What if embracing mystery, whether direct or passive, is essential to our mental health?
Where is Amelia Earhart? Who is D.B. Cooper? The body is found, but who is the murderer? And why is there always that one lonely pair of socks left in the dryer?
We are surrounded by mystery every day, and because we hate change, we often feel anxious about the unknown. But what if embracing mystery, whether direct or passive, was essential to our mental health?
The Mystery of Seeing Mystery
As soon as Bill Watterson and John Kasht published their book Mystery Purchased in October 2023. I love Watterson Calvin and Hobbes The series and, after almost 30 years of retirement, his dark and strange tracts have been fascinating.
I read “Mysteries,” a kingdom-hunting army story, in one sitting. While I enjoyed the mixed media art (mostly by Kasht), I was perplexed by Watterson’s words. I’ve re-read this book many times over the past six months, and I think the ambiguous ending is perfect. The reader is left in the dark, allowing for multiple messages to be taken from them.
After I first read this book, I started seeing mysteries everywhere. I mean, for about two months, I literally saw the word “mystery” everywhere. It was like how we’d never seen a gold Toyota Highlander until we bought Golden Girl (named after the car the Q-tip quartet might have driven), and then we started seeing Highlanders more frequently. Is the mystery providence or coincidence? I’m not sure, but it’s been fun exploring.
ghost Vision of Arrakis
I was the first MysteryI saw Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie film. Ghosts of VeniceBeing a Hercule Poirot detective novel, it’s only natural that there would be a mystery involved, but one scene stood out: After a séance, Tina Fey’s character excitedly recites that the world is full of mysteries and that God is real, to which Poirot disagrees, asking why God would break His rules by using a psychic.
How we react when an explanation doesn’t match our expectations says a lot about our worldview.
I speculate that the aforementioned “rules” of God refer to God’s silence in response to human suffering. I will return to God’s silence later, but I find it interesting how the two characters reacted to the same experience. Tina Fey’s character is a writer, while Hercule Poirot is a world-famous detective. Both are dealing with mysteries, but one sees them as evidence of God’s existence, while the other sees them as factual secrets that have no logical explanation.
Can science explain everything? When I saw ghostSomeone told me that the doctors can’t explain why Acetaminophen It helps with headaches. (Obviously I could give some fantastic cosmic example, but Tylenol was “accidentally” thrown at me as a mysterious drug.) So science can’t explain everything, but neither can someone with deep spirituality. Who are the Sabaeans? Why is God a Trinity?
This leads us to a question that divides us: Is there something between science and spirit? Magic? I’m a slow reader, so Frank Herbert Sand Dunes When I was reading for a while MysteryBut being highly sensitive to the mysterious, I was deeply struck by Mrs. Jessica’s transformation into the Virgin Mary, a process she recalled: “She knew that this was not exactly how it worked in the Bene Gesserit schools. No one had ever taught her the mysteries, but she knew.” So how much faith are we to give to a man like Herbert, whose ideas of messianic fulfillment of carefully planted prophecies are meant to baffle and convince the masses?
Work at silo cause a flood of anger
Mysteries of man’s creation can be fun, like detective stories or treasure hunts, but the search for truths that will affect our lives now and in the future requires a serious approach. In both cases, a story well told fulfills a basic human need. But any storyteller who claims to represent reality has a serious responsibility and is making a meaningful claim. When L. Ron Hubbard invented Dianetics, Battlefield Earth, He founded a mystical religion called Scientology, and his followers considered him a god-like being.
Although the Bible speaks of mysteries in figurative language in both the Old and New Testaments, the Apostle Paul often speaks of them directly, using the word “mystery.” The Apostle speaks of mysteries twenty times. 5 different categories Many of them usually point to Jesus. Why are humans attracted to mystery and to charismatic leaders who seem to have the answers? The simple answer is because we want to be better informed. and It’s about belonging to something. But is it healthy? How we react when the explanation doesn’t match our expectations says a lot about our worldview.
We seem to be wired to seek explanations to mysteries, but we will never have all the answers.
silo Another show I watched during my months-long mystery journey. It added a lot to the quest as a story of an isolated underground community surrounded by unquestioned (but questionable) traditions. Faced with a radical discovery, Tim Robbins’ character says, “The Founders left us many mysteries,” before quickly moving on to other topics.
Should we suspend logic, suppress emotions, and ignore inexplicable contradictions? Professor and author Matthew Lynch says none of these responses are optimal. In his book Flood and Fury (Yes, dear reader, this paperback marks the end of my months of mystery.) As he tackles the violence of the Old Testament, Lynch repeatedly speaks to his readers to embrace mystery.
Since I like to be a puppet master, I will ask Professor Lynch to respond to Hercule Poirot’s earlier statement that “God does not break the rule of silence to intervene in human suffering.” Professor Lynch states:
But here we see the completely mysterious nature of God. Heterogeneity And God’s perfect hidingThe theological affirmation of the mystery of God is a defense of His absolute uniqueness: “Gods are different” does not mean that one person is different from another, but that God remains a mystery to them.1
But Paul also makes it clear that we know “in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12). God is not totally unknowable. The mystery of God does not give us an exact knowledge of what He is like. Enough But it is a partial understanding of God and his ways: it is enough to foster trust and love for God and others, but not enough to unravel the wicked problem of Old Testament violence. Rather, God is found “to be sought.”2 My prayer is that the mystery of God’s ways in Scripture, especially the mystery of God’s ways expressed as the mystery of violence, will inspire us to continually seek the mysterious God we encounter in Scripture.
If Lynch is right, then the mysterious God of the universe uses mystery and the language of the Bible to meet and interact with people.
An eternal mystery
Not all mysteries or “solutions” are attempts to know God, but both are opportunities to know God.
None of these pop culture artifacts are intellectual or assume any science of the universe. Apparently, this is essential for our mental health. They speak to different parts of everyday life and experiences of the supernatural. We seem to be wired to seek explanations for mysteries, but we will never have all the answers. But if we can embrace and even revel in these two truths at the same time, there will be some peace. Over the past few months, I have come to accept that. It is humbling and exciting to know that while (some) answers may be found, the mysteries will always remain.
