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21

MYSTERY v FUNDAMENTALISM

   True prayer should lead us to the God who is mystery. It should lead us away from the childish notion of a God we can define, explain, even control. It should lead us to the childlike notion of God which inspired every moment of the life of Jesus. He believed in a God who was Abba, a loving Father, who was at the centre of life, who held all in his hand and was in control of everything. His being and all the activity flowing from that being was love. Jesus lived out this faith in total trust. All his security was placed in his Father. We can imagine the sincerity with which Jesus prayed the Psalms:

'In God alone there is rest for my soul,
from him comes my safety;
with him alone for my rock, my safety,
my fortress, I can never fall.'
Psalm 62:1-2

  Let us with great respect and great admiration remind ourselves that this was not easy for Jesus. He was like us in all things but sin. Like us he was tempted. He was tempted in the desert to put his security in miracles and not in his Father’s providence. In Gethsemane he is tempted to avoid the consequences of total trust in God and cries out against the chalice of suffering he is invited to drink. But he did not sin. He trusts. His security is in God his Father and he trusts to the bitter end.

  We are invited to similar trust but it is very hard for us. When things go badly wrong, we find it nearly impossible to put all our faith in God. We crave security. We fear risk in life. But, at the same time, we say we are people of faith. Now true faith of its very nature involves some kind of ‘risk’, some kind of ‘insecurity’. This is a problem. We too pray with the Psalmist to God, ‘You are my rock, my safety, my fortress.’ But we also experience distress, doubt and darkness and are tempted to seek security elsewhere. Thus we experience an inner tension. Two conflicting desires are at work within us, to trust completely in an often unpredictable God and to have security and certainty about life – especially the next life – and about salvation.

  The understandable desire to resolve this tension and to accommodate both these yearnings in our nature often leads religious people on to a deceptive sidetrack. It is worth noting this danger and being on our guard. A general word used to describe this aberration is ‘fundamentalism’. It is a temptation that recurs in every age of religious history and in every creed. I use the word ‘temptation’ because it attracts us under the guise of good. Fundamentalism professes an ardent faith and a burning zeal for the living God and his place in our lives. But it interprets this God in a way that makes him more predictable and manageable. It keeps faith in God but in a God of its own designing. This is prompted by our cravings for security and certainty. Since fundamentalism is a response to feelings of insecurity, it manifests itself strongly in times of change, recession and deprivation. We should not be surprised that recent times have seen a strong, universal upsurge of this phenomenon. Our age offers a receptive climate. The post-Vatican II upheaval in religious thinking; the nuclear threat; the rapid technological development and experimentation without a corresponding growth in moral sensitivity; unemployment; talk of the destruction of the environment – all these foster a strong sense of insecurity and helplessness. More than ever we need some rock to cling to, some fortress where we will feel safe.

  The fundamentalist finds this hiding-place in religion, in a relationship with God, but with a God he can cope with, a God he can understand and predict. The fundamentalist will oppose change in religious thinking or any exploration of the mystery of God. It is too threatening. She must interpret God in a predictable and manageable way. But how can the infinite Mystery become more manageable? One way is to equate God with some partial revelation of himself or his wishes. God reveals himself in many ways. For religious people he is revealed in his laws, in the Bible, in a community of believers called the Church. The fundamentalist is always tempted to make a God of law, or of Bible or of Church. The law of God, the word of God, the community of God, are all sacred, precious gifts to be loved, but they cannot take the place of God. They must always lead us past themselves, into the mystery of God who is love and in whose image we are created and whose being we are to reveal to all by loving each other. The fundamentalist temptation is to substitute one of these for God himself. They are all more manageable than God himself!

  Take law, for example, a favourite ‘god’ of the fundamentalist of any time or place. We can understand law. It is clear-cut. It tells us what to do, how to please God. If we know what we have to do, and we do it, then we are safe before God. We can make sure of salvation. If we keep the law, God must reward us. We can see how this line of thought can lead us far away from the God of Jesus. Indeed, it can destroy the very notion of God altogether. It destroys the sense of mystery. It leaves no room for exploration, revelation, surprise. It is an enemy of real faith. It wants to substitute certainty for trust. It substitutes an idol for the living God and, in a subtle way, it puts us in control of God.

