The Lost Art of Mysticism: Encountering God Beyond Certainty, Control, and Words

In this episode, The Unintentional Heretic explores the lost art of Christian mysticism and why contemplative voices like Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and Thomas Merton still matter for a faith often shaped by certainty, performance, and control. Mysticism invites us beyond simply believing the right ideas about God and into a deeper experience of union, love, silence, and transformation.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the unintentional heretic. One of the most common things I hear from people is I believe in God, but I don't feel close to God. And I understand that. Many of us were taught how to think about God. We learned doctrines, apologetics, Bible studies, and theological systems, and those things have value. But somewhere along the way, many of us were never taught how to become attentive to God. We've become very good at talking about God while forgetting how to be with God. And that wasn't always true. For most of Christian history, there was a stream running alongside theology, preaching, and the sacraments. It wasn't reserved for monks or saints. It was understood as the heart of the Christian life. It was contemplation, not escaping the world, but learning to see the world as God sees it. The word mysticism comes from the Greek word myin, meaning to close the eyes or lips. It wasn't about keeping secrets from outsiders. It was about discovering that some truths cannot be explained. They can only be experienced. The Eastern Church has always understood this. The goal of the Christian life wasn't simply forgiveness, but theosis, participation in the very life of God. As Saint Athanasius famously wrote, God became human so that humanity might become divine. He wasn't suggesting that we become gods. He was speaking of transformation. Grace doesn't simply pardon us, it changes us. And that vision shaped Christianity for centuries. Then came the mystics. Meister Eckhart may be one of the most brilliant theologians that many people have never heard of. A Dominican friar living in the late twelve hundreds, Eckhart pushed language to its limits because he believed God always exceeds our ideas. He once prayed, I pray God to rid me of God. And that sounds scandalous until you understood what he meant. He wasn't asking to lose God. He was asking to be freed from every false image of God, the God we've constructed, the God who always agrees with us, the God made in our own image. Sometimes our ideas about God become the greatest obstacle to actually knowing God. About a century later came an English anchoress named Julian of Norwich. She lived through the Black Death. She watched entire communities disappear. And yet one of the most striking things about her writing isn't fear. It's gentleness. Julian wrote, The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love. Think about that, not fearfully, not anxiously, gladly. For Julian, God's love wasn't something to earn. It was the deepest truth about reality. Remarkably, she also became the first woman known to write a book in English. Not because she wanted to make history, but because she wanted ordinary people to know that divine love was closer than they imagined. Then there's Teresa of Avila. Teresa was practical, funny, deeply human, and one of the greatest spiritual teachers the church has ever produced. She once said, It is love alone that gives birth to all things. Notice she didn't say certainty or knowledge or perfect doctrine, love. She believed prayer was friendship with God, not performing, not persuading, friendship. It's a surprisingly ordinary word for something many of us have made terribly complicated. John of the Cross understood something else. Growth almost always feels like loss. He wrote, To reach satisfaction in all, desire satisfaction in nothing. Our culture tells us that freedom comes from acquiring more. John suggested freedom comes from clinging less. He wasn't promoting asceticism for its own sake. He understood that our attachments, even good ones, can keep us from receiving life as gift. Fast forward to the twentieth century, Thomas Merton entered a monastery expecting to leave the world behind. Instead, he discovered the whole world inside himself. Late in his life he wrote, Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. And that's profoundly Christian. It's also profoundly difficult. Merton believed contemplation wasn't withdrawal. It was a training ground for compassion. The more deeply we encounter God, the less capable we become of dismissing another human being. So what happened? Why did this tradition fade in much of Protestant Christianity? The reformers inherited a medieval church where some mystical language had become detached from ordinary discipleship and at times mixed with superstition. Luther insisted that salvation is a gift of grace. Calvin emphasized the authority of Scripture. And these corrections mattered in that era, but over the next several centuries another shift occurred, especially after the Enlightenment. Knowledge became primarily analytical, reason became the highest authority, truth became something to prove. The Christian life slowly became centered on information rather than transformation. As Eugene Peterson said, we began trying to use scripture for information more than formation. The sermon became central, silence became suspicious, mystery became something to solve instead of something to enter. Ironically, this would have puzzled the earliest Christians. The Cappadocian fathers repeatedly reminded believers that every statement about God is partial. Gregory of Nyssa described the spiritual life not as arriving, but as an eternal progression into God. The closer we come to God, the more we realize there is always more. That's humility. Maybe that's why our churches can produce people who know the Bible remarkably well and still struggle with forgiveness or generosity or peace. Because knowledge alone doesn't transform us. Attention does. Practice does. Love does. The philosopher Simone Weil once wrote, Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. I wonder if attention is also one of the purest forms of prayer, to become fully present to God, to another person, to ourselves. The mystics were never asking us to reject theology. Most of them were theologians. They simply believe theology should eventually become doxology, wonder, silence, love. After all, the deepest Christian truths are not ideas to master. They are realities into which we are invited. I'll leave you with a prayer from the 14th century anonymous mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing. Lift up your heart to God with a humble impulse of love. Not a perfect argument, not a perfect certainty, just a humble impulse of love. And maybe that's where genuine faith begins. Thanks for listening to the unintentional heretic. Until next time, keep asking questions.