Today’s readings: Malachi 1:14b-2:2b, 8-10; Psalm 131:1, 2, 3; 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-9, 13; Matthew 23:9b, 10b; Matthew 23:1-12
Reza Aslan’s book, God: A Human HistoryReza Aslan’s controversial God: A Human History (2017) explores the idea that humans throughout the ages fashioned God in their image, rather than the other way around as claimed by the Judeo-Christian tradition. The author, a Shī’ite convert to Evangelical Christianity who reverted back to Islam, is an Iranian-American professor of creative writing at the UC Riverside and scholar in sociology of religion.
Aslan dissects forms of religious beliefs to show that the gods of history are a mirror image of humans. Humanity in its pursuit to union with the divine, projects its own image and amplifies it on one or more super beings. Aslan argues that the way forward for humanity is to adopt pantheism, where everything and everyone is divine, irrespective of belief or lack of it thereof. This will finally enable us to reach divine union and live in harmony even on an ecological and environmental level.
One might argue that Aslan’s argument can be fallacious as even a pantheistic world view is a subjective mirroring of the divine. Pantheism, together with its counterpart panentheism, is in fact a version of the same theism Aslan has issues with.
The book reflects perhaps the author’s mystical sensibility as a Shī’ite journeying to and fro from Islam to Evangelical Christianity and back, grappling with divine ineffability and unknowability on the one hand, and Biblical and/or Quranic literalism on the other. Aslan himself discloses: “I have spent most of my spiritual life trying to bridge the chasm that I imagined exists between God and me, either through faith or scholarship or some combination of the two.”
Jesus advocates the virtue of humility where one shares the good news coming from God with caring gentleness
The history of religions is God’s history as much as it is human, where one cannot fathom images and forms shaping the subjective impact of divine objectivity. Key to a balanced perspective – at least from a Catholic stance – is to preserve the subjective and the objective altogether. The polarising ‘either-or’ humbly makes way to a ‘both-and’ approach. God is thus perceived as both transcendent and immanent. Images and forms are tools to be used in our religious and spiritual journeys towards human-divine union. Here, mystics come to our assistance with their experience and teachings, distancing us from psychologisms, sociologisms, biologisms and spiritualisms.
Today’s liturgy faces us with images and concepts of a “great king”, a caring “nursing mother”, a “father”, a “teacher”, and a “master” in relation to God and religious authority. These convey something of God enabling us to tangibly connect with divine revelation. Jesus points out to instances where these images go terribly wrong, failing to be pointers towards transcendence, becoming instead self-referential and egocentric tools for the exploit and the control of others.
Distorted images of God are always abusive and cause irreparable damage to individual and collective humanity. Jesus advocates the virtue of humility where one, to use the Apostle’s designations, shares the good news coming from God with caring gentleness, by sharing one’s life with others through thick and thin for the good and benefit of all.
In acknowledging God as the ‘Divine Other’ drawing us to transcend ourselves in a personal encounter, we discover others as brothers and sisters, sharers of the one and the same humanity, journeying together the same path of life. They too impel us to go beyond ourselves and our egotistic tendencies and needs.
By acknowledging and appreciating what unites us – our common humanity – we can in hope move to a more harmonious coexistence and a holistic ecological sensitivity. The Christian Good News rests on the premise that human nature is fundamentally good and blessed and that the invisible God became visible assuming our humanity.