The Mechanical God Doesn’t Love You
If you’ve ever had a bad first impression of someone, then you know how hard it is to see that person in a positive light. Sometimes we do not even need to have a bad experience ourselves. Someone’s words may put someone else in a bad light, leading us to distrust every word and action as if it was coming from a place of malice.
At other times, the stories and reputation we hear about another person is not meant to be said in a negative light, but is meant to help us relate to that person better. A friend or co-worker is trying to actually help us by preparing us for how demanding an employer can be or by giving us insights into what our boss may or may not like. In order to make our own good first impression, we may distort or exaggerate our personalities or make an extra effort to cater to the other’s needs, all the while we are never actually getting to know our employer, simply their likes, dislikes, or second-hand expectations.
If this can happen with those around us, it can certainly happen with how we perceive God.
Someone may have an incredibly negative image of God and in an effort to “protect” their children or friends, may do everything they can to warn them against coming to know, trust, or believe in a judgmental, indifferent, or malevolent deity.
Perhaps even more dangerous, however, is someone who proclaims themself a Christian, yet has an equally distorted image of God This person may be incredibly zealous and may even have a good intention of helping others come to know God, yet the person’s warped understanding and experience of God only leads to preaching this false god to those in their circle of influence.
Proclaiming a false or distorted image of God can come in a wide variety of approaches. One approach that is easy to fall into is seeing our God as an unthinking machine. In this view, this mechanical god is cold and simply needs to be fed the right amount of prayers or correct behaviors in order to respond to our needs.
When we hear the mechanical god described in such blunt terms, we may scoff and wonder who really would see God that way. Yet, I think that when we look at the number of future former Catholics our schools are churning out, the newly dead whose children and grandchildren stumble and mutter through the funeral liturgy without really knowing what is going on, and the desolate churches devastated by lockdowns who may never see the majority of their pews filled again, we do see evidence that the mechanical god is not far from people’s minds.
The explosion of the “nones” and disaffiliated is a complex issue, but I think that if we do not recognize how our actions and words may contribute in some way to the distancing of many from the faith, then we will continue to have those hard conversations with friends and loved ones who simply aren’t interested in the faith anymore.
“We evangelize how we were evangelized”
If you are reading this, it is likely that you had a moment or several of moments in your life when you began to take ownership of the gift of faith you received or at least had a powerful experience of the presence of God in your life. In many cases, once we’ve had such a good experience of God, we have a strong desire to share that same experience with others. We can recruit others to go on the same retreat we went on or to attend the same style of liturgy or style of prayer that moves us.
Sharing God through the experiences that moved us can be incredibly powerful as we can see in others the same fire that burns deep within us.
The danger of this approach is found in believing that imposing a certain behavior or necessitating certain conditions is required in order for God to show up in the same way that He did for us. Instead of explaining why a certain style of prayer (for example) may be fruitful, we only show how to do it. There is no longer freedom to actually pray; in this case - now we only find robotic actions aimed at a mechanical god.
A young person often needs to begin by learning how to pray the rosary, but as they grow older is the time taken to explain why and what is actually happening in this prayer? Do we expect that as the child grows they will simply come to a point of enlightenment and begin to deeply meditate and immerse themselves within the biblical scenes of each decade?
If we fail to help those who are still growing in the faith come to a deeper understanding of the mechanics of prayer, then it should be no surprise that they are completely disinterested in worshipping a mechanical god. In their eyes, the rosary becomes some kind of superstitious ritual being offered to a machine that demands a certain amount of prayers in order to dispense the approach response - God becomes a vending machine.
In other instances, creating certain conditions that result in sensations becomes more important than helping form someone in a realistic spiritual life. We can believe that following a certain retreat formula with mathematical precision or posturing our bodies in certain ways can lead to a better “experience” of God, so we impose this on others, demanding that they focus more on the sensation than the person of God - in other words, God becomes a jacuzzi.
It is not just prayer, however, it is also moral behavior as well. It can be easy to demand certain behaviors be followed and to instill the how of morality; yet, as children grow or as those new to the faith begin to mature, we can fail to explain the why. Those living under the dictatorship of only how, revolt and begin to act in the exact opposite way of what was originally communicated to them. In their eyes, it is not so much a rebellion against the living God, it is a stretch towards freedom away from the chains of a robotic overlord that demands right behavior in order to dispense portions of “love.”
Maybe the imagery sounds dramatic, but I think that if we want to see a shift in the outward flow of Catholics from our parishes and schools, it is essential that we consider how our approach to preaching, teaching, and even living the faith may create a distorted image of who our God has revealed Himself to be.
Confronted with Reality
Our God, of course, has revealed Himself to be personal. We have the ability to have a relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While this may sound obvious, it is important to consider that we live in a culture where this truth can no longer be assumed. In fact, it can be incredibly easy even for those who go to Mass every weekend, volunteer in the parish, and serve the poor to do all of this because they have disciplined themselves in the how but not the why of the faith. All of the activity risks becoming a performance - an outward sign with a hollow interior. Parents who have found themselves stuck in a performative faith pass on not an encounter with the living God, but a series of expectations that are interpreted only as a family tradition - a tradition that is easily left behind when the children leave the home to start their own lives.
Oftentimes we can find comfort in the metrics, that is, the numbers, believing that they somehow are more important than the fruit itself. We can convince ourselves that because our schools or parishes are maintaining a certain amount of people that this somehow translates to some form of success. In a bittersweet way, COVID-19 has uncovered in a matter of months what may have taken years for us to actually see. Many, regardless of whether dispensations are lifted, will simply not return. Years of attending the same Mass every weekend is not necessarily an indication that a person has come to know our personal God.
In a teaching from November 14, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI wrote:
“Many people today have a limited idea of the Christian faith, because they identify it with a mere system of beliefs and values rather than with the truth of a God who revealed himself in history, anxious to communicate with human beings in a tête-à-tête, in a relationship of love with them. In fact, at the root of every doctrine or value is the event of the encounter between man and God in Jesus Christ. Christianity, before being a moral or an ethic, is the event of love, it is the acceptance of the Person of Jesus. For this reason the Christian and Christian communities must first look and make others look to Christ, the true Way that leads to God.”
We cannot delude ourselves into thinking that those with a limited idea of the Christian faith are only those outside the doors of our churches. Certainly, no small number of those who call themselves Christian have fallen into the trap of seeing their faith as only an ethical choice or a lofty idea and have given into believing in the mechanical god.
While the circumstances of the last year have certainly wreaked havoc on our parishes, this does not mean that it is the time to give up and certainly not the time to continue business as usual. We have the opportunity at this very moment to try something different - to approach our preaching, teaching, and even living in a much more foundational way. It begins by doing a self-examination of why.
Why do I pray as I do?
Why do I believe as I do?
Why do I behave as I do?
Hopefully, what is motivating our why is love. Love of God. Love of neighbor. Love of self.
It can all sound so simple, but if we don’t start with a solid foundation, everything else will crumble. When we recognize our God, not as a machine, but as a Trinity of Persons with whom we can enter into a relationship, it changes everything.
The mechanical god is static. The Living God is dynamic.
The mechanical god is indifferent. The Living God desires a growing relationship.
The mechanical god doesn’t love you. The Living God loves you personally.
If we ourselves don’t know why, how can we hope to lead others to that inner union with God and an experience of his love that can give meaning and direction to someone’s life.