Being What God Means Us To Be
By Thomas Merton
A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It ‘consents,’ so to speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.
The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like [God]. If it tried to be like something else which it was never intended to be, it would be less like God and therefore it would give [God] less glory….
This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do….
The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this April day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by [God's] own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God.
The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God. This leaf has it own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength. The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance.
The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God’s saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity.
But what about you? What about me? Unlike the animals and the trees, it is not enough for us to be what our nature intends. It is not enough for us to be individual [humans]. For us, holiness is more than humanity. If we are never anything but people, we will not be saints and we will not be able to offer to God the worship of our imitation, which is sanctity.
It is true to say that for me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists in being your self and that, in the last analysis, your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours, except in the communism of charity and grace.
For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.
Trees and animals have no problem. God makes them what they are without consulting them, and they are perfectly satisfied. With us it is different. God leaves us free to be whatever we like. We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. We are free beings and sons [and daughters] of God. This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in [God's] creative freedom, in our own lives, and in the lives of others, by choosing the truth. To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity. We can evade this responsibility by playing with masks, and this pleases us because it can appear at times to be a free and creative way of living. It is quite easy, it seems, to please everyone. But in the long run the cost and the sorrow come very high….
We do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be. The secret of my full identity is hidden in [God.] [God] alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with [God] and in [God], the work will never be done. The way of doing it is a secret I can learn from no one else but [God]….
The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, by God’s will, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, my own sanctity. To refuse them is to refuse everything; it is the refusal of my own existence and being: of my identity, my very self. Not to accept and love and do God’s will is to refuse the fullness of my existence.
Selah.
Showing posts with label Imago Dei. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Imago Dei. Show all posts
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
How can a person be both pro-life and pro-war?
Learning from my mother on abortion and war
My mother marched in Washington on Monday, in defense of unborn children. Her take was remarkable, especially the part where she heard newly elected Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr. and Sen. Arlen Specter field questions from a pro-life constituency. Those who consider Casey pro-life would have been well-served to sit in on this session. Not for nothing has Chuck Schumer boasted that Casey will be firmly on board with the pro-choice voting line, when significant votes arrive...
But I digress. My mother’s quiet courage to attend this march alone – traveling without knowing anyone on the bus – in order to lift her voice against the night, this courage has moved me deeply! And so I take up my pen tonight to do some heavy lifting in this battle for life…
I’m thinking specifically of a question asked by a friend, concerning the seeming hypocrisy of people who march for life and yet support war. Perhaps you’ve heard it, but the question goes something like this:
Q: How can person be pro-life and yet supportive of war? Isn’t this terribly hypocritical?
A variation of this question substitutes capital punishment for war, but the implication is the same: if a person is for life, s/he is a hypocrite to support something that engenders any death [e.g. war or capital punishment]. The unspoken part of this argument is that a person is morally justified in voting to enable abortion if someone else is justified in voting to enable war – abortion is reduced to just another political position.
That is a regretful stance – doubly regretful because it misunderstands both life and war while enabling war on life.
When life and war are understood in a revelation framework, it presents a powerful answer to the question of pro-life hypocrisy.
Biblical definition of life: creation and existence in the Image of God.
Biblical definition of war: use of force to restrain evil.
Abstract: If human life is defined in relation to divine nature and intent, the Imago Dei, then it’s consistent to oppose abortion while supporting just war [theoretically], because in each position, the person is defending the Imago Dei against evil: the evil that would destroy life before its fruition, and the evil that would destroy life in its function.
If the argument is made that war in itself is evil, therefore cannot be properly used to combat evil, then I would reply: One should not confuse means with actuality, especially in understanding evil. An axe in the hands of a woodsman is life-sustaining; an axe in the hands of Freddy Krueger is a nightmare.
Yet the question necessarily reflects on a divine level: Is it possible for a good, life-giving God to be for war?
After all, we claim that God is perfectly good, our good “Father of lights, with whom is no variation or shadow of turning,” the One who “cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any person.” God is for life, unequivocally so: God has given His one and only Son that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Can this good God – unalterably good and equivocally for life [in its highest definition] – be for war?
The answer is conceptual [rather than categorical, key distinction] but it is again, unequivocal. War first began in the heavenly plane: Force was first used when evil [and all its dark mystery] acted against Imago Dei on a non-earthly plane.
The view of revelation is that war preceded the human plane, and that war was used by God to cordon the spread of evil. Scripture presents the paradox of a Holy God who is consistently for life and for peace while being an active Warrior: the Christ who says, ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword’ is shown at the end of time, riding a white horse with a flaming sword…
Likewise, the prophet Isaiah saw this Christ as the strong Warrior coming back from Bozrah, with His robes dipped in blood:
In reading these texts there is a mystery, and it is the mystery of justice, the mystery of righteousness: How can Goodness use a sword to defend life? How does the One who calls himself Life own the blood of His enemies?
