Honest to God: Moving towards a more credible language Joseph Mattam S.J.

Honest to God
Moving towards a more credible language
Joseph Mattam S.J.
1. Introduction

Hitler’s Willing Executioners - Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (D. J. Goldhagen, Vintage Books, 1997) is a challenging book. It narrates how ordinary Germans were willingly involved in the execution and near extermination of Jews in the 1930s and 40s. The Jews are considered God’s chosen people; the Bible, especially the OT, attests that God always protects His people. They are never left without his protection and providence, but the events from 1930 onwards did shatter the above conviction. God was significantly absent in these events. If we look back into our history of say, 500-600 years, we are left with further questions. We may mention just a few, out of the many hundreds, of such important events that have happened and are happening in history: millions of Africans were uprooted from their own country, were made slaves and treated in the most inhuman ways; the genocide of millions in America and Australia (it is claimed that more than 80 % of the local inhabitants have been murdered by the invaders from Europe - The Bible and Colonialism, a Moral Critique, by M. Prior, Sheffield, 1997); Colonialism by which most of the Asian and African nations lost their sovereignty and were impoverished, becoming mere source of enrichment for the colonizing Christian nations.
The Black Death of the 15th century which nearly decimated the population of Europe, major events like the horrors of Hiroshima, the Bhopal tragedy, killings in Rwanda, Khmer Rouge genocide, World Wars and smaller wars where millions have been killed; the killings in Vietnam, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Uganda, Bosnia and Kosovo; in Iraq so far more than 650000 people have been killed in and after the recent war imposed on them by the Americans; the horrible treatment of war prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the tortures at Guantanamo and many more. At another level we see casteism, the discrimination and ill treatment for centuries of dalits in India; in the world and in various Christian Churches the treatment of women, and their inferior position, in spite of the claims that we are all equal as God’s children. We may add also the co-existence for centuries of enormous luxury on the one hand and abject misery for the millions on the other hand. Even today in spite of all developments, hundreds of people die of hunger in Africa and Asia. Everyday newspapers bring us stories of a minimum of a thousand persons who die of unnatural causes – by accidents, killings, etc. So many unwelcome, unexpected, and unexplainable things happen. The cyclones in Orissa and Andhra, the earthquakes in Gujarat, the recent tsunami, tornados, hurricanes and many such “catastrophes” happen and God does not seem to be involved in them in any direct way. When we look at these and similar events of great importance involving literally millions of people, the question cannot be avoided: where is God in all these? God has been apparently absent.
Christianity has appropriated the mentality, language and ways of thinking of the pre-Christian era and of the early centuries of Christianity. Jesus’ own words were on the background of and to the people brought up on the Hebrew Bible and mentality. People have evolved culturally, linguistically and in many other areas, but our religious language and mentality have remained the same as if no change is required in that area. There are many areas that need to be re-thought and reworded; we need a radical re-thinking in order to speak a more honest language suited to the people of the present day. Here I want to comment on our way of speaking about God’s action in the world, and prayer. This is an area that the Church authorities and theologians seem reluctant to broach, for fear that what was held as truth for so many centuries may be found to be not accurate. This may shake up their security. What is proposed here is not a definitive stand, but an invitation to all to reflect on an important facet of our history and life.

