The Christian Spiritual path is based on a deepening trust in God. It is trust that first allows us to take that initial leap in the dark, to encounter God at deeper levels of ourselves. And it is trust that guides the intimate refashioning of our being, the transformation of our pain, woundedness, and unconscious motivation into the person that God intended us to be.

Because trust is so important, our spiritual journey may be blocked if we carry negative attitudes toward God from early childhood. If we are afraid of God or see God as an angry father-figure, a suspicious policeman, or a harsh judge, it will be hard to develop enthusiasm, or even an interest, in the journey.

These negative images of God, which are implanted in us largely as a result of early religious training, are in fact a legacy of past generations and a pervasive set of religious attitudes that represent a distortion--sometimes a 180-degree distortion--of scriptural and gospel values. This is true for both Protestants and Catholics, although its imprint has been felt particularly vividly in the Catholic Church.
Prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-66), a syndrome of attitudes about God that has been labeled the "Western Model of Spirituality" was generally communicated in catechism classes and religious instruction. The term is used by Fr. Richard Hauser, S. J., a professor at Creighton University, in his book In His Spirit. "Spirituality" should be put in quotation marks because the understanding of God that was communicated did not faithfully represent the teaching of Scripture; rather, it showed the heavy influence of the eighteenth-century Age of Reason, with its thought processes dominated by the philosophical dualism of René Descartes and its worldview shaped by Newtonian physics, with the grand image of God "out there," managing a mechanical universe from a majestic distance. The bottom line, according to Fr. Hauser, was a rigidly dualistic sense of "self-outside-of-God," and "God-outside-of-self." This dualism might be characterized by the conviction that down here on earth, completely separated from God, we search, suffer, and struggle, while from some distant heaven God watches and judges.

According to Fr. Hauser, many college students continued to reflect these dispositions even after the Second Vatican Council. These tend to be unconscious but strongly held attitudes that arise spontaneously unless they have been evaluated and updated by a mature judgment. You may recognize some of them by recalling your own early religious instruction.

The first attitude that flows from the Western Model of Spirituality is that external acts are more important than internal acts. The term "external acts" refers to rituals or to the exercise of good works such as fasting, almsgiving, and bodily penances. The term "internal acts" refers to the motives out of which these acts emerge. The former can come from pride and self-centeredness as easily as from love of God and respect for others. Jesus' teaching in the gospels is clear: "Clean the inside of the cup first and then worry about the outside."

The second attitude that flows from the Western Model of Spirituality is that the self initiates all good works and God rewards them. When articulated theologically, this belief comes close to the Pelagian heresy. It brings to mind the image of battling in an arena to placate God for one's sins or to win God's favor, while God sits passively in the bleachers watching the contest. If we do well, it is thumbs up; if we fail, it is thumbs down. The gospel, on the contrary, teaches that God initiates all good deeds through the inspiration of the Spirit abiding within us, while we listen attentively and put into action what the Spirit suggests.

The third attitude that flows from the Western Model of Spirituality is an overarching concern about getting to heaven rather than exercising the love of God and neighbor here and now, as strongly emphasized in the preaching of Jesus. This concern was sometimes expressed by efforts to accumulate merits in this life in order to require God, so to speak, to reward us in the next. Following is a caricature of the "good" Catholic gentleman prior to the Second Vatican Council as perceived by the Western Model. He attends Sunday mass faithfully, never eats meat on Friday, contributes generously to the collection every Sunday. He goes to confession and Communion at least once a year and expects that on his death bed a priest will be there with the Last Rites to anoint him so that he can at least get to purgatory and then after a brief detainment, shortened by means of masses offered for the repose of his soul, move on to heaven to be amply rewarded for his exemplary Catholic life. It might never have occurred to this man that it might be a sin to exasperate or dominate his wife, to shout at the children, to underpay his servants and employees, or to disregard the poor just down the street or in his parish. In short, he adheres to the dogmas and observes the externals of the Catholic religion but fails to practice the gospel. The gospel is a life to be lived, not just a set of observances.

This caricature is not too far-fetched. Before the Second Vatican Council there was a climate that favored bargaining with God, so to speak, to avoid hell or to shorten purgatory. So-called meritorious deeds were exaggerated out of all proportion, an attitude accompanied by a naive disregard for what Scripture clearly states regarding the good we are able to do in and of ourselves. For example, the gospel urges us to love God here and now and to love our neighbor with the same unconditional love with which Jesus has loved us. Excessive concern about future rewards or punishment tended to take ordinary people's attention away from their primary duty of manifesting here and now the love of Christ toward their neighbors. This emphasis on future reward led the Christian people to underestimate the duty of social action, a responsibility that in recent centuries was largely left to religious orders to fulfill.

Human nature prefers to offer substitute sacrifices to placate God rather than to offer the sacrifice that God clearly states in Scripture is the only acceptable one, which is the gift of ourselves. Underlying much external religious practice lies the terror of a god who condemns to hell and the need to placate him. This is the attitude of Typhonic consciousness, the level of consciousness proper to primitive peoples and to children from ages two to four. There is a certain magical approach in this kind of observance: "If I faithfully attend mass every Sunday and confess my sins, even though I never change the value system that is causing them, everything will be okay."

The Scriptural Model of Spirituality, rediscovered by Christian scholars and emphatically endorsed by the documents of the Second Vatican Council, enabled the Church to recognize, recapture, and start to renew Christian teaching and values from the pure source of Scripture. Through the scholarly study of the original meaning of words and the cultural context in which Scripture was written, we probably have a better understanding of the actual intent of the scriptural authors in our time than any generation since the death of the apostles.

The Scriptural Model represents a 180-degree turn from the Western Model. Scripture teaches that interior motivation is more important than external acts. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, "The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath." The Pharisees in his day were following traditions made by human beings, not the Law of Moses and the inspired tradition of the prophets.

Continued . . .

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Excerpted from Intimacy with God by Fr. Thomas Keating

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