  In the gospel, the extreme Pharisees had become such fundamentalists. They could not cope with Jesus and the God he was claiming to reveal and the change of thought he was inviting. How could Jesus be a friend of sinners who broke the law? How could he himself flout respected law and traditions? How could he do all this and claim to do it in the name of God? Jesus was too full of surprise and change for them. They confronted Jesus again and again. In these confrontations Jesus used some very severe words. He accused them bluntly of not knowing God at all, and, even worse, of not having any love for God in their hearts.

'You study the scriptures,
believing that in them you have eternal life;
now these same scriptures testify to me,
and yet you refuse to come to me for life!
Besides, I know you too well:
you have no love of God in you.'
John 5 39-42

  John is saying that it is possible to know the scriptures and keep the law perfectly and still have no love of God in the heart. This is surely a most sobering thought, one which invites us all to reflection.

  We can understand why Jesus was so angry with the Pharisees. They were destroying the true image of God his Father. They had put law at the centre instead of love. They portrayed God as a stern judge and not as a loving Saviour. Jesus came to reveal the true God, the God who entered the life of his chosen people as Saviour first and not as lawgiver until later. Before there was any mention of law, God, moved by compassion and love, delivered the chosen people from the slavery or Egypt. Only afterwards was there mention of law when the chosen people accepted the covenant with this saving God and promised to walk with him and keep his wise laws. This they did in a spirit of joy and thanksgiving. In later years, love grew cold but law remained. People accepted the law now, not out of joyful gratitude, but out of fear. It was a way to be on the safe side of this God. People no longer felt they were pleasing to God in themselves. They felt they had to win his favour, to prove themselves. Strict observance of the law was seen as the way to do this. Observance of the law became a condition for receiving God’s love. The Pharisees encouraged this attitude, presenting God as the lawgiver who had to be pleased by observance of law, an observance that depended on our own human effort. The way was now open to interpret life’s misfortunes and sickness as punishment for failure to keep the law. When the disciples of Jesus see a blind man one day, they instinctively as, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?’ (John 9:2).

  The way is now open also for intolerance, bigotry and persecution in the name of religion. The impoverished, narrow and severe fundamentalist idea of God leads to an equally rigid and impoverished idea of the salvation which God offers. This salvation is seen as something static. It is a state which the fundamentalist claims to be able to define, a place where he can arrive even now. In a sense, the fundamentalist cannot be a pilgrim. He claims to have arrived! Then he sets boundaries to this state. He knows who belongs and who is outside. This breeds intolerance. Those considered outside are judged as sinners, as lost, even as enemies of God. They must be forcibly converted or be punished. The line between right and wrong, between good and bad, is clearly drawn. There are no grey areas. There will be no surprises in the fundamentalist kingdom. Surprise is not welcomed by those who crave security. Yet, in his parable of the Last Judgment, Jesus suggests that the kingdom will be full of surprises. (Matthew 25:31-46)

  The fundamentalist wants the security of certainty and fears the ‘insecurity’ of faith, But true faith has some darkness, risk, ambiguity and unanswered questions, while at a deep level there is peace and a ‘certainty’ that the ultimate reality is love, despite so many apparent contradictions. In faith there is simultaneous awareness of my sinfulness and of my being accepted in that state by a beauty and love infinitely transcending myself. This is the beginning of salvation, a process which will develop throughout my life of joy and sorrow, laughter and tears. God is patient with this process, infinitely patient in waiting for us to grow. The Pharisee and his modern fundamentalist counterpart do not have the same patience with their fellows. They want to separate the weeds from the wheat now. God says, ‘No, because when you pull out the weeds, you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest.’ (Matthew 13:29). Elsewhere Jesus says his Father is the gardener. Weeding out is best left to the skilled and loving gardener who will have the discerning eye and the gentle touch.

  Our faith, our religion is not a fortress where we can safely hide and be protected from life’s changes, ambiguities and challenges. Our faith is a going forth, a journey, an exodus, a summons to walk with the living, saving God who will be out shield on the journey. Sometimes that journey will take us through the desert when we may wonder if we walk along of feel that perhaps we are lost. But if we keep trust, out God will provide water and guide our steps in the safe path. We walk with the God of Jesus. This God is mystery, but the mystery is love. The mystery is the loving Father of Jesus who is our Father too.

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