2. The inadequacy of our Language about God’s Doings.

The Jews or the authors of the Hebrew Bible believed that nothing happens apart from God’s plan, permission and decision. God makes the sun to rise, the rains to come down. The Jews seem to take everything in the Bible as literally true, as records of what really happened in time and space. For example, the stories of the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy were taken as literally true. God kills the innocent babies of Egypt; God takes the land of other peoples and gives it to the Jews. See for example: “But as for the towns of these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breaths remain alive. You shall annihilate them – the Hittites….the Jebusites…” (Deut 20.16-18; 7.1-11; 9.1-5; Exod 23.27-33; 33.1-3; Num 33.50-56). Today hardly anybody takes these accounts as literally true. The fact is that the Hebrew authors used various stories, as is normal in most cultures, to give the people a religious message; their aim was to keep the people faithful to the covenant, and to convince them that they were different from the rest of humanity and that they had to behave differently. This purpose of the authors was often forgotten, hence the many stories of God punishing and rewarding were taken as what really happened.
This way of looking was not just an OT mentality. The New Testament, especially Paul takes so much of the OT as literally true and bases his theology on that reading. For example, his views on the place of women in the church (1 Cor 11.7b-8, 1 Tim 2.13-14) are based on a literal reading of Chapter two of Genesis. Leo XIII in 1893, Benedict XV in Spiritus Paraclitus in 1920, took all these as literally true; even in 1950 Pius XII seems to take the Genesis story as literally true in Humani Generis.
Jesus’ words about prayer and God’s providence, for example, need to be understood on this background. When Jesus said: “Not a hair of your head will fall without the knowledge of your Father in heaven”, he seems to have this OT mentality in mind. Some people, even today, are convinced that the weather, rains, climate changes all depend on God – does this make sense?
One often hears of “unmerited” suffering, implying that some are merited, meaning, they are a punishment from God. When earthquakes happened in Gujarat some interpreted that as God’s punishment, forgetting that the people who perished in the earthquake had nothing to do in whatever may have taken place in Gujarat. God does not punish anyone, especially the innocent, for the sins of some wicked people. Obviously some good comes out of such situations, but we may not say that God punishes innocent people for the good that might come out of it. The OT authors interpreted natural and human-caused events as punishments or rewards by God to keep people faithful to the covenant. Otherwise, we would have to believe that there is a different God in the NT.
A theistic concept sees God as up in the heavens, who in answer to our prayers comes to solve our problems, helps us, heals us, prevents accidents, stops wars, controls and directs the weather and the like. In the past, prayers have been composed by the opposing armies, and their chaplains solemnly said those prayers before their army went forward to kill their brothers; God is supposed to have helped them crush their enemies, be they Christians or others. Often people believe in a paternalistic God who is supposed to be doing things for us, keeping us as infants all the time. Some think of God as doing part of the job for us, especially the difficult part; all that is needed is that God be informed of the situation. But, as we saw above, God does not seem to intervene to solve such huge problems created by humans or through natural causes, yet for centuries people have kept up a paternalistic concept of God. Perhaps such a naïve belief in God’s providence encouraged by the official Churches and our Shrines, prevented people from questioning these beliefs in the face of such shocking events where God is seemingly absent.
We may not continue ignoring history; we have to take it seriously and ask serious questions about our God language. What is obvious cannot just be swept under the carpet. The obvious fact is that in enormously important and weighty matters affecting billions of God’s children, God has not intervened to solve any of these problems, nor has God rectified, remedied or improved human situations.
I intend no disrespect to those who truly believe that God does intervene in this way. I am fully aware that many holy people are declared blessed or saints in the Catholic Church on the basis of the miracles, in answer to their prayers, seen as the otherwise unexplainable interventions of God in history. There are millions of people today who find consolation, comfort and strength in the conviction that God ‘hears’ their prayers, God is watching over them. But this fact of God’s non-intervention in very tragic and weighty human events may not be overlooked, as if such things have never happened. The frog-in-the-well mentality will not help prevent the present generation of people from leaving the Churches in big numbers. The Church authorities are closing their eyes to the number of people declaring themselves as “not-Christian” in the once Christian Europe and America. I am not suggesting that people leave the Church only for this reason, but this is also one of the reasons. Atheism is also partly a result of such a discrepancy between what is claimed about God and what is seen as happening.

