My Christian Pessimism

I am a profoundly (and, perhaps, sickeningly as well) dialectical person, and one consequence of my dialectical nature is that I can never be satisfied beyond a certain point with any view, belief, or practice that does not challenge, criticise, change, or even invert my present way of living. Or to put it more bluntly, I feel somewhat uncomfortable being around people either with whom I agree too much or with whom I agree too little : I seek that precariously unstable balance wherein I can find enough common ground to have a transformative discussion without that shared horizon itself ossifying into a rigid position. Thus, as a (former) student of the physical sciences, I still seek the aesthetic and the intellectual satisfaction of a 'theory' that will 'coherently explain all the facts', but I long for, at the same time, a 'counter-theory' that will shatter the conceptual frameworks through which I have become accustomed to 'reading' the world, and will set me on the journey of weaving a newer theory in a spiralling process that only my death shall bring to an end.

As a result, the 'I' that I am using in the process of writing this post (in obedience to the syntactical 'subject-verb-object' convention of the English sentence) is a loose unity woven out of various strands which are being (sometimes painfully) unravelled and brought together as the 'I' moves on through various experiences.

Perhaps this is the reason why all of 'religious' symbols it is that of the (Christian) Cross that has most powerfully exercised my imaginative intellect for so many years now. It brings together into one focal point two powerful 'dispositions' in me : one is my substratum of hope for a state of affairs where 'every tear shall be removed from every eye', and the other is my growing realisation, one that occasionally drives me to the brink of despair, that this yearned-for 'paradise on earth' will perhaps never be realised, and if at all it is, it can be achieved only by our passing through the purgative fires of unspeakable suffering, horrific agony, and violent death.

Thus when I am with people who are 'all smiles', who tell me that 'everything will be fine in the end' and who claim 'to be cool and to live for the moment', I wonder if they have ever heard of the Gulag, the Holocaust, East Europe, and the Balkans; and, more uncomfortably, whether they have taken into account the clinically depressed woman next door, the abused child in their own family, and the breakdown of personal relationships that routinely mar and blight the beauty of our lives. However, when I meet people who prophesy doomsday with the claim that the world is a rotting and putrid mess that must be discarded into the dustheap of history, I cannot help thinking that they have never truly experienced the 'unbearable' joy that bursts forth through a baby's smile, lights up a newly-wed bride's face, and urges millions to withstand terrible suffering for the sake of the promise that they can make a difference to the ways in which we live.

In short, then, I am a 'Christian pessimist' : 'pessimist' because, as far as I can see (which may not be thaaaaat far given my myopic vision, in the literal and not just metaphorical sense) everything that has been constructed with human hands is hopelessly riddled with ambiguities, internal contradictions, and unresolved complexities, and stands shakily today only to be inevitably eaten away tomorrow by the corrosive acids of ruthless time; but 'Christian' because I believe that this bleak brooding on the irreparable havoc that time, the grim reaper, wreaks on our human projects, desires, wishes, and ambitions must not allow me to sink into a nihilistic despair that will deaden or anaesthetize me to the stark reality of human suffering, whether or not I am able to do anything to alleviate it.

That, indeed, is how I 'read' the symbol of the Cross : the lateral arm of the Cross stands for our mutual 'horizontal' solidarity with all human beings who are suffering (even as you are reading this very post), and the upright arm represents our 'vertical' yearning for an en-wholing vision that will give us the hope that the struggle against those impeding conditions which constrict human flourishing is one that is worth dying for. The Cross is then the dialectical union of 'horizontal agony' with 'vertical promise', and I believe that we need both these dimensions, the horizontal as much as the vertical, if we are to 'get anywhere'. Without the former, the horizontal, we shall not even begin to realise how deep down under our skins we belong to one gigantic family whose members carry agony and death in the very marrow of their bones; but without the latter, the vertical, we shall soon sink into a vertiginous abyss of cynicism, despondency, and abjection so that every individual will become a monadic world unto itself, shut up in meaninglessly alternating paroxysms of pleasure and pain.

I have postponed a fundamental question till this point : is the Christian 'scheme', 'view', 'picture', or 'description' of reality --- one that is more or less presupposed in the above paragraphs --- 'correct', 'justified', or 'true'? Or to break down the question into two smaller parts : Is there a God who loves us? and Is there a post-mortem existence of blessed communion with this God of Love who has sent 'His' Son to suffer with and for us until the end of time? To this, I shall reply, while noting that the notion of 'truth' is a highly context-sensitive one so that the questions 'Is it true that 2+2=7?' and 'Is your love true?' exist on two distinct categorical planes, that I simply do not know whether this so-called grand narrative is 'true' or 'false'. However, perhaps because of my earlier training in physics (the 'exact science'!), I refuse to 'buy' the currently fashionable ('postmodern') view that 'anything can become true provided that you believe in it hard enough'. I wish to keep open the truth-question of 'Christianity', '(Vedantic) Hinduism' and '(atheistic) French existentialism', the three broad streams at whose shifting confluence I live, move, and have my being; and, consequently, all that I have to say in this matter is that I cannot answer that question for you in any definitive and conclusive manner today on May 16, 2005.

Nevertheless, the somewhat contentious phrase 'Christian pessimism' is a convenient summary of my views about the 'world', bringing together as it does into the conceptual space of two words a host of conflicting and (sometimes) contradictory beliefs that I have learnt to make my peace with over the years. This phrase perhaps also explains the curious alternation of 'individualism' and 'anti-individualism' that haunts my posts on this blog : I am an 'individualist' in the sense that I believe that every individual must go through the painful and unavoidable discipline of carrying the Cross within the specific context of his/her own life-narrative, but I am an 'anti-invidualist' because I hold that this Cross-bearing is never a solitary enterprise but an interpersonal venture that we engage in for the sake of one another.

Thus, on the one hand, we must not seek to grasp or reach out for the Other without first subjecting ourselves to a 'crucifying' process of looking into our own depths and becoming aware simultaenously of the capabilities of evil that we bear within and the riches of goodness that lie hidden there; but, on the other hand, we must also try to ascend from these inward depths once we realise that it was the (logically) prior call, desire, or love of the Other which had made it possible for us to start this journey of self-exploration in the first place.

To suffer with and for others without either sinking into a derisive misanthropy or raising suffering to the status of an end-in-itself by glorifying in it : that is the perennial challenge of the reality of the Cross, a reality that continues to provoke, challenge and unsettle me, in ways that are as new as they are old. To see Christ crucified in every human being that I meet in my life, and yet not to know whether I should move in or move out to lend a helping hand to him/her or even not to have the strength, courage, or will to do so, these are ambiguities and ambivalences that cannot perhaps be overcome within my mortal limitations. Will they ever be though? In some (putative) state of post-mortem existence where, to use my earlier phrase, 'every tear shall be removed from every eye'? That is a question that I continue to grapple with, not knowing whether it is even meaningful to seek an answer to it.

And yet, to return to the key with which I started this composition, my dialectical nature already begins to catch up with me. I am beginning to feel that whatever I have written here is as useless as a pile of straw to be burnt for the summer-night's bonfire and forgotten the next morning as a nightmare. And yet, I know that it is not entirely worthless either, for the dialectical union that the Cross is cautions me : 'You are correct, but not quite'. If someday I wish to be buried (instead of being cremated), I would ask that my epitaph should carry these words :

Here lies a man who had the following words for life :

Yes, but not quite.