Does the "Sacred Text" Contain the Entire Truth?

From Sat. USA Today letter to editor in response to article by Dinesh D'Souza defending against claims that religion is to blame for terrorism: "The bottom line: No one group (atheists or religionists) has cornered the market on morality. There has never been any perfect text - religious or otherwise - to guide us through life. We have to guard against religious fanatics just as we must guard against atheistic fanatics. A belief that any religion, sacred text or ideology contains the entire truth is always fraught with danger. All good people must contend against this insistence on absolute moral certainty. - Norm Allen Jr. Buffalo" (emphasis added)

This from my Catholic Study Bible's readers guide to Micah (RG, 372):

"The true prophet here, as so often in the history of Israel, finds himself in opposition to the religious leaders, the priests, and the official prophets (3,11). On the surface of things, the priests appear to have great faith: no evil can come upon Israel because the Lord is in its midst. Such faith is no virtue for Micah. Rather virtue lies in the practice of justice and in facing reality honestly. He regarded the Temple on Mt. Zion, often the focal point of Jewish religion in antiquity, as a negative force. According to the Psalmist, Mt. Zion was 'the holdy dwelling of the Most High. God is in its midst; it shall not be disturbed' (Ps 46,6). If kings came to attack it, they would be seized with terror and put to flight (Ps 48,5f). Micah realized that the Assyrians would not panic at the sight of Jerusalem. The belief that Zion could not be destroyed was a source of complacency and illusion. So Micah uttered his radical prophecy that Zion would be plowed like a field. This prophecy is quoted in Jeremiah 16,18 as a precedent for the equally radical prophecy of Jeremiah. It was not fulfilled in Micah's time, but it was not forgotten either, and it was justified in time. Faith cannot be based on any religious institution, no matter how sacred. No temple is permanent, and no one is guaranteed the unconditional protection of God." (emphasis added)

Are they saying the same thing? Close, but not exactly. When the sacred text warns against the very attitude decried by the letter writer -- the attitude that pridefully assumes it is in the right -- the sacred text IS entirely truthful!

Who are the modern day prophets?

In Christ is our Hope this month, there is an article by Fr. John Welch, located here in Darien, IL. He writes of "The Languages of a Christian," noting the first language is one of thanksgiving. "No matter how difficult life may be . . . it is always appropriate to give thanks to God. For what? For the unmerited love of God that brought us into this world and sustains us throughout life."

The second language is that of prophesy. "Having given thanks to God, we look around our world to see who cannot participate fully in the love God offers us. Who, for whatever reason, cannot take his or her place at the table of life prepared for all by God? Who, for reasons of economics, politics, gender, religion, sexual orientation, cannot participate in the banquet of life? Our prophetic language says, 'This situation should not last; it must come to an end.' The language of the prophets in Scripture has been called 'an articulated grief' because it announces the end of a dominant consciousness, which is at odds with God's will."

In my opinion, Fr. Welch's words about prophecy sound nice, but are too ambiguous to be helpful. Who, for example, for reasons of "sexual orientation" "cannot participate in the banquet of life?" Gays who cannot marry because of Maine's vote against gay marriage? Or those whose gay lifestyle contravenes God's law? (see earlier post) Fr. Welch does not say.

Who, for reasons of gender, cannot participate in the banquet of life? The woman needing an abortion? Or a Chinese women discriminated against for having more than one child? Again, Fr. Welch does not say.

The prophet IS called to announce the end of the "dominant consciousness," which is at odds with God's will. But who represents the dominant consciousness? The oppressive majority? The dominant minority? No answers are given.

Fr. Welch's platitudes aren't at issue. At issue in prophecy is WHO is being denounced and WHAT FOR. In my opinion, one group of the powerful and "dominant" against who the prophets should rail are those who are able to enact legislation contrary to accepted norms through power politics, i.e., through judicial fiat.

I agree with Phillip Rieff who said the primary test of a prophet is whether he (or she) preaches fresh renunciations of instinct. Jesus was one -- the greatest -- of these. (See last post.) A prophet never preaches fresh satisfactions of instinct. He (or she) calls people back to obedience to God's immutable law, his covenant of "shall nots." The prophet's mission is not, as so many today believe, to loosen the compass of God's law, so as to show compassion.

Fr. Welch's article on the surface sounds nice, but what is left unsaid makes it unhelpful and therefore unsatisfactory.

Do you "care enough"?