3. Empowering, Indwelling Presence: towards a more credible language

If we want to speak to educated people and expect them to continue to believe in God, we have to speak a more credible language about God’s action in the world. We have to recognise that God has left the world completely to us to look after, to care for, to nurture, to improve, or whatever we want to do with it, as Gen 1.28f tells us. Hence rightly the Bible says that after God put Adam in charge of creation “God rested” (Gen 2.2), though this also is not literally true, these words seem to direct us towards a solution in our God language. God, however, is not like a retired engineer who after completing a building goes away for good. God is right within us, empowering, enabling us to be our own creators. God is not absent from the world as God dwells in each one of us as the source of our creativity, freedom and love-ability, enabling each one to reach out in every human situation, human-made or natural, lovingly and creatively to improve the situation. In fact, as history of centuries testifies, humans have done precisely that. Humans have progressively responded to challenging situations creatively and lovingly; hence we have freedom movements, scientific and other discoveries and progress; we have people like Gandhiji, Mother Teresa, John XXIII, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and many others who have affected human history; we can rightly see them as prophets who speak in God’s name.
The Bible calls God a compassionate one, a “suffering-with-us” God, for God cannot force God’s children created in God’s image and likeness as sharers of God’s freedom, creativity and love-ability. Hence God does not, cannot force them, but lets God’s children manage their freedom. God is, strictly speaking, “not allowing” anything that happens – everything happens according to its natural laws of cause and effect. The whole of creation is interconnected and inter dependent; what happens in one part of the world affects other parts; what one person does affects others. If God has created creators after God-self, it is but natural that they be fully responsible for what happens on earth. In fact most of the problems are created by humans; accidents are caused by human error, negligence. Children are born handicapped due to what happens to and in the mother when the child is in her womb. If for example, parents carry the viruses of AIDS or any other contagious disease they will transmit them to their children and God does not prevent that from happening. So God cannot be held responsible for what happens on earth. God does not intervene in these matters, as they follow their own laws. We remember too that God did not intervene when God’s innocent Son was brutally murdered.
If we hold that God intervenes as he is supposed to have done in Sodom and Gomorrah, God would have punished the world a hundred times over, seeing the sexual perversity and promiscuity, pornography, cruelty and inhumanness that rule the world today. If God is supposed to intervene and rectify things, in no way can we understand all the happenings in history, especially events like the Holocaust, and many more. One would rightly say that all these are human-made problems. As we see from history, all human-caused or other disasters have to be solved by humans alone. While affirming our responsibility, I do not fail to emphasize and always acknowledge the divine as present within each one of us, enabling us to be creators.
It is high time that we use a language that makes sense to today’s questioning, searching people, emphasizing our full responsibility, in total dependence on God, the loving source, the fountain within which keeps flowing into us, but without forcing us. This is what we find realised in Jesus: in total dependence on God, his Abba, he was fully responsible for what he had to do; and he told his disciples to be responsible through the examples he gave them (the birds and lilies who are very hard-working – Matt 6.25f), and by telling them, “you give them something to eat” (Mk 6.37), instead of asking them to pray to the Father, as one would have expected him to do, as he himself had told them that the Father gives whatever they ask for (e.g. Lk 11.1-13).
Only when we come to be an adult Christianity, can we expect to stop the emptying of the churches in Europe, stop the flow of many Christians to new sects like the Brahmakumaries. During a recent visit to Mount Abu in Rajasthan I was surprised to see hundreds of foreigners, both men and women, among the Brahmakumaries and Brahmakumars. The Hare Khrishna, Hare Ram and other movements also attract many Christians. Without Christianity growing up to adulthood, using a language relevant to today’s people and mentality, we may expect more and more churches turned over as theaters or handed over to developers. In India and Africa this may not happen immediately yet people losing faith is becoming more and more common. The solutions of yesterday, just as the language of yesterday, cannot solve the problems of today.

