Mature Religion versus Junk Religion

There are I think many kinds of religion. I’m talking here about quality more so than type, type as in denomination, creed, tradition and culture. Let me be straight: the quality of religion in our world today ranges from authentic and mature to false and downright dangerous.

Dangerous, you say? Yes, dangerous. And false. Any divine creed that espouses killing and vilifying others is quite simply wrong and… dangerous. And let’s be honest, religion has many times been pro-active in sponsoring wars and bloodshed across the centuries. Supposedly honouring its founder’s teachings but in practice doing the opposite. Operating from a base of hate rather than love, of an exclusive tribe rather than an inclusive and outreaching community.

And the quality of religion is both on the collective level and the individual level. Even within my own Catholic Church there are those who long for a return to the old sin-centric, negative and fear based teachings, those who support dangerous and divisive political leaders and ideologies, and who would gladly see the undoing of all the spiritual renewals arising from the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. There are even some extreme Catholic groups who regard the present pope, dear good Pope Francis, as heretical and a ‘false pope’ – mainly because of his teachings on compassion and outreach to the poor and the marginalised! And let’s not forget those individuals who can seemingly combine a faith in God and a spiritual ministry with child abuse…

What then do we mean by ‘mature religion’? I can do no better than to quote from Richard Rohr OFM, whom I regard as a modern day prophet and a voice of rare sanity and sanctity in today’s world, and who by the way is often vilified by the reactionary and traditionalist elements within the Catholic Church. Richard writes:

The true purpose of mature religion is to lead you to ever new experiences of your True Self. If religion does not do this, it is junk religion. Every sacrament, every Bible story, every church service, every sermon, every hymn, every bit of priesthood, ministry, or liturgy is for one purpose: to allow you to experience your True Self—who you are in God and who God is in you—and to live a generous life from that Infinite Source.

For Rohr, the True Self is that inner core of our being where God resides, where God is both delighted to be and also by being there gives life to our being. The True Self is of course usually hidden and distorted by the events of our upbringing: the wounds, the prejudices, the fears, the lack of understandings, the lack of love and affection, even the cruelty that many of us suffer. For Rohr, the key job of religion, perhaps the only really vital job of religion, is to enable us to discover our True Self, and by doing so, liberate our innate ability to love and be loved. For Rohr, God resides in every single human person – period. If that were not so, then we would not be.

The acid test of all religious practice is then quite simply, does it foster the authentic and true Self? Does it promote our ability to love and be loved? All the bells and smells, the worthy sermons and prayers, the diverse and long standing rituals and doctrines, all of these are pointless if they do not encourage us as individuals and communities to be more loving, more open, more joyful and fear-free.

If any one of us honestly feels that their ‘church’ is failing in this, perhaps failing quite badly, then I think there is a blunt choice: either to abandon that brand of religion or to work harder to renew it into the image of a mature church. Being lukewarm is to collude in mediocrity, or worse.

As Richard Rohr says: As disappointed as I get with religion, I can’t give up on it.”

God is with us and in us!

Martin

Hiding From God

I think the most tragic line in the entire Bible is in Genesis 3: 8.

In the story of Adam and Eve, when they had both sinned, we’re told that God Himself, as He was wont to do, came into the beautiful garden later that same day. And what did Adam and Eve do? They hid from Him. In their guilt and their shame, they hid from the very One who was their Creator and their Life, their best friend, the One who loved them most of all. They hid from the only One who could heal the wound of their sin. And thus they compounded the damage of their sin by refusing to face up to it and find the sole remedy. They felt guilt and shame, but failed to respond in a positive manner. And so they lost paradise.

The story of Adam and Eve is of course an archetype: it symbolises something fundamental in human nature and in our relationship with God. That’s after all why it is in the Bible: to help us to understand one of the most abiding and profound issues in life.

We can understand sin as doing wrong things but also failing to do right things. When we are aware of our sin we should ordinarily feel shame and guilt. However that doesn’t always follow, as we can be very good at denial, at suppressing the consequences of our deeds. We can be very adept at rationalising and even justifying our conduct. I think it was Kierkegaard who said that people don’t do right or wrong so much as take up a position. And that position or attitude can then justify what we do. For example, we may justify killing a man because the one we killed was the enemy in a time of war. And the fanatic can so easily justify abhorrent deeds because of his or her extreme viewpoints. This justifying can be both on an individual and a collective level.

If however we presume for the purposes of this article that we are aware of our sin, it is healthy to feel guilt for sin, though even here our guilt should be proportionate: sometimes we can agonise over something quite trivial and yet ignore something far worse. Excess guilt can be crippling and is closely related to scrupulosity which is one of the most intractable psychological illnesses, especially when combined with religious faith.

So we may say that guilt is positive when it is proportionate to the wrong-doing (or the failure to do good), and when it leads us to feel an appropriate remorse. That remorse can then naturally move us towards seeking forgiveness, reconciliation and any acts of reparation. So finding the proper remedy for sin is not a straightforward matter and perhaps is one reason why so much suffering and evil persists in our world. In the Catholic tradition this is acknowledged and celebrated by a proper preparation for sacramental absolution and reconciliation, through a form of examination of conscience. We literally take the time to discern the true state of our heart. Or as the Greek philosophers would put it: know thyself.

