The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [61]
It was a different answer to my prayers, but an answer nonetheless. Had I not been listening, I would not have heard the answer.
As in any good friendship, you not only have to listen, you have to listen carefully.
CHANGING
Another aspect of healthy relationships is change. Friendships that began in childhood and adolescence can be among the richest of all. Yet if we don’t allow the other person to change, the friendship will not deepen and mature. Still, as with a friendship, change can be threatening in a person’s relationship with God.
Many believers assume that their relationship to God will remain the same—or should remain the same—as it was when they were children. Some adults feel, for instance, that they cannot be angry or disappointed with God, since they did not harbor those sentiments when they were young. Or, more likely, they were told that those feelings were wrong.
Recently an elderly Catholic woman sent me a copy of some questions from the Baltimore Catechism, the religious-instruction book used by many Catholic children from the end of the nineteenth century to the late 1960s. At the end of the chapter on sin, there were questions to help children better understand their faith. But some of them sound more like questions from a law-school exam. She marked the following with the ironic notation “a personal favorite.”
Giles is murdered by a Communist just as he leaves the church after his confession. Giles had been away from the church for 28 years. He just about satisfied the requirements for a good confession, having only imperfect contrition, aroused during this week’s mission. The Communist demanded to know if Giles was a Catholic, threatening to kill him if he was. Fearlessly, Giles said: “Yes, thank God!” Did Giles go immediately to heaven, or did he go to purgatory for a while? Give a reason for your answer.
Pity poor Giles! And pity the poor third grader who had to puzzle out the answers. Of course religious rules and regulations have been around since (at least) the Ten Commandments. Jesus of Nazareth, during his short ministry, offered his own set of rules to his disciples. And nearly every organized religion has its own share of rules. (Check out the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law if you want a good example.) So do religious orders: my version of the Jesuit Constitutions runs to 502 pages.
Rules are an essential part of any community, since they enable us to live healthy lives in relationship with others. Rules bring order to the group. They also help order our personal lives. Ironically, some critics of religious rules designed to lead to spiritual health follow an even stricter set of rules designed to lead to physical health. Diet plans and exercise programs are often as draconian as any canon law.
But an overreliance on a rules-based religion can lead to an image of God as a stern traffic cop concerned only with enforcing the law or, as one friend said, a parole officer. How many children who memorized the Baltimore Catechism concluded that spiritual life was not an invitation to a relationship from a loving God but a series of complicated rules from a tyrant God?
This style of instruction may be necessary to educate young children, but if that teaching is never deepened it can hinder their ability to relate, as adults, to God. It would be as if in your twenties you related to your parents the same way you did in elementary school. The most obvious example of being stuck in a childhood idea of God, which I’ve heard from almost every person I’ve directed, is the tendency to see God not only as a judge but, worse—to use the image of the French philosopher René Descartes—as an “evil genius.”
When a person starts to be intentional about the spiritual life, prayer is usually delightful. Like any relationship, the initial period is one of infatuation. Reading Scripture and spiritual books is fun, talking with fellow believers about your spirituality