4. Prayer and our God language

If God does not directly intervene in what happens on earth, what is the purpose and meaning of prayer, which is very often seen as getting things, graces, from God? While prayer is very personal and one cannot classify it in any definite way, one may safely say that prayer is not primarily to “inform God” (see Matt 6.7-8, 32) of our needs, not a duty, and finally, it is not to get things from God. As we saw earlier, God does not seem to give anything, because God has given us everything, including God-self. Here we have to keep two things in mind. First, the most important and precious things in life are all freely given without our asking: our very life, our parents, our sisters/brothers and other relatives; nature with all its riches, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat; culture, religion, Jesus, the Spirit, the Church, the Sacraments, and many more. Second, we must keep in mind what we saw above that God does not seem to intervene in our history to solve our problems. It is in this context that we look at prayer as not a means to get things from God. It is naïve to presume that a God who does not involve himself in such mighty, massively important events, where millions and millions of his children are involved, would step in to solve a small problem. Hence we have to say that prayer cannot primarily be a relation to be maintained or fostered with a view to getting things from God, though many honestly claim that they have received such and such a gift in answer to their prayers. We need to remember that the God we pray to, lives in us: the source of all blessings is already in us, God’s power is available to us.
Yet Jesus does say: “Ask and it will be given you; search…, knock…”. What does God really ‘give’ us in prayer? Luke answers it very clearly: God ‘gives’ us God’s Spirit (Lk 11.1-13). It is the Holy Spirit that is ‘given’ in every prayer. But if we believe that God dwells in us, the words, “the Father gives the Spirit”, mean that in prayer we become more aware of his loving, creative presence within us, we consciously open ourselves to be transformed by God’s presence. That is, God’s love becomes more alive and operative within us. A piece of iron thrown in the fire becomes red-hot; a stream being in touch with the spring is filled with fresh waters. What God ‘gives’ is God-self. Every prayer is ‘heard’: we come into conscious communion with God, our source, like a stream coming into conscious contact with the fountain whence it springs. This coming into conscious communion and contact with God is the purpose/aim/end of prayer. Apart from this gift of self, we may say that God does not give us anything, for God has given us everything: this beautiful creation with all its potentialities, we ourselves with our creative powers that we have to actualize.

Is, then, all our prayer of petition useless? No, whether it is prayer of petition, or just prayer, the aim is to be in communion with God and our willingness to be in communion with our brothers/sisters and with the rest of creation. In that sense, it is an end in itself. Besides, in our prayer of petition, we express the truth of ourselves: our total dependence on God; we express our concern and love for others - true love is truly miraculous and powerful; it brings about what it desires. Such a prayer is also an invitation to us to do something for the needy: to translate into human action God’s concern for God’s people. God works in and through us, through our love. God loves God’s children infinitely more than anyone ever could; but I believe it is in God’s plans that through our genuine love we bring life, more life, fullness of life to one another. When such genuine love is present ‘miracles’ do happen. Genuine love is the most “power-full”, “miraculous” power; but as we are not aware of its power, we imagine God as specially intervening every now and then, independently of our love and commitment to one another.
Studies in Para-psychology show that our genuinely wanting something for another person or for us brings about a change in us and in the other person; also our concern, solidarity and love expressed in the form of prayer is a source of tremendous strength and power.

By saying that God does not give us anything, because he has given us everything, I do not oppose the belief of many who claim to receive gifts from God – that belief sustains many people. All I want to say is that personally I do not see the need to affirm such extraordinary interventions of God independently of the created world of people and things. The God, who has given us so much without our asking or even desiring, does continue to give abundantly more than we can ask for or even desire (Eph 3. 20-21) – God is the source of the infinite power that we carry in ourselves.

While affirming the value of prayer of petitions, I must also add that petition focuses on ourselves and on what we do not have; whereas the prayer of thanksgiving focuses on God and on what we have received. Hence that seems to be more human, more meaningful and growth oriented.

Prayer has to be seen as the expression of our love for God. Prayer is love. Prayer is the willed, chosen and wanted openness to Reality: it is to open ourselves like a flower to the morning sun, to its warmth and light. Prayer is to remain open to the breath of God that enters into our being, fills it and leads to its growth, like a stream open to the spring whence it comes. Prayer is truthfulness to ourselves, to be more intensely and consciously what we are, namely, “received beings”, “praise-worthy-beings”, “loved-beings” destined to grow unto the likeness of God. It is to share in the “YES” and “NO” of God: “YES” to self, to others, to life, to everything that God is “YES” to; and “NO” to all that God is “NO” to, namely, sin, injustice and dehumanization in whatever form. Prayer is the time we live fully with awareness of who we are: as gifts (the giver in the gift), received beings, interrelated and interdependent beings, meant to be gifts to one another as children of God our loving Father/Mother.