This brings me back to the sad notion of ‘hiding from God’. In our sinfulness we can be like the alcoholic who, having drunk himself or herself into a dark place, then feels shame and self-loathing, and this compounds their guilt and can often lead… to another drink to suppress the emotional pain – and a vicious circle is enacted. The alcoholic desperately needs to hear and experience themselves as precious and lovable if they are to have any chance of breaking that cycle.

We all of us sin – period. What really matters is finding the remedy and a new beginning. Faith in a loving God is the true gateway to that wonderful liberation and salvation. Only when we bask in the unconditional love of God for us can we really open the eyes of our soul to the true darkness within, neither denying nor inflating nor minimising the severity of what we have done and failed to do. And with a true perspective we can find mercy and even show mercy.

God is always ‘coming into our garden’, always waiting for us to recognise His healing presence. Only when we refuse to run and hide but rather open up, warts and all, to the One who truly loves us and gives us infinite worth – only then can we find healing, peace and joy. No matter how bad you think your sin is – never hide from Him!

Peace and joy,

Martin

HATE

Most folk, even smokers, would agree that smoking is injurious to one’s health. Prolonged heavy smoking risks lung cancer and divers other ailments, and overall is highly likely to result in a physically limited life and indeed to shorten one’s life. As the old saying goes: if God had meant us to smoke He would have put a chimney in our heads…

No one in their right mind would put their hand into an open fire. Human tissue and fire are not meant to come into contact with each other.

Both these assertions are simply obvious and come under what we can call the ‘natural law’, that is, laws deriving from the observation of natural phenomena.

I think it is demonstrable that we can also state that “human nature finds its fulfilment in love”. We come from love, we live in love, and we will find our destiny in love. To deny that, it seems to me, is to deny our very essence.

The antithesis of this is simply that hate, the opposite of love, impedes our fulfilment and is therefore injurious to our being. We might say that prolonged and intense hatred damages our spiritual, mental and emotional selves (even physical selves…?), in a similar way to how prolonged and heavy smoking damages our vital tissues. Ultimately hate is self destructive – a mantra for losers.

Yet we may feel that hate is thriving in our world today: hatred of others, of doctrines and ideologies, of groups, tribes, races and nations. Hatred even of self.

Hate may be self destructive but it can provide a powerful motivation, as well as give group identity (“them and us”) and a corresponding sense of belonging. It can make of use of all manner of otherwise neutral things like football, religion and ethnic identity to demarcate, caricature and alienate the “others”.

If we think of subject and object, where the subject is the one who hates, and the object is the one being hated, then we can say that often the object is hurt when the subject acts on their hatred, but one thing is clear: the subject is always hurt, whether they realise it or not. Hate is always self destructive because it is contrary to our true nature.

Take for example a lynch mob – the mob may well be impassioned, unstoppable and, on the face of it, joyous in what they do to their victim, but afterwards they cannot individually escape that inner voice condemning them. They may shut it out, with slogans, with get-togethers, with fanatical beliefs, with alcohol or other drugs, but only the most amoral and already soul-damaged individuals would sleep soundly. They cannot know peace. Continued denial of wrong-doing is not peace. Their hearts are diseased. Shrivelled.

When it comes to hate, the object of the hate may well get hurt, but the subject, the one doing the hating is always hurt. Hate is a dead end – a creed for losers.

I would add to this that it is not enough to stop hating. If we really want to know joy and peace, and to experience healing for past wounds, especially self inflicted wounds, we need to pro-actively love, and that includes repairing past damage. Jesus went so far as to say: “Love your enemies”!

We could define love and hatred of others as follows:

hate – always wanting the worst outcome for them;

love – always wanting the best outcome for them.

If there is someone you hate, someone who has perhaps hurt you badly – just decide to stop hating them! You may never get to like them – that isn’t the issue – but for God’s sake take that weight of hatred off your soul!

To the degree that each one of us decides to stop hating and to replace hatred with love, to that degree we can stop the ripples of hate from traversing our world. The antidote to evil and injustice is not violence but love. Jesus not only spoke love, He lived it to the cross.

Peace and joy to you today,

Martin

Do Whatever He Tells You

Imagine three people: person A, person B, and person C. Imagine that person A tells person B to do whatever person C tells them. In an absolute sense, no one can ever say such a thing – at least not without taking huge risks. I say this because as human beings we are all of us sinners: we do wrong things, but perhaps more importantly we fail to do right things, and often we just do not really know what is the best course of action. We suffer from not knowing the full situation, misreading another’s feelings, inherited and deep-set prejudices, etc, etc. In other words, we can never fully submit our will and our conduct to another human being. Person A should never ask person B to “do whatever he/she (person C) tells you”. Never.

