OUT OF YOUR MIND

JULY 12, 2008

In therapy it's called the turning point. It's that most crucial moment when interior change begins. It is brought on in startling ways. An unwanted, uninvited insight finally makes its way into consciousness and is accepted, and a new world of understanding begins to open. Inner resistance to reality is relaxed, and old defense mechanisms are disengaged. Healing begins. Blindness is overcome. A new life is underway.

In politics it's called the defining moment. It's that decisive hour when the forces of history and circumstance suddenly converge on a public official and bring him to a crossroads of decision. The moment is defining not only because it bares the man's soul, but also because what he decides sets an irreversible course for the future.

In Christianity, it is called conversion. Conversion is not just about changing one's course, however. It's about changing the one setting the course. There are many kinds and degrees of conversion, but whenever it happens, it transforms everything.

There is a specific kind of conversion that, I believe, is greatly needed today. We live in an information‑based society which places premium value on knowledge. It shows unbounded confidence in the power of unaided reason to prudently guide our judgment and action, and to determine what is real and true. In this culture, there is a great temptation to think that the heart of religious conversion has to do with a dramatic change from one way of thinking to another.

This is not the heart of it.  Since human reason is ordered toward truth, it is a valuable guide. But Christian conversion is not the outcome of thinking longer or harder about the Christian mysteries. Christian conversion does not just remake our ideas; it remakes us. It ushers us into a higher order of reality than our minds can attain. The distance between possessing knowledge about God and knowing God directly through love is infinite.

We cannot pass from the natural to the supernatural by a continuous series of gradations. The supernatural is not the invisible periphery of nature, and it does not arise out of nature. It is reality of another order. We have as much chance of laying hold of God through the use of our intellect as a dog has of laying hold of Einstein's theory of relativity by sniffing the chalked out formula E=mc2 on a blackboard. The nose cannot grasp physics; the mind cannot grasp God. Or again, just as manipulation of the contents of matter will never transform matter into mind, so also no amount of manipulation of the contents of mind ‑‑ thought and knowledge ‑‑ can elevate the mind to communion with God.

God discloses himself in secret, in terms we cannot understand or dictate. We know him not in reason, but in what is deeper in us than reason ‑‑ our souls. Our minds are able only to verify the truth of the experience which they cannot explain but cannot deny. It is God who enters into us, who "introduces" himself within us. We ourselves can accomplish this no more than we can introduce mind into matter.

This is why the poor and uneducated are at no disadvantage when it comes to making the ascent up to God. In fact, they may enjoy a subtle advantage because their minds do not clutter their way. This is also why the disposition of intellectual humility is essential, and why pride holds us back. To reach God, we must allow ourselves to be led far past the outermost limit to which reason can go. We must leave the light of reason and enter the darkness of unknowing beyond.

One outcome of conversion is to realize that we are called by God not to knowledge but to goodness. Goodness, or holiness, is the highest expression of the human person, not knowledge or action. Yet, conversion does not signal an end to reason. Quite the contrary. It increases our appreciation of the dignity and worth of the human mind.

Here is the way the 17th century French scientist‑turned‑Christian‑mystic Blaise Pascal put it: "The God of the Christians is a God of love and consolation; he is a God who fills the soul and the heart which he possesses; a God who makes them feel their own misery and his infinite mercy; who unites himself with their inmost soul; fills it with humility, and joy, and confidence, and love; and makes it impossible for them to seek any other end than himself... This is to know God as a Christian. But to know God thus, a man must know also his misery and his own unworthiness, and the need he has of a redeemer... The knowledge of God, without the knowledge of our ruin, is pride. The knowledge of our ruin, without the knowledge of Jesus Christ, is despair. But the knowledge of Jesus Christ delivers us from both pride and despair, because in him we discern at once our God, our guilt, and the only way of our recovery."

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 19-Sep-2008 13:30 sitemap