Growing up as children of God

“What is sex?” the five year old asked her Father. Her father was hoping he heard wrongly. “What did you ask?” “Daddy, what is sex?” He sighed, sat beside her, pondered for a while, and measuring his words, tried to explain the birds and the bees to his puzzled daughter. When he considered his first lesson on the topic finished, he sighed again in relief and asked her, “did you understand?… but, why did you ask me that question?” The daughter was still trying to digest the confusing situation but explained to her father, “Mommy said dinner will be served in a couple of secs.”

A father may find it difficult to explain the mysteries of human sexuality to a 5 year old. It is not about terms or reasoning. Children simply lack the maturity and experiences that enables them to understand that. Now, imagine you are not someone trying to explain something so personal to someone who is 30 years younger, imagine you are God and you want to explain yourself to human beings. That is a challenge.

Honestly, if you were God, would you attempt to explain yourself to humans? It is difficult for them to understand each other. The curse of Bable has long lasting effects. God, however, tried. He became man, spoke a human language, and did not choose the intellectual elite of Jerusalem to communicate but the fishermen and peasants of the countryside.

However, understanding is not only a matter of speaking the same language. Children simply don’t have what it takes to understand adults’ matters. In the same way, it is impossible for humans to understand God. Jesus explains ”I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” (Jn 16:12). The Spirit of God is what we need to understand God’s matters.

God’s incarnation (Christmas) and even Christ’s resurrection will remain inaccessible mysteries for us without the Pentecost. We would only be mere spectators of God’s power and wonders unless that power works within us. Our God is not only the God above of the Old Testament, not only the God with us of Christmas, but foremost the God within us of Pentecost.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is expressed in our hearts with a new kind of life that comes from God. Understanding from the Spirit is different from human understanding. One is about human matters, the other about understanding God.  Filial piety helps to build a relationship with parents; the gift of piety helps us to live as children of God. Life is not just a human life, but maturing into a divine dimension of  the human life. It is about growing up to partake in the business of God.

The power of the God of the Old Testament is not anymore something to witness from a distance, but something to experience within. It is not an overpowering strength, but certainly, it enables those who experience it to “achieve whatever they presume to do.” (Gn 11:6). Speaking and understanding God’s matters means we have truly grown up.

The skills of engagement: Communication Sunday

This Sunday’s theme is “New technologies, new relationships and Promoting a culture of respect, dialogue and friendship.” Our religious authorities have requested that we do not use the pulpit “to engage in socio-political activities to canvass for or against the matter.” Do new technologies account as virtual pulpits? Technically no, I hope, and then that restriction would not apply to this post. But even if it does, I will not engage in a socio-political activity that canvass for or against the matter of AWARE. Still, can we promote a “culture of dialogue and friendship” by avoiding issues or by talking about them? Is this fear of debating well-founded or typical panic of control-freak institutions?

However, there are well-founded reasons for fear. The AWARE saga has escalated beyond prognostics. Emotions are high on both sides of the conflict and authorities fear that this may affect national cohesion. The danger is real. In fact, everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it.

However, what causes division is not the debate but the way it is debated. The scientific community does not seem to be threatened by an irreversible schism for or against the possibility of finding water in Mars. And it is not impossible to imagine two scientists of opposite opinions mutually explaining their reasons while sipping coffee amicably. What matters is not what we debate but how we debate about it.

Perhaps the first reason we should learn from this turmoil is that rules are not enough. The rules of engagement between the secular sphere and religion were respected. People have their right to express their reasonable opinions and act on them. Some suspect a religious conspiracy behind the “turn over”, others saw a “crusade for righteousness”. But the facts remain that this was just a group of people with two irreconcilable opinions about sexual education and both sides are equally entitled to defend and act according to what they believe is best. In other words, the rules were not broken. The question is, do rules alone suffice?

If you want to learn to play tennis, you can learn the rules in few minutes, but it will take you years to master the skills of playing tennis well. Rules do not make tennis players better players. Skills do. Integrating dialogue between faiths and secular societies needs more than just rules of engagement, it needs skills. So what are the skills of engagement? Many: sympathy, dialogue, truth seeking, etc. Today, we are specially challenged about one of them: dialogue.