How can this be?
Key: the divine Warrior only takes the sword to defend creation intent against the onslaughts of the night. The Holy One makes war when war would consume the Imago Dei in His people…
Consistently, this concept is applied from divine to human planes, where the State is properly viewed as a servant of God to contain evil:
The proper role of State: God’s minister to protect good and execute wrath on the practice of evil.
Here we begin to see the coalescing of revelation, in relation to abortion and war: Life in the image of God is seen as something worth fighting for, something worth defending. Innocent life is not equal with guilty life: Adult humans destroy themselves from the Imago Dei when they turn their will against divine intent and partner with evil.
And, as Thomas Aquinas clearly expressed, when God punishes evil, that punishment of evil is not an evil, but a good: Punishment is a function of the good to which evils are attached, not a function of prior divine imperative. God cannot will the sinner to evil, since this is a “privation of right order towards the divine good.” God can will a context in which the sinner chooses evil, but this is only because God has first willed the attendant good. The sinner wills evil, and God wills punishment, or justice, which is a good.
Likewise, God wills no one to perish, but those who destroy Imago Dei must perish, because they destroy their own life: God is life and only in God can there be life.
Those who oppose the killing of unborn children and support the just killing of evil men [war] are actually intuiting the divine order of Imago Dei. In both directions they act to defend life: life in its promised fruition and life in its existent function.
And thus is exposed the lie of pacifism: pacifism demands a moral equivalency of physical life without referent to innocence, or to divine Image. The consistent pacifist will stand by while his wife and children are raped and killed, because he equates the life of the terrorist with the life of his family. I once posed the question to an intellectual grad student who paraded his pacifism at a party: “Would you stand by while your wife and children were harmed by an intruder?” He answered, “I would hope I would be true to my principles.” My reply: such a person may be true to his principles, but he wouldn’t be true to God, or to his family.
Thankfully, God suffers under so such ‘principles.’ He ‘has no pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ but He often demands such death in the restraining of evil.
We are human actors in a cosmic war, and we reveal our proper relation to God as we defend the Imago Dei in the life of the unborn and in the life of those grown children being killed by evil men.
This answer is more than logically consistent: it is relationally consistent with divine decree.
Someone as humble as my dear mother, who cannot stand violence in any form, knows the truth of divine Person as she marches for unborn children in Washington, D.C., and, in the same breath, hopes for human freedom world over, though such freedom demand war…
This is not to say that all war is right, but rather to say that she is not a hypocrite in her stance. She is a child of God, striving for understanding in the Spirit of Truth. She is for unborn children, and she is for war, if it be that war might defend grown children against the destruction of Imago Dei.
Thanks, Mom, for marching this week! May your march of courage inspire those souls seeking courage, yet not yet sure of the path!
Selah.
My mother marched in Washington on Monday, in defense of unborn children. Her take was remarkable, especially the part where she heard newly elected Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr. and Sen. Arlen Specter field questions from a pro-life constituency. Those who consider Casey pro-life would have been well-served to sit in on this session. Not for nothing has Chuck Schumer boasted that Casey will be firmly on board with the pro-choice voting line, when significant votes arrive...
But I digress. My mother’s quiet courage to attend this march alone – traveling without knowing anyone on the bus – in order to lift her voice against the night, this courage has moved me deeply! And so I take up my pen tonight to do some heavy lifting in this battle for life…
I’m thinking specifically of a question asked by a friend, concerning the seeming hypocrisy of people who march for life and yet support war. Perhaps you’ve heard it, but the question goes something like this:
Q: How can person be pro-life and yet supportive of war? Isn’t this terribly hypocritical?
A variation of this question substitutes capital punishment for war, but the implication is the same: if a person is for life, s/he is a hypocrite to support something that engenders any death [e.g. war or capital punishment]. The unspoken part of this argument is that a person is morally justified in voting to enable abortion if someone else is justified in voting to enable war – abortion is reduced to just another political position.
That is a regretful stance – doubly regretful because it misunderstands both life and war while enabling war on life.
When life and war are understood in a revelation framework, it presents a powerful answer to the question of pro-life hypocrisy.
Biblical definition of life: creation and existence in the Image of God.
Biblical definition of war: use of force to restrain evil.
Abstract: If human life is defined in relation to divine nature and intent, the Imago Dei, then it’s consistent to oppose abortion while supporting just war [theoretically], because in each position, the person is defending the Imago Dei against evil: the evil that would destroy life before its fruition, and the evil that would destroy life in its function.
