What Size and Shape is Your God?

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Way back in the 1950’s, a British biblical scholar, J. B. Phillips, wrote and published a small, but impactful book entitled: Your God is Too Small. His premise was that many of our images of God are totally inadequate. Doctor Phillips gave a number of examples of images that people regularly put onto God, and showed how and why they did not fit the God of Scripture, especially as revealed in and through Jesus.

It seems to me that we tend to fall into one of three big mistakes (I’m sure there are more than three) when we try to capture God in an image. The first is when we make God think, feel, behave, act just like we human beings do: anthropomorphism. We project onto God how we think we would be if we were god. This never works.

The second is when we dive into the Scriptures and choose an image depicted there that does not reach the full image of God that Jesus presents to us. Too often we can’t get beyond the compelling images of God in the Old Testament. Don’t you dare stir up God’s righteous wrath! The irony is that the Israelites grew beyond their own earlier less adequate images of God. Just compare the God described in the Pentateuch (first five books = the Torah) with the God of the Prophets. 

The third big mistake is when we cozy up to and get comfortable with an image of God that matches our individual preconceived ideas and personal preferences. This God (My God), surprisingly enough, is totally in tune with what I think, my idea of right and wrong, how I judge others, and is enamored of the way I choose to live my life. This God is on our side; so sorry, not on yours.

In random posts to come, I hope to look at some of the less than healthy, or even less than holy, images that we human beings come up with to justify our way of being in the world.

Are You Sure? – Discernment part 7

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How can we be sure we’ve made the right choice?  Sorry, but we can’t – at least not absolutely. A key moment in the discernment process comes after we’ve chosen what we believe is the better option, when we pray for confirmation. As we live into the consequences of our choice, we seek this gift/grace. We ask the Holy Spirit to bless us with some sense that we have chosen rightly and well.

Praying for confirmation is not asking for a divine guarantee. Such a thing doesn’t exist. As long as we are fallible and easily swayed by forces within and outside of ourselves, we cannot be absolutely certain.

I was finishing my commitment with a L’Arche community, and had made plans to enter a program in a few weeks that would lead to a Certificate in Respiratory Therapy. Having studied philosophy and theology, I was not prepared for any kind of career. I knew that my life was meant to be of service to others, and I had worked in hospitals for a number of years and felt comfortable in that environment.

The community’s leader approached me with a request: Would I be willing to stay on just a bit longer to allow a part-time assistant, who also worked full-time outside of the home, to participate in a large international meeting of L’Arche? This was a first for this person, after a number of years of humble, faithful service. I knew two things to be true, if I chose to stay: The people with disabilities would feel safer and more secure with me than with a patchwork of benevolent caregivers who did not know those I was living with as well as I; and, I would not be able, at that moment, to fulfill my desire of attaining the skills that could lead to the satisfaction of having a concrete and tangible line of work.

I had an immediate and clear sense of what appeared to be the “right thing to do” – to continue a little while longer with these wonderful, vulnerable people who had taught me so much. Yet, in the back of my mind, there was this creeping sense that I was “throwing away” my first real opportunity for stable work. After all, respiratory therapy was a relatively new and much needed area of healthcare. I would be helping plenty of people.

I stayed on in the community. The community leader and the other assistant went off to the big meeting. The extra time passed by, and I savored each day. I became filled with peace and the sense: this is the right thing to do. Yes, I did miss the date to enter the training program, but it was okay. 

I hadn’t formally prayed for the grace of confirmation, but it was given, and I recognized it as a gift from God. We can feel the grace of confirmation. We are at peace, even though the decision was difficult and may have seemed illogical. There is an inner sense of rightness. We can feel joy, new energy; we may feel freer and more alive. Choose carefully, and then ask for confirmation, before you finalize your life-plans or major decisions.

Something Messy Emerging

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We wish it weren’t true! We would much prefer a gentle unifier; someone who makes everyone feel at ease, content – a conciliator. Jesus, please, tone it down a little!

