Skip to main content

To Be in Relationship

When I was in graduate school, one of the things we joked about was all the big words we were learning.  Learning the big words was not a joke.  We all understood why we were doing it.  The big words gave us an ability to be more precise about what we were discussing.  Our conversations were often about deep things that were not capable of absolutely clear description.  God is the biggest example here.  We would joke that if anyone described God precisely, that person did not know God.  And we felt like the joke was true!
   
We joked about our big words knowing that we could never use these big words in many of our venues of ministry.  If we were preaching to a group of normal folks, we cannot use the big words.  They would not be understood and that is the point of speaking---to be understood.  And if we use big words when they hampered our cause, then we were the joke.
   
I thought about this when I recently read one of Richard Rohr’s daily meditations.  I will use only one sentence from that selection.  Rohr says, “As the old saying goes, do you want to be right or do you want to be in relationship?”  It does not much matter the context of this sentence within the Rohr meditation.  I want to use it to illustrate my own point.  
   
I do know that Rohr talked about relationship because this is a primary way of talking about God.  And this is my point, too.  Relationship is key to our dealing with God.  And if you think about God with respect to the Trinity, relationship is key there, too.  Let me address that in the first place. 
   
While I don’t want to make a big deal of the Trinity, I do find it still a useful way---albeit one way---to talk about who God is.  The early church chose to use personal terms to describe the members of the Trinity.  The classical terms are Father and Son.  I am ok with that description.  I am also quite good with using maternal language, so that we talk appropriately of God as Mother.  The Son of God can also be used with feminine, such as Wisdom (or Sophia, as she is in Greek).  The advantage of this kind of personal language is we can talk about relationship within the Trinity.
   
More importantly for our meditative reflection here is that relationship is a key way of talking about humans and our experience of God, the Holy One.  As a Quaker, I always heard that relationship was first.  Relationship was the way we “knew God.”  Without relationship---which is to say, experience---we can only “know about God.”  To know about God is what doctrine is about.  So this is the basic distinction to be made here: the distinction between experience and doctrine.
   
It is understandable how doctrine arose.  Let’s say we have an experience of God.  For example, I sometimes experience God as a kind of “presence.”  In my heart I know and call that “presence” with the word God.  But then, someone might ask me about my experience.  This causes me to have to do theology.  I now have to reflect on my experience and try to put it into words.  I might even say something like, “words don’t really capture my experience.” 
   
But I struggle and say that God’s presence is like a “light.”  If others concur that this is a good description of their experience, then a doctrine begins to develop.  We can all say that “God is Light.”  This becomes a doctrinal statement.  Fair enough.  But doctrine can develop in some particular ways.  For example, we might begin to think it is necessary to affirm that God is Light.  This doctrine starts to be “true,” even when there may not even be an experience with which it is associated.  A personal example of mine would be all those times in my younger years when I would talk about religion and use doctrine, but was not sure that I had even experienced God---at least yet.
   
While I could articulate doctrine, I longed for experience.  I even took Religion classes in college where I learned a great deal about doctrine---the Trinity, etc.  Even atheists can learn Christian doctrine (or Jewish doctrine or Muslim).  But it does not mean you know anything about God.  Furthermore, various denominations might insist that some doctrines are “right” and others are not.  Now the emphasis is upon doctrine---often at the expense of relationship, as it is grounded in experience.
   
Doctrines can become the way to have theological fights.  These never interested me much.  I was more interested in how people experienced God and then how this could nurture my own experience.  This is why the Rohr sentence so captured my own spirit.  Indeed, I would rather have relationship than be right about doctrine.  Or to quote Rohr again, “As the old saying goes, do you want to be right or do you want to be in relationship?”
   
I want to be in relationship.  Relationship is the way experience is extended over time.  It is with God, just as it is with members of our family or our friends. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I-Thou Relationships

Those of us who have read theology or, perhaps, those who are people of faith and are old enough might well recognize this title as a reminder of the late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber.   I remember reading Buber’s book, I and Thou , when I was in college in the 1960s.   It was already a famous book by then.   I am not sure I fully understood it, but that would not be the last time I read it.   It has been a while since I looked at the book.             Buber came up in a conversation with a friend who asked if I had seen the recent article by David Brooks?   I had not seen it, but when I was told about it, I knew I would quickly locate and read that piece.   I very much like what Brooks decides to write about and what he contributes to societal conversation.   I wish more people read him and took him seriously.             Brooks’ article focused on the 2016 contentious election.   He provocatively suggests, “Read Buber, Not the Polls!”   I think Brooks puts

Spiritual Commitment

I was reading along in a very nice little book and hit these lines about commitment.   The author, Mitch Albom, uses the voice of one of the main characters of his nonfiction book about faith to reflect on commitment.   The voice belongs to Albom’s old rabbi of the Jewish synagogue where he went until his college days.   The old rabbi, Albert Lewis, says “the word ‘commitment’ has lost its meaning.”    The rabbi continues in a way that surely would have many people saying, “Amen!”   About commitment he says, “I’m old enough when it used to be a positive.   A committed person was someone to be admired.   He was loyal and steady.   Now a commitment is something you avoid.   You don’t want to tie yourself down.”   I also think I am old enough to know that commitment was usually a positive word.   I can think of a range of situations in which commitment would have been seen to be positive.   For example, growing up was full of sports for me.   Commitment would have been presupposed t

Inward Journey and Outward Pilgrimage

There are so many different ways to think about the spiritual life.   And of course, in our country there are so many different variations of religious experiences.   There are liberals and conservatives.   There are fundamentalists and Pentecostals.   Besides the dizzying variety of Christian traditions, there are many different non-Christian traditions.   There are the major traditions, such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on.   There are the slightly more obscure traditions, such as Sikhism, Jainism, etc.   And then there are more fringe groups and, even, pseudo-religions.   There are defining doctrines and religious practices.   Some of these are specific to a particular tradition or a few traditions, such as the koan , which is used in Zen Buddhism for example.   Other defining doctrines or practices are common across the religious board.   Something like meditation would be a good example.   Christians meditate; Buddhists meditate.   And other groups practice this spiri