There is something precious in our being mysteries to ourselves, in our being unable ever to see through even the person who is closest to our heart and to reckon with him as though he were a logical proposition or a problem in accounting.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the inherent mystery of human relationships and the complexities of understanding ourselves and others.
Rudolf Bultmann emphasizes that a significant aspect of human existence lies in the mysteries that we embody. No matter how close we are to someone or how much we think we understand ourselves, there are always layers of depth and complexity that elude our comprehension. This invites a sense of humility and wonder in our relationships, as we encounter the unpredictable nature of human connection and the limitations of our rationality.
In practice
In a discussion on the nature of love, this quote can illustrate how relationships are deeper than mere logic.
It may be said that myths give to the transcendent reality an immanent, this-worldly objectivity. Myths speak about gods and demons as powers on which man knows himself to be dependent, powers whose favors he needs, powers whose wrath he fears. Myths express the knowledge that man is not master of the world and his life, that the world within which he lives is full of riddles and mysteries and that human life also is full of riddles and mysteries.
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.
All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me.
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