In Luke 12:49-51, Jesus cries out, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing. There is a baptism which I need to undergo, and how great is my anguish until it is done. Do you imagine that I have come to establish peace in the world? Not at all, hear me say it, rather division is what follows in my wake.” Jesus, these are not the words we wanted to hear.

Jesus has taken the road to Jerusalem. His disciples are dreaming of conquest and glory, despite Jesus’ regular reminders of what is likely to be the reaction to his mission there. He now turns to images from the prophetic tradition to describe his experience and what awaits him: fire, baptism, division. He feels in his bones the tension and conflict of his impact on others and on the inevitable confrontation before him. Jesus, once again, invites his followers to see what he is seeing.

“I have come bringing fire!” For the prophets, fire was symbol of purification, of transformation. Jesus understood his mission from Abba-God as one that required the kind of radical change that fire generates. The way things had devolved could only lead to disaster, incredible suffering and misery. Business as usual can never save us. But not even his closest disciples were able to see this coming. 

Jesus had submitted his life to God’s Will and sensed that now he was entering into a new, critical phase (crisis = a defining event). This is the baptism he refers to.  He is about to be plunged (and all those who continue to follow him) into the crucial (literally = cross roads) moment that will define his life and ministry. Is this the baptism we are ready to endure?

All the true prophets had experienced opposition – frequently from the powers that be. The people divided in response to their preaching: acceptance of the message, or rejection. Jesus is only noting what was obvious when he said that division, not peace, resulted from his words and actions. He saw families split apart because of him, maybe even some of the families of his apostles.

All this was likely on his mind when he cried out these terribly anguished words. Hearing them, we are called to choose to follow him all the way, or to dismiss him and huddle with a familiar, risk-delaying life. It’s either hanging on to what we think we have or opting for the messy disruption of something new emerging – the Kingdom of God.

What Do I Know?

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We can grow so insensitive over time to what is familiar that we dissociate ourselves from its true meaning and implications. “Oh yes, I know that. I’ve heard it before.” The question becomes: “Am I hearing it now?”

The one group that Jesus consistently called out with rebuke and forceful warning was not the oppressive Romans, not the unbelieving neighboring tribes, not the Samaritan half-breeds, not even the Israelites who were unable to strictly keep God’s Law (at least as interpreted by the majority of  teachers of Jesus’ day). Jesus got after the religious leaders, represented by the teachers of the Law (Scribes), the priestly class, and the zealous laymen – the Pharisees. Instead of bringing the ordinary people closer to God, they pushed a righteous life beyond the reach of almost all. “Woe to you!”Jesus cries out. “This isn’t what God wants!”

In Luke 11:52, Jesus unleashes an especially poignant broadside. “You scholars of God’s Law are in big trouble! You hold back the key of knowledge, refusing to enter yourselves, while blocking the way for others who are trying to enter.” Harsh. 

In Jesus’ day, only a tiny minority of the people could read. These understood and practiced their faith by listening carefully to what was transmitted orally, memorizing the content, repeating what they heard in prayer and in instructing their children. The scholars of the Law were able to read and write. They had a privileged place in society. They had direct access to the written word, including the Word of God – the Scriptures. They had the possibility to enter into, to immerse themselves in, and to ponder deeply the full meaning of God’s Law. Most of them didn’t. Rather, they just repeated and debated the teachings and arguments of one another.

In doing so, these scholars of the Law whom Jesus addressed so pointedly could only pass on to the people who depended on them for knowledge well-digested food – nothing life-giving. They refused to dive into and wrestle with God’s Word, and in doing so, they failed in their responsibility to teach. Real teachers are excited to learn, to grow, and to share what they have learned with others.

Knowledge, in the biblical tradition, is not a static storehouse of facts, information, canned truths, but an ongoing, dynamic process based on personal experience. You know what/who you have experienced and are experiencing in your life. If what you know is not constantly evolving, something in you is frozen in time, stuck, if not already dead. All you have to offer is nostalgia.

