The Christian of the future

Father Karl Rahner once said that the Christian of the future will be a mystic or not exist at all. He used the term mysticism in a religious sense, as the pursuit of communion with God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight.

In Catholicism the Eucharist, as an encounter with Christ, is at the centre of these nurturing practices of mysticism. This is why the notion of being “spiritual but not religious” baffles the mind of most practising Catholics.

But, as the French Catholic writer Charles Péguy said, everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. He was talking about politics in a sense of organised activity, which religion falls under.

Most people in our age are allergic to the politic (that is, the organised). They don’t like the institutions it creates, including those of religion.

You might say that this is for good reasons: institutions can be slow, plodding, dictatorial, and they can even enable and shield wrongdoers. Institutions tend to frustrate individualistic desires by asking for the supremacy of the collective, and submission to authority.

Ours is an age that values individualistic freedoms, hence the talk about freedom to practise one’s own conscious awareness of God. This is sometimes called spirituality without restraining chains of dogma.

It’s nice to have soothing feelings and emotions of spirituality. But to stay on a proper course of authentic human development, we need also to honour our obligations as part of humanity and members of society.

Even Christ struggled with obligation sometimes. We witness this in a dramatic manner in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus’ obligation to his Father demanded that he moves out of himself to do something he would rather not, that is to die on the cross.

“Not my will but yours be done,” his prayer goes. Translation: not only my spirituality but my obligation also.

As people of faith we strive for the personal, individual relationship with God. But we cannot be with and of Christ without also being in a community of believers. We cannot be church alone. To be church requires of us to also set aside our personal feelings for the bigger picture.

Religion is in decline today mostly in places where the culture of individualism is primary, because most people there choose good feelings over obligations. They choose to look after number one, as the saying goes.

And this is mostly in Europe, with the exception of the Scandinavian countries where the Christian church seems to be having a noticeable revival.

Decline of religion and growth of selfish individualism seem to go hand in hand. Some say the decline of religion is closely associated with Thatcherism, the anti-society-greed-is-good philosophy.

As the faithful we need to guard against the Church becoming Kafka’s castle, where it is impossible for the messenger to get word out. And the situation whereby the sheep don’t recognise the smell of the shepherd, as Pope Francis likes to say.

Also, for far too long, the dividing walls between Christian churches have obstructed the message of the Gospel. We need to rediscover the courage to knock down the walls that block Christ to the outside by returning to the simplicity and coherence of its origins — the “hermeneutics of radical continuity”, as a Southern Cross editorial recently put it.

The Church might have Peter as bishop of Rome, Andrew as bishop of Moscow, James as bishop of Jerusalem — but it must be one Church, as Christ prayed for.

It is perhaps easy for me, as an African, to advocate religious spirituality; because in African culture there is no authentic spirituality without community. In fact, there’s no such thing as individualistic development — umntu ngumntu ngomnye.

Being spiritual without community or religious confines is what we may call a “subjective devotional life of feeling good” — the use of God as just another fix. I dare say it denies the obligation for carrying one’s cross in answer to Christ’s call.

Spirituality without community is a symptom of narcissist immaturity, of insisting on doing “my own thing”.

If we have learned one thing about human nature, it is that people’s internal sense of goodness does not always match their behaviour. This is the point the Apostle James makes when he refuses to accept an opportunistic distinction between belief and action.

We need something outside our subjective selves to measure our commitment to goodness, else things descend into a cesspool of competing egos. To know whether our actions are good, a window is more effective than a mirror.

The good thing about institutions is that they are also conduits for learning to humility, to accept rules and authority; going where sometimes you would rather not go. Humility is a much needed virtue for our times.

St Augustine says you cannot be a Christian without humility. Christianity is about imitating God’s humility in incarnation.

The Christian of the future will have to be defined not only by a deep sense of humility, but also by the rediscovering of religious life.

Rediscovering our religious roots is about seeing anew what is familiar, and revealing that which somehow has escaped our notice while practising it.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said that “the aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity”.

The election of Pope Francis has brought new hope that has awakened curiosity in people waiting to hear from God. There is a welling-up, a sense of plenitude, which if used right shall transform the grey landscape of dawn into the spaciousness of noon for the Church. We may hope the election of Pope Francis is the beginning of the Church’s Spring.

Like St Francis of Assisi, the future Christians will have to evangelise more by their deeds than by their words. People are tired of sermons and lectures and long debates, even as these do have their place in the life of the Church. The people of good will want mentors and concrete examples to follow.

When asked what it means to be a Christian, the Catholic author GK Chesterton said it is to aspire to be a saint. The world is hankering for saints!

Saints — Iminyanya, in my African culture — are not necessarily religious, but they are definitely communal. They are people of good will to whom the angel announced the Good News of birth of the Saviour.

As it was before, is now, the course of the world will be changed, for the better, only by saints. And what is common about saints is that they are all mystics according to different orders and styles, as it pleases God.

It might seem as if I am endorsing the now fashionable disjuncture between religion and spirituality. I see nothing wrong with spirituality, the self-development towards the full wisdom of God. What I object to is treating religion as if it inhibits authentic spirituality.

My concern is perhaps best expressed by St Teresa of Avila when she wrote about the need to distinguish between actions beginning in God and terminating in the self, and those beginning in the self and terminating in God.

The latter leaves the self-altered in unpredictable and sometimes in alarming ways, but has the effect of enlarging it rather than simply consoling it.