Here's an often misunderstood and misinterpreted statement: Many people feel drawn to God in times of suffering.
During a serious illness, a family crisis, the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one, many people will say that they've turn to God in new ways. Atheists, agnostics, and those with more skeptical minds usually chalk this up to desperation. The person, they say, has nowhere else to turn, and so turns to God. God is seen, in this light, as a crutch for the foolish, a refuge for the superstitious, or a haven for the gullible.
But in general, people do not turn to God in suffering because we suddenly become irrational. Rather, God is able to reach us because our defenses are lowered. The barriers that we erected to keep out God -- whether pride or fear or lack of interest -- are set aside. We are not less rational. We are more open.
When he was in his late 50s, my father lost a good job. After a long while, he found a job, but one that he found unsatisfying. As too many people know today, it is difficult to find work and start a new job later in life, at an age when many people are looking forward to retirement. It was hard for him and for my mother.
His job required an hour-long commute from our home in suburban Philadelphia. One dark night, in the parking lot of his office, far from home, my father had a dizzy spell, lost his balance, and fell. He ended up in the hospital. Tests showed what everyone feared: cancer. Cancer of the lungs had spread to his brain, which had caused the fall. (My father had been a heavy smoker for much of his life.)
During the next nine months, my father's physical condition went steadily downhill, despite chemotherapy. Soon he was bedridden and began to rely on my mother to care for all of his physical needs at home. During the last month of his life, when my mother could no longer help him out of bed, he said, "I think I should go to the hospital." So we moved him to a sub-acute care facility.
But while his physical condition declined, his spiritual condition seemed to improve.
Near the end of his life, my father started to talk more frequently about God. This was something of a surprise. Although he had been raised Catholic and graduated from Catholic grammar schools and high schools, and although he attended Mass during important feast days, he had, at least as long as I had known him, never been overtly religious.
But as he neared death, he asked my Jesuit friends to pray for him, he treasured holy cards that people sent him, he mused about which people he wanted to see in heaven, he asked what I thought God would be like, and he made some suggestions about his funeral Mass. My dad also became more gentle, more forgiving, and more emotional.
I found these changes both consoling and confusing.
One of the last people to visit with him was my friend Janice, a Catholic sister who had been one of my professors during my theology studies. After his death, I remarked that my dad seemed to have become more open to God. In response, Janice said something that I had never heard before, but which I seemed to have already known.
"Yes," she said. "Dying is about becoming more human."
Her insight was true in at least two ways. First, becoming more human for my father meant recognizing his inborn connection to God. All of us are, in the core of our being, connected to God, though we may ignore it, or deny it, or reject it during our lives. But with my father's defenses completely lowered, God was able to meet him in new ways. Whatever barriers that kept God at a distance no longer existed.
This, not desperation, is why there are so many profound spiritual experiences near death. The person is better able to allow God to break through.
But there is a second way that Janice's insight made sense. My father was becoming more "human" because he was becoming more loving. Drawing closer to God transforms us, since the more time we spend with someone we love, the more we become like the object of our love. Paradoxically, the more "human" we become, the more "divine" we become.
This is not to say that God desires for us to suffer. By no means, as St. Paul would say. Rather, when our defenses fall, our ultimate connection is revealed.
The contemporary German theologian Johannes Baptist Metz may have expressed this best in his short book Poverty of Spirit:
If a person ... focuses on his naked poverty, when the masks fall and the core of his being is revealed, it soon becomes obvious that he is religious by nature. In the midst of his existence there unfolds the bond (re-ligio) which ties him to the infinitely transcendent mystery of God, the insatiable interest in the absolute that captivates the person and underlines his poverty.
Thus, vulnerability is another time in which we draw near to God and God is able to draw near to us.
The God Who Seeks
This experience, which many of us have had, as well as those that I've been discussing in my posts over the last few weeks -- experiences of incompletion; common longings and connections; uncommon longings; exaltation and clarity, desires to follow and desires for holiness; and now vulnerability -- are all ways of becoming aware of our innate desire for God.
Anyone, at any time, in any of these ways, can become aware of their desire for God. Moreover, finding God and being found by God are really the same, since those expressions of desire have God both as their source and goal.
