Category Archives: Religion

#8 Prayer: getting intimate with God

31 Saturday Jan 2009

Posted by in God, Prayer, Religion, Spirituality, Theology

≈ 1 Comment

dreamstime_6064669For most people of faith, religion is more than a philosophical discussion.  And for most,  “God is the God of religion only when He is our God and we can speak to Him.”  Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote those words.  He ministered to Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt before they were shipped to Nazi death camps. He also wrote that “The deeper God’s love [is] felt, the more human [is] its form of expression…One cannot pray in concepts; one cannot hope in definitions and in the abstract.”

When we reach out, in prayer, to the God Whom Baeck calls the God of religion—the God Who is our God—our prayers reflect our intimate relationship with God.  We pray to God Who is always here and everywhere, the God Who is with us in all places and at all times, the God Who is as close to us as our own breath.  When we pray, we talk to God without any need to catch God up on what’s happened in our lives (unlike a friend we’re meeting for coffee).  We talk to God without preamble, sure that God has traveled with us every minute of the day, aware of our thoughts, our worries, our triumphs.  We lift our voices to God Who’s been with us at every step, and Who is still here, right now.  We lift our voices to God, the most intimate of intimates. 

The Christian Reformer, Martin Luther found it significant that Jesus called God, not Father, but Abba, the Aramaic word for Daddy (see Mark 14:36).  For Luther, the Lord’s Prayer might rightly be prayed like this:  “Our Daddy, Who art in Heaven… “

At one time, English-speakers had pronouns that captured the intimacy we bring to prayer—Thou, Thee, Thine.  These pronouns disappeared in the 17th century, folded, for good or for ill, into the formal pronouns, You, You, Yours.  However, European languages like French, Spanish, and German retain the informal, intimate pronouns English-speakers have lost.  Prayers in those languages show the tender and personal way in which people of faith often speak to God.  The informality of these pronouns underscore how we presume a personal God whenever we turn to God with trust and openness.   

This prayer (lightly edited) appeared on a poster in the Cathedral of St. Denis.  It was written by Brother Roger; until Brother Roger was murdered in 2007, he led a Christian ecumenical community in Taize, France, that is dedicated to peaceful reconciliation.  Rabbi Baeck and Brother Roger had very different Gods but they could have prayed this prayer together.  The Naked Theologian’s English translation appears below the original.  Note the words “toi”, “tu” and “te” in the French version—these are pronouns used when speaking to close friends, loved ones, and children.

Toi, [Dieu], tu vois qui je suis,                       
            j’ai besoin de ne rien te cacher                       
de mon cœur, tu m’accueilles avec                                   
            mes peines et mes inquiétudes                       
                        tu comprends tout de moi.           

Thou, [God], Thou seest whom I am,
             I need not hide anything from Thee
of my heart, Thou welcomest me with
            my sorrows and my worries
                        Thou understandeth all about me.

Baeck taught that we have faith in God before we have thoughts about God.  What do you say when you pray?  The way you talk to God may be different from the way you think about God.  Listen in on yourself—see what you think.  

Shall we close with the Hebrew word for “so be it”?  Let’s.  Amen.

References:  Albert H. Friedlander, Leo Baeck:  Teacher of Theresienstadt (Woodstock, NY:  The Overlook Press, 1991), 80-1.

#7 We fear not God, Who busts us not

26 Monday Jan 2009

Posted by in God, Philosophy, Religion, Theological Ethics, Theology

≈ 4 Comments

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Oaths.  This blog’s previous entry, “#6 So help me God“, described how, for a truly-honest person, oaths “give rise to no new duties.”  For such persons, oaths “merely serve to awaken” the conscience.  In some other world, truly-honest persons may exist. But let’s face it, that world is not our world.  No perfectly, completely, 100%, all of the time, 24/7, honest person has ever travelled this world’s byways (some would argue that Jesus, the Buddha, and President Obama are exceptions).  No matter how hard we work at it (if we even work at it that hard), we swear to do such-and-such, we promise to do something-or-other, and then—shall we admit it?—we renege. 

