A Covenantal Theology or Relational Spirituality, Part 1: The Goal and Aim of the Life of Faith
What if the goal and aim of the life of faith is NOT finding the Truth? NOT finding the Truth that is God, nor discovering the One True Faith, nor finding the Truth and believing in that Truth and holding to that Truth against all other contenders? What if the goal and aim of the life of faith is NOT about Truth at all, and faith is not about believing the Right Things in the Right Way?
What if the goal and aim of the life of faith begins with this simple acknowledgement: As human beings we are so filled with self-interest and fallibility that we will mistake our own preferences for Truth, our own incomplete understandings for Truth, and we will ascribe our own distortions of the good, the right, and the true to God. It is what is so poignantly portrayed in the second creation story in the Book of Genesis. Human beings are fallible and finite. We cannot know God’s ways because they are God’s and not ours. God and man are not the same. We walk in a garden we did not create.
What if the goal and aim of the life of faith began with a realistic estimate of human nature, the nature that is shared by ALL who walk or have walked this earth? It is how the disciples are portrayed in the Gospel of Mark. Centuries later we deride them as being dull-headed and slow when it came to seeing "the Truth," but maybe in reality we are all characters in this kind of story. To walk on this earth is to see through a glass darkly, unable to know what Truth is. Or, to say it another way, none has a “God’s eye view” of things. What if the goal and aim of the life of faith began with the spiritual declaration: “I do not understand Your ways, O God.”
Then, it would be impossible to declare that the life of faith is completely or even primarily about either searching for or discovering the Truth because, armed with a realistic estimate of human nature, we would have to admit we are not able to disentangle the Truth from the self-interested fallibilities we are susceptible to. The unwillingness to admit this is especially in evidence today when people will inflict untold horror on others in the name of Truth. Today the way religion motivates human beings to treat others leaves one in despair. How can the Truth that is God, when believed in, lead one at worst to murder others, and at best assume a posture of absolute certainty concerning whom God favors with salvation and condemns with damnation? Religion today eschews a realistic estimate of human nature and builds a Tower of Babel upon a foundation of human conceit. Can religion be rescued from its own arrogance and humanity from wallowing in its own hubris?
Not unless the goal and aim of the life of faith is conceived of in a different way. The goal and aim of the life of faith is not completely or primarily about Truth and believing the Right Way.
Jesus identified the Great Commandments as love to God and loving neighbor as self. Love is a kind of relationship, and a particular kind at that. What if the goal and aim of the life of faith begins with considering the nature of relationships; relatedness, connection, ties, bonds, tethers, all those qualities that emanate from what unites us and links us and joins human beings to God and one other in the most ennobling and transformative ways? And reasoning from this, to conceive of a life which we are then called to enact faithfully. One might call this a covenantal theology or a relational spirituality.
The first observation might be this: In order to be in a relationship there needs to be two distinct entities. The same cannot be “related” to the same when they are synonymous. This ontological reality is referred to above in recounting our distinction from God as mythically embodied in the Garden of Eden creation story. Yet, it is the nature of relationships that by coming into a connection with one another each distinct entity influences the other. It’s like my father and me. We have a relationship because we are distinct. Yet, because we are related too, we share some things and have influenced each other; by blood, by shared experiences, by the way our life destinies involved obligation and consent, and even as he has been dead now for 15 years, transcends the grave (anyone who has had a loved one die knows the relationship does not end with physical absence and, in many ways, becomes even more intense!). This is one quality of Jesus’ use of the “Father” metaphor to refer to God; not as Lawgiver, or First Cause, or Repository of All Truth, all metaphors that have their uses. But, “Father” implies the distinctiveness of two entities that nevertheless have an intimate relatedness, a similarity of a kind characteristic of relationships. The two of us are different, yet related.
By virtue of our createdness, that we did not create ourselves, we are born into a relatedness with God that causes us to ask, “In what way do we resemble divinity?” We ask this in many forms. What is the right thing to do? What is the good life? What are my ultimate obligations to self and others? How do I live uprightly? We even ask, What is truth?, of course, and it is our asking of all of these that is evidence that we are seeking the way in which we resemble whatever it is that created us; the nature of what it is out of which we came. These are what might be called the “higher” questions, the “exalted” sentiments, the “loftiest” values, or most “elevated” ideals and principles. It is enough to say that we human beings are not only animals, but also possessing of a reasoning, imagining consciousness such that we ask questions that are transcendent, about something more.
We are creatures who seek to know how it is that we resemble our Creator. And the question of how humanity resembles divinity is echoed in the first creation story in Genesis, the compliment to the second, which declares human being to be made in the image of God. Image does not wipe away distinction. And an “image” is a lesser version of the real thing, which, to the undiscerning eye, can easily be mistaken for the thing reflected. But an image is "familiar" to the original. Being in part an image begs transcendence, and lures us towards thinking upon a relationship with God and how that relationship might rightfully shape our living. How can we, in broader and deeper ways, be shaped more and more like what we resemble?
And the curious thing is that in searching for our resemblance to our Creator, we find the way in which we are distinct as well. Freud was right in one way, that the religious search is the search for the Father, or the Mother, or the Parent Creator. But, to those who live the life of faith conceived of out of the idea of covenant, the aim is not explanation or reductionism so much as it is to discern right relationship. That is, becoming a human being who is in a right relationship with self, others, and God. Thus, the goal and aim of the life of faith emanates from this question: “How do I love God and neighbor as self?”
