An Attempt to Stop Containing the Uncontainable

I wrote this essay this semester. It is almost entirely reflective of who I am, so I decided to throw it up on my blog. I hope you'll enjoy it. The past few years of my education have been spattered with various English classes that have played with the ideas of the intersection of faith and discipline. The idea that the two subjects could mesh quite well was originally brought up in my Introduction to English Studies class, but it was not until I took British Novel that I began to explore how literature in particular could respond to or shed light on the faith that I profess as a Christian. This revelation stemmed from my professor’s inclusion of a quote from Georg Lukács in his introduction on the first day of class. Lukács’ quote said that the novel is “the epic of a world that has been abandoned by God.” From that day forward, this quote has stuck with me. If I was indeed in a discipline that studies the works from a world that has been abandoned by God, then my faith as a Christian was futile in this major. Fortunately, I now disagree with Lukács. While many novels may record a world that does not explicitly deal with the workings of God, I have come to see English studies in a new light. One of the unique strengths of the English discipline is that it is unrestricted in its subject matter. I have found that this strength often contradicts with the values of the Christian community that I have been raised in—in my conservative, evangelical upbringing, God was anything but unrestrained. Yes, I have seen people “dancing in their freedom in Christ,” but when it comes to exploring the unknown or asking the difficult questions of my faith and my God, there was no freedom. English studies, on the other hand, permitted me the opportunity for exploration. It is in this major that I have seen the freedom to entertain a multitude of possibilities for meaning and truth, and in doing so I have seen that this discipline does work hand-in-hand with my faith. In entertaining the possibilities, English studies seems to allow God to be greater than humanity can possess or understand, which fits completely into my view of God.


As I have opened myself to the possibility of finding truth in different areas and in various works of literature, I have discovered that English studies allows the room for doubt to lead to greater faith. As I read for Capstone this semester, I found this idea emphasized by Flannery O’Connor in her letter to Alfred Corn. She writes,

I don’t know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this experience that you are having right now of unbelief. This may be the case always and not just in the 20th century. Peter said, ‘Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.’ This is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith. (542)

Just as O’Connor emphasizes, I believe that quite frequently my faith has been possible only because of my doubt. As I study English literature, I have found myself often questioning the basic faith principles that I have learned. English allows the opportunity for doubt. In this major, I have found that as I look to see God, and feel that I have not found him, it is simply a time of waiting. This is the idea that N.T. Wright comments as he is describing his process of reading the Bible. He says,

I take it as a method in my biblical studies that if I turn a corner and find myself saying, ‘Well, in that case, that verse is wrong’ that I must have turned a wrong corner somewhere. But that does not mean that I impose what I think is right on to that bit of the Bible. It means, instead, that I am forced to live with that text uncomfortably, sometimes literally for years […], until suddenly I come round a different corner and that verse makes a lot of sense; sense that I wouldn’t have got if I had insisted on imposing my initial view on it from day one. (9)

This allowing for doubt, instead of insisting on our wrong ideas (as I see happen so often in the church), allows God to be more than we can understand immediately. There is humility in admitting our humanity, and not thrusting out ideas unto God. As O’Connor also says to Corn, “You can’t fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories” (543). I believe that we as humans must always limit God, as we are limited ourselves, but English at least attempts to acknowledge our limitations instead of insisting dogmatically that God is just so.


