Hidden worlds. Part 3

Hidden worlds

Part 3: Take and eat

And this illustration can suffice: to those who don’t know, to talk of a banquet in bread and wine is to obscure the truth – to cast a veil over the reality. Yes, you understand that it is a reference to communion, but the reference means nothing, because the symbols mean nothing, because the reality means nothing. And it is wearying to think of the time and effort that it would take to find meaning in it – so let me be distracted by some new toy or pastime in the material world. But to those who understand, removing the cloth from the bread and wine is like removing the bandages from your eyes after cataract surgery, or like the lead weight being removed from your heart when the fears we dreaded turned out to be unfounded. Such a banquet is food for the soul and we shall never be hungry.

So, there we are: a hidden world, that everyone knows about, but many never visit it because they see no value in it. Yet for those who enter the world of faith, it is life in all its fullness.

Hidden worlds. Part 2

Hidden worlds

Part 2: Faith imparts treasure beyond value – but only if we value spiritual treasure

Yet the claim of faithful people is that there is a whole new world to discover. It is immediately available. It is a world enfolded within and integrated with the physical world. We pass the door to this world every day; it is not hidden; we simply have not noticed it. Within this world, things look different, and we become different. The people in this world live by different values and they have access to hidden resources that others cannot see where on earth they are getting them from. Yet the people in this world also live in the world that we all know – but the resources they gained in their faith world don’t disappear into thin air  with the pop of an imaginary balloon when employed in the world of the physical, material universe. The gifts found in this faith world turn out not to be make-believe magic; they can literally be found once you know how to read the clues and follow the signs. Contrary to the view that it’s a world for the inadequate, those who come and go between the world of faith and the physical world discover spiritual gifts of grace that strengthen them in wisdom and love beyond measure. It is an Aladdin’s cave of riches – yet anyone mishearing and bursting in hoping for wealth finds an empty room, but those who see with eyes of faith discover gifts too precious for words – perhaps in the way the soaring vault of a cathedral is not empty, but full of holiness.

Yes, I know that those of us who visit this world of faith are not great advertisements for it. We are too casual and too quick, rushing in and grabbing the first thing to hand, to satisfy our hunger, eager or anxious to return to our muggle world of everyday concerns. We are not good at dwelling in the world of faith till it fills every morsel of our being. Except at times we do, and then we know that we have placed our faith well, and we partake fully in the banquet God has prepared for us. Even we, who know the world of faith, do not fully understand it; it is too simple and too profound, epitomised in a banquet in a morsel of bread and a sip of wine.

Hidden worlds. Part 1

(A reflection on faith in 3 parts)

Hidden worlds

Part 1: A deeper reality, hidden in plain sight

One of the many appeals of the Harry Potter books is the idea that, hidden within the ordinary everyday world, is a world of wizards and witches and magic. Without us realizing it, we are rubbing shoulders with those who can cast magic spells. They are in many ways indistinguishable from us, but, as well as inhabiting our world, they can also visit magical realms about which we know nothing. We regard ourselves as being normal, but to them we are just muggles. Not that there is anything disparaging about being a muggle, it’s just that we have no right of entry to the world that wizards and witches can freely go to.

A second example of a hidden world is not fictional, for it exists all around us. I had no idea that it existed till my daughter introduced me to it, and then I realised that I had been walking past it obliviously for the last 20 years. It is the world of geocaching. This is a hobby where people hide little objects for others to find, and the pleasure is simply finding them. There are clues to follow and signs to look out for. There is a good chance that you pass one of these hidden objects everyday without ever knowing that it’s there.

I use these two illustrations to try and open peoples’ eyes to the reality of the spiritual life of faith.

It may seem strange to make such a claim. Is not religion something that we all know about? Isn’t there a church on many a street corner? Yet for increasing numbers of people, the world of faith is a closed book to them. They inhabit a mental world completely enclosed within the physical, material universe, and they simply cannot conceive of the world of faith. They know the word “God”, but they dismissed the idea as nonsense by the time they left primary school. For them, God is just a made-up figure to help inadequate people who can’t cope by themselves. That’s if they aren’t more dismissive and see the whole of religion as superstitious nonsense and socially oppressive. Having hidden God away in the part of their mind that has that label on the door, no wonder they never visit it. The church on the corner is at the edge of their vision each day as they drive to work, but it never registers. Perhaps they never enter a church – until perhaps a relative’s funeral takes them there, where they feel socially awkward, like a fish out of water.

It must be true that God exists. Part 5

It must be true that God exists

Part 5: A child-like faith flows seamlessly into mature truth and provides the key to find God

However, I return to the simple truth that the religious experience is a reality. In this respect, it does not require “faith”, if faith is understood to be a commitment to something that is otherwise not provable – for the religious experience is provable. However, I think that faith is still involved in that you have to have an attitude of trust and hope in order to commit to this belief in the reality of the religious experience – for it is a belief until such time as you have it for yourself. So, the fundamental faithful attitude is still being employed, and I think this will count as faith and be sufficient to activate the experience of being completely and utterly loved.

