Who do YOU say that God is?
MARY S. SHERIDAN
“
W
ho do you say that I
am?” This question,
posed by Jesus
(Mk 8:29), challenges the heart
of our faith. It becomes even
more important when we
remember that in the first
commandment, God told us,
“You shall not have strange gods
before me.”
Is this commandment still
relevant today, when few of us melt down our jewelry to
make golden calves? Does it have meaning beyond what
is often preached to us—to avoid over-attachment to
material things?
Einstein said that the fundamental decision of one’s life is
whether the universe is friendly or unfriendly. Those of
us who hold to a faith tradition would see this as a
decision about the kind of God we believe in. Is God
stern or loving? Does God forgive us, but hold us to
account for making up the wrong done by sin? Or does
God lay that aside and tell us that the debt was paid in
full by Christ’s sacrifice? Is there a debt to be paid at all?
Our answers to these questions matter in our daily lives.
In my practice as a social worker, I often encountered
people whose interpretation of events was formed by the
kind of God they believed in. When his infant son got
sick, a young father believed that God was punishing him
for shoplifting as a teen. He would not have articulated it
in this way, but he believed in a God who would wait
years (as Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago was said to
wait), until we are most vulnerable, then “zap” us. How
many a man has browbeaten his wife, believing in a God
who gave him control over her. How many a woman has
obeyed, believing in a God who wanted her to subordinate herself to the wishes of others. How many churches
have preached a stern, Old Testament God, in the name
1
of the New Testament, or placed
great emphasis on Jesus’ often
poorly translated instruction,
“Be ye perfect . . .”.
Others believe that God wants
us to wear old-fashioned clothing, or use outdated language.
They believe in a God who is
somehow fixated on a previous
century, and a God who asks us
to sacrifice our personalities—or
at least our common sense—as the price for coming
closer to him.
The Puritans believed that, from birth, we are either
saved or damned, and that there is nothing we can do to
change God’s decision. Although this belief has largely
died, today there are people who believe that God has
chosen a specific and narrow path for us—which job we
should take or not take, which city we should live in,
whom we should marry or which religious community
we should enter. Unfortunately, these people usually also
believe that God is reluctant to make these directions
known to us, yet will punish us if we make the wrong
choice. They may spend much time in agony trying to
discern God’s will. If our families and friends treated us
this way, we would think them controlling, arbitrary,
even cruel.
At the other extreme, Mother Teresa believed in a God
who was manifested in other people, and who could be
loved and served in them. Although we now know that
her interior life was marked by an absence of spiritual
consolations,1 the fire of her faith has burned brightly
throughout the world, and ignited this vision of God in
countless others.
How do people form their view of God? For many of us,
it was our early education in faith, provided by those who
Mother Teresa and Brian Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light, Image, 2009.
July-August 2011
5
handed on the viewpoints that they had been taught. For
others, it is our human experience on earth. Have we
trusted others, only to have them betray our trust? If so,
then it will be more difficult for us to trust God. If we
have learned the hard way to be skeptical of things that
are “too good to be true,” then we may bring this same
attitude to God. If others have treated us lovingly, then it
may be easier to conceptualize a loving God.
In his discussion of the crucifixion, Leonardo Boff 2
suggests that we interpret God’s interaction with the
world in keeping with the dominant paradigms of our
culture. To the early Christians who were Jewish converts,
for example, Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law, the one
who could free people from its strictures. For other Jews,
steeped in the ideas of ritual sacrifice, Jesus was the
“lamb of God,” the perfect sacrifice who could appease
a perfect God.
What ideas dominate our American culture today?
Individualism and self-sufficiency are certainly prominent. Do these make it harder for us to trust, depend on,
and abandon ourselves to a transcendent God? Work and
making money, with only lip service given to other
values, are also prominent. So it should not surprise us
that we see perfection as our own job, salvation as
dependent on our own efforts, and God largely standing
by neutrally to judge the results.
Women of theWord
Continued from page 4
we have come to abhor such views. So as we read the
scriptures, we need to identify what the real message of
the passage is, and how, along with tradition, we can
apply it to our lives today.
All in all, the Holy Spirit’s basic invitation is for us to be
formed by the Word. As we become more and more
willing to be invaded by the Spirit, we are transformed
into women and men who embody the Scriptures. We no
longer just read and pray with the Scriptures, but we
become transporters of that Word. We may not have a St.
Jerome to teach us Greek and Hebrew; we may not be
wealthy, noble or Roman; but we do have the yearning
that God has planted in our hearts. We have unprecedented opportunities to be “hearers and doers of the
Word.” Do not “our hearts burn within us” while Christ
talks to us on our journey of faith, while he opens to us
the Scriptures? b
Sr. Jeanette von Herrmann, OSB
Benedictine Sisters - Queen of Angels Monastery
840 S. Main Street, Mt. Angel, OR 97362
503-871-7625
Monastery website:
www.benedictine-srs.org
Our thoughts about God as Father must be formed, at
least subconsciously, by our experiences of our own
fathers. If our own fathers were absent or present, then
God is more likely to be absent or present to us. If our
own fathers were loving or unloving, controlling or
indulgent, then this becomes our image of any father.
Which God was the God of Jesus? Jesus’ name for God
was “Abba,” “Daddy.” We are told that Jesus’ mission was
to spread the “good news.” As we look at what Jesus
taught, which part of it is the good news for us? Which
part do we want to believe in?
When I am in a fanciful mood, I like to believe that we
will be judged by the God we worship in our earthly lives.
Who is God for us? Even if it doesn’t affect our final
judgment, it does make a difference. b
2
Leonardo Boff. Passion of Christ, Passion of the World,
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001, Ch. 6.
6
July-August 2011
The writing of this
article was prompted
by the feast of St.
Jerome, which occurs
September 30.