What if the goal and aim of the life of faith begins with this simple acknowledgement: As human beings we are so filled with self-interest and fallibility that we will mistake our own preferences for Truth, our own incomplete understandings for Truth, and we will ascribe our own distortions of the good, the right, and the true to God. It is what is so poignantly portrayed in the second creation story in the Book of Genesis. Human beings are fallible and finite. We cannot know God’s ways because they are God’s and not ours. God and man are not the same. We walk in a garden we did not create.
What if the goal and aim of the life of faith began with a realistic estimate of human nature, the nature that is shared by ALL who walk or have walked this earth? It is how the disciples are portrayed in the Gospel of Mark. Centuries later we deride them as being dull-headed and slow when it came to seeing "the Truth," but maybe in reality we are all characters in this kind of story. To walk on this earth is to see through a glass darkly, unable to know what Truth is. Or, to say it another way, none has a “God’s eye view” of things. What if the goal and aim of the life of faith began with the spiritual declaration: “I do not understand Your ways, O God.”
Then, it would be impossible to declare that the life of faith is completely or even primarily about either searching for or discovering the Truth because, armed with a realistic estimate of human nature, we would have to admit we are not able to disentangle the Truth from the self-interested fallibilities we are susceptible to. The unwillingness to admit this is especially in evidence today when people will inflict untold horror on others in the name of Truth. Today the way religion motivates human beings to treat others leaves one in despair. How can the Truth that is God, when believed in, lead one at worst to murder others, and at best assume a posture of absolute certainty concerning whom God favors with salvation and condemns with damnation? Religion today eschews a realistic estimate of human nature and builds a Tower of Babel upon a foundation of human conceit. Can religion be rescued from its own arrogance and humanity from wallowing in its own hubris?
Not unless the goal and aim of the life of faith is conceived of in a different way. The goal and aim of the life of faith is not completely or primarily about Truth and believing the Right Way.
Jesus identified the Great Commandments as love to God and loving neighbor as self. Love is a kind of relationship, and a particular kind at that. What if the goal and aim of the life of faith begins with considering the nature of relationships; relatedness, connection, ties, bonds, tethers, all those qualities that emanate from what unites us and links us and joins human beings to God and one other in the most ennobling and transformative ways? And reasoning from this, to conceive of a life which we are then called to enact faithfully. One might call this a covenantal theology or a relational spirituality.
The first observation might be this: In order to be in a relationship there needs to be two distinct entities. The same cannot be “related” to the same when they are synonymous. This ontological reality is referred to above in recounting our distinction from God as mythically embodied in the Garden of Eden creation story. Yet, it is the nature of relationships that by coming into a connection with one another each distinct entity influences the other. It’s like my father and me. We have a relationship because we are distinct. Yet, because we are related too, we share some things and have influenced each other; by blood, by shared experiences, by the way our life destinies involved obligation and consent, and even as he has been dead now for 15 years, transcends the grave (anyone who has had a loved one die knows the relationship does not end with physical absence and, in many ways, becomes even more intense!). This is one quality of Jesus’ use of the “Father” metaphor to refer to God; not as Lawgiver, or First Cause, or Repository of All Truth, all metaphors that have their uses. But, “Father” implies the distinctiveness of two entities that nevertheless have an intimate relatedness, a similarity of a kind characteristic of relationships. The two of us are different, yet related.
By virtue of our createdness, that we did not create ourselves, we are born into a relatedness with God that causes us to ask, “In what way do we resemble divinity?” We ask this in many forms. What is the right thing to do? What is the good life? What are my ultimate obligations to self and others? How do I live uprightly? We even ask, What is truth?, of course, and it is our asking of all of these that is evidence that we are seeking the way in which we resemble whatever it is that created us; the nature of what it is out of which we came. These are what might be called the “higher” questions, the “exalted” sentiments, the “loftiest” values, or most “elevated” ideals and principles. It is enough to say that we human beings are not only animals, but also possessing of a reasoning, imagining consciousness such that we ask questions that are transcendent, about something more.
We are creatures who seek to know how it is that we resemble our Creator. And the question of how humanity resembles divinity is echoed in the first creation story in Genesis, the compliment to the second, which declares human being to be made in the image of God. Image does not wipe away distinction. And an “image” is a lesser version of the real thing, which, to the undiscerning eye, can easily be mistaken for the thing reflected. But an image is "familiar" to the original. Being in part an image begs transcendence, and lures us towards thinking upon a relationship with God and how that relationship might rightfully shape our living. How can we, in broader and deeper ways, be shaped more and more like what we resemble?
And the curious thing is that in searching for our resemblance to our Creator, we find the way in which we are distinct as well. Freud was right in one way, that the religious search is the search for the Father, or the Mother, or the Parent Creator. But, to those who live the life of faith conceived of out of the idea of covenant, the aim is not explanation or reductionism so much as it is to discern right relationship. That is, becoming a human being who is in a right relationship with self, others, and God. Thus, the goal and aim of the life of faith emanates from this question: “How do I love God and neighbor as self?”
posted by Brent Smith | 7:29 AM
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