Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I. Images of God
Activity:
Reflect on this Biblical passages
1. In the beginning of the Gospel according to John, the writer says:
“For the light was coming into the world, the true Light that
enlightens everyone.” (1:9)
Where does the writer suppose the Word was coming from?
We often supposed that each writer means what he says literally. People in the past
thought that the earth was flat and that heaven was in several spheres above the earth. God
lived in one of those spheres.
Do we mean it literally today when we say that the Word came down to us? Is heaven
really up there? Does God stay in heaven, and is God very remote from us?
We must admit that the usual image of God is a God who is very remote from us. But, it
does not always match our personal experience of God. Many of us have experienced a God
who is, in one way or another, present to us in our daily lives. Our experience of God is not that
God is somewhere in heaven. Rather, it is more like the title given to Jesus in the Gospel
according to Matthew, in which we read:
“Now all this took place to fulfill the words spoken by the Lord through
the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to son and they will call him
Emmanuel, a name which means ‘God-is-with-us’.” (1:22-23)
Our experience of God are in the image God-is-with-us. Let us now look at our own
experiences of God who is with us, and share them with one another.
B. FAITH AND REVELATION…
The human person grows and develops, becoming more fully human. As we grow and
develop, our faith can also grow and develop. Our understanding of God and religion will
grow and develop, if we allow it to.
We have known and/or believed in several different images of God. While some were
given to us in the past, we have created others out of our own experiences of God.
Sometimes, these different images compete within us.
It can happen that a strong image of God that we have had for a long time no longer fits
our experiences. When that happens, that image of God from the past can begin to crumble and
no longer speaks to us. Because the image was dominant in the past, we might even begin to
have doubts about God. We might say, “God no longer has meaning for me.” “God is not real
anymore.” But, although we feel that way, God does not cease to exist. It is the image of God
that is dying, and not God Her/Himself.
Our doubts may lead us to stop believing in God, or they may lead us to hang on
desperately to a dominant image of God from the past. But, doubts need not be terrible events
in our lives, as long as we try to stay open to our growth and development, even in matters of
faith.
Some of us may still have received instruction in the traditional catechism, and received
an image of God as king or ruler and judge, who is “out there” in heaven. But, we can also
begin to understand that God is both present everywhere and “up in heaven”. As traditional
Christian theology puts it, God is both immanent* and transcendent*. As immanent, God is not
somewhere else, but is right here and everywhere. As transcendent, God cannot be identified
with one particular thing. And, even if we put all things together, they will not add up to God.
God is more than everything. Yet, everything is in God.
When we study our experiences of God, we gradually realize that God, who we were
taught as the sacred and the holy, is real. God is not just a concept or a belief but is an element of
an experience. The only way we can really know and understand God is through our
experiences.
As we grow in our faith, our images and understanding of God and religion may grow.
We can see this quite clearly in the Bible. The writers of the Jewish Scriptures were writing
about a God who was present to them and with them in their lives. As their history presented
them with new challenges, their images and understanding of God also changed.
The childhood stage of the faith of Israel can be seen in the stories of the Patriarchs* and
the Exodus. The stories do not present historical description of what happened to the people.
Rather, they were meant to teach some of the mysteries that are related to God, nature, and
humanity. The language and imagery is of magic and the world is seen from the eyes of a child.
God, therefore, is viewed as a magician.
The older childhood phase of the faith of Israel have begun on Mount Sinai. Like
children, the people wanted to know exactly what they are allowed to do and not allowed to do.
They measured their worthiness before God in terms of how well they fulfilled the Law.
Therefore, they viewed God as a judge.
In the “teen-age” phase of the faith of Israel, the Law became more deeply established in
their life, as they grew in relationship in each other. They moved into a tribal structure and the
Law bound them together. They were united, but they did not know mercy. They viewed God
as tribal lord who was capricious and arbitrary.
Like young adults, Israel’s faith gradually developed an awareness towards others. The
prophets were very active in helping Israel get to this stage. Often, they challenged the people
by proclaiming that the heart of God’s covenant rested on their concern for the poor and the
oppressed, for Jew and non – Jew alike. So, at this stage, they saw God as a just, loving, and
caring God.
This was the beginning of their maturity in faith, which meant growing past magic,
legalism, and tribalism.
Later, the faith of Israel grew into “middle age.” The writings known as Wisdom
Literature reflect the midlife crisis of Israel. Their defeat by the Babylonians and their exile to
Babylon precipitated the crisis. The crisis itself was that because of what happened, they started
to question everything that they had always believed. They believed that God was present to
them in Temple. But, the Temple had been destroyed. God promised they would always have a
king who descended from David. But, there was no more king. The justice and mercy of God
was no longer clear. But because they had the humility to admit to themselves that they did not
have all the answers, they grew in wisdom and moved to a new level of relationship with their
God. God was viewed as a personal God. Surprisingly, as they grew into a deeper level of their
consciousness of God, they grew, at the same time, into a deeper level of self-consciousness and
social consciousness
3. AN UNDERSTANDING OF SALVATION
Our idea of salvation* follows our understanding of God. We received from the past the
idea that salvation means happiness in the after-life, in heaven, the God who is king and
mighty.
In Jewish Scriptures, there is a different view of God. God is not “out there,” but is
involved in the history of the people. Therefore, for many of the Jews, there was no notion of
salvation as happiness in the after-life, in heaven. The notion of an after-life started only
around the time of the writing of the Book of Maccabees and writing of the Book of Daniel,
which was later than 103 BCE.
In the history of the Jewish people, we saw the Jewish experiences of God and have seen
their understanding of God develop. Let us retrace the steps of the history of the Jewish people.
This time, let us find out how their understanding of salvation developed.
