Difficult Questions Part 1

Every now and then in a movie or TV show one of the characters will attempt to pray. Usually it is a character with no religious affiliation, or at least has been away from religion for a long time and he doesn’t know what to do or say. He or she will begin, “Hello, I’m Ben (or whatever his name is).  Maybe you remember me? My parents used to bring me to church when I was a kid. Anyway, it’s been a while.”  At this point the character will sit quietly for a minute or so trying to figure out what to say. Then he might say, “Hello, God! Are you there?”

I love such scenes because they are an honest portrayal of the human condition. We experience a deep yearning to relate to something or someone that is beyond our comprehension. Yet we are limited by our human perceptions, language and concepts. These are the tools with which we must work, if we are to bridge the gap.

Every now and then I find myself in this situation. I have enough theological training to know that my understanding of God is so far short of the reality to be sadly laughable. So, like the character described above, I speak into the darkness. Yet, there is hope, even faith, that I am connecting with something beyond me in a positive way, but it is more a leap of faith than any sure knowledge.

Enveloping darkness is a good image, according to some saints and mystics, because it is like being suddenly exposed to a very bright light. For a moment you are blinded by the light and then your eyes adjust. It is suggested that speaking into the darkness is simply being blinded by God’s brilliant presence.

Perhaps this is the case, though I would also suggest that it may simply be a matter of not having the capacity to perceive that which is beyond us. Our range of perceptions is quite limited. We can see only a small range of light frequencies and hear only a small range of sound frequencies. Other creatures have a much wider range of frequencies they can perceive and thus have a richer perception of the reality around us. Some of the navigational senses found in birds and various sea creatures are totally lacking in humans. Our ability to perceive that which is beyond us may simply be lacking; thus, the experience of darkness.

I was listening to an audio book the other day and the speaker was talking about there being a divine spark in each of us. What are they talking about when they speak of a “divine spark”? Is there some aspect of my humanity that I share with the divine? Is it some element that is part of what constitutes me? Is it some characteristic that I share with the ultimate? Traditionally, the Church Fathers suggested that the ability to reason and to exercise a degree of free will is what we have in common with angels and the divine. Is that the “divine spark”?

God seems to be whatever people want God to be. On the news I hear people explain that they support a politician because it is part of God’s plan.  What god are they talking about?  What plan?  The politician they advocate for seems to have very little to do with Christ or any religious tradition with which I am familiar. Too often it seems that they are invoking God to give authority to their morally questionable plans and desires. Does God want suicide bombers to kill innocent people? Does God want people harmed simply because of the color of their skin or their ethnic group or their religion?

What does it mean to be divine? What does it mean to be God?

One of my professors in graduate school described spirituality as our relationship with the ultimate. This description of spirituality was inclusive enough to be able to encompass almost every religious tradition, as many traditions don’t have a well-defined understanding of the ultimate with which we attempt to have a relationship.

Animistic traditions relate to the ultimate as the manifestation of some supernatural power-a kin to the Force of Star Wars fame. Polynesian cultures refer to it as mana. Oriental traditions refer to it as Chi. Chinese culture refers to it as Tao.

Polytheistic cultures express the ultimate in terms of gods. These are usually very human like beings with supernatural powers. You can enlist them to help you or you can offend them and experience them turning against you. The gods of polytheism are very similar to the superheroes of comic book and movie fame. These gods are essentially augmented human beings with all the foibles of any human but with the ability to wreck-havoc with their augmented powers. While the stories of these gods are entertaining (think “The Avengers: Endgame”). The gods of these traditions may have superpowers but don’t seem have the nobility and wisdom that we usually associate with the divine. They don’t seem to be accurate representations of the ultimate.

Monotheism brings us closer to familiar territory. There are different flavors of monotheism. There is the absolute monotheism of Judaism and Islam, where there is no God but God and Mohammed or Moses is his prophet. In Judaism, it is thought by many scholars, that God was a tribal “sky god” in the model of the polytheistic gods. This tribal “sky god” was our god among many gods, who weren’t our god.  Eventually this understanding of the divine morphed into an understanding that Jehovah wasn’t just a local sky god among other gods but was the one and only God.

This was a god that cared for humanity, a god that entered human history. This was a god that led people out of slavery and gave them the power to defeat their enemies. This was a god that appeared to humans as a burning bush or a pillar of fire.  This was a god that spoke to his people, entering into a contract with them. This was a god who sent prophets to teach them and remind them of the difference between good and evil. We still didn’t know what this one god looked like but we knew enough about his attributes to enter into a relationship with him. Yet, we understood that this god was beyond us. This was a god that we couldn’t comprehend, even if some type of relationship was possible. Indeed, there was a prohibition against attempting to make images of this god. Images might reduce the ultimate into something that was finite in the minds of God’s people.

The philosopher, Robert Neville, describes religion as a “broken symbol”.  By this he refers to the practice in some cultures of friends taking a coin or some other small object and roughly breaking it in half when the friends must head off in different directions and are not sure of when they will see each other again. The broken coin is unique to the two of them. It is a symbol of the missing friend; whose other half perfectly fits the piece of the coin that is missing. Religion is our half of the broken coin that constantly points to the unseen and incomprehensible God for whom we yearn. Religion is the broken symbol that points beyond us to the ultimate.

Most symbols refer to some finite object. The flag is a symbol of our nation. The nation to which it points is something that we have experienced to a certain degree, so we can grasp it. The flag is an effective symbol. A “broken symbol” speaks of the boundary between the finite and infinite. It is an attempt to map that boundary and allow us to speak in some meaningful way about the infinite, with the caveat that we are operating in the darkness with just a bit of light shining across the boundary offering us a sense of what is beyond.

This means that on our own our thoughts about what lays beyond the finite-infinite boundary are little more that our flailing around in the darkness. We are dealing with a reality that is far beyond our grasp. At best we can experience that darkness and draw upon our limited set of symbols, concepts and words to find finite analogies for our experience of the infinite. We know from the beginning that what we give expression to is far short of the reality, but it is the best we can do.

Or, is it?