Thus, the beginning of the path to God is not only trusting that these desires are placed within us by God, but also trusting that God seeks us in the same way we seek God.
That's another wonderful image of God: the Seeker. In the New Testament, Jesus often used this image (Luke 15:3-8). He compared God to the shepherd who loses one sheep out of one hundred, and leaves the other 99 behind to find the one lost. Or the woman who loses a coin and sweeps her entire house in order to find it. This is the seeking God.
But my favorite image is actually from the Islamic tradition, which depicts God as seeking us more than we seek God. It is a hadith qudsi, which Muslim scholars translate as a divine saying revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad: "And if [my servant] draws nearer to me by a handsbreadth; I draw nearer to him by an armslength; and if he draws nearer to me by an armslength, I draw nearer to him by a fathom; and if he comes to me walking, I come to him running."
God want to be with you. God desires to be with you. What's more, God desires a relationship with you. All you have to do is say yes.
Reflection Questions:
1) Do you desire God's presence in your life? Can you see that desire as coming from God, as a way of drawing you nearer?
2) During tough times, have you ever become aware of a greater desire for God? How did you respond?
3) Johannes Baptist Metz believes that deep within the core of our being we are tied (the meaning of the word "religion") to God. Do you feel "religious by nature"?
4) Does the image of the "God who seeks" make sense to you? Have you ever thought of God seeking you?
James Martin, SJ, is a Catholic priest and culture editor of America. This essay is adapted from his new book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.
Jay Michaelson: A Better Way to Believe in God
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
© 1968, 2001 Kent M. Keith
" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa
Richard Dawkins offers some compelling arguments regarding how religion may be an accidental by-product of a variety evolutionary human gene pools that serve other functions. So in that sense, religion may indeed be "deep within the core of our being". Not sure that's what the author had in mind though. :)
"We are not less rational. We are more open."
You really can't imagine a correlation between these two things?
And, once again, the religious apologist assumes his answer (god exists) as the basis for proving his point, which, of course, he does not.
AAMOF, I get the feeling that the author is working from a macro to micro structure in his essays. As the author proceeds if he chooses to do so, the next several blogs will, as least in the way I see it, will begin pointing to the traditional, gendered (male) literal --person-- of "God" in the cosmos that the Catholic church espouses. The church and any officially appointed member of the hierarchy will not waver from the male "God" sitting on a throne in a lavish kingdom just watching, waiting and checking a royal list of his handiwork.
The stuff of primal and fundamentalist belief systems indeed.
It is documented that he caused his "stigmata" with carbolic acid, as testified by the Archbishop of Manfredonia.
He was forbidden to preach mass in public, because according to the Vatican he was "“a noxious Socrates, capable of perverting the fragile lives and souls of boys.”
So comdemned was he by his own church, yet he was cannonized many years later by a Pope who didn't even know him. So who was right? The Vatican that comdemned him, or the Vatican that made him a saint? The infallibility of Popes seem to be in direct contradiction over this psychopath.
;;
No, I don't feel religious by nature. Perhaps that's why I didn't stay religious.
4) Does the image of the "God who seeks" make sense to you? Have you ever thought of God seeking you?
No and no. The image of any deity doesn't make sense because it lacks evidence and has severe logical paradoxes that fail to make sense. Also, frankly and honestly, with no intent to offend, if any deity has been seeking me, he/she are poor at it. For omnipotent and omnipresent beings, they are quite bad at finding me.
No and no. I used to desire the presence of Yahweh, but that never happened. I don't see that desire as coming from Yahweh, as I've never had the slightest bit of evidence that He exists, but as coming from indoctrination that I have thankfully escaped.
Many do have these desires, and they associate them with quite different deities - many of those deities goddesses.
2) During tough times, have you ever become aware of a greater desire for God? How did you respond?
I used to. I don't anymore. It has been a long time since I've had the desire to pray. It does no good, provably so (see tests of the effectiveness of prayer), and it just doesn't occur to me. I'd rather do something real that can affect the situation.
I don't respond, as I lack this desire. I used to respond. It didn't work.
I agree. I think those that believe in any deity - not just yours - are always irrational in that belief.
"Rather, God is able to reach us because our defenses are lowered."
