Finding Your Theological Way

1980 [dates unspecified]
Lakeland
Port Charlotte

Finding Your Theological Way

The difficulty is in the pronoun: “your” or “my.” It is not easy to attempt systematic thinking of one’s own about the perennial questions that can be listed under “religion.” To endorse someone else’s thinking about God – Good and Evil – our origins – our proper behavior – our destiny – is not difficult, it seems to me. A holy church with saving sacraments, an authoritative creed, an unerring scripture, a personal savior [all] provide assurance for most persons. Singer Pearl Bailey told an audience why she switched from the study of French syntax to theology: “I switched from French to theology because I discovered God was easier to understand than French.”

My experience has been the opposite. Not that my high school French was easy; it was difficult, and soon forgotten. But God, or the variety of ideas of God, are immeasurably more difficult for me either to fathom or express. In my more skeptical moments I am amused by the definition Ambrose Bierce gave to faith in THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY: “Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.”

When in that mood I don’t care very much about finding my theological way. When I have friends, shelter, food, literature, art, music, work to do, conviviality, love, memories and hopes, what need have I for theology? But when I reflect on these living experiences, I become quite aware that each of the values I hold has a theological base or a theological reference.

Theology is a thoughtful interpretation of one’s experience. The reality that my theology does not have the assurance of positive an unchanging answers does not make it less my own. Those of you who are regularly here know that no religious creed is required. The certainties each of us have are our own. More often, I believe we have learned to live with uncertainty about the theological questions. [CJW note: Woody Allen]

Living in our questions rather than relaxing in someone else’s answers, while not expecting final answers, is the spirit of a religion of critical inquiry. Search is a form of prayer – a reaching out to the mystery of origin and destiny.

Here is a paraphrase of a definition of religion I noted down some years ago: “Religion is a dimension of our human consciousness which is concerned with our ultimate relation to our world, with the meaning we find in, or attribute to, life’s activities and experiences and with the direction we give effort and aspiration.”

There are words in that definition that are indicators of finding our theological way:

our human consciousness
our relation to our wold
the meanings we find or attribute our efforts and aspiration

All theologies are human whether fixed creed or open search. The Gods and their symbols, creed, hymn, icon, structure, prophecy, poetry, myth, art, are human expressions of human fear, hope, good, evil, mystery. Thus, it is in human events and experiences we find our theological way.

How? Not by abstractions pronounced from a pulpit. The better way is sharing our stories. Some of us know the value of this and recommend it to others.

What can you remember from your experience that caught you up, absorbed you with the feeling that life is good? When I think back, I recall many such experiences. For example, when I was a T.S. student, with a family, struggling to get through, money ran out and there seemed no alternative but give up the goal. Then I was given an anonymous gift of $100 (it was equivalent to what $600-$700 would be today). It simply made the difference both in my circumstance and my spirit. I’ve never known or had any hint who was my benefactor.

Who were some of the unforgettable persons in your life, and why? A teacher, perhaps who instilled in you a love of poetry or drama or science?

Share the story.

How and when have you encountered “evil” or “sin?” I remember how angry and cynical I was when one I believed a friend deliberately cheated me out of some money.

Share the story.

Then think of deeper mysteries – the pain and suffering perhaps when your spouse or child or parent died.

What would you say to the parents and friends of the young American boxers who died a few weeks ago in that airplane crash in Poland?

Share the stories. If there are no others with whom you feel to share some of the high and low experiences of your living, write them down for yourself alone, and read them over.

There is another step on finding your theological way. Reflect with others, or alone, on these stories of your living.

Good warm living experiences
The love of a parent, mate, friend
The disillusion of a wrong doing – done by you, or to you
The tragedies for which no one is to blame – a Mt. Pelee in Martinique erupted and 20M lives lost; or earthquake, flood...

There is a theological rogue word – contextualization. (That’s almost as repellent as finalize) but its meaning has a point that theology must be anchored in the realities of time, place, and circumstances.

For each of us, finding our theological way, our reflection is in the reality of our time, our place, our circumstance.

What do your experiences of good and bad, the moments of great joy, the times of keen sorrow, lead you to believe about human nature? That is theology.

What does the self you may hide tell you about your nature? That is theology.

What does the frequency of unmerited suffering – fire, flood, earthquake – suggest to you about the nature of the universe and the force or forces that created it? That is theology.

What does the fact of planet Earth with its provision of air and soil for crops of grain and vegetable, trees for fruit, shade, shelter, and warmth; oil and metals beneath the earth, water for our thirst, the sun for our warmth – what does planet Earth suggest to you about the nature of the force that created it? That is theology.

Henry D. Thoreau writes of a time he visited a Catholic Church. He was not turned off. Rather, he found it an excellent place for contemplation. He wrote that if a town can have a meeting room (Town Hall) and a reading room (the Library), why should there not be a thinking room?

Bob Tapp, “We seldom contemplate and perhaps we never discover, that contemplation is a form of inquiry.”

It has been suggested, also, that in theology, “the answers you get depend a bit on the questions you put.” The questions I have suggested are not about ancient Palestine, Galilee, Rome, but about our time, our place, our circumstance. The past may illuminate the page but it cannot write for us. We must wrestle with the blessings, the cruelties and the enigmas of our individual and social experience. The world of our experience is not a world of dying-rising savior gods, but w world of astonishing technology and irresistible political change amid a continuing struggle of nationalistic and economic ideologies. [CJW note: and calls for theological reflection and sharing God – good (evil) salvation]

Beyond that – reflection on the astounding mystery of the universe.

There never may be a fixed way of finding God or a creative force which explains it all. But mystery deserves contemplation, too. I respond to the whimsical but profound way Robert Frost revered the mystery:

The Secret Sits:

“We dance round in a ring and suppose
But the secret sits in the middle and knows,

Forgive O Lord my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive thy great big one on me.”

And finally 425
Accidentally on Purpose

[CJW note: poets, artists, musicians – study, reflect on their creation in the light of the experience you’ve had ... study ....]