Chapter One

An Attraction Beyond Understanding

We are drawn to Christ by something that is greater than ourselves.  It is an attraction that cannot really be understood for it is beyond logic.  It is deep within our consciousness, and we barely feel the tip of such a pull within our normal awareness.  This attraction is a part of a larger process that pulls all of creation ahead in a great quest for consciousness and identity.  This is a longing in the heart of every human.  But the longing also exists in all other things as well.  It is in the animals and the fish, the trees and plants, the rocks and the sand, and in the stars.  The longing is a desire to live, and never to suffer or die.  Yet it is also a longing to change and to be perfected.  This is the longing for transformation, and it is seen in the life and death of every human being, as well as the constantly changing earth which gives life to plants and animals, and witnesses their deaths.  It is a part of the process of the earth itself, as it moves continents and changes the valleys to mountains, and the mountains into ocean floors.

The longing for Christ is a part of the human longing to find the true self.  This is an inner self that is not visible to the eye.  In our hearts we know that we are something beyond the body that ages, and even the mind that weakens.  Within our hearts there is a feeling that a part of us is beyond the cycle of life and death.  This is the same feeling that leads us to follow Christ.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French priest and scientist (paleontologist) who taught that love is at the heart of all creation, holding the universe together and leading it onward toward its great evolutionary goal of becoming fully conscious of its own reality of love.  This consciousness is honored as a reflection of God in the ancient religions of the world.  In Judaism and Christianity, the Book of Genesis says that human beings are made in the image of God.  In Hinduism, the whole universe is seen as a manifestation of the divine reality that also remains hidden to human perception.  And Buddhism teaches that everything is a part of the great “emptiness” that is the only true and lasting reality. 

Even modern science confirms our identification with an unperceived reality that it calls “energy.”  Everything is “light,” or “energy,” simply expressed in an infinite number of forms, yet all basically made of the same “stuff.” This basic form of the energy of the universe is constant and unperceived by our senses. For science, the energy of the universe appears to be more real than we are, for it remains even after we pass from this human experience.

At the heart of reality, and at the heart of every human being, is a longing for unity.  In the universe it is the longing of objects in space to come together – called gravity.  In the animal and plant world, it is a longing to continue through time by procreation.  And in the human world it is the longing to belong, to be loved and to love, and to find a sense of fulfillment from human life.  In the human heart this is the longing for God.

Yet “God” is a term that has been loaded with meaning for thousands of years.  The word creates strong reactions in people because of the immediate reactions it gives them – both in their thinking and their emotions.  The majority of the time we talk about “God” as if we are talking about a house or a neighbor.  God has become an object in most human minds, like other objects of thought.  We ask each other if we believe in God, and most of the time people respond that they do or do not believe.  We read books about God that are filled with presuppositions about God’s nature and meaning.  In the Western world we usually talk about God in a dualistic fashion.  That is, God is something separate from the world we live in.  The reason for this presupposition is that we do not encounter God in the same way that we encounter the rest of the world.  God is not something to hold and touch, to hear with our ears and to see with our eyes.  Even when we speak in the poetic language of the mystics, and say such things as, “God is in my heart,” or, “I hear the voice of God,” we understand that we perceive God in a different way from normal human perception.

We instinctively know when we are touched by something so profound that we feel a sense of God in the experience.  This happens when we feel great love or compassion, or are inspired by natural beauty.  It also happens when we encounter people who inspire us.  Great individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Gandhi have inspired the people for the last hundred years, and have made us feel that in touching them we have somehow also touched God.  Such people are called saints or sages and are found in all the religious traditions of the world.  The experience of the first followers of Jesus was the same.  In experiencing Jesus they felt that they had encountered someone who reflected God.  And in the first three centuries of Christianity the power of the experience of the first Christians grew beyond all expectations.  The experience of Jesus and his teachings went even beyond the level of “saint” to the level of “savior.”  The spirit of the new Christian faith was like an explosion that started with the life of a controversial Jewish teacher in the ancient land of Israel/Palestine and, within three centuries, reached as far as the present-day lands of Ireland, India, Africa, Spain and Germany.  Jesus became a manifestation of God for huge numbers of people.  This was not exactly understood, and there were many disagreements in the Christian Church over the meaning of Jesus’ divine identity because there were differences in the understanding of the meaning of “God.”  Those differences were seemingly resolved for many people when the Church became more organized and was established as the official religion of the Roman Empire.  But the disagreements never ended completely, and will never end, because each of us experience life differently and have different meanings for God, Jesus, and other religious terms.

What is more important for each individual is the journey of faith itself.  This is a journey of awakening and trust that is inspired by Jesus.  Within Jesus is a reality that exists in all people, but shines forth from Jesus in a way unequalled in the history of the Western world.  This divine reality has the power to transform human life, and has done so for millions of human beings throughout two thousand years of Christian history.  Jesus is called the Christ, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Savior of the World, the Light of the World, and many other titles.  These titles all point to the unseen reality that comes from the source of life itself and is encountered in following Jesus and his teachings. 

People come to this path because of the inspiration of other Christians who follow the path of faith; or they are touched through the ceremonies of the Church; or they are inspired by reading the Christian Scriptures.  They may also be drawn to Christianity when they experience Christians who are compassionate toward those who suffer; or Christians who struggle for justice toward the destitute and the working poor; and those who are marginalized by society – who suffer prejudice because of gender, race, color, sexual orientation, etc.  The journey of faith is not a smooth path.  It is naturally full of doubt, as well as many awakenings and affirmations of faith.  It can never be taken alone.  It begins because someone has passed to us the message of hope, just as life itself was passed to us by our parents.  In the community of faith each individual matures and moves to a deeper understanding of both faith and life until the two become indistinguishable to the one who believes and who lives the journey.

The words of John’s gospel (chapter 15) echo this understanding of faith when Jesus says, “You have not chosen me.  It is I who have chosen you.”  The words create a great dance with our imaginations so that our understanding becomes important in their interpretation.  We understand these words in our day to mean that the power that created us has also chosen a destiny for us: the path of moving ahead in the discovery of who we are as human beings and as members of the universe.  We are brothers and sisters of the stars and the creatures of the earth.  St. Francis reflected this beautiful understanding of our relationship with the earth and the universe when he spoke of creation as “Brother Sun,” “Sister Moon,” “Sister Water,” and “Brother Fire.” 

We are led on the journey in which we are drawn to God through Christ.  And we draw Christ to ourselves and discover our identity in God.  This is not the God we thought of in the past.  We move past old ideas of God because of new experiences.  We will finally come to discover that ideas of God as just that: “ideas.”  The experience of life will move us past ideas to an encounter that is beyond the categories of “idea” and “experience.”  This is the journey of discovery to which we are called by Christ and his followers.

You may object that Christians and their churches have also destroyed the call of faith.  You may have felt disgust for the bigotry of Christians, the rigidity of many churches, and the hypocrisy or political influence of Christians that seemed so contrary to the life and teaching of Jesus.  The journey of faith will reveal that both the terrible and the courageous are a part of Christian life, as are failure and success, struggle and hope, joy and anguish.  The life of Jesus is the great image that shines forth as a model for Christians, for it is full of all these things.  The beauty and glory of life lies within its great struggle.  This is the truth of the life of Jesus that speaks to the human heart.  It is this element of struggle that shines with such strength in the life of Jesus, and causes us to understand struggle and courage as central to life’s meaning.