A brief reflection today…

Reviewing some of my recent posts, a friend gave me some friendly criticism. He fears that I may be writing more about politics than theology. He encouraged me to “stick to theology please.” I replied that “sticking to theology” demands political reflection and commentary as well, especially today when so many politicians are pushing Christian nationalism but behaving in very non-Christian ways.

The word “politics” comes from the old Greek word politica. It concerns achieving and exercising governance over a human community like a city or a state. Politics, in the traditional humanitarian sense, strives to maintain the common good. In the American political tradition, of course, key political expressions of the U.S. common good are found in the 1776 Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution: all people are created equal and have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The 1787 U.S. Constitution stresses the importance of insuring justice, domestic tranquility, liberty, and the general welfare – for all.

“Theology” comes from two Greek words: theos and logos, meaning discourse about God. The traditional definition of theology is that it is “faith seeking understanding.” Theology probes and tries to understand and interpret the human experience of the Divine, whether called “Ground of Being;” “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;” “the Sacred;” “God;” or “Allah.”

In every generation, Christian theology strives to provide a believers’ narrative that makes sense of who we are today: that makes sense of the Good News of Christianity that God is love and we are not fated by our mistakes. Life is stronger than death. Care is stronger than hatred. We are all destined to be friends with one another and with God. Christian theology comes from a thoughtful conversation between the “I” who is a believer and the “we” who are believers. It is grounded in Christian tradition, the scriptures, and the experience of contemporary believers.

I am not a politician but a theologian. Living in Europe but still very much a citizen of the United States, I do have some concerns about contemporary U.S. politics and the current Washington administration. I think the upcoming mid-term elections will be tremendously important. Key issues are truth, honesty, human compassion, and respect for all people regardless of gender, race, and religion. The incumbent president has increased his wealth by at least $2.2 billion since returning to office. This is not just about politics. It raises humanitarian ethical and theological questions.

A religion is an institutionally organized and highly structured theology. It has institutional and cultic leaders, set symbols and rituals, an official creed or statement of belief, a code of morality, sacred scriptures, and sacred places like shrines, synagogues, mosques, and churches.

When religion and politics get twisted together, one can expect sparks, short circuits, and explosions. The genius of the American political philosophy and governmental structure has been a strict separation of church and state. Good political wisdom. Good religious wisdom. As an American I do not want a theocracy. I do not want any bishop or any evangelical reformer setting up rules of life for me and telling me what I can or cannot do as a citizen. Religious leaders can and should critique government policies; but they should not become political operators. And certainly not high-level functionaries of any political party. An established church or religion is the end of democracy and undermines the common good.

It is a dangerous situation when a religion becomes the political engine that runs a country. History teaches and current events show that highly politicized religion loses its proper religious identity. By becoming so intimately bound up in the political operations, it loses its ability to challenge the values of that society. It loses the always necessary prophetic and counter-cultural social critique function of a religion. Over time, it loses its ability to be of service to people. It loses its proper religious identity. Instead, it becomes an autocratic crowd-control mechanism. It ceases being the object of respect and admiration. It becomes cold, controlling, and demeaning.

I have no desire to get into party politics. As a strong believer in Christ and as an historical theologian, however, I will speak out about and challenge any politician, political policy, or political movement that denigrates or destroys another person because of that person’s gender, sexual orientation, race, religious identity, or nationality.

Being the Good Samaritan is not just pious platitude demanding polite lip service. It is the way of Christ. We all must be prophetic witnesses to the message and spirit of Christ in contemporary society.

• Jack

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Personal email: jadleuven@gmail.com

Thinking about last week’s reflection on God, my thoughts this week went back to the analysis of human growth and faith development by James W. Fowler (1940 – 2015). 

For many years now I have been interested in Fowler’s thinking. He was Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University. Fowler argued that the development of people’s spiritual awareness runs parallel to other aspects of human development. His research into stages of faith development has helped me understand my own development and has greatly influenced my own approaches to faith formation and continuing education. At Emory University in Atlanta, he was director of both the Center for Research on Faith and Moral Development and the Center for Ethics until he retired in 2005. He was also an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. Fowler is perhaps best known for his book Stages of Faith, published in 1981, in which he outlined his understanding of the developmental process in “human faith.”