Yet there is perhaps one area in human life where this instruction must apply: to an army in wartime. A soldier submits to do whatever his/her commanding officer orders him/her to do, even to the point of killing. Without this complete obedience an army, especially in wartime, just wouldn’t function, and the consequences for it’s survival would be grim. But this total obedience comes at a great cost: the soldier may be involved in brutalities and atrocities. Effectively, a soldier signs his/her conscience away. This is one of the many evils of warfare, and the psychological effects of that for the individual soldier can be crippling, as in Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD).

OK, so in normal life, no one can order or should obey such a command. And yet in the Gospel, Mary, the mother of Jesus, says precisely this! At the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2: 1 – 12), when the wine for the feast runs out, potentially causing the newly weds a huge social embarrassment, Mary, who is ever attentive to the needs of others, turns to Jesus and asks him to do something to help. He at first seems to rebuff her request, but the Gospel story makes it clear that he is nonetheless content to be subject to her parental authority. She then without hesitation tells the catering staff: “Do whatever he tells you”. As we know Jesus performs his first recorded miracle and the blushes of the newly weds are saved – indeed the wine Jesus transforms from water is superb! Divine even!

Great story, and impressive demonstration of what Christians believe to be Jesus’ divinity as the Son of God. But the point I want to take from this story is quite simply that Mary is perfectly right to tell the servants to “do whatever he tells you”. OK, she is saying this in the context of a local social emergency – but all Gospel texts have a much bigger relevance, and Mary and Jesus’ words are meant for all humanity, and for always. So we can take it from St John that Mary is also speaking directly to us: she is point blank telling us: “Do whatever he tells you”! This instruction is a succinct description of true discipleship.

But my real point is this: Mary can only say what she says to us – because she knows who Jesus is – the sinless Son of God. Jesus, as the incarnate God, is the only person we can ever give our full heart, soul and mind to. We can always, and with perfect trust, obey His will – though let’s be honest, knowing the will of God is not to be taken for granted.

And so when Mary says her few brief words to us, let me capitalise the H in ‘he’:

“Do whatever He tells you”.

In His will is our peace,

Martin

Wisdom

I think there are three basic levels of knowledge, and there is a profound hierarchy to them.

At the lowest level we have what might be called ‘learning’. This is where a person fills themselves with facts. Such a person may be good at quizzes and may outshine less knowledgeable folk. They can be studious but without ‘setting the world on fire’.

The middle level of knowledge is ‘intelligence’. This is where a person may not always have amassed a huge body of facts, but what they can do is evaluate and use their knowledge. They may not win at quizzes but they often surpass others in being able to see the crucial issues from the welter of information.

I think most people can make an attempt to learn stuff, but not everyone seems able to have the gift of intelligence – through no particular fault of their own. Intelligence seems to be an innate quality: some folk appear to sail through exams without much study, whereas others cram and cram and still don’t excel.

The highest level of knowledge is ‘wisdom’. We might define wisdom as “knowledge for life”, that is, the ability to understand not just facts and ideas but to be able to apply a thorough common-sense to what life throws at them. As such, wisdom doesn’t depend on great learning or even the natural gift of intelligence. Indeed, the most unlearned person can be the wisest. Folk who have never had the benefit of education may nonetheless have wisdom. In fact, I think great learning and intelligence can often be a hindrance to attaining wisdom as such folk tend to rely on their own skills and talents. Whereas we sometimes meet young people who, without great experience, seem to be ‘wise beyond their years’. Wisdom is therefore precious beyond calculation. And – wisdom can be acquired – by anyone.

What then is this ‘knowledge for life’ and how do we get it? I think it has to be grounded in a deep awareness of who we are, what are our limits and rightful ambitions, and what ultimately is our true destiny. As such a purely ‘human wisdom’ is not really true wisdom, because it fails to understand the scope and purpose of life. Any wisdom system that posits that we have only this earthly life is not wisdom at all and will not set us aright for daily living. We are immortal – we come from God and will only find our true fulfilment in God.

The psalmist cries out:

Make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart!” Psalm 90: 12

As such, true wisdom is inseparable from a relationship with God. And any relationship is built on time spent in each other’s company, and, for our relationship with God, this must be based on prayer. And this is why the most unlearned and lowest IQ person can be the wisest – if they are a person of prayer. I have met monks and nuns who radiate joy and ‘simple wisdom’ by virtue of long hours spent in the presence of God. I have also met ‘ordinary’ folk who make a deep impression of goodness because again they have based their daily lives on an intimate relationship with God.

Another way of looking at this is in the context of love. Most people would ascribe to the principle that love is the most positive aspect of human life. But in spite of ourselves we hurt others, we let them down, and try as we might we often fail to know how to love. What wisdom provides is the best chance to get love right: to know what is best for those we love and how to get that ‘best’ across to them, even when it may seem to them that we are being unloving.

We can all of us aspire to success, to money, to status, to power – but surely the single most precious quality of all is to gain wisdom: to know how to live and love properly. Therein lies the secret to joy and meaning.

In His love, Martin