Dialogue is a nice word. It sounds as enticing as the friendship that dialogue fosters. But we might have the wrong idea of dialogue or worse, we take for granted that everyone knows how to engage in it.

One issue the  AWARE saga has put on our laps is whether we can continue to ignore the issue of truth. If there is no truth that we are all suppose to pursue, dialogue simply means, “I want to know your stand, so that I do not step on it.” Dialogue without truth is merely information about other’s opinions to live and let live. In other words, indifference. Of course, indifference is not a nice word, so we call it tolerance and peace. And we esteem it a necessary condition for civilized life in a democratic society.

Dialogue with truth, on the other hand, tries to understand the other side. True dialogue is a skill because it needs to listen carefully to what the other has to say. If there is truth, I, the other party, or both can be wrong. I need to pay close attention to what I hold true, to what others hold true and to any other possibility of being true. If I cannot rephrase what the other side has to say, I am not listening, and if I am not listening, true dialogue, that is, dialogue about truth is futile.

This kind of dialogue is a skill because it entails hard training, continuous effort, lots of practice, acceptance of failures and short comings and indeed a special talent.

True dialogue requires that I consider that I could be wrong and how the other might be right. After all, if others hold a different view, there must be something that makes them believe what they believe. We do not only need to know the difference of opinions, we need to understand why the other thinks differently.

The truth about the shape of the earth is not simply about “flat is wrong” and “round is true”. There are serious reasons why people have believed for thousands of years that the earth was flat. The truth is not only that the earth is round. The truth is that the roundness of earth is so vast that it looks flat. Flat-earth believers were able to embrace the truth not because they were slapped with the facts, but because they were able to reconcile “their belief” with the “truth”. This truth did not satisfy one side of the debate only; it satisfied both.

Dialogue with truth moves people in the same direction; without truth makes people draw “untouchable boundaries” between each other. Tolerance without truth promotes a kind of indifference where the opponent is just an obstacle to avoid, rather than a companion to move along with. They also do speak about “moving on” but it does not refer to any particular direction, it simply means to stop the confrontation.

But truth alone is not enough. Truth without hope creates desperate fighters who figure that without their “truth”, the world will surely collapse. Dialogue, in this case, is fact a confrontation. It seeks to overpower the opponent. It often has recourse to caricaturing the adversary, distorting the weakness and then attacking the distortion they themselves have created in the enemy. It denies the dignity that true dialogue respects. It draws the same difference between street fights and noble sports where opponents salute each other before and after the fight. It is easy to understand why. Truth without hope despairs, and when we despair we explore any means to prevail.

This is where our skills for dialogue are most lacking. I would say that we suffer more from a crisis of hope than from a crisis of truth. Even if Jesus is not acknowledged as a religious authority, He mastered the skill of dialogue based on hope. The God of Jesus Christ is not here to fight against man. And Jesus fought not. He could have tried to avoid evil by running after sinners and screaming to them his infinite truth. Instead, He respected. In him, God respects the freedom of the victimizer, even at the expenses of the victim. And this is for us hard to swallow.

This is what was lacking in the AWARE case. When the new guard realized that they could take over leadership of the group, they saw their chance to stop people from teaching the wrong sexual values. They believed they had the truth and they took advantage of the opportunity to spare children from being exposed  to ”wrong sexual teachings.” The question is, was it done appropriately? It was legal, licit and certainly respected the “rules of engagement” between the secular and the religious. But, was it done with skills of engagement in consistency with the gospel they believed in? Did they exercise the evangelical cunning of serpents for the sake of the kingdom or did they fail to present the values of the gospel with the evangelical simplicity of doves?

Jesus did not impose His way. He proposed it. God does not force His way into man’s lives. He invites Himself to be invited. Only a fool or a hopeful person can afford to to that. Only a fool can do nothing in the face of evil. Only a hopeful person will know that forcing people to do well is not a durable solution. But the truth is that only a genuine change of heart in freedom and truth can solve the evil of the world. It is not about shouting louder than abortionist, or even about forcing paedophiles into chastity. We certainly must do what we can to prevent crime and evil. But, the ultimate goal is to move people into being willing to do good.

