From "A Slice Of Infinity" for 8 March 06

Who Are You?

Jill Carattini


In the C.S. Lewis novel 'Til We Have Faces, the main character, Orual, has taken mental notes throughout her life, carefully building what she refers to as her "case" against the gods. Finally choosing to put her case in writing, she meticulously describes each instance where she has been wronged. It is only after Orual has finished writing that she soberly recognizes her great mistake. She now sees the importance of uttering the speech at the center of one's soul, for to have heard herself making the complaint was to be answered. She profoundly observes that the gods used her own pen to probe the wounds. With sharpened insight Orual explains, "'Til the words can be dug out of us, why should [the gods] hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face 'til we have faces?"


Never has a book cut open my heart and laid it before me so plainly. It was simultaneously the moment I realized how distant I had become from God and how near to me He had been all along. I had spent a lifetime subconsciously compiling my case against Him. Through these more turbulent years en route to faith and belief in Christ, I stood armed with my diary of questions, taking more a stance of interrogator than glad follower. Some of my questions were milder interrogations than others; in fact, some even embodied the possibility of exoneration. But the telling detail in this perspective was that I saw myself as the one holding the judge's gavel, while God was the one on trial.


I vividly recall the first time I realized the barrage of questions I was prepared to ask. It was not long before I would come across the pages of the book that brought me to surrender the gavel. I was reading the last chapter in the Gospel of John.


In that scene, the disciples were fishing when Jesus appeared on the shoreline; this, just days after they had watched in horror as he was crucified on the Cross. No doubt with heightened anticipation, the disciples quickly drew in their nets and rushed to the shore where Jesus was preparing breakfast at the fire. John's description places us aside a group of expectant fishermen. With bated breath we wait to hear how the silence will be broken. And then John writes, "None of the disciples dared to ask, 'Who are you?' For they knew it was the savior" (John 21:12).


It was the word "dare" that got under my skin. It completely upset me that none of them dared to ask. They had every reason to ask questions. Where did you go? How are you here? Why did you have to die? That the disciples were not full of questions seemed to me remarkably unnatural. It did not take me long to realize that I was bothered by their lack of asking specifically because I did dare to ask.


The frenzied, almost illegible words in my journal still remind me how frustrated I was at that moment. In words more fired onto the page than composed, I asked everything I had ever wanted to ask. Two weeks later, I picked up a copy of 'Til We Have Faces and was overcome with the absurdity of my "case"—even as I was overcome with the certainty that I had been heard.


For me, sensing myself far away from God is often riddled with the suspicion that it is his doing, that He has left, and that I have been abandoned. It is interesting how often these feelings coincide with an outburst of honest writing and confession. In such moments I realize, like Orual, the importance of uttering the words at the center of one's soul—if for nothing more than to hear in my own words the illogic of my anger or the intensity and passion I am complaining is absent. To hear myself making the complaint is often to be answered. And repeatedly, these moments of despair and distance become realizations of proximity and awareness of the God who is there. Interestingly, in such moments I don't dare ask who it is. For I know it is the savior.