Ch. 8 The GOD-Centric Response
Theme Song: Love Is The Answer-England Dan & John Ford Coley
“We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God.” ~ St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle
How should a GOD-centric person respond when encountering an “other” who chooses to be selfish, immoral, and unfair or who devotes themselves to a vision of God that is unloving, immoral, or unfair? Love them. How should a GOD-centric person respond when encountering an “other” of a different race, social class, political ideology, nationality, sexual orientation, or religion? Love them. When in doubt, love. When not in doubt, love. “Love” is easy to type yet difficult to define and to do. Love is both a verb and a noun, an action and a destination, a means and an end, the tone of our conversation and the goal of our transformation. Being GOD-centric means that we no longer blow with the breeze of circumstance allowing the behavior of others to determine our behavior. Being GOD-centric means that we are centered in God's love, that we are committed to expressing God's love, and through expressing God's love to better loving God, but how? What are the practical steps we should take to respond to others with love?
Step 1: Relationship with God
In order to be able to express God's love in the world, it is important that we maintain the well of love in our own hearts by continually refilling from the eternal source of love, God. To refill, we must be in a relationship with God, not just committed to our thoughts about God: “Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees." (St. Gregory of Nyssa) Just as there are many ways to share a loving relationship with another person, I believe there are many ways to share a loving relationship with God. Each GOD-centric person should relate to God in the ways that better suit their personality, experience, culture, or tradition. For me, opening myself to God through meditation or contemplative prayer works best. Clearing away the clutter of my mind and opening my receptivity to God's love and wisdom nearly always fills me with love and gratitude. Sometimes it allows my boundaries to fall before the power of a mystical experience:
“In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church where I kneel./ Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist./ Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is illumined nothing,/ where ecstasy gets poured into itself and becomes lost,/ where the wing is fully alive but has no mind or body?/ In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church/ that dissolve, that dissolve in God.”
~ Rabia of Basra, In My Soul
I return time and time again to this great well of God's love to replenish myself as I try to live out God's love in the world. Spending time in loving relationship with God lifts me out of my limited self-perspective, allows my vision to expand as I stand rapt in awe, fills my coffers of love, and readies me to love others.
Step 2: Quality of Being
“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.” (The Talmud) To carry forward the love and insights from our relationship with God requires spiritual discipline and focus. We are responsible for the quality of being we bring to the world. The GOD-centric person hopes to bring love, goodness, and fairness but to do so requires taking responsibility for where and how we focus our attention.
We should try to avoid the love draining influences of pettiness and anger by keeping mindful of the worthiness of the ways in which we use our time and energy. Enjoying frivolity from time to time can be a delightful rejoicing in the small things but a steady diet of the trivial depletes us of the sustenance we need to thrive. Anger can be a valuable tool for recognizing and correcting injustice but anger not spent wisely can feed upon itself growing unwieldy and mean. We should be wise stewards of our anger and avoid feeding it past its point of constructive use. Let's ask ourselves how likely it is that our anger will successfully bring about positive change. If our anger would not likely create increased justice or help build a more loving society, we should not remain in an emotionally angry place. We should never vent anger just because we believe we are right; we should only use anger to motivate ourselves to take constructive action. Venting almost never brings about positive change and usually just further entrenches everyone involved. We should not allow anger to drain our reservoir of love.
Let's try to be as spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically strong as we can so we do not bring a depleted quality of being to the world. If we are feeling deficient, we will likely seek our own fulfillment from others rather than trying to fulfill them. To be loving is to be other-focused and we cannot be truly other-focused if we do not have our own houses in loving and peaceful order. We give best from a place of generosity and we are most generous when we are giving to the world a quality of being that is centered in God's love, goodness, and fairness.
Step 3: Attitude Towards Others
“The more I love humanity in general the less I love humans in particular” so sayeth Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov and so liveth me in my daily life. I love the idea of people, the potential of people, the heights and the depths of people; however, actual people tend to get on my nerves when they are intellectually and emotionally inconsiderate of others and of that which is most important in life ~ living out God's love. What should my response be? Love them! “That of God in everyone, that of God in everyone, that of God in everyone” is the Quaker mantra that adorns many post-it reminders in my work space. I will keep trying and I hope you will too.
To love others, we must genuinely believe in their value as beloved of God. If God loves them, we should too. Allowing another person to be different from us in full dignity can be challenging. There may be a part of us that seeks to force conformity, to make the other person admit that our way is right or superior. When these impulses rise, we must recognize them and stop ourselves. Loving another person does not mean reshaping them to look like ourselves so that in the end we are really just gazing into Narcissus' mirror. We must value the other person and honor their potential to teach us by delivering wisdom that helps us grow towards God. We must be willing to learn something new, admit that we have something new to learn, admit that we do not have all the answers though we do have the heart and wisdom to seek the answers.
To love another person is to truly value the ways in which they are different from ourselves; however, being GOD-centric is not to be completely relativistic. The GOD-centric person truly values differences in others so long as those differences do not contradict a good and fair God of love and our living out God's love. Does the different viewpoint increase the movement of love in the other person's life? Does the different viewpoint lead to an improved quality of being in the other person? Does the other person become less self-centered and more generous with others? If so, the sharing of this difference is a cause for rejoicing because through their sharing this other person has allowed us to expand our own repertoire of love and to experience a fuller unfolding of our good God.
Step 4: Action On Behalf of Others
“The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.” (St. Gregory the Great) Remember my childhood mantra: “What would God want me to do?” and my questing mantra: “If that were true, what would it say about God?” The GOD-centric mantra is “How would my action affect the movement of love in the world?” Living out God's love in individual circumstances is very important and it is also important that we live out God's love in our corporate interactions. To be GOD-centric means that our good and fair God of love is central to everything we do. Being GOD-centric will impact every aspect of our lives from what we will eat for dinner to how we collectively respond to an international crisis. Being GOD-centric is more than being perpetually sweet, spreading sunshine, and distributing lollipops. It is Kingdom building wherein we create a world where love, goodness, and fairness thrive. How would our actions affect the movement of love in the world? Loving people can hold a variety of responses which should be shared and heard respectfully in full eagerness that we each have something of value to bring to the table and that together we can create a loving solution. We are called to express God's love through goodness and fairness in every aspect of our lives and thereby transform ourselves and the world.
Love is the answer: "At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.” (St. John of the Cross, Dichos 64) Living out God's love is the central spiritual practice of the GOD-centric person. We continually return to our Godly source of love to strengthen the quality of being we bring to the world so we can better interact lovingly with other people as we look forward to being transformed by them and to better realizing God. In all matters large and small, the GOD-centric person returns to the question of how the issue at hand would affect the movement of love in the world. Returning to this question time and time again develops a habit of character that can transform us from being instinctively selfish to being naturally, lovingly considerate. The more the question is asked, the stronger the habit of responding to God's call to love. How would my action affect the movement of love in the world? Ask that question time and time again and watch the flowering of God's love, goodness, and fairness in creation. Love is the answer:
"Love is the mystery of divine revelations! Love is the effulgent manifestation! Love is the spiritual fulfillment! Love is the light of the Kingdom! Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit! Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth in the phenomenal world! Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!" ~ `Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of `Abdu'l-Bahá
