What is it that motivates today’s Christians? It really is not God… It is rather their egos that motivate them, their social diversity, their worship, their relationship to Revelation, and the restoration of the unity of the Church. All of these are indeed important aspects, but they will not become stale only so long as the salt of the passionate relationship with God preserves its freshness.
-Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Why we need Nicholas of Cusa”
I agree with this statement, as I agree with much of von Balthasar when he speaks of the thought of others. I think there is unnatural, enclosed subtext in much of Christian discourse that is really unsure of how much it can encompass the totality of human experience. And this has to do with an understanding of God, fundamentally. For if God is only conceived of as a function of my own ideological and political necessity (either as the ens causa sui upholding a particular social order, or a “fire in the bosom” affirming my own presuppositions regarding my personal experience, or what have you), we are not really thinking about God, but of a particular axiom needed to uphold our own superstructure of choice. That is a problem of both the left and the right, and it crosses confessional lines.
I agree. I’m guilty of it myself.
I think that the politicization of religion is inevitable in a modern society (defined here as being industrialized and semi-pluralistic) where everyone has differing ideas of “the common good” and where religion is either a private matter or a means of social control. Granted the latter option has always been a factor, but I think in modern societies the concern is over propping up the status quo rather than any alleged concern over the state of the souls of the people within the political boundaries (one could argue whether that was ever the case, but that’s another post). The major point of departure was probably the French Revolution, where religion was firmly put in the place of being a reactionary force. Eventually, religion became a handmaiden to all of the other -isms – fascism, nationalism, socialism, communism, racism, liberalism, conservativism, libertarianism – and we find ourselves in the current situation where people join a religion or church because it supports political ideas that they would have had anyway.
Here is another interesting quote about God, although, I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m sorry if this viewpoint seems off-topic here..
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God: an inner experience, not discussable as such but impressive. Psychic experience has two sources: the outer world and the unconscious. All immediate experience is psychic. There is physically transmitted (outer world) experience and inner (spiritual) experience. The one is as valid as the other. God is not a statistical truth, hence it is just as stupid to try to prove the existence of God as to deny him. If a person feels happy, he needs neither proof nor counterproof. Also, there is no reason to suppose that “happiness” and “sadness” cannot be experienced. God is a universal experience which is obfuscated only by silly rationalism or equally silly theology.
What mankind has called “God” from time immemorial you experience every day. You only give him another, so-called “rational” name – for instance, you call him “affect”. Time out of mind he has been the psychically stronger, capable of throwing your conscious purposes off the rails, fatally thwarting them and occasionally making mincemeat of them. Hence there are not a few who are afraid “of themselves”. God is then called “I myself,” and so on. Outer world and God are the two primordial experiences and the one is as great as the other, and both have a thousand names, which one and all do not alter the facts. The root of both are unknown. The psyche mirrors both. It is perhaps the point where they touch. Why do we ask about God at all? God effervesces in you and sets you to the most wondrous speculations.
People speak of belief when they have lost knowledge. Belief and disbelief in God are mere surrogates. The naïve primitive doesn’t believe, he knows, because the inner experience rightly means as much to him as the outer. He still has no theology and hasn’t yet let himself be befuddled by boobytrap concepts. He adjusts his life – of necessity – to outer and inner facts, which he does not – as we do – feel to be discontinuous. He lives in one world, whereas we live only in one half and merely believe in the other or not at all. We have blotted it out with so-called “spiritual development,” which means that we live by self-fabricated electric light and – to heighten the comedy – believe or don’t believe in the sun.
C.G. Jung. Selected Letters of C.G. Jung, 1909-1961
Hello Arturo Vasquez and all,
Fresh –and possibly unwelcome– voice here: Just let me know.
Real Devotion, to any person or persons (in any form!) is religion to me. Good luck finding any!
People think Devotions come from Churches; but it’s Churches that come from the Devoted. Any **functioning** parish, congregation or synagogue will show that. I’m not exactly Catholic (call me Khrist Bhakta?)– heck, come to think about it, I’m not exactly anything– but that is what I like about what the Church used to be: The Abode of the Devout. Many folks like you are making it the Home of Tradition(alism?)– and today that’s not necessarily a bad idea, but….
You do good work, but hell Vasquez, if we all start salting our discourse with Passion, you’ll have something other than a nice cool intellectual site here– it might get (gives me the shivers just thinking about it) “deep”. No, not “deep”, I mean, “uncomfortable”. Or do I mean otherworldly?
I think maybe you see through the past, and though ideas all the way to the people and the present– I think maybe you see Him– but who the heck wants that?
Pardon my lowclass biker sentimentality. But hey, maybe someday I’ll get lucky and it’ll really become…
Devotion.