Fowler proposed a multi-stage understanding of faith development. His analysis is closely related to the work of the developmental psychologists Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980), Erik Erikson (1902 – 1994), and Lawrence Kohlberg (1907 – 1987). He defines faith as an activity of trusting, committing, and relating to reality based on a set of assumptions about how one is related to others, the world, and the Divine.

According to Fowler, there are six primary stages of faith development in the life of an individual. They are as follows:

Stage 1 – “Intuitive-Projective” faith: From ages 3 to 7. Spiritual awareness is learned primarily through experiences, stories, images, and the people with whom one comes in contact. What kind of people? What kind of parents? Day care personnel? In this stage, children begin to use symbols and their imagination. Children at this stage tend to take ideas about right and wrong very literally. The ability to distinguish the real from fantasy is not yet well developed. Also, they are generally not yet able to see the world from another person’s perspective.

Stage 2 – “Mythic-Literal” faith: At this stage, elementary-school-aged children develop an anthropomorphic sense of the Divine. Metaphors and symbolic language are often taken literally. This second stage starts around the sixth or seventh year of life and continues until about the twelfth year of life. In this stage beliefs are interpreted literally. Religious truth is communicated through stories, in which morality is legalistic. But some people stay in this phase for their whole lives.

Stage 3 – “Synthetic-Conventional” faith: From about age 12 to adulthood. This stage is characterized by conformity to religious authority and the development of a personal identity. Any conflicts with one’s beliefs are ignored at this stage. One fears inconsistencies and what challenges authority. It is better not to question. Some people have arrested development at this stage; and we find them quite often ending up in fundamentalist movements. They don’t move beyond this stage.

Stage 4 – “Individuative-Reflective” faith: From the mid 20s to mid 30s. This is a stage of angst and struggle as one begins to take personal responsibility for his or her own beliefs. One begins to see that life issues are not so easily clear cut. One becomes open to the complexity of faith and more aware of conflicts in one’s belief. One also begins to question existing authority structures within one’s religious institution. This stage is an important turning point as one either accepts ambiguity and the need to explore or one simply shuts the door to faith challenges. Is this why some young people become missionaries and care-givers, while others become terrorists and suicide bombers?

Stage 5 – “Conjunctive” faith: This is the time of the mid-life crisis. People in this stage acknowledge the paradoxes found in human life and can begin to resolve conflicts about reality through a complex understanding that human life is grounded in a multidimensional and interdependent “truth” that can be neither controlled by nor completely contained in any particular institution. Everyone is a truth-seeker. Many people who have reached this stage are beginning to become more and more open to the religions and beliefs of other people. This is not because they distance themselves from their own faith, but because they believe that the faith of others can inform, deepen, and enrich their own.

Stage 6 – “Universalizing” faith: Some call this “enlightenment.” The individual realizes that all people — regardless of their sex, gender, age, religion, nationality, or culture – must be treated with compassion, guided by universal principles of love and justice. I think Jesus of Nazareth arrived at this stage when he was close to 30. And he hoped his followers would arrive there as well. Some did of course. And some still do. People who are at this stage have the potential to become important religious figures. That’s because they have the ability to interact with anyone at any stage of faith development without being condescending. People in this phase cherish life, but do not take life too seriously. They put their faith into action, challenge the status quo, and work to create justice in the world.

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Closing reflection. In all segments of the community of faith – members, teachers and leaders in the church – we need to ask: How are we alert to and ministering to children, teenagers, young adults, and older adults? In not just what we say, but in what we do. Are we stimulating and promoting healthy human development and growth in authentic faith? 

Or are we, by actions or inaction, contributing to interpersonal environments that stunt human growth and faith development, and distort individual and group religious understanding?

Jack

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Personal email: jadleuven@gmail.com

A friend sent me an email and asked me about God. Well, indeed, perspectives on God are important.

