By Cordelia Fitzgerald (Rated G)
Currently, my coffee table is piled with invitations for baby showers, weddings, and various other events. They all have one thing in common – a nice but urgent little message near the bottom that reads, “Please RSVP by August 13th” or something similar. Understandably, the host or hostess needs to be able to plan for food, space, and other essentials, but usually they’d also just like to know who’s coming, since we, as a human race, are curious. We are also, for the most part, control freaks. We are usually looking for assurance about the things we expect from life, and thus we have receipts, signatures, IOU’s, and contracts.
When it comes to divine things, it turns out that we are no different. Assurance might look slightly different, but it is still sought, usually in the form of signs. Cain, Gideon, David, Isaiah… the Old Testament is rife with signs sought and given. Would not any human in Gideon’s place have played mind games with the wool while Midianites pressed in? We, of such little faith, so strongly desire certitude in following God, and God, in His mercy, will often dispense it, and even allow His saints to. (One has only to toss a rose in a Catholic church to hit someone who has prayed the St. Therese novena.)
Interestingly enough, with a cursory glance at anecdotal evidence, it would seem that signs evolved rather quickly about the time of the New Testament to be miracles that … just don’t seem to pop up as frequently after the apostles died. Or maybe they did, and were just poorly documented, but it would appear to be a rarer occurrence based on the press surrounding the modern miracles that do happen, such as Sister Wilhelmina.
Why?
Perhaps it has something to do with the idea of Christ instituting a new covenant. Often, when studying the harsh laws of the Old Testament, we are encouraged to look at the growth of the human race as that of a child. The Israelites were given strict, specific, and not necessarily perfect or nuanced rules to follow in the childhood of our race; once Christ appeared, He brought the new commandment of the new covenant: Love. We have graduated kindergarten; we have moved up; we are ready for the next step in His plan of salvation.
This does apply to the main point, but first we must define our terms. What are signs, and where do they fit into all of this? Sign comes from the Latin signum which means mark or token. A sign symbolizes something, like language does, and is indeed a form of language. Think of love languages: verbal affirmation is only one, where signs of love, such as gift giving and physical touch, form the other versions of this language. Signs are used in medicine; patients in comas are asked to twitch a muscle or move a finger if they can hear. Signs are used with children, when a mother snuggles her child when he won’t understand her words of love yet.
A recently released movie (recommended by the Dominicans – no small praise) provides an insightful meditation on language and expansion of this point. (Go watch the movie and then read the rest of this paragraph. It is illustrative of my point, but not vital to it. Moderate spoilers ahead.) Arrival is a story of the eponymous action of some aliens onto Earth. The US government equips a prominent linguist to attempt communication with the beings, since they have not yet shown signs of attacking. Various methods are experimented with around the world, such as games and patterns, but our heroine takes the bull by its horns, and after a small stab at teaching them our language, dives into the much more daunting task of learning theirs. Ultimately, those that constrain the aliens to human games and limited communication through symbols receive a tainted communication that they interpret as an act of aggression, fostering panic. Our heroine, however, gets a different message. Her peers, by using limited vocabulary and imaginative space, only provided a communication opportunity that offered conversation with the base philosophy of war. On the other hand, her character learns, through the medium of their own language, that the aliens wish to provide humanity with the tool of their language. When learned, it has the ability to alter the very process of thinking, and by adjusting the subject’s perspective, change fundamental realities thus far taken for granted. And everyone else prepares for war.
The moral of the story, if you skipped the last paragraph, is that forcing a higher (or more learned) being to use a limited form of communication distorts the message, occasionally irretrievably. Therefore, communication must follow all else in the maturation of humanity, as succinctly represented by Paul when he says, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child. We see now through a glass in a dark manner: but then face to face. Now I know in part: but then I shall know even as I am known” (1 Cor 13:11-12).
Who are we, after all, to insist God communicate with us through our own pitiful and primitive language of signs? Do we even trust them, when He does use them? Gideon required the wonders to be repeated, after all. We must have modern day miracles verified by the Vatican because some of our fallen race have counterfeited them. When, O Lord, will we trust You and put away the childish things of constraining You to the cold “yes” or “no” of signs?
For God’s language is, without a doubt, far superior to ours: He provides, at minimum, three. His very first recorded words, the words of creation, created a world so complex and beautiful that we are not, millenia later, even close to understanding it. His next word, of indescribable beauty and length, is a document of such richness and diversity that all Christian churches cannot even agree on what books it is comprised of. And His First Word, co-existent with the Father before all ages, Jesus Christ, became flesh to dwell with us.
What language have we, my friends, to compare with that?
So join me, if you will, in my journey of trust, by eschewing signs sought in favor of waiting on His words, in hope and in peace.
LogoSophia Magazine 