Life happens. Life is continually changing. As we experience it, our understanding grows and reshapes itself. And remember, our love is rooted in our experiential knowing, and love carries us beyond what we can know. St. Paul, whose well-honed knowledge was blown to bits by his encounter with Jesus risen from the dead, wrote of this: “Love never fails. Knowledge is imperfect, partial. It will come to nothing.” Paul continues: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, thought as a child, reasoned as a child; when I became an adult, I put aside childish ways.” (1 Corinthians 13: 8-11) Perhaps Jesus was trying to say to religious experts, “Grow up!”

The Queen, the Ninevites, and Seeking Signs

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Are we an “evil” generation? Jesus used this descriptor for those who. came to him demanding a sign from God to “prove” his legitimacy. (Luke 11:29-32) Do we seek signs from God before we decide to follow a way of life? Are we in a “Show Me” state? What would it take to convince us so completely that we are willing to live and to die (if necessary) for someone or some cause? Following Jesus is no part-time job.

Continuing his response, Jesus points to lessons from history. When the pagan queen of the South came to visit Solomon, based on his reputation for wisdom, she went away certain that she had been in the presence of someone who had acquired wisdom. When Jonah, the reluctant and rebellious prophet, preached in the capital city of the hated enemy, the brutal, unbelieving people of Nineveh, they repented.

Jesus finishes his argument with a powerful and mysterious statement. There is something here greater than Solomon’s wisdom or Jonah’s preaching, as impressive as these were. He doesn’t say that there is someone greater here. Though we might be tempted to go there.

The implication is that all the people around him need do is open their eyes and see what’s going on: countless people’s lives are being transformed. There is only one source for such an outpouring of gracious goodness – God, our loving Abba (Papa/Mama God). Jesus’ teaching, healing, liberating and the response, especially of the little people, is the only sign to be given. God’s Kingdom is breaking into our history in a new and definitive way.

We today are also called to open our eyes, our ears, our hearts to the signs of God’s love at work among us.The heart of Jesus’ mission and message is and always will be, whatever the age: The Kingdom of God is at hand! Allow yourself to be taken and transformed! Believe this Good News! Live it!

Disordered Attachments (not talking about emails here) – Discernment part 6

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We all have likes, and some of these are strong, compelling, almost non-negotiable. We have favorite foods, colors, sports teams, things to do when we are not directly engaged with our responsibilities… The combination of our individual preferences make up a profile of our characteristic style. They are so familiar, so comfortable, and yet, they are not who we truly are.

One of the major barriers to making free and loving choices is what Ignatius of Loyola called disordered attachments – those people, things, activities, substances that we value more than our relationship with God. Whatever deviates our mind and/or our heart and/or our life-path away from what we know is right and good, away from God’s call, away from God’s loving desires for us and for others; these are disordered attachments. When it comes time for us to make an important decision, we are pre-conditioned by our attachments to choose according to whatever we are attached to. This can severely impair our discernment of God’s Will for us.

Ignatius has a simple antidote for disordered attachments – indifference (or detachment). To choose well, we need to be indifferent, detached. Ignatius was a passionate Basque. He was not talking about developing apathy as some backward kind of virtue. Indifference doesn’t mean that we don’t care. As fully alive human beings, we need to be in touch with, and have access to, all our feelings, no matter how fierce or deep. But when we choose, we need to be free from the domination of our feelings.

Once again, a huge help to dealing well with disordered attachments is awareness. We need to know ourselves inside and out. What claims us? What tugs at our heart? What siren’s song sings more loudly and more seductively to us, drowning out the voice of God? What, in our life, is more important to us than doing what is loving and just? Whatever pulls us away from God and God’s ways is a disordered attachment. It means more to us than is healthy and good for us. Knowing the answer to these questions allows us to choose more freely.

Because we do care, very much, we try to discover how our caring, or our passion, clouds our vision and moves us in one direction or another. Does it help or hinder our listening to/for God’s direction for our life? We may want something with all our heart. We may be totally convinced that what we want to do has to be the right way, the only way. We are attached. We need to back off and try to see our life and the choice in front of us from God’s perspective.

