(originally posted on Facebook on 3 November 2016)
Already this is turning into a mad creature with tentacles reaching in all directions, so this is long, and also not…very finished? But, see disclaimer from last week, I’m DOING THIS.
I’ve been thinking a lot about identity. Am I “Christian?” What does that mean? What do I believe? I identify as Catholic. I go to church on (some) Sundays, I sing in a gospel choir, I love hearing church bells, I contemplate the historical and current role of the church in society. But at the same time, if you put a gun to my head and said, “Do you believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and all that is seen and unseen? And in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial one in Being with the Father?” I’d be like…do you have to capitalize ALL those things? Could I maybe have some more time to think about it? And if you came up to me and said, “religion is all just made up to serve some human purpose” I probably wouldn’t argue. This makes me a pretty bad Catholic, I think, though maybe an ok candidate for Episcopalianism…and if THAT difference matters to this God-I-may-or-may-not-believe-in I’d be pretty surprised. So there it is.
We recently made our annual fall pilgrimage to Legoland. Usually this is a three-day, two-night trip, but this year we decided to take four days and three nights and try to see something of Germany besides those wondrous 107 acres dedicated to the relentless pursuit of brightly colored plastic bricks. So on the way home we stopped in Ulm. Ulm, besides being the topic of a famous German tongue-twister, contains parts of a medieval city and features a huge gothic church with world’s highest steeple. What I found interesting wasn’t so much the steeple, but the fact that most of the windows in the main part of the church were destroyed by a bomb in World War II, then repaired with plain panels, and then replaced bit by bit with stained glass windows done by contemporary artists. As a result, the individual windows are done in a variety of different styles and none of them match the building. It’s…interesting, and incongruous.
So in class we looked at various texts that describe “the meaning of life from a Judeo-Christian perspective.” The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17), Jesus’s answer to the question “What do I need to do to obtain eternal life?” (Mark 10:17-21), the poem about love from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13), the catechism of the Catholic church from 1931 (in English this would be the Baltimore catechism from 1941), and the most recent catechism, from 1993. The overall effect of this was a lot like the windows in Ulm: all theoretically about the same thing, but you’d hardly know it.
The Ten Commandments start (in the NIV translation), “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” You know the rest. Basically, “I am the BEST god with the BEST powers and here’s what I say you should do because I saved your sad asses, now get to work.” But (according to the instructor) that "shall" (and those that follow) isn’t meant to be read like a command, even though we call these the “commandments” (sheesh) – it’s more like “will,” in the sense of logical implication. If the above is true, then all the rest follows. “If you believe that I am a god so powerful and so on your side that I brought plagues to your captors and let you out of slavery, then you won’t be needing any other gods.” That’s a bit of a different tone, no?
And so fast forward to the catechisms, the 1931 version of which says (translated from the German by me, probably badly) “God made us so that we can join him in heaven through knowing, loving, and serving him. Serving God means believing in him, hoping in him, loving him, and relying on his Grace.” Which is gentler, but not incompatible with the perspective that God is the big boss dude and we are the servants who do what he says or face eternal damnation. The 1993 version (in English) says, “The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God calls us to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual personally, but also to the Church as a whole, the new people made up of those who have accepted the promise and live from it in faith.” Which is…let’s say…not as straightforward (the class material took pains to point out that this catechism was aimed at church leaders and teachers, not intended as something for ordinary folk to memorize), but moves towards something that feels less like God being separate from humans and more like God being an integral part of us. And this certainly aligns better with the individualistic society we have today.
In the end I think that words are simply limited - they contain some sliver of truth while also reflecting our personality and society and culture. So what DO I believe? Or, want to believe? That we hold the image of God, who is the perfection of Love, within us. And that if we each seek to become the person that we in our deepest hearts long to be, then we will collectively bring the kingdom of God – the reign of Love – to this Earth. It’s not about trusting a man in the sky, it’s about trusting in the divinity of myself and all of the other humans around me and around the world. Which is in its own way just as difficult to swallow. Does this make me Christian? I still don't know. Stay tuned...
...and you have read this far you will certainly want to get over to The Work of the People and listen to people far more educated and eloquent than I talk about Advent.
No comments:
Post a Comment