In Genesis, first book of the Hebrew Bible, composed between 500 and 400 BCE, we read that God created humanity “in God’s own image.” (Genesis 1:27) But periodically over many years, some people have tried to make God in their own image and likeness.

Today, vindictive images of God have been used by Christian Nationalists to control, manipulate and even destroy people.

I don’t understand God as a vindictive and hard-nosed authoritarian. In the New Testament, such an understanding of God does not resonate with the historical Jesus’ understanding of God, as his loving Father.

Unfortunately, some medieval Christian theologians did have distorted authoritarian notions about God, and they passed them on to future generations. Anselm the famous Archbishop of Canterbury from 1033 until his death in 1109 is a good example. Anselm saw God as a nard-nosed judge and taskmaster. Anselm believed that human sin and human disobedience to God, going back to the first humans, had defrauded God of the honor that God was due. That offense to God’s honor, Anselm taught, had to be compensated for and repaired.

Anselm said that God could only be satisfied by having a being of infinite greatness, God’s very own Son acting as a human, repay the debt owed to God and thereby satisfy the injury to God’s honor. In other words, God would only be happy when God’s own Son was tortured and suffered a cruel death. What a strange image of God. Catholic theology has called it the “Satisfaction Theory of Atonement.”

Jesus and early Christians, however, clearly understood God as loving and kind. That is essential. That is where we begin. As my Nijmegen Catholic theological mentor and long-time friend Edward Schillebeeckx OP (1914 – 2009) often said: “Christianity began with an experience, an encounter with Jesus of Nazareth which caused people to discover new meaning and to direct their lives in a new direction.”

The clear message of Jesus was and still is that the Divine Presence is here, with us, and with all of creation. God is not simply “out there” in some far-off realm. The Jesuit philosopher and theologian Karl Rahner (1904 – 1984) stressed, however, that people do not come to know God by solving doctrinal conundrums, proving God’s existence or engaging in an abstruse metaphysical quest. Rahner stressed the importance of Divine mystery as very simply an aspect of our humanity.

Our challenge is to live that Mystery with openness and calm reflection. That Mystery, which defies exact description, is God. Religious doctrines have their place but can never totally explain or define that Mystery.They are symbolic or analogous pointers toward God. When people focus only on the pointers, however, they really miss the point.

As contemporary believers we have to ask how we can develop better pointers that really help point people towards God. We need pointers anchored in all the complex realities and needs of our time, enabling people to believe and deal with human suffering with serenity and courage. Many of us learned about God at about the same time we also learned about the Easter Bunny. As we grew in awareness, our understanding of the Easter Bunny phenomenon evolved and matured. But for many people their religious belief has remained somewhat static and adolescent. 

Divine revelation is not an event that happened once in the past. It is an ongoing and creative process that requires human perception and contemplation. Revelation is a part of reality. We are called to be open, alert, and contemplative. Faith means trust, commitment, and engagement. But too often it is mistakenly understood as simply an intellectual assent to ecclesiastical propositions.

Today, science itself says there is so much we still do not know. It is time to return to a theology that asserts less and is more open to mystery and calm and reflective exploration. This may not be easy for contemporary people so used to getting instant information with a click on a cellphone or checking their favorite website or social network.

The image of a domineering and controlling God is an archaic image. We journey today with a different and more of a traveling-companion God, even if we struggle with descriptive words about God. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12) The true and essential work of all religions, but especially Christianity, is to help us recognize the divine image in everyone and everything.

My concluding reflection this week comes from the priest and theologian Ronald Rohlheiser OMI, a friend who also completed his doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven: “God lies inside us, deep inside, but in a way that’s almost non-existent, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed, and easily ignored. However, while that presence is never overpowering, it has within it a gentle, unremitting imperative, a compulsion towards something higher, which invites us to draw upon it. And, if we do draw upon it, it gushes up in us in an infinite stream that instructs us, nurtures us, and fills us with endless energy.”

Our perspectives on God are important and worth sharing. For me, God is my traveling companion on the great journey.

• Jack

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian