The Bible: A Text in Travail
An Evolving Faith
Friday, February 13, 2015
The writings of the Hebrew Scriptures show an evolutionary development, a gradual coming to see how God acts in human life. God is not changing; it is our comprehension of God that is changing. As we go through the Scriptures, what we see in Israel’s growth as a people is a pattern of what happens to every person and to every people who set out on the journey of faith. They go through stages and gradually come to see how God loves them and what God’s liberation does for them. But they come kicking and screaming and denying.
In the first stage, people start to experience the reality of God and God’s love as more than abstract concepts. At the same time, however, they tend to believe that God’s love is limited to just themselves, a select few such as a chosen people or the one true Church.
In the second stage, people begin to respond to God’s love, but they perceive God’s love as rather totally dependent on their ideal response. They believe that grace is a conditional gift, that God will love them if they are good, that God will save or reward them if they keep the commandments.
In the third stage, people begin to see God’s love as unlimited and unconditional, but they do not see further than that. They acknowledge that God loves them whether they are good or bad, and that God is gracious to the just and the unjust alike. But they still think that God is doing that from afar, from up in heaven somewhere. They do not yet see themselves as inherently participating in the process. Frankly, they have not discovered their own soul yet.
Finally, in the fourth stage, they make the breakthrough to seeing that God’s grace and love is present within them, through them, with them, and even as them! The mystery of incarnation has come full circle. They can now enjoy God’s temple within their own body, as Paul loves to teach, and can love themselves and others and God by the same one flow. It is all one stream of Love! They now fully realize that it is God who is doing the loving, and they surrender themselves to being channels and instruments of that Divine Flow into the world.
The first three of these stages can be seen most clearly in the Hebrew Scriptures. I am not a believer in supersessionism, which thinks that Christianity supersedes and thus eliminates Judaism. The evolution simply continues with the fourth stage seen most clearly in the words and actions of Jesus, in John’s Gospel, and in many of the letters attributed to Paul. Even in these texts there are pockets of resistance and exclusion. It is all three steps forward and two steps back!
Paul himself clearly affirms: “Is it possible that God has rejected his people? Of course not!” (Romans 11:1ff where he then develops this argument at length). You cannot succumb to any rejecting spirit, or it will surely undo you! If you hate your parents, you will soon hate yourself too. As love is one, so also is hate. We must totally build on and honor our Jewish foundations, and live in eternal gratitude for their substantial gift to us, just as we have a gift to give back to them—Jesus.
What makes Jesus such a special Jew was that he said this divine election was first of all free, and therefore universal, and not bound by any ethnicity or era of time. Grace is inherent to our dignity as human beings. But he learned that and dared to believe it both from the Jewish Scriptures and from his own God experience. He claimed them both.
You are loved and chosen so that you can pass on the experience, not hoard the experience. In fact, if you feel a need to guard it, as if it were limited or scarce, that is the certain evidence that you have not accessed the Infinite Source yourself. It has to start with some kind of “I got it” experience which should lead to “But everybody else does too!” and eventually a Leonard Cohen kind of Hallelujah! As Ken Wilber so brilliantly says, “Religion starts elitist, but ends egalitarian. Always!” I think it is almost a necessary pattern, but far too many stop half way.
Gateway to Silence:
Seeing with eyes of love
References:
Adapted from Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament; pp. 110-112 (published by Franciscan Media); and New Great Themes of Scripture (CD set)
