the fact that you are seeking a direct encounter with a being that is many, many orders of magnitude greater than your capacity to understand. Thus you have to put aside your own understanding first and be willing to submit totally to that being when He speaks.

I should point out that I am not talking about our normal prayers of petition for God’s help, or our prayers of praise for God either. This is something different. This is a level of encounter where God becomes more real to you than anything else you experience. It is not something we can do all the time, but it is something we can do when we need to reach a new level of understanding and an empowerment of the spirit in us.

To enter into this cloud of unknowing is done solely that God may speak His will to us. We do it out of Love for Him, not for self, yet we benefit.

Reading this essay you may have a sense that it doesn’t really tell you how to proceed. Good. That is the first inkling of what unknowing is like. This writing is only a hint. True contemplation of God is not something that can be described, only experienced.