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No 165 - 2002
6. A LOW GOD IS NO GOD
Reflections on latent atheism by Peter Bowe OSB
AN impoverished Christianity is abroad. I am struck by how much I hear sometimes merely that "God wants us to do this or that." I have come to realize that I feel in this way God is trivialized. The expression seems to betray the speaker's very "low" or " shallow" sense of god in contrast to what may be called a "high" sense of God. It seems to demonstrate failure to believe in God's unconditional love which calls us to freedom.
A low sense of god is soon shown up as mere humanism. God and Jesus turn out to be regarded and "believed in", it seems, as no more than authoritative, and therefore normative, humans. They are just good humans, even the best of all humans, who have to be imitated or whose commandments have to be obeyed.
And that is effectively nothing more than atheism. A "low" god turns out to be no god. To have before us a low god amounts in fact to rejecting the Divine and ineffable Mystery at the heart of our universe and of each of us - a denial of God as God is. A low god misuses, even abuses our language for the Divine, which essentially has to retain and express a sense of awe before the mysterium fascinans et tremens.
Only such Divine Mystery, a "high" God, a God in whose presence we are literally nothing, a God who holds us and the whole universe in being, whose love enfolds us and sustains us, is worth worshipping. We do not worship the good man whose admirable life we desire to imitate or whose fine words we want to follow.
Even the agnostic has a "high" sense of God. While leaving the question of God open and unanswered agnosticism still respects the issue: whether God is or is not. And if God is, God must be greater than the merely human; God is for the agnostic, at least potentially, unfathomable Mystery. Indeed, perhaps the agnostic is agnostic precisely because he has a high sense of God.
We show whether we believe in a high or low God, whether we are believers, agnostics or effectively atheists, of course not only by what we say (our discourse), but mostly by what we do (our lives). We may speak of a high God, but we are atheist, denying God, when we act self-centredly or unjustly, when we sin.
Preaching is more revealing than other forms of discourse. If preaching is not just entertaining, or just shocking and challenging, or just intellectually stimulating, or just emotionally uplifting, then the preacher unwittingly reveals where he is coming from. His preaching will fundamentally and subtly demonstrate his basic stance of faith: he will be seen to be, fully or partially, a believer or an agnostic or an atheist. The preacher inevitably discloses his own truth.
So a low sense of god is no more than no sense of God and is in fact atheistic. A high sense of the Divine Mystery and Divine Love is essential for the Christian, whether held more tentatively by the agnostic or more passionately by the believer. A high God empowers me to live from the Spirit dwelling within me. The low god leaves me in control: I have to interpret his wants, commands, demands. Indeed, can I in fact know what he wants me to do? Only when I surrender entirely shall I live by the power of the high God.
How prevalent among Christians, even among ministers and preachers is the low god! Is atheism indeed lurking among us?‡
Index
The Role of the Monastery in Today's Society A Layman's Viewby Sir David Goodall
100 Years at Woolhampton as seen from the pages of The Douai Magazine
The New Monastery Buildings by Oliver Holt OSB
Go to index of Douai Newsletter.