A claim for which you fail to provide any reasoning or evidence.
"The barriers that we erected to keep out God -- whether pride or fear or lack of interest -- are set aside. We are not less rational. We are more open."
You have yet to provide a distinction in which being more open does not include being more irrational. I really hate to break it to you...ok, no I don't, but Hindus in desperation reach out to Krisha, Shiva, Lakshmi, Durga, etc. I know Wiccans who reach out to Isis. They believe that they are more open, rational, and experiencing their deity in the same way you feel you are experiencing yours.
If you feel a need for it, and it helps without harming others, fine. That's your business, and I hope it does help. However, that doesn't make what you believe to be happening true.
Now the other extreme is what we Catholics call , " The Saints". These are the 'Celebrity' figures throughout human history whose celebrity will last forever. Their lives offer the kind of proof of God's reality that the atheist runs from, for these lives defy all the atheist claims is true. From the 3 small children of Fatima predicting accurately miracles witnessed by 70,000 people, to the once Christian persecuting Jewish Rabbi turned Saint Paul used by the Spirit of God to instruct us all so well in the good news of Jesus Christ.
Catholicism is such a strange cult. It is heavily influenced by pagan religion. It has a triune God, and a pantheon of demi-gods called "saints." It still has mystical rituals, and blood sacrifice. And obviously... it turns minds into mush.
Hope has nothing to do with it. This is hard for a Theist to understand, as hope and faith are central to their paradigm. They have nothing to do with mine. What matters is evidence, logical validity, logical consistency, and truth value. That's all.
"The sad part comes from their imagining that ignoring or denying Almighty God will somehow make it all work out OK in the end."
I cannot ignore that which does not exist. It is rather the same as how you cannot ignore Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny. To make it more clear, it is rather how your disbelief in Krishna, Osiris, Durga, Isis, or Odin does not come from you imagining "that ignoring or denying Almighty God will somehow make it all work out OK in the end." Someone simply makes a claim, such as "Durga exists", and you reject that claim.
When you understand why you disbelieve in Durga, Horus, Brighid, Freya, Aphrodite, and Shiva, you will understand why I disbelieve in Yahweh. I just add one more deity to the list than do you.
Ah...nope, you are wrong because there is no imaginary being called god so please stop infecting people with your woo hoo.
He is wrong on that one. At best the idea applies to only those people who are steeped in a "Hierarchy of inherent dominance."
Those who are not steeped in such a condescending hierarchy will likely not find Metz's statement meaningful.
1) Do you desire God's presence in your life? Can you see that desire as coming from God, as a way of drawing you nearer?
Answer: For the duration of life I desire to remain inclined to noticing God’s presence in everything. This desire must originate from my heart which quite likely holds an imprint of my Creator. Once I slow down from the pace of this life and step back from its seductive social structure of which I take part seeking power, pleasure, possessions, security, love, praise and influence by refined argument, I am able to lift the shade covering God’s imprint and come to see that which my reason knows not. Yes, this is God drawing me nearer to God.
2) During tough times, have you ever become aware of a greater desire for God? How did you respond?
Answer: During tough times, these days I find myself preferring not to gloss over or deny my experience of pain and fear, nor do I prefer choosing to engage in futile exercises with easily accessible, superficial comforts such as numbing elements and various mental and physical activities. This is not easy. This is when I indeed notice a greater desire for sharing my hurt with God who alone brings me the comfort I need. Again, not easy, but definitely doable. Making space for the doable is how I respond to the greater desire.
3) Johannes Baptist Metz believes that deep within the core of our being we are tied (the meaning of the word "religion") to God. Do you feel "religious by nature"?
Answer: If by religious it is meant that I am capable of recognizing and accepting that there is an infinity beyond my reason, that I am capable of believing in and reverencing God whom I may or may not know but can very well love, then yes, I feel myself religious by nature.
4) Does the image of the "God who seeks" make sense to you? Have you ever thought of God seeking you?
Answer: After becoming aware, by a hairsbreadth, of a movement of my heart in which I perceived God’s presence and action in my life, I cannot help but think of God who seeks through invitation. When I am able to tune in to, accept and respond to the invitation, I experience God’s seeking as an invitation to peace.