The Left Hand of God



The Prodigal Son - Rembrandt

Christian religion is becoming increasingly militant. Today God’s Judgment is often presented in strict terms beginning with punishment and banishment to hell for those who have strayed. Homosexuals are defined as deviants and not worthy of God’s love.  Women who seek abortions, for whatever medical reason and doctors who perform them are called murderers.   Ordinary folks who challenge church teachings are openly threatened with the withdrawal of the sacraments or simply asked to leave the church. Anti-abortion students are encouraged to publically parade with posters displaying graphic images of aborted fetuses. Some religious clerics are eager to ban children of gay parents the right to attend their publically supported schools. Theologians who did not follow church teachings to the letter have been banned by the hundreds from their teaching positions. Religious institutions are confining God’s unconditional love in strict legal terms. Volumes of religious edicts are being issued forth proclaiming that their religion is the only true one, etc. etc. Extremes of every kind are being enforced or applied at the expense of the right to obey our God given conscience.  

Under these conditions is it not entirely reasonable that more and more people are turning away from these ridged and dispassionate views of God and the religious institutions that support them?    

Michael Lerner in his book The Left Hand of God suggests that it is time to listen to the more loving, compassionate and justice seeking voice of God. Instead we seem to have been responding to a fearful voice which is often harsh, judgmental, power oriented and domination seeking.  Rabbi Lerner describes the left hand of God in these simple terms    “The Left Hand of God stands in marked contrast to the vision of God as the powerful avenger, the Force that will overthrow evil through superior power, the Force that seeks to exterminate enemies and suppress dissent. The vision of the Right Hand of God imagines that evil can be wiped out by one more war or by imposing rigid com­mandments about how to live and enforcing them through violence and punishment. It imagines that people can be coerced into goodness.

The human race needs and yearns for the Left Hand of God. It longs to be part of a world in which kindness, generosity, nonviolence, humility, inner and outer peace, love, and wonder at the grandeur of creation stand at the center of our political and economic systems and become the major realities of our daily life experience.

The spiritual consciousness that I call the Left Hand of God is not the exclusive property of any one party or movement.”

Recently I participated in an online exchange with an anonymous Catholic on the sensitive question of heaven and hell. Because my opponent expressed her understanding of hell only in literal terms I tried to present her with the Left Hand of God which presents a more healing image of God and hell.  What follows is a condensed version, which began on the subject of Indulgences and went on to the more serious question of hell:

Trebert:  

The practise of granting Indulgences is rooted in the belief that a penitent needed support by the prayers of the Church in the effort to pay the debt of penance. However, we cannot bargain, earn or win God’s love – it is His gift to all.
Sin cannot prevent us from our eternal reward with God in heaven – sin simply often keeps us in a self created hell on earth. The purpose of salvation is to free us from the burden of sin whenever we are willing to INDULGE and learn from our mistakes with the help of the Holy Spirit. God’s unconditional love heals comforts and forgives the unforgiveable because He does not remember our sins. (If we believe God gives up on people forever and does away with them by sentencing them to death in hell, then we can give up on some people forever and do away with such people by sentencing them to death through capital punishment). The image of God as a vengeful, demanding and punishing deity can literally drive us crazy! Punishment never heals, only love can heal.

Anon:
If sin cannot separate us from God, then there is no point of the Cross.
God does not send anybody to hell. Where did you get that idea from? It’s not a teaching of the church. Heaven is union with God. If someone does not want to be there God will not force them.
God cannot also give someone what does not exist. If they want to love God on their own selfish terms. God cannot give that to them. It does not exist. It's not a question of earning God's love. It's a question of expecting something that does not exist. Love demands justice. The cross is both the mercy and justice of God.

Trebert : Nothing can separate us from the love of God Romans 8:38-39). When we associate or interpret the meaning of the cross with punishment or fear we immediately diminish our understanding of God’s unconditional love. True Love cannot make demands. God’s mercy has everything to do with restorative justice not worldly punishment. Yes, God will not drag us into heaven ‘kicking and screaming’ but he is willing to descent into hell to offer his unconditional love which we may never have experienced or received while we inhabited this earthly place.

Anon:

Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, means that nobody can snatch us out of the love of God, but that does not mean that we cannot opt out of it. "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 7:21; cf. Matt. 10:33, 18:35).
The Catechism of the Catholic church states:
#633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham's bosom": "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Saviour in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell." Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.

