We Push Away the Unimaginable
- Oct 10, 2017
- 3 min read
There have been a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head and heart these last few weeks. Themes of darkness, woundedness, forgiveness, and God as the Great Storyteller have been weaving in and out of each other, deepening and intensifying each other and growing.
Although I resisted liking Hamilton for a long time on the grounds that it was “too popular”, I eventually came around and recently listened to the whole thing in order. I found it deeply moving in a number of ways, but most profoundly in the song “It’s Quiet Uptown“. Eliza Hamilton has just been through the public announcement of her husband’s affair followed by the traumatic death of her son. The motif throughout this emotional climax is “the unimaginable”. At the beginning, the “unimaginable” refers to the absurd weight of suffering resting on Eliza:
“There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is suffering too terrible to name you hold your child as tight as you can and push away the unimaginable”
But by the end, the meaning of the “unimaginable” has shifted to mean forgiveness. Against all human expectation, Eliza has forgiven Alexander: “There are moments that the words don’t reach there’s a grace too powerful to name we push away what we can never understand we push away the unimaginable”
I have a passionate dislike for the tendency to talk about our age as the worst that the world has ever known, but every age does have its own unique shortcomings and I think that one of ours is an obsession with safety and control. Although the motivations that lead to this tendency are eminently sympathetic and understandable, it is a real shortcoming and poses a very serious danger. The world is broken and dark. Don’t get me wrong, the darkness only makes the hope more evident and I will argue probably more fiercely than most people that there is always hope. But the darkness is very real and an obsession with safety and control leads to a tendency to shut out the reality of darkness, take shelter in a small and synthetic world that is under one’s own control, and pretend the darkness does not exist. That can seem to work for a while, but it causes a host of problems. It is through not in spite of death that our Savior worked our Redemption and our Hope and it is only by facing the darkness with His strength that we come to new life in Him. Tolkien speaks of death as “the Divine Paradox, that which ends life and demands the surrender of all and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, that every man’s heart desires.”
When we push away the unimaginable – suffering and darkness beyond our strength – we also push away the redemption that Christ has brought through suffering and darkness. We push away the power of real forgiveness, of compassion, of heroism, and, honestly, of real faith, hope, and love.
This is not a glorification of darkness – darkness is what Christ came to conquer. But He did not hide from the darkness, He did not shelter Himself from it or try to pretend it didn’t exist. He met it head on, entered into it fearlessly, and achieved victory in the darkest hour the world has ever known. It is only in facing the reality of darkness with Him, that we can join in His victory and come to His marvelous light.
Comments