EXPERTS
It is worth the effort to discover and then study those
people who have come close to “getting it” during their
spiritual lives. Some of the best known and most lucid are
certain monks in several of the brotherhoods (now mainly
associated with the Roman Catholic church), chiefly because
we have the greatest of exposure to their writings. They go
back to the earliest centuries after the church was begun
and they continue through such “mystics” as Thomas Merton
in the 20th century.
Some are almost angrily intolerant of worldliness,
believing that, unless you shut out the world altogether,
you are eternally corrupted and damned by it. For those who
believed that, perhaps it was true. But how can you dismiss
a Mother Teresa? Am I serving God better by involving
myself in the world and pausing occasionally to yield to
its temptations, or would I serve better by joining a
monastery and immersing myself in constant prayer? I think
we’re both needed. Incidentally, it was the monasteries
that preserved the codices over the centuries that now
comprise our Bible.
Each of us has to determine for herself whose testimony she
will believe about what she has not seen herself. When she
can believe no testimony at all, she must rely upon
empirical evidence. Either route to truth, enlightenment,
or merely daily decisions, is respectable and valid. When
she resorts to emotion and divination, others have every
right to reject her conclusions, because she cannot expect
everyone else to proceed on the same internal hocus-pocus
that she uses.
I have decided over the years who seem to me to be valid,
reliable, honest, learned witnesses to history. They
usually attract me by their consistency in findings,
independently of one another over time, and by their
level-headedness. I have not asked for signs from God, but
I’ve had them.
FAITH
Tertullian (A.D. 155-225) wrote: “It is to be believed
because it is absurd,” and “It is certain because it is
impossible.” Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) paraphrased it
as: “I believe because it is impossible.” Voltaire wrote:
“To believe in God is impossible; not to believe in him is
absurd.” Yet another (for the source of which I’ve searched
in vain for years after hearing it) expands the thought
with: “I have said what I have said, not to have the last
word about it but because I cannot remain silent in the
face of so great a mystery.” (I think it may have been
Saint Augustine in his Treatise on Trinity.) Tertullian was
a delightful early thinker on the church (which, recall,
was neither Roman Catholic nor Baptist nor Lutheran, but
merely the Christian church), and one of his more cunning
lines was: “It is certainly no part of religion to compel
religion.” You hang it out there for the world to see, you
set the example, you let them come find out what is
different, you share, you care, and you let them choose.
And you leave the judging to God. Plutarch: “It were better
to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is
unworthy of him; for the one is only belief -- the other
contempt.” From Brother Roger of Taizé: “It is never our
faith that creates God. Nor is it our doubts that put an
end to God’s existence.”
Faith is trusting in things hoped for, believing in the
unseen. Most importantly, perhaps: Faith is knowing that
God is with you. If knowing is too strong a word, then
faith is trusting that God is with you. If trusting is too
strong a word, then faith is hoping. It’s okay if you
aren’t that confident, at first or ever. Are you willing to
hope? God looks for your willingness. It helps to recall
the two magnificent verses from Isaiah: “For my thoughts
are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the
LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
thoughts.”
MORE ON FAITH
This from a sermon I heard recently: Believing without
following is possible. Following without believing is
impossible. The Bible is about faith, duty from
faith, and following.
HEAVEN
I am not concerned with getting to heaven. Either I am
worthy or I am not. I expect to learn more throughout the
rest of my life and as I learn, to be more humbled by what
I learn and by my unworthiness. When death removes me from
this realm, I have a modest hope that I will next find
myself becoming conscious of kneeling or lying prostrate
before the actual altar of God. How will I know I’m there?
Perhaps I’ll know because the music will be so incredibly
beautiful, or the light so incredibly intense that I dare
not open my eyes, such as they may be in that setting. But
I’ll know. And I can envision only one reaction on my part,
and my response will be to weep. If, though, I am counted
unworthy of God’s eternal kingdom, I believe I can go to
hell singing God’s praises, for even though I may be turned
away from heaven, I know he was right and good and just.
From him to whom much is given, much is expected. I have
been given too much to comprehend. In all the history of
mankind, no one I’ve ever heard of has been more blessed
than I am. No one. People have had more money, more things,
more leisure, more “fun.” Kings have had palaces and slaves
(and slept in drafty rooms and eaten grain left by the
rats). And not everything is right for me, but this isn’t
heaven, either, so who has any reason to expect that
everything will be rosy?
From me, much is expected. I don’t congratulate myself that
I am fully delivering. My consolation is that I am working
continually to the point of exhaustion, I am offering my
home and my spirit to one or two desperate humans at a
time, I am creating things on the side that, if read by
anyone, I believe will be of substantial influence.
The essential things are one’s purity of spirit, honesty
with oneself and others, and faith like a mustard seed –
the simple acknowledgement that there is a creator. These
comprise the basis of humility. If one has been fortunate
enough to have been introduced to the Gospels of the
Christ, then it is wise to study his teaching and realize
his position, for if the first essentials are met, it will
be plain that he too met them. It will be plain as well
that only as ordained, commissioned, and born of God could
he have been so pure as he is depicted, and only by being
so pure, so divine, could he have earned the following he
achieved in his own time and thus been depicted as he is.
The most convincing of his advocates, I think, is the
brilliant, eloquent, almost arrogant Paul of Tarsus.
Not in the context of getting into heaven, (for nowhere do
I see the Bible chiefly purporting to be a roadmap
to heaven), but in the context of our relationship with
God, you find the Old Testament admonition in Micah: “The
Lord has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the
Lord require of you? But that you act justly, love
tenderly, and walk humbly with your God.” (Roman Catholic
translation, I believe. I found it in those words on the
wall of a convent.)
Being smitten with the Spirit, “confessing the Lord, Jesus
Christ, as your personal Lord and savior,” or being
“saved,” as some describe it, is not a one-time
abracadabra. Some seem to believe that if you fit their
special category in this world, undergo their special
conversion, you have been admitted into the kingdom of
heaven right then and there and you’re invulnerable ever
after. You’re in, you’re special, and you can tell who
isn’t going to make it. What’s worse, they believe that if
I haven’t done it their special way, they can speak for God
and assure me that I’m not going to get there. Well, let’s
each one of us wait and see where we lie when we “open our
eyes” after we’ve taken our last breath.
I was “saved” when I was about 13. (I didn’t get to that
when describing the Evangelical United Brethren Church
background I had in Ohio.) But it was a very shallow
salvation. It was a moment of great realization about
Yeshua’s sacrifice for me, but by the time I was 30 I had
become smarter than the God I believed in at 13. That
one-time fix hadn’t assured me a place in heaven. Or if it
had, I would no longer want to be there anyway, if that’s
all it took. Imagine how corrupt it must be…
Does it take deeds? No! It takes love. Deeds are done
spontaneously and happily and abundantly out of love. They
flow almost effortlessly. (Although love sometimes leads to
an ultimate sacrifice.) Love doesn’t flow from deeds done
grudgingly. (See LOVE.)
2002
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