Trebert: Are you perhaps more interested in fear, punishment, and eternal hell, etc. than  the love of God? Religion is for those who fear hell. Spirituality is for those who have been there! (anon)

Furthermore, "Hell exists, not as a place but as a state, a way of being of the person who suffers the pain of the deprivation of God.” Pope John Paul II Vatican on July 28, 1999.

Jesus' story of the rich man (Dives) and Lazarus (a poor beggar) is sometimes cited to prove that there are people in hell, or that once a person gets to hell he or she cannot leave. Lazarus, a poor beggar, dies and goes to heaven where he is in the bosom of Abraham. Dives, who had not reached out to help Lazarus, dies and goes to hell. Dives asks if he can go back and warn his five brothers so that they will not end up in hell too. Abraham refuses.

A clue that this story is not to be taken literally as proof that some people are in an eternal state of hell is Dives' desire to help others and Abraham's refusal to permit it. If we define heaven as a state of giving and receiving love, and hell as a state of total alienation in which no love is given or received and repentance is impossible, then the compassionate, unselfish, repentant Dives is at this point behaving more like a resident of heaven than is Abraham. What the story does seem to be saying is two things. First, social standing in this world can be turned upside down in the next. Secondly, if you ignore your brothers and sisters in need (as Dives did previously), you will feel like hell. Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn & Matthew Linn, S.J., Good Goats – Healing Our Image of God, Paulist Press, 1994.

Anon: The love of God does not deny the existence of sin and its consequences - just as a parent disciplines their child, because they do not want them to go astray. Jesus said "Not everybody who calls me, lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven." Do you claim to know more than Jesus? Only angels are spiritual without being religious. Human beings are a body, soul unity. We are bodily persons. This is how we experience the world.

Trebert: The consequence of sin (missing the mark) often results in the experience of hell.  Jesus never condemned anyone who went astray and neither should we. God (Jesus) is unknowable (St. Thomas Aquinas).  When we attend church regularly but do not reflect a basic Christian attitude our pleas “Lord, Lord but will not bring us into the kingdom of heaven.  If religion does not bring us into a direct relationship with God we will not understand the meaning of ‘spirituality’.    

In conclusion to these exchanges the aforementioned book by the Linn family is an excellent Catholic understanding of God’s Left Hand. I highly recommend it for those who yearn for a more healing image of God.

On Sin

For the second time, in less than a week, I was presented by elderly but ‘devout Catholics’ who expressed deep feelings of remorse and guilt for missing Mass on a Sunday. Both individuals admitted that they were taught that missing Mass was considered a sin.

It seems these days that religion has become obsessively focused on the question of sin rather then the healing and affirming power that God instills in each individual. This negative and narrowing focus on sin is also clearly reflected world wide by most institutional religions.

Some religious leaders have reduced God to a vengeful deity who desires nothing more than for us but fight for his dominion by slaying all those who stand in his way. ‘God is great’! Others think that God needs us to fix all wrongs by imposing our specific ideas of what is right! Still others feel that God is on their side when they impose specific rules or regulations by which they think God wants us to live. No matter what, we feel perfectly justified to condemn, vilify, penalize, convict, excommunicate, ostracize, hate and even kill in His name. Small wonder then if our religion teaches that we are sinful creatures from the time we are born. We are what we're taught in our culture. And, to break out of this mold often requires a difficult and painful transformation.

How do we break out from those things that were once held sacred by our family, friends or cultural background? When Jesus said, “you must hate your mother, your brother, sister, etc.” must be understood as a metaphor for our false beliefs (i.e.,the factors that caused us to sin in the first place). So, we must simply recognize our own selfish inclinations, our ego or false self. I really don’t think God asks us to ‘attack’ our dark/shadow side. Or, as Richard Rohr states: Evil is not overcome by attack or even avoidance, but by union at a higher level. It is overcome not by fight or flight, but rather by “fusion”! Thus we merely need to make ourselves aware & gradually obedient to our true self. In that way, we can use our negative behaviour as a springboard to help us come in touch with our true self – the true image in which God created each one of us.

When we see our sin, from a healing perspective, and as a means of discovering the God within we will be able to drop all judgment and condemnation and become the hand, ears, eyes, etc., of God’s love for all those he places in our path.

Two stories, from Fr. Anthony de Mello, my favourite Jesuit author, retreat master on the mystery of sin.

SIN

One of the disconcerting – and delightful

teachings of the Master was: “God is

closer to sinners than to saints.”