This conscious openness to Reality means listening to God’s Word wherever it is heard and seeing God wherever God is found. It is to be attentive to God’s Word and Spirit. It is to listen to, to touch and feel God. It is to wonder, to contemplate, to be lost in Reality. The precise object is not important, for everything is God’s self-revelation. To wonder, to contemplate, to be totally present, you need to be silent. Whatever leads to silence, like the repetition of a phrase, the Name of Jesus, a line of a Psalm… is welcome, for finally we want to come to silence. If our aim is to be with and in God, then silence is what we are looking for. It is in silence one is being born into prayer. Silence is not mere absence of noise and words but being attentive to what goes on inside, being fully present to oneself. In silence we come into contact with the truth of ourselves, with our deeper self. This openness to the truth of self implies openness to God, the ultimate source-reality. One may or may not name this ultimate reality, but the effects would be the same. Each moment of this conscious contact with the source, God, fills us with God’s Spirit, and we become renewed, refreshed, recreated (see Lk 19.1-10).
This coming into contact with the deeper self, this openness to Reality lived out more consciously and fully, and enhanced in silence is not an obligation from outside, but the very necessity of one’s being to be truly oneself. Such silent attentiveness to God, the sense of the Presence, in everything and everyone, leads one to the spirit of gratitude. There is so much to be grateful for. Jesus’ own prayer was often giving thanks and praising the Father. By having limited God to the so-called extraordinary interventions, we have lost the sense of God in everything and everyone; we do not “find God in all things”, as St Ignatius tells us; we have lost the spirit of wonder, of contemplation, of gratitude.
Prayer is to slow down and listen to God’s silent whispers of love. In prayer we take time to soak in, to reflect on His love for us. Love conquers all and knowing how much we are loved will change our life. What happens in that silence in/with God is very personal (See Gitanjali 42). One may hear Jesus’ words calling his disciples, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mk 6.31). There one freely chats with one’s Father/Friend/ Beloved, calling God Abba/Amma, or by whatever intimate word appeals to each one. By His Spirit, Jesus leads us into his own intimacy with the one He called ABBA. We may quarrel with God; complain to God – whatever one feels like doing. One is no more controlled by rules, but just communes with the Beloved and enjoys that communion. One senses being in the company of Jesus, the Spirit opening our hearts to the warmth of the Abba’s love. We cannot pre-determine to what depths this intimacy with the Abba will lead each one.
Prayer is to allow God to find us; it is only when we are totally empty that we are able to receive God in God’s fullness, with all God’s love and strength. Prayer is the conscious attempt to enter the transcendent moment, into the Mystery. That is why we have to move away from mere “asking”, “informing” and “thinking”. The Bible reminds us “you have only to keep still” (Ex 14.14). This emphasis on “be still” has been lost in our urge to inform God of what God needs to do; in our greed for getting more, we forget God’s presence in us, the infinite number of gifts go unnoticed and we fail to see the millions of miracles that happen all around us all the time. Unfortunately, in the Catholic tradition, due to our greed, we have made prayer into a business relation of getting things from God and have encouraged more novenas and more shrines. I conclude by saying that in fairness to God and to ourselves we must “save” prayer from the commercial and manipulative relationship that it often becomes; prayer cannot be seen as a means of manipulating, coaxing God to do things for us, but it is our surrender in love to let God’s infinite love be operative in us to such an extent that we become the living, creative channels of God’s love and concern for the whole of creation.

5. Conclusion

To conclude, then, let me say that we need to discover a way of speaking about God and God’s ways with us in line with what we see in reality, in our history; the language inherited from over 2000 years ago cannot satisfy the people of today. Obviously, we do not deny God’s right to intervene in history when, where and how God wills. However, we cannot just ignore history. God cannot be seen as one of the causes along with other finite causes, but as the transcendent Mystery that envelops and sustains us from within, which we acknowledge as the source of infinite power within us, as the source of everything – a source which does not replace the finite causes, which does not interfere with the created freedom of humans, and which enables each one to be his/her own creator.

However, I agree that in the light of our centuries’ old ways of speaking, many questions remain unanswered – hence the invitation for further reflection and dialogue.
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