What Do We Expect from Religion?

Google Image

Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and promoter of a kind of meditation called centering prayer, asks this question in one of his videos on YouTube.

Ancient Israel’s expectation, says Keating, who died in 2018, was that religion would save them from the problems of daily life and bring about the glory of the kingdom of Israel.

“And that’s our expectation, too,” he says about the first of those ancient Jewish yearnings. “We expect religion to deliver us from the nitty gritty of daily life and put us in peace and security. But that’s not normally God’s way. God’s way is to join us in our daily lives.”

The Importance of Trust

Maybe it’s these expectations that partly explain why we believers get upset when things don’t go our way, despite all that we’ve heard and learned about the importance of trust in God. Our expectations are out-of-whack. We listen to or read the gospels week after week, year after year, and still believe that faith promises us a rose garden.

That should be a warning for all people searching for God. Faith will not give us immunity from the problems of daily life nor the tragedies that can befall us. So, what good is it? “None,” answer many people who have given up on God and religion.

But isn’t that like asking the value of the love of a spouse or child or friend? Their love doesn’t make us immune to the bad stuff, but who would say it’s of no use?

To that point, Keating has an interesting twist on one of Jesus’ parables.


Thomas Keating
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son” goes the story in Mathew’s gospel, “and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the marriage feast; but they would not come.

“Again, he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, Behold, I have made ready my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves are killed, and everything is ready; come to the marriage feast.’ But they made light of it and went off, one to his farm, another to his business…. 

"…Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.’ And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

A common Christian interpretation of this parable is that it pertains to Israel’s unworthiness to be “the invited” of God’s kingdom and that, instead, the possibility of entering the kingdom is open to all of humankind.

Keating sees it a bit differently. In the highly stratified, caste-like society existing in Jesus’ time, it means that God is not trying to bring everybody – “the good and the bad” – up to his level but that he is descending to theirs. He has already promised the Hebrews that he “would be their God and they would be his people.” Now, he is saying that he has become human - in the person of Jesus.

Extraordinary Love

Accepting God’s invitation is what matters, not merit, says Keating. And to accept the invitation is to accept the trials of ordinary life and lead that life with extraordinary love.

“The kingdom of God is now,” he says. “God is in total solidarity with us.”

This idea is good news for all of us searching for God. Maybe our expectations for religion – belief in, and loving, God and others – are not too high but too low. The invitation isn’t just to live an “ordinary life,” which would satisfy many people who focus on prosperity and good health, but to live a life in communion with our creator, one that brings true peace and joy.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

  1. MS Tech SolutionsJune 8, 2022 at 6:27 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LeifJune 16, 2022 at 8:23 PM

    I agree with every factor that you have pointed out. Thank you for sharing your beautiful thoughts regarding from our God Savior.

    ReplyDelete
  3. CharitoJune 16, 2022 at 8:34 PM

    I appreciate the sincerity of this write-up of yours. The TRUST what we're looking for. As I was received from Judith Martin Alford shares it was really grateful to read and witness some wonderful thoughts from our Jesus Christ God Savior. Thank you so much to your write up and God Bless.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gospel of The Little Prince

Image
  Attention all those concerned only with “matters of great consequence:” Is it possible that you’ve become someone you didn’t want to be, having strayed far from the innocence and simplicity of childhood? That’s the main question asked in The Little Prince, which Netflix, the streaming video service, has added to its repertoire of movies and TV shows. Though not a big fan of animated flicks, I was a big fan of the book, The Little Prince, back in the 1970s when it became extremely popular in the U.S. It was first published in French and English in New York in 1943 as a novella by French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery , who disappeared while piloting a Free French Army plane the following year over the Mediterranean Sea. Nearly Two Million Copies “The novella is the fourth most-translated book in the world and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France,” says Wikipedia. “Translated into more than 250 language...
Read more

‘Spiritual but Not Religious,’ Revisited

Image
Google Image I’ve expressed several times in these blogs my skepticism about declarations by some of our contemporaries that they are “spiritual but not religious.” Much of the skepticism results from the false dichotomy this entails, as if the spiritual and religious are mutually exclusive. Spirituality, after all, is the whole point of being religious. With the exception of some forms of Buddhism, all the major religions aim to bring people closer to God, who is “spiritual.” St. Paul, among the earliest leaders of Christianity, wrote that he is imparting a teaching “not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.” But Daniel Horan, Franciscan priest, theologian and author, wrote in a recent edition of the National Catholic Reporter: “What if our starting point in thinking about what it means to be a person in communion with God, oneself and the world was not reduced to external expressions of institutional belo...
Read more

Clinging to Archie Bunker's God

Image
Google Image Archie Bunker, the character masterfully played by the late Carroll O’Conner in the 1970s TV comedy “All in the Family,” had his own take on the traditional Christian doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. “God don’t make no mistakes,” declared Archie. “That’s how he got to be God.” For those too young to remember Archie, who in 2005 was listed as number 1 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, Wikipedia says Bunker was characterized by his bigotry towards “… blacks, Hispanics, "Commies," gays, hippies, Jews, Asians, Catholics, "women's libbers," and Polish-Americans….” Bunker was presented as a Christian, however, and “… often misquotes the Bible. He takes pride in being religious, although he rarely attends church services ….” An Anonymous Contributor Sister Mary Matilda, my eighth grade teacher, would accuse me of being uncharitable but I imagine that an anonymous contributor to a recent newspaper column is an “Archie Bunke...
Read more