Once open to the doubt that helps build faith, we can then begin to understand that God is greater than we, as humans, can encompass. This idea has been reflected in many of the readings from this semester. In Brian McLaren’s book, A Generous Orthodoxy, his chapter called “The Seven Jesuses I Have Known” celebrates the fact that humanity cannot contain the entire image of the divine. After giving brief sketches of each of the Jesuses that he has come into contact with over his lifetime (including Conservative Protestant Jesus, Pentecostal/Charismatic Jesus, Roman Catholic Jesus, Eastern Orthodox Jesus, Liberal Protestant Jesus, Anabaptist Jesus, and the Jesus of the Oppressed), McLaren ends the chapter with this thought: “I am a Christian because I believe that the real Jesus is all that these sketches reveal and more. Saying that, a question comes to mind… Why not celebrate them all? […] What if, instead, we saw these various emphases as partial projections that together can create a hologram: a richer, multidimensional vision of Jesus?” This is the strength of English studies; I have been trained to look for meaning in many ways, and in that I have come to see that one individual’s perspective of God is not always entirely perfect. This realization sometimes leads to a time of doubt in the English life of faith, but it is not in doubt that we are destined to stay. Instead, as McLaren suggests, we can move to a place where we can celebrate a more complex Christianity than we knew before. I would argue that Rachel Held Evans would agree with this understanding of faith, as she encourages Christians to let go of “false fundamentals” and embrace the true character of God. This is shown as she reflects on the conflict she felt when trying to communicate the ideas of “biblical womanhood” to a group of young girls. After seeing them broken and oppressed by their understanding of what biblical womanhood is and therefore what they should be, she says, “I would tell them that womanhood, like the Bible, is far too lovely and mysterious and transcendent to systematize or explain” (185). This quote falls into Held Evans memoir at the end of a section in the middle of a chapter, but I feel that it is the most central idea of her book. If we, as Christians, believe we are following a God who truly is too transcendent to systematize and explain, then it is a good thing for English studies to allow Him to be so. The pressure to have all the answers is removed for us, as we look to God instead to show Himself to us. As Wright says, “If we really engage with the Bible in a serious way we will find, I believe, that we will be set free from (among other things) some of the small-scale paranoia which goes on about scripture. […] You’ll be paying attention to it; you won’t be sitting in judgment over it” (8). In the same way that he approaches Scripture, so can we, especially as English majors, approach God. We can really engage with Him and be freed of our paranoias about if we are right or wrong in our understanding of him; in process of coming to understand that God is greater and more complex than we can understand, we are required to accept our limitations.

As we are freed from our paranoias about what Christianity looks like and who God has to be if our understanding of Him is to be right, we discover the freedom to seek the true nature of God and to authentically experience our faith. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes about this experience extensively in the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. I believe this is the experience that Rilke is talking about when he writes about God’s nature, saying,

You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken. To each of us you reveal yourself differently: to the ship as a coastline, to the shore as a ship. (“II, 22” 11-14)

In these lines, there is an understanding that God comes to us all in different ways. I believe that this idea is the same one that McLaren is trying to promote in “The Seven Jesuses I Have Known.” Perhaps we will never know all the answers about who God is, but perhaps that is something to be celebrated. Held Evans acknowledges that engaging with faith is risky and challenging and Wright proposes the metaphor that it is our responsibility to act out the fifth act of God’s work in this world by drawing of what we have learned in the first four acts. I think that the only way to do these things is by first owning our human limitations. Held Evans says in her book, “My interpretation can only be as inerrant as I am” (195), and I believe that through being an English major, I have been able to admit the same. Once that truth has been owned, we can then work together to discover God in a greater fullness than we could each discover alone.


Perhaps it is simply because this topic was already on my mind, but I have felt like every movie I watch or book I read now reiterates this same idea: the acknowledgement of our human limitations. As a Christian, this realization only intensifies the awe I feel as I am beginning to see God’s greatness that transcends humanity. Although it is not appropriate vocabulary for a senior level English paper, the only adjective that I can think to use to explain what English does to faith is that it allows God to be “big.” This immeasurability of God is necessary for each individual to experience Him authentically; it is only in our conceived limitations of God where we do not allow Him to be who He needs to be in order that all could come to know Him. As Rilke writes poetically, “To each of us you reveal yourself differently: / to the ship as a coastline, to the shore as a ship” (“II, 22” 13-14), I have come to learn that God’s vastness is important. As our many Christian interpretations of God differ, as English majors, we can learn that just because one person perceives God to be one way, doesn’t mean that their perspective is completely sufficient to explain who God is. Our faith requires much more humility than that. Through this humility, we can learn and understand more of God’s nature in a continual process, for he truly is more than we can encompass. As Rilke writes in another of his poems, “There is no image that I could invent / that your presence would not eclipse” (“I, 60” 10-11). In English studies we can stop trying to know everything, and instead be content with contributing our understanding of Him to the conversation and learning from what others see that we do not. The novel does not have to be “the epic of a world that has been abandoned by God,” but instead can contain partial glimpses of the coastline toward which we sail.