If the argument is made that war in itself is evil, therefore cannot be properly used to combat evil, then I would reply: One should not confuse means with actuality, especially in understanding evil. An axe in the hands of a woodsman is life-sustaining; an axe in the hands of Freddy Krueger is a nightmare.
Yet the question necessarily reflects on a divine level: Is it possible for a good, life-giving God to be for war?
After all, we claim that God is perfectly good, our good “Father of lights, with whom is no variation or shadow of turning,” the One who “cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any person.” God is for life, unequivocally so: God has given His one and only Son that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Can this good God – unalterably good and equivocally for life [in its highest definition] – be for war?
The answer is conceptual [rather than categorical, key distinction] but it is again, unequivocal. War first began in the heavenly plane: Force was first used when evil [and all its dark mystery] acted against Imago Dei on a non-earthly plane.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. [Revelation 12:7-9]
The view of revelation is that war preceded the human plane, and that war was used by God to cordon the spread of evil. Scripture presents the paradox of a Holy God who is consistently for life and for peace while being an active Warrior: the Christ who says, ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword’ is shown at the end of time, riding a white horse with a flaming sword…
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns... [Revelation 19:11]
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work… And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. [2 Thessalonians 2:7-8]
Likewise, the prophet Isaiah saw this Christ as the strong Warrior coming back from Bozrah, with His robes dipped in blood:
Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah, with His garments stained crimson? Who is this, robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of His strength?
“It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.”
Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress?
“I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.
“For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redemption has come. I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm worked salvation for me, and my own wrath sustained me.
“I trampled the nations in my anger; in my wrath I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground.” [Isaiah 63:1-6]
In reading these texts there is a mystery, and it is the mystery of justice, the mystery of righteousness: How can Goodness use a sword to defend life? How does the One who calls himself Life own the blood of His enemies?
How can this be?
Key: the divine Warrior only takes the sword to defend creation intent against the onslaughts of the night. The Holy One makes war when war would consume the Imago Dei in His people…
Consistently, this concept is applied from divine to human planes, where the State is properly viewed as a servant of God to contain evil:
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. [Romans 13:3-4]
The proper role of State: God’s minister to protect good and execute wrath on the practice of evil.
Here we begin to see the coalescing of revelation, in relation to abortion and war: Life in the image of God is seen as something worth fighting for, something worth defending. Innocent life is not equal with guilty life: Adult humans destroy themselves from the Imago Dei when they turn their will against divine intent and partner with evil.
And, as Thomas Aquinas clearly expressed, when God punishes evil, that punishment of evil is not an evil, but a good: Punishment is a function of the good to which evils are attached, not a function of prior divine imperative. God cannot will the sinner to evil, since this is a “privation of right order towards the divine good.” God can will a context in which the sinner chooses evil, but this is only because God has first willed the attendant good. The sinner wills evil, and God wills punishment, or justice, which is a good.
Likewise, God wills no one to perish, but those who destroy Imago Dei must perish, because they destroy their own life: God is life and only in God can there be life.
Those who oppose the killing of unborn children and support the just killing of evil men [war] are actually intuiting the divine order of Imago Dei. In both directions they act to defend life: life in its promised fruition and life in its existent function.
And thus is exposed the lie of pacifism: pacifism demands a moral equivalency of physical life without referent to innocence, or to divine Image. The consistent pacifist will stand by while his wife and children are raped and killed, because he equates the life of the terrorist with the life of his family. I once posed the question to an intellectual grad student who paraded his pacifism at a party: “Would you stand by while your wife and children were harmed by an intruder?” He answered, “I would hope I would be true to my principles.” My reply: such a person may be true to his principles, but he wouldn’t be true to God, or to his family.
Thankfully, God suffers under so such ‘principles.’ He ‘has no pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ but He often demands such death in the restraining of evil.
We are human actors in a cosmic war, and we reveal our proper relation to God as we defend the Imago Dei in the life of the unborn and in the life of those grown children being killed by evil men.
This answer is more than logically consistent: it is relationally consistent with divine decree.
Someone as humble as my dear mother, who cannot stand violence in any form, knows the truth of divine Person as she marches for unborn children in Washington, D.C., and, in the same breath, hopes for human freedom world over, though such freedom demand war…
This is not to say that all war is right, but rather to say that she is not a hypocrite in her stance. She is a child of God, striving for understanding in the Spirit of Truth. She is for unborn children, and she is for war, if it be that war might defend grown children against the destruction of Imago Dei.
Thanks, Mom, for marching this week! May your march of courage inspire those souls seeking courage, yet not yet sure of the path!
Selah.