When the first Christians wanted to make sense of the death of Jesus on the cross, indeed about preferring to be a victim rather than a victimizer, they found the verses of Isaiah meaningful: “he does not break the crushed nor quench the wavering flame.” (Is 42:3; Mt 12:19). The gentleness of God’s ways is plain consistency with His love. God does not impose Himself nor imposes his ways. He introduces Himself as the one who yearns to be introduced into man’s lives by their own free choice.

Often we are tempted to stop evil no matter what it takes. Jesus’ approach is surprisingly different. In the parable of the Kernel and the wheat (Mt 13:18ff), Jesus suggests that in a world where good and evil are intertwined what matter most is not to be involved in uprooting the good, even at the cost of letting evil grow. The truth that sets ahead trying to eradicate evil at any cost for the sake of efficiency does not fulfill God’s gentle ways. Imposed truth is not the way of truth, because truth cannot possibly be imposed. It needs to be proposed. This is why the church as well, “proposes, she imposes nothing. She respects individual and cultures, and she honors the sanctuary of conscience.” (Redemptoris missio, 39).

Jesus could have avoided all the crimes of His time, He could have stopped the adulterous woman before she committed adultery and could have forbidden the prostitutes that ate with Him to commit any sin. The father of the Prodigal Son could have run after his son and nagged him to conversion, but he chose to wait for his son’s conversion in freedom. God’s truth must be proposed in God’s gentle, respectful ways.

Good and evil will continue to coexist. However, evil fights; good, instead, prefers to be crucified before forcing His way. This  can only be done in folly or in hope. The folly of the cross can only be reasonable in the hope of the resurrection. It is not our fight but God’s. God has the last word and we must hope in it. Truth without hope fights because it seeks to win no matter how. Truth with hope would rather wait, even if ignored or despised. The goal of the fight is to overpower. The goal of the dialogue is to draw people.

Training in the simplicity of doves is a key skill of engagement. As Blessed Mother Teresa put it, “God does not ask us to be effective, He asks us to be faithful.” What counts most is not how much evil we have stopped or how much amount of goodness we have poured out; but how faithful we have been to God’s ways, how consistently we show love lovingly. “The media is the message” even for God.

Truth is associated with totalitarian and intolerant attitudes and that is why it has practically disappeared from the social sphere. In fact, it might well be the very reason why religions are under suspicion in the first place. However totalitarian regimes were not dangerous because they believed in truth. Some were indeed right. They became dangerous when they started to believe that truth could be imposed.

If we should move on from the conflicts between the religious and secular realm, we need to remember this crucial lessons: dialogue is here to stay. It is up to us to engage each other in a dialogue with truth and hope or to just move away from any risk of tensions pretending that absence of confrontation is real peace. As we celebrate the day of communication, we should promote a culture of respect. Let’s do it by learning to dialogue, rather than assuming that everyone has already mastered the skill.

Rules of engagement between secular and religious ideas

The AWARE saga has taught us a few lessons but also left some unanswered questions. Do religions have a role to play in the public realm? Is faith an exclusively private issue? Jesus himself said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”. Does it not mean that religious and social matters should be kept separate?

Once a religion is adopted by the majority of the population, the temptation is to simplify matters by mixing or even equating legal policies with religious issues. That well intentioned merging comes at a price. The history of the western world is plagued with conflicts brought about by the confusion of the religious and the secular realm. Emperors claimed religious authority and religious authorities invoked God to rule over secular matters. In fact, it took Europe a few centuries to realize that church and state are better kept separate.

However, we are still wondering whether religious beliefs and customs should be allowed to creep into the secular arena. Crucifixes and scarfs in public places are just two examples.

After a long history of the erroneous mixing of secular and religious matters, we have reached a point of no return and other states that still use religious laws are more likely to move on to secular states. The reason for this is not simply practical but one of fairness. The secular realm has its own goals and methods and this gives it an autonomy that religion should respect. By the same token, the secular law should guarantee freedom of religion and freedom in religion.

Christianity has understood the theological reasons for this mutual respect. God himself respects human autonomy. He does not force His way into human history.  The God of Israel is the God who “left man free to make his own decisions” (Ecc 15:14) and the church echoes this divine respect in her last ecumenical council: “God left man in the hands of his own counsel” (Gaudium et spes, 17). If God respects human autonomy, so must the church or any other religion for that matter.