Brainwashing, Insidious Advisors and Leaning Giants – Discernment part 5

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The gift of freedom we have been given offers us the opportunity to participate in God’s ongoing work of creation and to continue the mission of Jesus: to call all people, by our lives, to fundamentally change their way of seeing and acting; to believe in, and to build up God’s Kingdom now, where we are. Our freedom is awesome and, at the same time, so restricted. Our choices have vital significance, and are starkly limited – to the point where some people claim that because there is so much constantly shaping and conditioning us, we have no freedom at all. We can choose to focus on the awesome and do what we can, or get lost in the littleness of the impact of our decisions and choices, and court frustration and despair. 

Discernment requires that we have the fullest measure of interior freedom as is humanly possible. In order to recognize and choose according to God’s loving preferences and desires, we need to remove distractions (physical, sensory, mental, emotional, as well as spiritual). Distractions are whatever pulls us away from being freely present in this moment.

There are conditions that make it next to impossible to make a free and loving decision: ignorance, attachments, passions, deep wounding, intense pain, brainwashing, addictions, physical or psychological threats, being reduced to basic survival, social and familial conditioning… Brainwashing can either be a psychological weapon wielded by an expert, or the creation of a dependency on a powerful or charismatic personality who serves as one’s auxiliary mind, conscience and will – a substitute god, or a divine parent. 

Most of us, thank God, are not dealing with such heavy duty constraints. For us, the impediments to our freedom are usually simple, common and pervasive. I tend to lump them together as fear, ego, and expectations. If we are in fear, and to the extent we are afraid, we are not free to make good decisions. If we, because of some illusion of self-preservation, have set ourselves as the sole reference for orienting our life, ego rules – and ego is less concerned with freedom than with preserving its imaginary control over reality. Expectations are like a smiling giant with a cudgel, leaning down to us and suggesting what has to be right and good for us, and inviting us: “Now choose.” How free is that?

Since, I believe, we all are struggling with these challenges to making good, loving choices and decisions, how can we ever choose freely and well? The biggest factor is awareness – awareness of the influences that tend to restrict and inhibit our freedom to choose. If we know and can name these persuasive voices, they have less power over us. The secret is to know and name as many of these familiar “advisors”  as possible and to see how they are bending our will. This is choosing with our eyes open. We can say, “Yes.” We can say, “No.”

Problem Solving – Kill, Destroy, Annihilate – part 2

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It is possible that in one’s lifetime, in order to prevent further hurt or killing, a person may be faced with the necessity to use violence or to kill. Our conscience can recognize the need to act in this way, but will never see taking life as right or good. We can try to use our gift of reason to override our conscience, but all that amounts to is internally screaming in an attempt to drown out the voice we are not ready, willing, or able to hear. Over time we can find ways to ignore or numb our conscience.

We macho males have a tendency to equate meekness with weakness. By definition, meekness is strength under control. Consider Jesus. He had access to amazing powers, yet he chose to not use them to protect himself from brutal suffering and death. Jesus is the epitome of meekness. 

Jesus knew that one evil cannot be effectively confronted or destroyed by another evil. In fact, such an attempt only serves to further entrench and disperse evil. Violence begets violence. Evil begets evil. In the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, as Jesus is about to be seized by the night-shrouded troops and guards (Matthew 26:50a-53) one of his followers draws a sword and strikes out with it, wounding one of the High Priest’s men. “Put back that sword!” Jesus commands. Those who rely on weapons and violence are most likely to perish through them.

Jesus goes to Calvary, refusing to call upon “legions of angels” to protect himself in an apocalyptic battle against evil. He is crucified, trusting that this is the way Abba-God has opened for him in the face of our rejection of his message. Being raised from death ratifies his decision. Jesus chooses to confront evil with the only power that can eliminate it: Love. Christianity is not a religion for the immature or cowards.  Following Jesus means faithfulness to the way of Love, even when this leads to a cross.

