Mary and the goal of Christianity

On a Pints with Aquinas interview, the guest responded to the question “Do Catholics worship Mary?” this way, and I thought it was wonderful:

The [real] problem is that [those who say this] don’t understand Christianity. Why did Christ come? Yes, he did come so that I can go to heaven. But to be honest with you, that’s very shallow. Jesus came to make me like God. The Fathers say that God became a man so that man could become like God. The essence of Christianity is that you become like Christ…. That is Christianity. Holiness, deification, theosis. So, when you understand that the goal is union with Christ, then and only then do you understand Mary. For me to love Mary is for me to become like Christ. For me to hate sin is for me is to become like Christ. So, if you have a problem with Mary, your problem is really about Christ’s goal for Christianity, because for me to say “Mary, you’re my mother,” is simply to be a member of the body of Christ.

It has been astounding for me to think that, in being brought into the family of God by Jesus, he shares with me not only his Father, but also his mother. More and more, I feel in need of her compassionate intercession. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Are we angled mirrors?

The pastor at my church frequently articulates the central purpose of man in the following way: “We are angled mirrors, made to reflect the glory of God to his creation, and to reflect back the praises of creation to God.” So we are priests in the sense that we represent God to earth, and in the sense that we represent earth to God.

I take issue with the second part of this, not that we reflect the glory of God to his creation (which I believe we certainly do, as the only animals who bear his image), but the part where we “reflect back the praises of creation to God.”

For one thing, I am not sure that it is true. Creation does not need us to praise God. It does a better job than us! Deer and rivers do not need us to verbalize the praise they owe to God. Are they not praising him now, on their own? Can we not hear them, when we listen? And if we can hear them, how much more can God their maker hear them, who is attentive to the smallest creature he has made, and sensitive to the glory of everything he holds in existence by the continual lending of his own essence! If we were silent, would not even the rocks cry out?

But my more important objection is that this expression of our primary purpose frames it such that we are the agents, and God the patient. We are made so that we would do X to God. (reflect the praises of creation). This is the same as my objection to the Westminster Catechism’s answer to that same question of the purpose of man: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” In it too, we are made to do something to or for God, namely, to “glorify him.”

The verb “enjoy” escapes my criticism for the same reason the whole of the Catholic catechism’s answer does: the semantics of the word keep man as a patient. The Catholic answer is:

Of all visible creatures only man is “able to know and love his creator.” He is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,” and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created.”

To “share in God’s own life” is an infinitely more satisfying answer to the question of our purpose. After all, what good reason can any parent give for “why they had their child” except that they wanted their child to share in their love? How much more true of our Heavenly Father!

In discussing this with a friend after church, we came to the conclusion that our priesthood is only one-way, not two-way. We are priests of God toward creation, not priests of creation toward God. What about how priests represent the people before God when they offer the Paschal sacrifices? Perhaps the difference is that, in that, we are not offering anything created, but the uncreated Christ back to God; and thus, our sacrifice and our worship have come from him. That still keeps us as patients.

So the angled mirrors analogy breaks down. Mirrors are two-way reflectors, transparent and imageless; they merely reflect the image of something else to the viewer. But we are ourselves images with substance, imago dei, less like mirrors, and more like tangible paintings or icons. In his great love, he has deemed that we would show forth his glory by our likeness to him, as we follow him into the great journey of theosis, of entering into his divine life.

It’s true that this works out so that we do glorify God, and so that we do order creation in ways that please God (as I am pleased by my children’s works of art). But somehow, this is not our purpose, but the results of it, radiating out from the great love of God which remains relentlessly fixed on us, like a star-crossed lover, without any ulterior motive.

Success before purpose?

A student asked me today, following a reflective assignment, whether it is possible for a person to be successful as if by accident, without choosing to do the right thing with a knowledge that it was the right thing or without a sense of purpose in the choice, but rather as a sort of random choice. In other words, could it be that a person could be successful without knowing his purpose? Here is my reply:

Darren, you are describing a situation like the story I mentioned in class called “It’s a Wonderful Life” (the Christmas story with the old man angel). In this story, the man (George Bailey) made the choice to be successful (to be loyal to his town and raise a family), even though he did not KNOW that this choice made him successful (he was still wishing to travel and felt “trapped” by his town and his family).

So, you are saying, “Wasn’t he successful before he knew his purpose?”

In some way, yes, I believe he was.