However, in the typical pendular movement of history, we are now starting to swing in the opposite direction: from uncritical mixing to complete divorce. In fact, there is a suspicion that religions muddy the naturally peaceful waters of society, that religions bring about more  conflict than solutions, and that the world would be much better without any religion at all. So, until that day arrives, we’d better confine the burden of religion to a minimum. Now is the time of secularism. Indeed, some have call it the new religion. The slogan seems to be “Confine religions to the sacristies of their own private spheres where they should learn to live and let live.”

That attitude is a false solution. That divorce will end up crippling religions, depriving societies of a transcendental purpose and creating a kind of bipolar citizens: private believers but social practical atheists. But do we seriously believe that religion, even if it is not my religion, is better than no religion? Don’t we have enough of discrimination, riots and dissension of religious origin?

Religions have something to offer. Aquinas said that if God did not reveal Himself, only a few people would reach the truth, after great efforts and with a mixture of errors. Religions offer answers that are easily accessible to more people, in an easier way and with greater guarantees. It is not for nothing most great religions agree on most important matters.

Of course there are also differences among them. And there has been manipulation of religion to push private agendas. But we should not blame religions for the sins of religious people. It is better to believe that there is a God than not to believe at all. It is better to believe that God is a merciful God than believing that God is an avenging God. The whole truth about life is impossible to achieve in this life, but the more we have of it, the better. Religions do certainly bring a true aspect of life than the secular may find it difficult to achieve on its own.

By understanding the transcendental destiny of the person, religions advocate a kind of human dignity practically inaccessible to a materialistic secular mentality.  An awareness of a superior Being, necessarily fosters an understanding of equality among people that cannot be matched by the secular version. In fact, today,we are witnessing a kind of equality in which “some are more equal than others”, where the absolute right to life is being compromised by the quality of life one is judged to have.

It is not by chance that this version of “unequal equality” happens in our secularized world. Where there is a lord, the rest are all servants; if the lord disappears, all will fight for Lordship. As Vatican II put it, “when the idea of God vanishes, so does the dignity of man.”

On the other hand, secular ideas and criticisms help religions to be more reasonable. The Catholic church even finds herself thanking atheist critiques for helping her purify some misunderstandings in the practice of faith. Let us recall how a misunderstood sense of the next life withdraws some believers from social commitment. The criticism that religion was the “opium of the masses” was the wake up call for a right understanding of social progress and development in this world perfectly compatible with the hope of the after-world.

In other words, religions have something to offer to the secular arena; but the secular arena needs to be respected in its autonomy. Both are bound to live together. Now, religions and secular institutions have similar ends: the betterment of human life. They do this with different understandings and through different means. So religions and secular organizations are bound not only to encounter each other, but to often disagree and contradict each other. So, if religions and secular institutions must learn to live together, what are the rules of engagement? 

The goal of these rules can be reduced to one word: integration. Integration is opposed to confusion where both parties interact without respecting their boundaries and autonomies. Integration is also opposed to divorce or disintegration. Integration implies that the parts remain distinct but they make up a whole. Integrating religion and secular affairs entails that both respect their boundaries and autonomies through a mutual understanding of their own proper goals and at the same time, they both play a role in the whole of the society, making society more cohesive.

It is not enough not to cross each other’s boundaries. Religions do not become integrated when their believers become lukewarm. Compromising their believes and practices, religious people simply send out the message that religion is subordinated to practical goals. They become means to be utilized and compromised. What is supposed to be a witness of the absolute, fails to fulfill its role by compromising. Muslims who don’t take their fast seriously, send a message that faith is something superficial. When Catholics cooperate with activities that contradict their beliefs in the name of an “inclusive” mentality, not only do they betray their own faith, but fail to exercise the role of religion in the secular world.

There is often the illusion that because this believer in a different faith does not care much about his beliefs, he becomes closer to our  faith. In fact the opposite is true. Lukewarm Muslims, if converted to Christianity, tend to be lukewarm Christians. Committed Buddhist, if converted to other religion, would become a committed believers. Dilution is confusion, not integration.

There are some minimal rules of engagement that should be preserved. The right to conscientious objection for reasonable matters is one of them. Not to impose particular beliefs on others would be another. But the fruitfulness of the engagement lies not so much on respecting the rules of integration as it does on learning the skills of engagement. What are those skills? Many, I suppose, but one stands out: dialogue.

And that deserves more detailed consideration.