This, from Robert Gagnon, in connection with Maine's electoral vote to repeal the gay marriage law, and Sr. Donna Quinn's "outing" as a deathscort in Hinsdale:

"When Jesus rescued the woman caught in adultery from being stoned, he did so with a view to
encouraging her repentance. Put simply, dead people don’t repent. Jesus wanted to give the woman every last opportunity to repent so that she might inherit the kingdom of God. So he warned her: “Go and from now on no longer be sinning” (John 8:11). A similar statement is made by Jesus in John 5:14, where it is followed up with the remark: “lest something worse happen to you.”

That something worse is loss of eternal life through an unrepentant life. Whereas the Pharisees didn’t care if sexual sinners and persons who exploited the poor for material gain (first-century tax collectors) went to hell, Jesus cared enough to make them a focus of his ministry so that he might, through a proclamation of love and repentance, call them back to God’s kingdom (hence Mark’s summary of Jesus’ ministry: “The kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe the good news” [1:15]).

When the church calls to repentance those who engage in homosexual acts and does so lovingly, with a desire to reclaim lives for the kingdom of God, it carries out the work of its Lord."

Oh, So Reasonable

Idolatry to an idolator seems oh, so reasonable. I am thinking of the worship of Baal by the Hebrews on the verge of entering Caanan. See Numbers 25 and Hosea 9, 10. To a wandering people about to become sedentary and agrarian, the fertility rites of Caanan seemed "just the thing." Primitive peoples were in awe at the "coming together" of water and soil to produce new crops, and they believed Baal, the rain god who accomplished this, needed their help in his divine work of sowing life in otherwise barren soil. Hence Hebrew men's visits to the cult prostitutes and ritual orgies. And it seemed reasonable to think of god as a bull, the most virile of the animal kingdom. See Moses, by Martin Buber in Chapter on Baal.

But Moses, who witnessed this, was aghast. He knew that Yahweh was beyond sexuality, complete, not partial like human males and females. He knew too that the Baalist cult was drawing the people away from a pure and unadulterated worship of the one God who carried them "on eagle's wings" from slavery in Egypt, in effect a disaster that could lead only to death.

Today we snigger at this "idolatry." But aren't we too living in a Baalist cult, with the temptation to make sex our god, as ostensibly the only provider of solace in an otherwise meaningless world? Our faith teaches us otherwise. So let us turn away from the sexual cues, the learing invitations of the temple prostitutes of secular culture whose lust purveys death, and kneel in humble prayer toward our transcendent God who shows us the salvation and life of his son Jesus' love.

If we don't, Hosea's dire prophesies will continue to come to pass in our land too: the brokenness of families through divorce, abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and technology's unchecked hubris in creating life for death.

Facts embedded in Faith = Truth

As I watched the surface of my coffee in its cup this morning, I rotated around first one way and then the other, watching the coffee rotate in the opposite direction each time. Of course, the coffee surface really remained motionless while its "world" moved.

What appears to us is influenced by context; what I experience is a "profile" against a larger background. To me it's a good example of the importance of our faith as that larger background, against which the "brute facts" of life take on meaning. Facts only become meaningful and true when profiled against the background of a faith. Living in the truth is experiencing life "betrothed" to our faith.

Join in the "Energy"

I'll have to admit that I was put off by Fr. Baron's statement that the Kingdom of God "is not something to be admired from the outside, but rather an energy in which to participate." p. 3. He says "the Gospels want us, not outside the energy of Christ, but in it. . ." Ibid. He says, "But when we surrender in trust to the bearing power of God, our souls become great, roomy, expansive. We realize that we are connected to all things and to the creative energy of the whole cosmos." Ibid. p. 5. "To have faith is to allow oneself to be overwhelmed by the power of God, to permit the divine energy to reign at all levels of one's being." Ibid. p. 7.

What's wrong with the use of the word energy? Here are some thoughts:

1. God is not inside the Cosmos, but radically transcends it. Energy, as in E=Mc2, is part of the Cosmos, so not part of God. Wait a minute, God is incarnated in the world in Jesus and yet still God. So His "energy" is in the world, accessible to us. But Christ is not incarnated as "energy," unless we use the term metaphorically for a non-cosmic and non-material power. "Creative energy of the whole cosmos" leads to thinking of the energy as part of the cosmos. I don't think that's correct.

2. Energy, as part of the cosmos, can be manipulated and controlled through technique, to gain power. In fact, energy is another word for power. But the true man of God is not a man of power. In Rieff's Triumph of the Therapeutic, there is a chapter called "Reich's Religion of Energy." In it Rieff says, Reich fancied love "as something like electricity, bouncing off the inside of metal-lined boxes and so to be captured by a technique, like other forms of energy." p. 187.
God's "energy" cannot be captured and used like magic out of a genie's bottle.