This is how he explained it: “God in heaven

Holds each person by a string. When you sin,

You cut the string. Then God ties it up again,

Making a knot – and thereby bringing you a

Little closer to him. Again and again your

Sins cut the string – and with each further knot

God keeps drawing you closer and closer.”

REPRESSION

The Master had been on his deathbed

In a coma for weeks. One day he suddenly

Opened his eyes to find his favourite

Disciple there.

“You never leave my bedside, do

You?” he said softly.

“No, Master, I cannot.”

“Why?”

“Because you are the light of

My life.”

The Master sighed. “Have I so

Dazzled you, my son, that you

Still refuse to see the light

In you?”

- Anthony de Mello.

When I see our church entirely focused on the negative behaviour of its people I wonder what God sees instead and wants us to do?

On God's Judgment

The dictionary definition of judgment says nothing about condemnation. When God said, all through the Old Testament, that he would come to bring judgment for his people, he meant that he would act like a judge; vindicating the rights of each individual by restoring what had been taken and awarding them recompense.

This interpretation may be a dramatic departure from what most of us were taught. There are many people today, who are prepared to argue that justice demands punishment. After all, why should we have to share heaven with those who were downright evil and deserve to spend eternity in hell? The unconverted individual seems to demand a God who punishes and rewards the righteous. The book of Psalms supports this view again and again - forgive me God for my trespasses but please smite my enemies. This argument would seem not only justified but necessary particularly when we look at what is happening in our world each day. Not only do these passages in psalms prove that God understands our broken nature, but look at what Jesus said at the point of his final judgment by Pilate – forgive them father for they do not know what they do and turning to the thief also on the cross – today you will be with me in Paradise!

It seems that the last thing that Jesus had in mind was condemnation. Instead Jesus called for restoration and vindication. When I have been betrayed or hurt by someone, or a group, the first thing that comes to my mind (and most people I know) is how can I get even? If that attitude should remain on my mind, as the last thing, it will almost certainly guarantee the experience of hell (here on earth) spoken of by Jesus.

God promises us a way through our fear, pain and suffering. This universal gift is referred to by theologians as salvation. Jesus provided us with ample examples of God’s salvation. Jesus healed, comforted, blessed, forgave, restored and vindicated all those who believed in a life lived to the full, regardless of their sins. Over a hundred years ago, American Author Elbert Hubbard, said: We are not punished for our sins, but by them. Why then do we still demand an image of a punishing God? Why do we think that his additional punishment would carry us beyond the grave? What purpose does that serve God. Salvation has nothing to do with a ticket to get into heaven for the chosen few. Accordingly, is it not better to experience God’s free gift of salvation (no conditions attached – read the small print) in the here and now? So, lets stop fretting about God’s final judgment in the form of reward and punishment. Lets learn how to live in the 'true self', the eternal self.

When we die we will no longer need our 'false' or ego self and truly become as One. Or , in other words the final letting go or purging of the 'false self' at the moment of our death will finally set us free from the 'false' or ego self - the moment of complete restoration and vindication. Imagine just for a moment the great ‘Ah, ha moment’, seated next to God, as you come to understand why you endured all your trials and tribulations, with total clarity or understanding and the gifts they became. The moment when we will perhaps finally realize “Oh, this is why this or that was allowed to happen, and so on” without condemnation, accusation, or judgment etc. What a wonderful moment of great purging (purgatory) that will be.

The Good News simply is this: God has promised that he will never abandon us and will restore all who are broken, bent or indifferent and return us perfected in his own image as was first promised in the story of Creation.

The Three Judges

When I pass on I will stand before the three judges of the heavenly court. They will decide if I am to enter Heaven, or be returned to life to complete my transformation.

The first will ask me, "Did you treat others with respect?" and I will answer, "Yes, but did I treat them with enough respect? No." And my answer will be written down. The second judge will ask, "Did you study?" and I will reply, "Yes, I studied, but did I study as I was supposed to? No." And the answer will be written down.

Finally, the third judge will ask, "Did you love others as you loved yourself?" and I will answer, "Yes, but not completely." And this will be written down as well.

When there are no further questions, I will turn to leave the proceedings, headed, I am certain, for another incarnation in which I will try to do better. But the judges will cry, "Where do you think you're going? A person who speaks as much truth as you is needed in the Garden of Eden. Step this way."

Michael Berg, The Way – Using the Wisdom of Kabbalah for Spiritual Transformation and Fulfillment, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, NJ., 2001.