We not only see ourselves afresh as to our value but we also see afresh what the human problematic is. We are paradoxical beings. Blaise Pascal captured the paradox well in one of his pensées (“thoughts”): “What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe.”26 He captures the human predicament another way when he writes: “All these examples of wretchedness prove his greatness. It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king.”27 The Apostle Paul put the issue in moral and religious terms when he wrote to Christians in Rome and summed up the human situation in these terms (Romans 3:22-23): “There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
We have defected from the God who made us. Self-absorption comes all too easily and with it the temptation to make everything about me.28 A story I heard captures the point. Two people meet by accident on a street corner. They had been in high school together but had not seen each other for years. One got to talking and talked and talked. Talked about degrees done since high school, about marriages entered into and failed, talked about jobs and career path. The other person became restless and started shuffling their feet. Our talker noticed and said: “I have just talked on and on about me. How about I ask a question of you?” “Go ahead”, the somewhat relieved other person said. “Wonderful”, was the reply. “So let me ask: What do you think about me?”
The book that understands me knows my need for value and sees that I fall so far short of what I expect of others. I need forgiveness, and, as we saw before, the love of God has made that possible, according to this book, through what Christ did for me on the cross. God can break the cycle of toxic self-concern.29
Third, we see history afresh
The big Bible story presents human history as a road with a beginning and an end. It is not like some Eastern religious views that see existence as an illusion and the key metaphor is not the road, but the wheel, a wheel endlessly rotating and going nowhere—an endless cycle that must be escaped. This has been called the wheel understanding of life. Lesslie Newbigin writes perceptively about the wheel view. He writes too from firsthand experience of decades spent in India and in dialog with Hindu religious thinkers.
The cycle of birth, growth, decay and death through which plants, animals, human beings and institutions all pass suggests the rotating wheel—ever in movement yet ever returning upon itself. The wheel offers a way to the center where all is still, and one can observe the ceaseless movement without being involved in it. There are many spokes connecting the circumference with the center. The wise man will not quarrel about which spoke should be chosen. Any one will do, provided it leads to the center. Dispute among the different ‘ways’ of salvation is pointless; all that matters is that those who follow them should find their way to that timeless, motionless center where all is peace, and where one can understand all the endless movement and change which makes up human history—understand that it goes nowhere and means nothing.30
This is clearly a pessimistic worldview. History, and human life with it, are meaningless.
Newbigin also writes with great insight into another way to construe reality. This he calls the road view. The biblical understanding of history exemplifies this view. He writes:
The other symbol is the road. History is a journey, a pilgrimage. We do not yet see the goal, but we believe in it and seek it. The movement in which we are involved is not meaningless movement; it is movement towards a goal. The goal, the ultimate resting-place, the experience of coherence and harmony, is not to be had save at the end of the road. The perfect goal is not a timeless reality hidden now behind the multiplicity and change which we experience; it is yet to be achieved; it lies at the end of the road.31
The wheel and the road constitute “the great divide” in world religions, according to Newbigin.32