I finish with a repetition of my astonishment that a big chuck of humanity should simply ignore this obvious, immediately available, verifiably efficacious source of peace, joy and love. And simply because they stumble over believing in God. Of course, I am being mischievous in saying “simply” because they don’t believe in God; believing in God is a very big deal indeed. Yet I feel sure that a large proportion of people who have rejected belief in God have done so because they have an inadequate picture in their minds of who God is. I hope that our thinking about this has shown that, whatever our uncertainties about God – and they are never going to go away – the reality of the experience of being utterly loved – which is what many of us mean when we talk about the reality of God – is completely indubitable. The experience is real; what you call it is up to you, but it seems not unreasonable to call it “God”. I was told this as a child.

It must be true that God exists. Part 4

It must be true that God exists

Part 4: People ignore the treasure all around them because they cannot believe it is there

In which case, this most wonderful experience, that was outlined earlier, is the natural product of how our minds work. Our minds simply do have the capacity to impart to ourselves these extraordinary gifts of peace, joy and love, of meaning and purpose and of complete reconciliation of all aspects of our lives into one harmonious whole. We should also have mentioned earlier that this experience, which is so beneficially enriching to the individual receiving it, generally also becomes the most powerful generator of compassion for others that humanity has. So, even without the extraordinary concept of God, we have, at the very least, the extraordinary reality of this wonderful capacity of the human mind.

Given this simple reality, it is in itself truly extraordinary that so many people in the modern secular world should completely ignore this reality. The suffering and pain alluded to earlier are just as real as ever, and we see numerous signs of people searching for some sort of assistance to get them through the struggles of life. Yet, having dismissed belief in God as false, they have also completely rejected the transcendent experience of being completely and utterly loved, which is of the very essence of what it means to believe in God. Yet we have also shown that this experience of being completely and utterly loved definitely exists, whether it has anything to do with God or not. How mind-boggling – and mind-numbing – that people should reject the single most powerful source of well-being known to humanity. All sorts of “techniques” to generate peace of mind are tried, such as mindfulness, meditation, yoga (all of them worthwhile in themselves) but held in a secular mindset, they are merely techniques that are not tied into the generator of the healing effect which is the experience of being utterly and completely loved by the person we call God – or by whatever is the alternative explanation for what this experience of being personally loved is.

It is a moot point as to whether this wonderful, life-giving experience could be activated in a merely technical sense. Could a secular-minded person say, “I like the sound of this; I will now meditate on the experience of receiving peace, joy and love until it happens to me”? It may be possible, and perhaps Buddhism is the example of this – though I suspect that Buddhism involves more than simple adherence to techniques. However, as a religious person, I would be perfectly happy to discover that the religious experience is only activated through the exercise of faith, and this aspect requires further thought – especially in the context of helping people to exercise faith when they simply don’t have faith. Perhaps they have tried and it just doesn’t work for them.

It must be true that God exists. Part 3

It must be true that God exists

Part 3: God is God, but as we are persons, we can only understand God as a person

All this is assured in the sense that there is no doubt about it. This experience exists and is testified to by countless millions of people. A final observation on the quality of the experience is that it is perceived as a thoroughly personal experience – that is, we do not experience “love” or “peace” as disembodied principles or values, but our experience is that there is “someone” who is giving us this love and peace. Now, it is possible that the personal nature of this experience – that is, our experience of “a person” – happens because we are persons. As we are working from the human end of the experience, then the recipient of it is a person, and, perhaps, it is just the way our minds work, that we find it impossible to experience such profoundly wonderful gifts without passing that through the medium of understanding it as a personal gift to us. This is possible, though it appears to be one of those things that is impossible to explore further to see if this idea is correct or not.

In the traditional understanding, the gift of these wonderful experiences comes to us from a personal God. But perhaps God does not exist in this form at all, but he does exist in some other non-personal form and so he is still the source of this gift – but we are simply unable to grasp what such a God is like and so we invent the person of God as a suitable medium through which we can come to terms with receiving this most wonderful gift. I think the only other alternative is that the gift is the product of our own minds. We are already aware that our minds are truly, extraordinarily wonderful in the ways they work – and that we are far from understanding exactly how they do what they do. So, if God does not exist – in any form at all – then the only other explanation is that the religious experience – which we have already acknowledged definitely does exist – must have our own minds as its source.

