My daughter is turning Hindu.
On the one hand, this is not exactly a
glowing endorsement of my Christian influence. On the other hand, however, her spiritual
journey has led to some of the best conversations I think we’ve ever had. It’s
caused me to examine what I believe about ultimate truth and the nature of
reality, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my daughter might just be
discovering a new vocabulary for some things which I’ve long believed myself from
our Christian tradition. To that extent, I think I actually prefer an observant
Hindu (or Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or whatever) to a lukewarm,
Christmas-and-Easter Christian who never gives any real thought to the tenets of
the faith. It’s important—don’t you think?—to actually know what it is you say you believe.
This Sunday is the Feast of the Holy
Trinity. In theory, it’s one of the six principal festivals of Christianity. In
practice, I don’t think anyone gives a rip about it. The problem for me, of
course, is that it commemorates a doctrine of the church and not an event or a
person. I’m pretty much a story-teller, so I don’t really know what to do when
there isn’t a narrative to talk about. Holy Trinity Sunday is usually a good
time for a pastor to take a vacation so as not to have to preach a bone-dry,
dogmatic sermon which will sound like a theology lecture and leave the folks in
the pew staring glassy-eyed with occasional glances at their wrist watches.
Of course, there’s always the boring
history lesson I can fall back on. I can tell folks about how the Emperor
Constantine called for a church council in Nicaea in 325 A.D. to settle the
question of Jesus’ relationship with God once and for all. I can explain the
cute trivia that Nicholas of Bari (aka. Saint Nicholas, a.k.a. Santa Claus) happened
to take part in that initial convention. I can also point out that the motive
for coming up with a settled doctrine was every bit as political as theological—which
does not necessarily mean that those bishops in Nicaea got it wrong. But I can’t see that this would
have much an effect on my listeners.
No. If this festival day is to mean
anything at all, it has to challenge us each to come up with our own definition
of what we mean by the word GOD. It’s
only then that the doctrine of Trinity can mean anything to us, and only then
that we can have a meaningful conversation with people of other faiths or no
faith at all.
Yet here is where I have to make a
disclaimer. Nobody, not a pastor, a church council, a pope, yogi, rabbi, imam,
or saint can really comprehend God. In the Gospel lesson appointed for this
feast in the Revised Common Lectionary (John 16:12-15), Jesus says, “I still
have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit
of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth…” (v. 12-13a) This kind of reminds
me of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men
bellowing, “You can’t handle the truth!” And the truth is, we can’t. We have no
real conception of the wonder and vastness of God apart from what the Spirit
puts in our hearts. All we do for convenience is construct clumsy analogies.
The trick is to try to use these clumsy analogies to lead us to a place of
meaning and not turn them into doctrinal idolatry.
For a long time we in the church just said,
“Hey. You want to be a Christian? Accept the doctrine of the Trinity. If you
don’t, then you’re not really a Christian and you’re probably going to burn in
Hell.” I’d hope that we’re progressing a bit from this. What does this doctrine
actually mean at its core? For me, I’d have to say that it’s the experience of God
as the great I AM. God just IS—God creating and being, God in love and
compassion manifested in the person of Christ, and God as the connective tissue
of all things. Our Gospel has Jesus say that the Father is in him, he is in the
Spirit, and the Spirit is in us (vv.14-15).
That should be the challenge. If the
Spirit of God—God’s breath which breathes life into all and the spirit of
Christ’s compassion—is truly in me, then it has to be in everyone else, too. That
means I have some real thinking to do about how I relate to creation and to my
neighbor. If I sin against my neighbor, I’ve sinned against God and I’ve sinned
against myself. And this thought drives me to my knees to pray for reverence
for all people and all creation.
I’m not sure I get how my Hindu daughter
sees God, but I feel pretty confident that contemplation of my own tradition leads
me to a place of peace with hers.
Thanks for reading. God be with you.
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