And so, given that we don’t qualify for 100%-truly-honest-person status, oaths are for us after all.  Oaths are intended for what Moses Mendelssohn called the “ordinary, middling sort” of person, or for everyone, since we must all “be numbered among this class.”  Okay, we may take exception to being called ordinary, middling sorts of persons, but in our most clear-eyed moments, we know that, more often than we like to admit, we are “weak, irresolute, and vacillating.”  Sure, we have principles, and sure, we have the best of intentions to keep our word but we sometimes  (often?) lack the will to follow through, especially when the going gets tough.  

When Mendelssohn says we need oaths to God because we all qualify as ordinary, middling sorts of persons, he is making a claim about what we, human beings, are like.  In technical language, he’s making an anthropological claim.  His (philosophical) anthropology shaped his theology; it shaped the way he understood God and the God-human relationship.  

For Mendelssohn, God is a witness not only of our “every word and assertion,” but of all our thoughts and most secret sentiments.  And since God is privy to our every word, assertion, thought and secret sentiment, God is privy to our every “transgression of his most holy will.”  Armed with this knowledge, God allows no transgression to go unpunished.  

Such a view of God remains a common one.  After all, we want the world to be fair; we want good guys to finish first and bad guys to get their just deserts.  But since we’re familiar with plenty of bad guys who never get their just deserts, we assume or conjecture that God administers justice in the afterlife.

Universalists (by affiliation or sympathy) take a different approach to the fairness/justice conumdrum.  They believe that God is simply too good to punish anyone. But like most of us, the Universalists want the world to be fair.  And so they also believe that although God doesn’t punish us after we die, our consciences torment us whenever we do something like break a promise.  Thanks to our consciences, we’re punished during our lifetimes.  The Universalists have what’s called a high anthropology. They assume that human beings have fully-active, sensitive consciences.  They assume that we feel remorseful about the wrongs we commit.  

Most religionists reject the Universalist approach.  They might even suspect Universalists of being immoral people. That’s because they wonder why anyone who doesn’t believe in God’s punishment would ever be motivated enough to make the kinds of sacrifices required to do the ‘right’ thing.

When Mendelssohn explains that we need the assistance of an oath to God, it’s because he thinks we need a moral boost to keep our word.  He’s got a lower anthropology than the Universalists.  He thinks we need to transform a moment when our will is being tested into a decisive moment.  He thinks we need to transform a moment when we’d rather procrastinate into a moment when we resist every excuse under the sun (and there are no new excuses).  He thinks we need the assistance of a pledge to God, a “so help me God,” to shore up our resolve, to “gather up all the force and emphasis, with which the recollection of God, the all-righteous” can move us to do what we must.

So what is your anthropology?

Does fear of being busted by God motivate you to make good (more often) on your promises?  Or is giving your word to God (without fear of punishment) enough?  Hmm.  Really?  

What does your God demand of you?  Of human beings in general?  How does your anthropology influence your views about our ability to honor those demands? 

References:  Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 64-5.

#6 So help me God

18 Sunday Jan 2009

Posted by in God, Religion, Theological Ethics, Theology

≈ 5 Comments

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An apocryphal story has George Washington saying “So help me God” at the swearing-in ceremony of his Presidential Inauguration.  While scholars debate the plausibility of this claim, what is known for sure is that many Americans today expect incoming Presidents to end their oath of office with those theological words.  Yes, those words are theological–I’ll return to why in a bit.  

The Presidential oath of office mandated by the Constitution merely requires the incoming President to swear to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”–no more, no less.  Hence, the Constitution leaves it up to each new President to decide how he wishes to end the oath–whether right after the words, “United States”, or after adding “so help me God,” or, in some future time, with “so help me Shiva,” or with “Allahu Akbar.”  Now do you agree that the words “so help me God” are theological?

For some, they violate the separation of Church and State.  Indeed, a lawsuit has been filed by the atheist Michael Newdow (a level-7 atheist on the Dawkins scale?) challenging the right of almost-President Barack Obama to use them at his Inauguration.  Since Obama wants to say them, the issue seems (to this naked theologian anyway) to be one of freedom of speech and religion rather than one of separation of Church and State.  

