Critical thinking is not required every moment of the day. If each action needed careful analysis and purposeful judgment you’d have to awaken fully before you got out of bed in the morning, assess the ambient temperature of the room before extending a foot from under the protective covers to the cold floor by the bed; determine if a robe is be needed; calculate the steps to cross to the bathroom…. You get what I mean. We rely largely on ingrained habit to get ourselves up in the morning and ready for the day.
Some areas of life require a high level of critical thinking, like the process of choosing a career path and planning the steps required to accomplish the goal; or engineering the flight of the space shuttle from launch to docking at the International Space Station and its safe return to earth under various conditions.
When it comes to driving a car, what sort of thinking is involved? A quick response favors critical thinking. But maybe you rely on luck, or assume the others on the road are driving defensively, or even figure you’re a better driver than the rest. Those responses can promote over confidence, leading you to click on cruise control in heavy traffic, leaf through the Thomas Guide or adjust the GPS display, or turn to check a spilled grocery bag in the back seat.
Wednesday afternoon the Dunne family - three children under six years of age and their parents, was driving north on 101 near Mussel Shoals when their car suddenly collided with a disabled truck parked off the highway. Good Samaritans quickly rescued the children from their car seats. It took the fire department 90 minutes to extricate the parents in the front seats wedged under the truck’s trailer. The dad suffered head trauma and some broken bones. His wife and children have various fractures. One moment all is well, “Life is good!” the next “Catastrophe!” Critical thinking will puzzle this one out, and may help others avoid a future mishap.
This accident would have remained a newspaper article rating color photos except that I received a phone call from a priest in Fairview, California, on Thursday morning explaining that the driver was her nephew. She asked me to visit the family in VCMC, a not uncommon request given St. Paul’s location across from the hospital. At the time of the call I was musing about the sermon I would prepare for Trinity Sunday. Fusion. Two thoughts came together: What has the Trinity to say to this family? That’s probably not the first thought to occur to you. It’s an occupational hazard. The truth of the matter is the question is not such a stupid one. For what is the value of the Trinity? Is the doctrine of the Trinity a theological nicety with no practical relevance, or may it speak to the circumstances of this family and by extension to every life situation?
I don’t want you to think that I was planning to walk into ICU and give a lecture on the Trinity. It seems to me though that critical thinking is important for understanding our role in the world God has made and perhaps more importantly who this God is. Puzzling through this ancient doctrine provides a firm grounding for faith and good works.
First, it should be said that the doctrine of the Trinity arises out of scripture. The idea of one God in three persons is an abstract statement, but it affirms the experience of God among the followers of Jesus Christ. Their witness is our biblical text.
Second, the language of the creeds is another way to speak of the Trinity, though the creeds are at least a step removed from the interaction of humans with the Creator, whom Jesus spoke of as our heavenly Father, Jesus of Nazareth who was fully God and fully human, and the Holy Spirit who moves like the wind among and within each of us forming us into the new people of God.
Third, it makes sense to say that the Trinity is a mystery. Mystery describes our bewilderment at the Dunne’s accident. That’s the kind of mystery whose truth is known by gathering the facts and making reasonable inferences about what happened. But we also speak of our lives as a mystery, for no matter how much we can study our bodies and minds there is something essential about you that cannot be dissected and analyzed. You and I are not a mystery to be solved but to be lived into the fullness of our being.[1]
Some years ago Frederick Buechner suggested the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God.”[2] It’s not all about us, as though we are the essential subject of this conversation. The concept of the Trinity also gives us clues about God’s own self, for though God loved us into being God has no real need for us. Three in One and One in Three (not the same as the motto of the famed Three Musketeers; nor to be confused with my favorite trio, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego), indicates a divine community complete within itself bound in the communion of divine love.
For some the Trinity – Three in One and One in Three, is a riddle to be solved. Examples are offered: the three states of water, or the characteristics of an equilateral triangle. But I find Buechner’s suggestion about mystery the most helpful, it’s personal.
“Look in the mirror someday. There is (a) the interior life known only to yourself and those you choose to communicate it to (the Father). There is (b) the visible face which in some measure reflects that inner life (the Son). And there is (c) the invisible power you have in order to communicate that interior life in such a way that others do not merely know about it, but know it in the sense of its becoming part of who they are (the Holy Spirit). Yet what you are looking at in the mirror is clearly and indivisibly the one and only you.”[3]
So, in what manner is the Trinity of practical use to five family members suffering from traumatic head injuries and broken bones? Is there something here to comfort relatives and friends? Perhaps pointing at our beginning reveals the truth in the mystery. God loved us into being, creating humans in the glorious image of God. The mystery becomes inscrutable. Then though circumstances go awry whether by deliberate choice or accident, God is in the business of making things right, ultimately through Jesus’ love and forgiveness restoring communion. But God is not done yet. God’s design is for all of creation to be reconciled and those who follow Jesus are deputized to carry out the work, not alone but directed by the Spirit who reveals the will of the Father in the Son’s word as times and circumstances change.
It is because God is love that we are reassured that we are loved. It is because love is known most clearly in forgiveness that nothing can come between us and God. It is because each person is the apple of God’s eye that God calls us to serve others so that we may become all God intends and the creation returns in praise to God.
So we pray with and for the Dunne family in the assurance of the love that binds together the Trinity, the love that made us, redeems us, and gives us life. This is the love that heals, promoting wholeness and health. This is the love that calls others to use their knowledge of medicine to alleviate pain and suffering. This is the love that does not forget us in the long lonely hours recovering from surgery. It is the love that blesses continually. For the Dunne’s and everyone who cries out for God’s healing in body, mind and spirit, we offer this blessing from Iona, thankful for the heritage of Celtic spirituality which is saturated with a Trinitarian view of daily life depicted in the overlapping strands in its artwork.
Around thee twine the Three
The One the Trinity
The Father bind his love
The Son tie his salvation
The Spirit wrap his power
Make you a new creation
Around thee twine the Three
The encircling of the Trinity.[4]
[1] Frederick Buechner, “Wishful Thinking – A Theological ABC,” Harper and Row, c.1973, p. 64
[4] David Adam, “The Edge of Glory – Prayers in the Celtic Tradition,” Triangle Press, c. 1985, p. 49.