3. Energy is not personal. It's an impersonal component of the cosmos which humans can "tap into." This is a characteristic of New Age pantheism/gnosticism.

In Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life, the Vatican commented on the differences between Christian spirituality and New Age spirituality:

4. Christian mysticism and New Age Mysticism

For Christians, the spiritual life is a relationship with God which gradually through his grace becomes deeper, and in the process also sheds light on our relationship with our fellow men and women, and with the universe. Spirituality in New Age terms means experiencing states of consciousness dominated by a sense of harmony and fusion with the Whole. So “mysticism” refers not to meeting the transcendent God in the fullness of love, but to the experience engendered by turning in on oneself, an exhilarating sense of being at one with the universe, a sense of letting one's individuality sink into the great ocean of Being.

This fundamental distinction is evident at all levels of comparison between Christian mysticism and New Age mysticism. The New Age way of purification is based on awareness of unease or alienation, which is to be overcome by immersion into the Whole. In order to be converted, a person needs to make use of techniques which lead to the experience of illumination. This transforms a person's consciousness and opens him or her to contact with the divinity, which is understood as the deepest essence of reality.

The techniques and methods offered in this immanentist religious system, which has no concept of God as person, proceed 'from below'. Although they involve a descent into the depths of one's own heart or soul, they constitute an essentially human enterprise on the part of a person who seeks to rise towards divinity by his or her own efforts. It is often an “ascent” on the level of consciousness to what is understood to be a liberating awareness of “the god within”. Not everyone has access to these techniques, whose benefits are restricted to a privileged spiritual 'aristocracy'.

The essential element in Christian faith, however, is God's descent towards his creatures, particularly towards the humblest, those who are weakest and least gifted according to the values of the “world”. There are spiritual techniques which it is useful to learn, but God is able to by-pass them or do without them. A Christian's “method of getting closer to God is not based on any technique in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. The heart of genuine Christian mysticism is not technique: it is always a gift of God; and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy.

For Christians, conversion is turning back to the Father, through the Son, in docility to the power of the Holy Spirit. The more people progress in their relationship with God – which is always and in every way a free gift – the more acute is the need to be converted from sin, spiritual myopia and self-infatuation, all of which obstruct a trusting self-abandonment to God and openness to other men and women.

All meditation techniques need to be purged of presumption and pretentiousness. Christian prayer is not an exercise in self-contemplation, stillness and self-emptying, but a dialogue of love, one which “implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from 'self' to the 'You' of God”.

(Emphasis added)

I don't claim Fr. Baron is a New Ager. But his use of New Age lingo is troubling. His emphasis on escaping "fear" (p.4) also seems to be an earmark of the New Age (see above). Rather, isn't the problem usually complacency rather than fear? And aren't we to experience God in "fear and trembling"?

The Vatican selection stresses that there is no cheap way to salvation, no "technique" to tap into "divine energy." Salvation is the way of the cross, and proceeds through humiliation, renunciation, continual self-examination, and re-dedication (i.e., ascetic work, practice, discipline), not a glass of wine on the patio. Self-awakening is initially shameful and only then joyful. Joy comes only by way of the cross.

Our Struggle To Know Ourselves as God Knows Us

At lunch my mom happened to say that she always felt that her fondest desire was to know herself the way God knows her. I've sometimes had a similar idea: I don't want to be a Pinnochio but a "real boy."

For Rieff, God knows each of us personally, in our uniqueness, in who we really are, in our "ideal." That "ideal" we ourselves can know through the "intense practice of faith, as free men - free to 'take the shape of Christ' (Galatians 4:19)."

In other words, we "live" to the extent we are given the grace to know our ideal, our godly, self. "To recognize such a person is to be indebted to him for his existence, for his presence in one's self. . ." and to recognize the one to whom we should more like. "Thus there can be no charisma of perception without guilt." Charisma, p. 36.

"But to make this ideal character takes relentless practice, through the charisms, and moreover, through each examining 'his own conduct for himself.' [Gal. 6:4] Ibid. at p.83.

Through this "intense practice of faith," this "relentless practice" through charisms and examination of conscience, we are inducted into the person God sees in us.

In this practice, we are guided to avoid "the kind of behavior that belongs to the lower nature," [Gal. 5:20]; but if we persevere, we garner "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control." Gal. 5:22. These are the goodly qualities of the godly person God knows in us.

Can there be an apter struggle in life? And isn't the outcome worth the extraordinary energies we put into it?