Could “so help me God” somehow ’strengthen’ the new President’s resolve to keep his oath?  The German-Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, made the following observation in a book he penned the year the American Revolution was about to stir in France (1783). Oaths invoking God, he wrote, “give rise to no new duties.”  In other words, oaths invoking God do not change the fact that the person, by dint of swearing to do something, has promised to make good on an obligation.  Oaths, Mendelssohn argued, “merely serve to awaken” the conscience. He also wisely observed that a truly honest person has not need of additional mechanisms to draw his or her attention to what he or she has already promised.  Hence, Mendelssohn concluded, oaths “are not, properly speaking, designed” for the person of conscience. (Nor are they designed for the n’er-do-well who has no respect for pledges–even his own).  Makes sense, don’t you think?  

If invoking God doesn’t serve as a moral booster, then “so help me God” takes on the quality of prayer.  Any new President who, at his discretion, chooses to close his oath with those words is, in effect, turning to God to ask for assistance.  He realistically anticipates that his resolve to keep his oath will be tested by the difficult compromises a head of state must consider.  He is asking God for help, not for moral reasons, but because he wants divine guidance and comfort when the going gets tough.  There’s no doubt, though, that he is, at the same time, telegraphing his theological convictions to the nation. In defense of almost-President Obama, he is limiting himself to the word God which signals an attempt to be inclusive of as many Americans as possible. Since Obama is a Christian, he might very well have preferred to finish with “so help me God, in Jesus’ name I pray.” Yes he could.  If he chose.  So help me God.  

Perhaps, one day, a President will surprise the nation by bucking the customary “so help me God.”  Perhaps, after repeating the Constitutional swearing-in oath, she will merely whisper to herself whatever words she wishes to add.  Perhaps she will even whisper so softly that recording devices and microphones will fail to register what she said. If so, she will have remained in the religiously neutral world of reason and common humanity, an all-inclusive world.  For now–well, if the President prays for God’s help, may God help the President.  

References:  1) Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 64;  2) Lisa Miller, “God and the Oath of Office,” Newsweek, Jan. 19, 2009, 13.

#4 Martin Luther King Jr.’s Theology, Exposed

04 Sunday Jan 2009

Posted by in God, Religion, Theology

≈ 4 Comments

dreamstime_42834221When we talk about the work of exemplary men and women, we usually focus on their achievements and pay little attention to their theological convictions–as if, somehow, their actions could be divorced from their beliefs.  There’s no doubt, though, that the ceaseless labors of many prophetic people are tied to their strong religious convictions, convictions that are not peripheral, but central to their work. 

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., illustrates this point.  We are well informed about what he accomplished and the world he helped change, but how many of us can explain the theological grounding of his visionary leadership?  In the passage below, we discover that, in his struggle for righteousness, King believed in, and relied on, the sustaining and loving power of a personal God:

“…in the past years the idea of a personal God was little more than a metaphysical category which I found theologically and philosophically satisfying.  Now it is a living reality that has been validated in the experience of every day life… In the midst of outer dangers I have felt an inner calm and known resources of strength that only God could give.  In many instances I have felt the power of God transforming the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope.  I am convinced that the universe is under the control of a loving purpose and that in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship.  Behind the harsh appearances of the world there is a benign power.  To say God is personal is not to make him an object among other objects or attribute to him the finiteness and limitations of human personality; it is to take what is finest and noblest in our consciousness and affirm its perfect existence in him.  It is certainly true that human personality is limited, but personality as such involves no necessary limitations.  It simply means self-consciousness and self-direction.  So in the truest sense of the word, God is a living God.  In him there is feeling and will, responsive to the deepest yearnings of the human heart:  thus God both evokes and answers prayers.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.  “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” in I Have A Dream:  Writings and Speeches that Changed the World, ed. James Melvin Washington, 54-62 (New York:  HarperCollins Publishers, 1986), 61.

#3 The spin on truth

02 Friday Jan 2009

Posted by in God, Religion, Theology

≈ 8 Comments

dreamstime_6640001Whatever our opinion about God, we all have one.  And that opinion rings true to us (even if we’re willing to revisit it, test it, adjust it, etc.).  If we only half-believed our opinion (is that even possible?), then our inner conviction would never rise above the level of platitude.  We adopt, or retain, the position that we find personally satisfying.  