At an early stage, God was seen as a Tribal Lord. As Tribal Lord, God was the giver of
land. Israel was a nomadic people, who were enslaved by the Egyptians. For them, salvation
meant to be set free and to go on an exodus towards “the Promised Land.” They were guided
by God, who entered into a covenant relationship with them.
Land is one of the most powerful symbols of salvation in the Bible. It refers to the
basic need of people. In our country, where lands have been taken away from many of our
tribal sisters and brothers and where there are still so many landless people, we understand
why land is so vital for human life, to have land means to have an identity as a people. It is to
experience freedom and peace, to live long, and to bequeath prosperity to one’s children and
grandchildren.
To the Jewish people, land promised total well-being, freedom, prosperity, and long
life. But, as soon as the Jewish people possessed the land, the rich, rulers, and kings
grabbed/horded it. The Yahweh of the prophets could not allow this, Yahweh was a just God
who protected the well-being of the poor and powerless in society.
The call of the prophets was not heeded. The Jews lost their land and had to go through
a new exodus. It was a new exodus of exile and return, in order to restore justice and the life of
their families and their nation. God became a personal God who gave people salvation. Now,
salvation meant the wisdom and compassion needed to build up a society nurtured by God’s
love and care.
From this short history of Israel, we realize that salvation need not be seen only in terms
of an afterlife. Salvation expresses first of all total well-being (“ginhawa”) in our life now: love,
care, peace, justice, wholeness of life. In Jesus’ preaching, this idea of salvation did not change.
Jesus was a Jew, who grew in the awareness of the long tradition of Israel. For him, too,
surrounded as he was by poverty, oppression and injustice, land was most important. He
sought to restore justice, peace, equality love and compassion with Israel. Jesus expressed this
in a master symbol which is the focus of the synoptic gospels: the Kingdom of God*. The God
of the covenant would again rule over Israel. He is a God who care for his people and will
recreate the poor, the rabble, the impious, and the wicked into human being. People will be able
to come home, to themselves and to a community of equals, imbued by mutual care and love.
At this stage, we have to highlight the core of Jesus’ preaching. It is about a God of
unconditional love (cf. the parable of the Prodigal Son, Lk 15:11-32). For Jesus, salvation is
something that God does because God cares passionately about what happens in human
history. God desires that every one will live with God now and in the future. God cares about
us so that God chooses to live with us now.
Such a view tells us that salvation is not something that we obtain by what we do or
what we do not do. Salvation is something that God has done, is doing, and will continue to do
in our lives. What we are saying is that God is love. Because God is love, God accepts us
unconditionally. We are accepted by God just as we are, even though we may be weak and
sinful. This seems to be the central message of Jesus or Jesus’ message of salvation. He says,
“God loves you just as you are. You do not need to earn God’s favor to win God’s love. (enter
biblical passage on the Prodigal Son)
C. PRAXIS…
a. Our Culture
Culture is a human creation. It is created by society as a whole, not only by a few
individuals. Because culture is a human creation, it can change; it can be re-created. Recreating
a culture is often a long and slow process because many aspects of the culture are embedded in
the society.
A culture has beliefs, values, customs and institutions. They provide the society with
some degree of unity. A culture also gives some members of society a sense of identity, dignity,
security, and continuity. Just as we can acknowledge that any dimension of the human person
can help or hinder the person’s process of integration, depending upon how the dimension is
used, the same may be said of culture. How we use a perception, a cultural action, or an
attitude can help or hinder our integration into the culture. Furthermore, the way we use these
dimensions of a culture can help or hinder our attempts to transform that culture’s social and
political institutions.
Cultures never simply exist, they are not static but dynamic. A culture is not only open
to change. A culture is constantly and slowly changing, as the members of the society adapt to
their ever-changing environment. The manner in which culture changes depends upon how the
members use those ever-changing internal and external forces acting upon their society.
b. Cultural Attitudes and Transformation
The values in any culture are always ambiguous realities. They can be life-giving or
death-dealing depending on the context in which they function. Redirecting some of our
cultural values may be a very difficult task because values are mostly sanctioned by religion.
An example of this cultural values is family-centeredness. We said that generosity
within the family has often a reverse side which is a lack of concern for the common good. The
care for the family alone, at the expense of the wider community, has led to political dynasties,
family monopolies, nepotism, and so on. We will have to question several aspects of our family
centeredness, if we want to arrive at an effective program of nation building. The same painful
process of questioning our other Filipino values will have to happen, if we are to sincerely
commit ourselves to political transformation. Let us now look at the elements needed for such a
transformation.
Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has intensified its efforts to
challenge Christians to be committed to socio-political transformation. The most quoted
statement can be found in the document Justice in the World of the Synod of Bishops (1971):
“Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to
us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of Church’s mission for
the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”
This document and the subsequent papal encyclicals point to four building blocks which
will lead to a transformation of society:
The first element is the common good. Every society needs as a foundation stone a concern
for what is good for all the members of society. This means that people, within a society, must
be willing to sacrifice their own personal and familial needs when those needs are detrimental
to the good of society as a whole.
The second element is justice that is maintained and established for all. This principle is
contrary to the “Robin Hood” attitude, in which someone robs from the rich to give to the poor.
We are challenged to realize that if we are to bring about peace, we can only do it by working,
at the same time, to establish justice for all people.
The third element is service. Those who work for society are performing a service to
society. This principle admits that those who work in social work and politics, as well as those
who seek to transform structures, are the servants of the people. Therefore, they are not to be
self-serving or family serving.
The last element is empowerment. We are not to seek power for ourselves. We can best
achieve our ends by working so that those who are most in need become empowered. We need
to help the powerless to find ways in which they can exercise power.