God isn’t found in change
I am taking an online course for teachers this summer. We can take courses online to learn how to teach certain subjects, and to become qualified for more specialized roles within the education system. Also, if you are near the bottom of the salary grid (like I am) you can move up by taking a certain number of these courses. They are called “Additional Qualification” courses, or AQs for short. This summer I am taking “Religious Education for Catholic Schools”. I have to take this course, as it is a requirement for all teachers on permanent contracts. But it also happens to be the last course that I need in order to move up a level on the salary grid. Woohoo! I will be getting a raise just in time for my wife to go on maternity leave. She is 36 weeks pregnant as I write this. Let’s just hope that the skin on her feet can hold out a few weeks longer! (If she stands for very long her feet start to look like balloon animals)
The course requires me to do a bunch of reading each week, and respond to prompts, or complete little assignments. I probably spend 9 hours a week on it. The other day I had to read some things about social media, and what the Catholic church says about it. One of the articles was a guideline for church workers on how to run websites and blogs. One point stood out to me: It said that you should be publishing new content all the time. It made me laugh a little bit. How can you keep saying new things about something (God) which does not change?
God does not change. God is always the same. So, how much can someone say about him? In a way, you could say infinite things about God. Imagine if you had all the stories from individuals who have ever experienced God’s presence, grace, love, and or help in their lives. It would be endless volumes. But for someone who is trying to tell people about God, there is only so much that one can say. That is probably the biggest reason that I haven’t been blogging this summer. I haven’t been away on vacation. I haven’t been too busy (although I have tried to keep busy). I just don’t always have new things to say about God. But I do have something to say today.
It appears that people think about God less often today than ever before. When I was younger, I struggled to make sense of God and life. So, it was hard for me to believe in God with any certainty. Eventually I was inspired by reading someone’s personal account of knowing God. That person lived in India. So, I read into the faith and spiritual philosophy of India and I found ideas that made sense to me. Those ideas allowed me to reconcile God with the world in which I lived. With that foundation in place, I pursued a relationship with God through prayer and spiritual disciplines.
Based on my experience, it would make sense that there would be a spiritual renaissance in todays’ world. Thanks to the internet (and increased immigration) people can have access to both personal testimonials of faith, and spiritual literature from all over the world. People from India could share their spiritual philosophy with western Christians, and vice versa. People could piece together their own puzzle and finally make sense of life and God. Why isn’t that happening? Because people aren’t thinking about God, period.
Why? Maybe it is because God is unchanging, and the human ego is wired for change. We seek change. We want to control everything and everyone around us. We want to choose everything we do, eat, watch, consume, what we look like, where we are, who is around us, etc. Whatever our experience is in the present moment, we want to change it. If we are doing nothing, we want to do something. From the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep, we try to change our present experience every nano second of the day. If you are reading this right now, you are going to move on to the next word. You are forcing change.
God can’t be found in change. He can’t be seen or heard when we are exerting our will. An analogy that has been used countless times is that our minds and hearts are like a lake and God is at the bottom. When the water is perfectly still, we can see to the bottom and see God. But when the surface is agitated with waves, we can’t see the bottom and can’t see God.
A lot of people think that religion, faith, and spirituality has declined because we have grown too smart for it. We have wizened up. We are no longer fooled by that idea. I’m sorry, friends. It is the opposite. We have forgotten God because we are too busy chasing things that aren’t God. We are trying to satisfy our own egos.
The beautiful part is that God is o.k. with that. God is letting the whole world forget him and try to live their lives without him. Why? Because that is the lesson. He doesn’t need people to worship him because he is the most powerful. He doesn’t need to stand over us and demand that we kneel. He wants our hearts. He wants to help us. He wants to love us and be loved by us. That is why he lets us go on our big ego trips. That is why he has let everyone go crazy, always seeking to change things and make them better, but actually making a lot of things worse.
Eventually, we are going to learn that our egos deceive us. In French the word deceive or “decevoir” means to disappoint. A deception, in French, is a disappointment. Our egos deceive us, and after “God-knows” how much time we spend trying to make things better by changing everything, we will be so exasperated and so disappointed that we will seek peace and love more than change and control. We will start saying, “I don’t care how it works out. I don’t need to control everything. Everything that I have tried has led me to unhappiness. I just want peace. I just want to be happy.” That is God’s long game.
If you are at that point, I will tell you where peace can be found: In biting your tongue, stilling your hand, resisting the urge to go on your phone or turn on the TV, and not trying to do anything else to make yourself happy. Peace can be found in this simple idea: God wants you to be happy. God will make you happy if you let him. VERY few, if any people are doing it right now. So, there won’t be a line-up to meet God. And he has an over-abundance of peace to offer anyone who wants it.
The idea that God doesn’t change is actually a very peaceful thought. No matter what you have done, it didn’t effect him. He is still there, and still down to hang, anything.