Problem Solving – Kill, Destroy, Annihilate

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James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were among the first and the closest of Jesus’ followers. They were present at a number of special moments in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus had reason to give them the nickname, “Sons of Thunder.” John, in zealous protection of the authentic “Jesus brand,” is ready to put out of business a person who was casting out demons and relieving people of suffering by using Jesus’ name (Luke 9:49-50). Jesus, with broader vision and deeper wisdom, points out that anyone who is not actively against is for you. Think about that.

Just a few verses later (Luke 9:51-56) we have this incident. When Jesus, reading the signs of the times, recognizes that this is the moment to bring his person and message to the seat of power, he “sets his face” toward Jerusalem. Now the quickest route between Galilee and the capital was through the territory of Samaria. Israelites and Samaritans, as a rule, tended to hate one another. (Jesus was an exception.)

Jesus sent out an advance party ahead of himself to prepare for his passing through. One Samaritan town, mirroring the mutual animosity between the two peoples, refused to welcome Jesus and his entourage. James and John, filled with righteous fervor and indignation, approach Jesus with what they have decided is the only appropriate response to the unthinkable insult of a whole town refusing to offer the sacred obligation of hospitality. “Let us call down fire from heaven on them!” 

How saturated our mentality is with the clear, simple and direct solution of whatever we feel is a problem!  Kill! Destroy! Wipe it/them out! Look at how popular culture is permeated with the concept that the only effective way to deal with evil – or what we see as evil – is to eliminate it through some manifestation of violence (books, movies, video games, music…). The hero (or superhero) is the one who survives by taking the lives of all the “bad guys “and ingeniously finding ways to destroy all their  weaponry (unless a sequel with even greater violence and destruction is planned, of course). We feel good that there is such a clean, straightforward method for overcoming evil.

And Jesus’ response to James and John? He scolds them in no uncertain terms and heads on to another village. Jesus knows that destruction and killing is never a solution. 

 

What More…? Maybe not.

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One of the most poignant encounters in Jesus’ ministry is between a “rich, young man” and himself, related in the three synoptic Gospels. Here is someone filled with the energy, generosity and enthusiasm of youth, seeking a new and more challenging path for his life. He runs up to Jesus, falls on his knees, and bursts out with: “What do I need do to enter into fullness of life?”

Jesus points him to the commandments as a sure way forward. The response from the youth is almost comical, if it weren’t for his obvious earnestness: “I have kept all these my whole (albeit brief) life. What more do I need do?” Jesus, Mark notes, looks at him with love. 

This young person senses that there is more within himself to give, and Jesus takes him very seriously. “If you really want to give yourself completely,” Jesus responds,”Sell what you have, give to the poor, and then come follow me.”  The youth was not ready for this. He turns and walks away sad, because he had many possessions. And how does Jesus feel at this moment?

Do we desire fullness of life? Do we sense that we have more of our life, of our self, to give? Jesus invites us to dispossess ourselves, to use our wealth to enrich the lives of those who are needy, and to let him guide us each step of the way through life as his disciples. 

What possesses us?  In what do we invest our time, energy, loyalty, and that we guard out of fear of losing? What holds us back or holds us in from giving ourselves more fully and freely? What is more important to us than our relationships, than our care for ourself, than our very integrity? What claims our life as a substitute god? Is it a career, the image we project, some seductive activity, substance or relationship? Have we surrendered our life to a beguiling unfreedom? It is difficult to untangle ourselves from this demonic, deadly, yet familiar, dynamic.  Letting go is the first step.

We all have gifts enough to share. What is our “wealth?” What do we cling to that would bring blessing to others? Is it our time, money, presence, care, a particular art craft or skill, education, the ability to listen, our smile, an ability to speak out for the good and against all that divides and all that is evil? Share in a way that makes life easier or better for someone.

Once we are freer from the tyranny of possessions, have begun giving our gifts to and for others, then we can follow Jesus, without looking back over our shoulder at what we left behind or to see how others are looking at us. There are more than enough challenges, sacrifices and joys walking close to Jesus to engage us totally for the rest of our days. “Come, follow me.”