Delighting in the Reality of Temporary Dissonance

Peeling potatoes for dinner, I was listening to music, a lovely arrangement around a poem by Robert Frost.  Of course, I couldn’t help but sing along until…

“BONG!”

The clock in the living room began chiming the hour.

The sudden dissonance stopped my singing, but not my enjoyment, because I loved that clock, and because I knew that the dissonance that its chime created was only temporary.

Sure enough, the chiming stopped, and the song continued, but I wasn’t singing anymore.  The interruption had sent my thoughts onto the track of another dissonance I had been hearing in my reading of Scripture. 

It’s always a gift to be surprised by a text.  (We “tame” the Word of God to our peril.)  The Hebrews 5 examination of Jesus’ role as our high priest brings on a collision of concepts in verse eight:

” …though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.”

Christ’s “Sonship” (His deity) qualified Him to represent us before God, and to be the perfect priest and sacrifice for sin. Yet the verse focuses on His learning obedience.  He was present at creation, and yet He became a learner.  Here’s where I had to take a step back and let myself enjoy the dissonance.  

Obviously, as God, He needed to learn nothing. Still, in taking on human flesh, He had to experience everything we experience, or, as Warren Wiersbe puts it, He experienced “the sinless infirmities” of human nature.

It is also true that, as God the Son, Jesus had never experienced suffering.  Clothed in humanity, however, he was subject not only to piercing and death, but also to the daily vicissitudes and exigencies that plague us and that comprise most of what the average person experiences as “suffering” on this planet.

Hebrews 5:7 pulls back the curtain on the truth of Jesus’s wrestling with God:

“He . . . offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death . . .” (Hebrews 5:7)

“Jesus Christ, the Righteous,” in Whom there was no sin, experienced terror over the prospect of becoming the sin-bearer, and I find myself, again, pondering this dissonance.  Was His temptation in the wilderness an actual test?  Could Jesus have made shipwreck the plan of God?  Can there be a valid wrestling in the heart of a Son who is one with the Father?

With every aspect of the incarnation, reason argues for a 50/50 split.  We want a theology that we can get our heads around; however, orthodoxy argues for the truth of “fully God, fully man.”  Theologian Addison Leitch spoke of driving a stake in the ground to represent one doctrine (Jesus’s humanity, for example), and then driving another stake in the ground to represent a seemingly conflicting doctrine (His deity).  No amount of reasoning can ever bring those stakes together.

So, peeling potatoes, listening to music, and enjoying the friendly sound of a chiming clock in the background, I also hold these two conflicting concepts in my mind—with joy!  They help to reinforce for me the absolute other-ness of God.

This is NOT an argument for flabby thinking or lazy, “I-dunno” theology.  Through the writer of Hebrews, God is calling us to a rigorous consideration of truth—an impossible feat without opening ourselves to the reality of dissonance.

Like the chime of the clock in my home, I know this dissonance to be temporary, for it will pass one day when I no longer see through a glass darkly.  In the meantime, I will neither silence the clock nor turn down the music, but I will love both truths, knowing that when the clock has ceased its chiming forever, and all dissonance has passed away, we will see Him face to face, and all will be made plain.

With every aspect of the incarnation, reason argues for a 50/50 split.  We want a theology that we can get our heads around; however, orthodoxy argues for the truth of “fully God, fully man.” 

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Grief comes to everyone sooner or later, and whether it’s the death of a loved one or the loss of some cherished aspect of our life or identity, God’s Word is crucial for grieving well. Past hurts have a habit of snagging our hearts in unexpected moments, but God provides abundant grace to help the believer move through grief without getting stuck and without wasting the opportunity to walk more closely with the Lord who lightens our darkness.

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