As a clergyman, I’m aware of the various ways people have searched for God. Traditionally it’s churches, synagogues and mosques where people start searching. Searches include reading sacred scripture, fasting, meditation, mortifications (for Americans, it’s typically foreswearing chocolate and second helpings), prayer,
sacraments, contemplating the wonders of the natural world, in wildernesses, corporate worship, and works of charity. Other places searched have included an empty tomb, in and along rivers, in oceans, and on mountaintops to mention a few. Some people search within themselves. That’s always a tricky business and the toughest challenge of all.
Results vary. One thing is certain – finding God is not accomplished all at once. We gain periodic glimpses of the divine milieu while we’re looking which is usually enough to build a viable faith. That suffices for most and mobilizes the energy for continuing the journey. A potential postmodern means for searching for God has developed: the computer. Today, computers dominate our lives. Writer Adam Gopnik, was discouraged about our global conflicts and wrote about how he went on line to learn what God was thinking about our troubled world.
Before proceeding directly to God.com, Gopnik, writing in the New Yorker Magazine, he tells us that he began his search by looking at ” . . . all the lesser things through which he (God) is said to reveal himself. ”
He typed in the names of several spiritual graces: hope, faith, mercy and charity. Hope was a blank page; faith, a company slogan; and mercy, a Catholic hospital network in Knoxville. Charity turned out to be essentially a site for collecting money for relief enterprises. Virtues like truth and beauty also came up as businesses. Jesus.com turned up only quirky entrepreneurs somewhere in Virginia. Gopnik’s search wanders, seeming to go nowhere, characteristic of the early steps of any spiritual journey.
Then he enters God.com. “Sorry,” is the reply, “No Such Address…You may have found one of the millions of links to Web sites that have gone out of business or moved without leaving a forwarding address.” Not encouraging. Finally, on an impulse, he types in God. Org. The screen reads, “Coming soon–a site for all.” God’s around, we may conclude, but doesn’t answer his emails the way we might wish. The reply isn’t much, Gopnik reflects, but “ it’s . . . enough for this sad season.”
For me, computers are the devil’s handiwork. I’m a computer klutz. In searching for God (it’s an ongoing thing, never completed) I use more conventional means like the one’s mentioned above. Interestingly, my search results are similar to Gopnik’s: God rarely gives me straight answers to direct enquiries, and I invariably have to wait.
I’ve noticed how seriously younger people (late teens through their thirties) ponder life’s mysteries. Many are not religious, but are curious about the idea of God, although most resist using the word ‛God’ because of the bigotry often associated with the word. They’re deeply troubled about environmental degradation, indignant about racial injustice, confused by the cruel prejudices surrounding sexual orientation, interested in women’s issues, and discouraged by how justice remains the hostage to power and money. They don’t trust clergy or politicians – not without some justification, I’d add. However, many young people remain spiritually hungry.
There’s depth and passion in our young people’s spiritual search for truth, dignity and transcendence. But they’re suspicious of the institutions that have historically addressed these issues like established religion and governance. Many of these young people grew up in main line Christian denominations or Judaism. Yet many feel their concerns are not significant to the present day’s religious preoccupations, nor taken seriously by government. As one young woman said after discussing women’s rights with her minister, ” I feel like he thought I was just one of those bra waving feminists.”
Old time religion may have been good enough for Jonah, but it’s not working for an increasing number of the upcoming generation. Religion shouldn’t be dismissed; it must be revisited. And although browsing the web may offer information, it can’t tell us what’s really important. That’s what discernment does and discernment is a spiritual discipline.
I believe our young people would welcome help in discernment. There are spiritually seasoned practitioners within established religious institutions willing to enter the conversation openly, without an agenda. They’re frequently called spiritual directors.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen changes in religious bodies. When Roman Catholics began saying Mass in English from the Latin, there was strong resistance not because it didn’t make sense, but because it’s painful to change the long habits of our hearts. We always become attached to what’s familiar. When Episcopalians undertook the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, it was fought tooth and nail from people who did not want to have this comfortable continuity with their past taken away; many felt betrayed. Now, religious bodies face far more thorny issues: women’s ordination, the status of gays and lesbians in ecclesiastical leadership, gay marriage, established religions’ complicity in racial and economic injustice and the ethics of reproductive rights. It’s important for religion to openly engage young people in conversation.
I found Gopnik’s playful excursion, refreshing. So why not search the web? The fatal error we make isn’t where we search, but that we stop searching. The fatal error is to believe that one site has the whole truth. I hope our young people will keep questioning and that they’ll seek for answers everywhere. When browsing the web for truth and God, however, I wonder if we’d get more reliable search results going with .org rather than .com. I say that because when truth and God go commercial, you can bet we’re being sold out.
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