It must be true that God exists. Part 2

It must be true that God exists

Part 2: It’s all about the quality of the experience

Well, if we put to one side for the moment the whole concept of God, as interesting but unproven (despite the assumptions that I made as a teenager) what firm evidence do we have? Well, what we’re able to say with complete certainty is this:-

  • There is an experience of transcendence where we “see through” our ordinary perception of reality and appear to break through to a deeper, more profound experience.
  • This experience includes immense feelings of peace and joy.
  • It includes a sense of being one with the universe and, somehow, making contact with the ultimate – ultimate truth, reality, meaning and purpose.
  • This experience has at its core a sense of being completely and utterly loved, and this seems, for the duration of the experience, to give the person “the answers to all their deepest longings”. It resolves all conflicts, doubts, pain and fear and leaves the recipient with the most profound sense that all is well and nothing can ever shake this.
  • This latter experience is so at odds with our normal experience of how the world works that it is a truly mind-blowing phenomenon. Nature seems to work on the principle of the ruthless exercise of power to obtain whatever you want in a completely amoral universe. The experience of suffering is ubiquitous and we are well-used to the selfishness, greed, hatred and anger caused by other human beings and in which we sometimes participate. Yet the experience of God – though we are for the time being ruling out consideration of God and so working from the human end of the equation – so the experience of humanity, when we are having this particular religious experience, is an experience of being completely and utterly loved. 

It must be true that God exists. Part 1

(A theological reflection in 5 parts)

It must be true that God exists

Part 1: I was told I could meet God and I did, so God must exist

When I was a boy I was told that God exists. I had no reason to reject this: they were adults and I was only a child and they belonged to a respected institution – the Church. To be sure, this God person was very peculiar in that he cannot be seen or touched, but there was not a shadow of a doubt that he was real, and, most importantly, it was possible to meet this person, and when you did you would discover that he was a most wonderful person who loved you utterly.

Some years went by, and, as a teenager, I believed that I had indeed met God, and – just as I had been told – this person was most wonderful, and meeting him did fill me with the most wonderful love. Conclusion: “God exists, QED”. This seems an entirely reasonable conclusion. What I had been told was true – despite its immense implausibility according to the ways of the world – and it had been proven true in my own experience.

Of course, if we explore a little further, we must consider the possibility of alternative explanations. I was told I could meet God, and, when I did it would be a wonderful experience; I had a wonderful experience so this must mean that I have met God. But what do I know for sure? What I know is that I had a wonderful experience. When this happened I then made an assumption that the cause must be meeting God, because this is what I had been told when I was a boy.

This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate explanation. It may well be true; I hope it is true; and I am inclined, on balance, to believe that it is true. However, let’s stick with what we know and see where it leads us – especially as many people today find it too difficult to believe in God. Where does this leave us?

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing. Part 3

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing

Part 3: God draws near to us to redeem the situation. Report card: “Has made good progress and should aim high”

Our faith in God allows us to be honest: “Lord, I have sinned again. I have failed to live up to my values and principles – let alone yours”. So, there is no need for self-righteous delusions; we are able to admit when we have gone wrong. Yet our deep assurance that God loves us protects us from despair because we are confident that God will forgive us and help to direct us in his ways of love and goodness. This is a much healthier outlook than that exhibited by many people today, where – because they have no sense of God’s presence – they are unable to admit to any fault. They claim that however they happen to be must have been ordained by fate from all eternity and so they react with instant outrage to any suggestion that they could be different and could be better. Yet this opportunity – that I could be different and better to how I am – is the essence of the call to a religious life. This gives people of faith the chance to leave behind aspects of their life that they don’t approve of – especially in the light of God’s nature – and to embrace a fuller life, without ever feeling that they aren’t valued. God’s love imparts a supremely precious value to our lives and becomes an impregnable bulwark against feelings of worthlessness or despair. We are able to embark on a journey of constant growth without ever despising the person we currently are. Even though, in our moments of deep repentance, we may indeed by dismayed or even disgusted by our own actions, this is not enough to breach the trust we have in God’s forgiving kindness or the effectiveness of his healing and renewing grace.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing. Part 2

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing

Part 2: We reach out for what is out of reach. Report card: “Has got the basics, but needs to focus”

The bedrock foundation of the religious outlook is that, while we are far from perfect, we can still rest in the assurance of God’s love. This is an enormously powerful place to stand.

The religious desire to be perfect is very genuine. And let’s just clarify what we’re talking about when we speak of “perfection”. It is not a self-righteousness, or a sense of superiority. It’s not an insistence that we have scored 10/10 in every test, let alone boasting that we have done better than others in the tests of life. The desire for perfection arises from our adoration for God. Even our feeble appreciation of him and our transient encounters with him reveal a wondrous love and goodness that fills our souls to overflowing. Basking in the clarity of light that he imparts we are suddenly ashamed of everything that is unworthy of him and want only to honour him in everything that we think and say and do. That we have the ability to apprehend God is the glory of our human nature. This desire to honour him remains long after the experience of his presence has subsided, and then, of course, we discover that without the impulse of our direct encounter with him, we are unable to live up to our deepest desire to honour him. Yet still that desire remains, and it is this that we are talking about when we say that God calls us to be perfect.

So, here we are, with our desire to live in perfect love and goodness, and with our evolved instincts for self-preservation which entail a ruthless amorality. No wonder we have a divided mind – as Augustine agonised about so acutely. I think it does help us to understand that this is the position we find ourselves in – though this does not absolve us from the task of choosing perfect love and goodness rather than ruthless amorality. Let’s explore a bit more this place where God enables us to stand.