But I believe the story teaches a deeper lesson: Although George chose the right thing, he did not LOVE it: He did not see it and accept it as his real purpose. (Because, to love something is to make it your purpose, your dream.) And that refusal to love the good things he chose made him deeply unhappy. Where did that unhappiness lead him? To a bridge on Christmas eve, ready to jump off. Can we say that anyone who kills himself was truly successful?

So I guess that someone can begin to be successful even before they realize it. But if they refuse to want it, to accept it as their purpose…if they refuse to LOVE it…that success will become failure. I think there are times in each person’s life when they have to choose whether to love like that or not, and I think those moments define the person.

[And, a note to self: it is these moments that crop up time and again in Flannery O’Connor stories, and in Dostoevsky, and perhaps in every good story…]

Some thoughts on purpose and evangelicalism

Most evangelical churches communicate their purpose in terms of a cycle: usually a salvation component, a discipleship component, and an envangelization component, like grow, serve, reach… win, equip, share… glorify God by making fully devoted disciples… etc. Other churches communicate it through their ethos in oft-repeated statements like, “We are blessed so that we can bless.”

There is one sort of organism which seems to possess this kind of cyclical process: a virus. They seem to exist only in order to spread. Biologists question whether to regard viruses as fully living organisms or not.

I do not deny that the purpose of God for man always includes a desire that he would go out, that he would bless others by his blessing. There is indeed something utterly outpouring, something outwardly oriented and abundant, in the nature of God’s love within the trinity. The most natural thing, the inevitable thing, when filled with this love is to move outward, to want to tell it and give it and dance in the streets with it.

But I wish this kind of love were articulated more often in terms of sonship and family, of abundant life rather than replicating machine. What I mean is: as a father I certainly and deeply want my daughter to bless others, and I want her to become the bearer of the truth and love that I am bestowing on her, in a world that will be hers after I am gone. I want her life shine for the glory of God. But I hesitate to frame this great desire as “her purpose” or the reason that I brought her into being. There is something much deeper, more ontological about her purpose–I want her to be simply because I love her and want her to be, because being is good (after all, God is pure being). She is a living being who, to the extent that she comes alive, will radiate life; but her purpose is not to spread life, so much as to be alive. She is an end in herself, because she is, in her very being, the expression of my joy and love. And that is the way I think that it is our purpose to evangelize: to use (hopefully correctly) Thomist language: it is an accidental, rather than substantial purpose, and thus not the most fundamentally descriptive of what our purpose is.

Keeping this distinction makes all the difference, because it is the difference between our approaching the modus operandi of our Christian life as fundamentally doers for God, or receivers of God. The Incarnation of Christ compels us to rejoice that we are indeed the means of God on the earth, but that is only because we are first and forever his ends.

What is the purpose of man?

You have heard that it was said in the Westminster Catechism, “What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” But I say to you that the purpose of man is for God to love him. Since God is love, we may more simply say that the purpose of man is, God. Our purpose is not really to do something for God, as if he wanted something from us, as if there is some ulterior motive, or result to which we are a means. The truest way to express why God made man is not to say that he made us to worship him, or glorify him, or even (though it is close) to enjoy him. Perhaps the problem is in our utilitarian concept of our purpose. Maybe it’s better to put it this way: We are for God—like a gift. Within the trinity we are gifts, from him and to him, an overflow of his love. Within the abounding excess of the fullness of the love of God, there is no need, no purpose or use as we are prone to think of it. You can no more say that “The purpose of man is…” than you can say, “The purpose of waterfalls is…” Like the lover and the beloved, he is for us, and we are for him. Indeed, even in the physical world, it is out of this great inulterior purpose—love—that life springs. Ask any two parents who are trying to have children what purpose they intend for their children and you will find at the heart of their answer that they simply want to have children so they can love them and let them experience life, as if life itself, despite its pain, is some great act of love—which is exactly what it is.

A hard thing to give up

To be used by God requires that I give up knowing how I will be used by God. For a planner and controller, this is exceedingly difficult. I always thought that my drive for success, my motivation to excel, to hew out a name for myself by years of early mornings and late nights–this was virtuous. Hard work is praised highly in both the American dream and mine. Laziness is damnable.

But it seems that America wants it for material prosperity, and I for spiritual legacy and “apostleship.” The life of Christ was simple obedience, an attentive ear to the Father, and the relinquishing of all prominence and honor. God, I will give up anything so that I would just be used by you. But can I give up being used by you?

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, November 10:

“After sanctification, it is difficult to state what your purpose in life is, because God has moved you into His purpose through the Holy Spirit. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself, thinking, “God has called me for this and for that,” you barricade God from using you. As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.”