Some theological views about God are:

1.   God exists

2.   God does not exist (dogmatic atheism)

3.   God might exist but whether God exists or not doesn’t impact life (practical atheism)

4.   Many gods exist

5.   There’s a good power in the universe and everything’s going to turn out okay

6.  There’s a cranky power in the universe and everything’s going to turn out badly (just kidding)

7.   God has never become incarnate

8.   Jesus is God incarnate

9.   Krishna is god incarnate

10.  To talk to God, I must face Mecca

11.  To talk to God, I must face the Wailing Wall

Each of these statements is a claim about truth.  Even uncertainty is a truth claim; we’ve decided that uncertainty is the truth.  Because we usually have several opinions about God, it’s fair to ask ourselves whether our claims make sense as a whole (are they coherent), whether they fit our everyday experience, and whether they are highly probable or less so.  

Most importantly, we’ll want to ask whether our opinions provoke and inspire us to live morally responsive and responsible lives.  We’ll also want to ask whether our opinions provoke and inspire us to help others flourish too.

#2 God: the mutilated word of appeal

28 Sunday Dec 2008

Posted by in God, Philosophy, Religion, Theology

≈ 3 Comments

 

dreamstime_63224261Do we administer CPR to God or leave God for dead?  Even after the Holocaust, the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber, refused to turn his back on God and walk (or run) away.  Why not?  He explained his thinking in his book, Eclipse of God:

“[‘God’] is the most heavy-laden of all human words.  None has become so soiled, so mutilated. 

Just for this reason I may not abandon it. 

Generations of men have laid the burden of their anxious lives upon this word and weighed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears their whole burden.  The races of man with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their fingermarks and their blood. 

Where might I find a word like it to describe the highest! 

If I took the purest, most sparkling concept…I could not capture the presence of Him whom the generations of men have honoured and degraded with their awesome living and dying.  I do indeed mean Him whom the hell-tormented and heaven-storming generations of men mean.  Certainly, they draw caricatures and write ‘God’ underneath; they murder one another and say ‘in God’s name’…  

And just for this reason is not the word ‘God,’ the word of appeal, the word which has become a name, consecrated in all human tongues for all times? 

We must esteem those who interdict it because they rebel against the injustice and wrong which are so readily referred to ‘God’ for authorization.  But we may not give it up… 

We cannot cleanse the word ‘God’ and we cannot make it whole; but, defiled and mutilated as it is, we can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour of great care.”

– Martin Buber, Eclipse of God (London:  Gollancz, 1953), 17-18.

#1 Skeptical? Some bare facts about theology

25 Thursday Dec 2008

Posted by in God, Religion, Spirituality, Theology

≈ 1 Comment

Skeptical young man

 

Here’s a test.  Have you asked yourself any of these questions:  What is my purpose in life?  What counts as a good life?  Do I (fill in your name here) matter?  Do I have a soul?  What is a soul?  Why is there so much suffering in the world?  Why have I suffered so much?  To whom am I speaking when, filled with gratitude, I find myself whispering “thank you, thank you”?  Where can I find comfort when I can’t take another piece of bad news?  What exactly IS my relationship to the divine?  Does that relationship entail any special responsibility on my part?  What are my moral principles and what am I willing to sacrifice to live by them?  Why should I be moral, why should I even be kind?  How can I love my neighbor—what exactly does that mean in practical terms?  What can I know of God?  

Okay, so you’ve got the picture.  Some of these questions could be considered philosophical because they’re asking basic questions about life.  Still, if you’ve read this far, then the God-dimension, or the vertical dimension, enters (or sneaks) into your questions and into your in-progress answers. 

Although you may not have known it, you’ve been theologians all along.  If you’re a dogmatic atheist and you discount the idea of God altogether, then you might consider yourself a philosopher, in the contemporary sense of philosopher anyway.  Because in the ancient world, philosophers like Plato and Plotinus considered ‘doing’ theology a key part of their work.  The idea of God was at the core of their musings—Plato called God, ‘the Good,’ and Plotinus called God, ‘the One.’  Now, while you may be theologians without knowing it, ‘doing’ theology means being intentional about asking questions like the ones above, and intentional about looking for thoughtful, rational answers. 

‘Doing’ theology is a kind of disciplined inquiry.  And that’s what this blog is all about.