the mystery gets solved and our questions get answered.
But the Bible has an entirely different understanding of mystery. True mystery, the kind of mystery rooted in the infinite nature of God, gives us answers that actually plunge us into even more . . . questions.
Take this example from John 3:16. The first part of the verse reads: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.”
So why did God give his son?
Because God loves the world.
But what does it mean for God to love the world?
Does God love evil people? Mean people? People who don’t think that God exists? People who think that God loves only them? If you do enough evil, can you exhaust God’s love?
Because God loves the world is an answer to the question, why did God give his son? It’s a real answer; it’s an answer you can trust; it’s an answer you can base your life on. It’s an answer you can know. But it also raises a new set of questions.
Why does God love the world?
What motivates God to love like this? What does God get out of it?
The writers of the Bible, especially one named John, would answer this way: “Because God is love.”20
Which is an answer, of course, but as you probably have figured out by now, it raises even deeper questions: How can God be love? Is every experience of love an experience of God? Is every experience of God an experience of love?
So God is love is an answer to the question, why does God love the world? But as an answer, it raises even more questions. And we could go on and on and on.
Truth always leads to more . . . truth. Because truth is insight into God and God is infinite and God has no boundaries or edges. So truth always has layers and depth and texture.
It’s like a pool that you dive into, and you start swimming toward the bottom, and soon you discover that no matter how hard and fast you swim downward, the pool keeps getting . . . deeper. The bottom will always be out of reach.
One of the great “theologians” of our time, Sean Penn, put it this way: “When everything gets answered, it’s fake. The mystery is the truth.”21
The mystery is the truth.
Or take the Trinity, for example. Even the best definitions end up sounding like a small child trying to play Mozart on pots and pans in the middle of the kitchen floor. The more you study the Trinity and what has been said about it over the years, the more you are left in wonder and awe about the nature of God.
As one of my friends often says: “If you study the Bible and it doesn’t lead you to wonder and awe, then you haven’t studied the Bible.”22
The very nature of orthodox Christian faith is that we never come to the end. It begs for more. More discussion, more inquiry, more debate, more questions.
It’s not so much that the Christian faith has a lot of paradoxes. It’s that it is a lot paradoxes. And we cannot resolve a paradox. We have to let it be what it is.
Being a Christian then is more about celebrating mystery than conquering it.
The Eastern church father Gregory of Nyssa talked about Moses’s journey up Mount Sinai in Exodus 19. When Moses enters the darkness toward the top of the mountain, he has moved beyond knowledge to awe and to love and to the mystery of God. Gregory insists that Moses has not arrived when he enters the darkness of the mountaintop. His journey and exploration have only really begun.23
Which leads to a really obvious observation: A trampoline only works if you take your feet off the firm, stable ground and jump into the air and let the trampoline propel you upward. Talking about trampolines isn’t jumping; it’s talking. Two vastly different things. And so we jump and we invite others to jump with us, to live the way of Jesus and see what happens. You don’t have to know anything about the springs to pursue living “the way.”
In brickworld, the focus often becomes getting people to believe the right things so they can be “in.” There is often a list of however many doctrines, and the goal is to get people to intellectually assent to these things being true. Once we believe the right things, then we’re in. And once we’re in, the goal often becomes learning how to get others in with us. I know this is harsh, but in many settings it is true. It is possible in these settings to be in, and to believe all of the correct things, and even to be effective at getting others in, and yet our hearts can remain unaffected. It’s possible to believe all the right things and be miserable. It’s possible to believe all the right doctrines and not live as Jesus teaches us to live. This is why I am so passionate about the trampoline. I want to invite people to actually live this way so the life Jesus offers gradually becomes their life. It becomes less and less about talking, and more and more about the experience we are actually having.
And what is the point, while we’re at it, of a trampoline?
Joy
The point is our joy. That is when God is most pleased.24 They aren’t two different things: God’s joy over here and our joy over there. They are the same. God takes great pleasure in us living as we were made to live. He even commands it in the Psalms: “Take delight in the Lord.”25 It’s such an odd command, isn’t it? You will be happy or else. But God is serious about this. Now this joy doesn’t rule out suffering, difficulty, and struggle. In fact, taking Jesus seriously almost guarantees that our lives will be difficult. History proves it. And very few actually set out to live such a focused, beautiful life. Narrow is the way, and only a few find it.26 But the kind of joy God speaks of transcends these struggles and difficulties. I love how one writer put it: “The peace of God, which transcends all understanding.”27
Sometimes when my boys and I are jumping and one of us starts laughing, we all start laughing. We’re jumping and we’re short of breath and we’re sweating and we’re having such a great time. When we’re too exhausted to jump anymore, we’ll lie down on the mat and stare up at the vast blue sky above us and watch the clouds go by and listen to the breeze as it moves the leaves overhead. I’ll be there on my back, and I’ll say a short prayer: “God, I can’t believe I get to live this life.”
Please understand, I stumbled into this gig.
I was teaching waterskiing the summer after I graduated from college at a camp in northern Wisconsin called Honey Rock. My job was to drive the boat all day, drag kids around the lake, plan ski shows, and get paid $30 a week for it. Every Sunday morning the camp had a chapel service in the middle of pine trees beside the lake. One week I was with the people who were planning the service, and for some reason, when they started discussing who would give the message, I told them I would do it. I had never preached or taught or tried to explain the Bible to
