The fleeting vision that God gives us shows the way to a God-centred life, one modelled on the Word made flesh who lived among us, and revealed to us the glory of a fully actualized human being. The way, however, demands of us an absolute obedience to the spirit within us. The spirit is the highest function of the soul: through it God is known: that of God in every man, the indwelling Christ. This obedience is in turn a function of the conscience, which can be thought of as our inner awareness of the soul or true self. This contains within it the totality of moral values by which the aware, and therefore fully awakened, person directs his actions.
The conscience itself has grades of authority. It first shows itself, indeed appears to be inflicted, in childhood by our parents, and few of us completely outgrow the opinions and prejudices of our immediate family circle, no matter how emancipated we may believe ourselves to be as adults. But the parental influence, provided it is based on honest, moral principles, does serve to inculcate in us certain fundamental attitudes that are essential for harmonious relationships with those around us. In other words, the impress of our parents and teachers is an inevitable aspect of the process of learning whereby we all come to take our place in the world with its accepted standards and practices. If we diverge from what is expected of us we are punished, even ostracized. And so we reflect our parents', and later our teachers', views on many topics, profane and sacred alike. Where truth ends and prejudice begins is an ill-defined terrain: perhaps truth is beyond our conception, even in later life, until humility endows us with a deeper understanding of moral values, a humility based on experience and fructified by love.
It is certain that the insensitive imposition of opinions on the child can easily quench the spirit for exploration and self-expression within, but provided the spirit is not crushed by the tyranny of an enforced, ill-assimilated uniformity, the endeavour of the soul to obey what is demanded of it from outside helps to develop the will and stimulates the awareness of the self.
My son, do not think lightly of the Lord's discipline, nor lose heart when he corrects you; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves; he lays the rod on every son whom he acknowledges.
In this passage (Hebrews 12.6, which finds its basis in Proverbs 3.11-12), we see an analogy between the firm discipline that a loving father lays upon his child with the love of God that is satisfied with nothing less than its creatures' perfection. The earthly father, unlike God, has his emotional limitations that flame forth as prejudices, but nevertheless the concern of the child's mentors easily outweighs their defects, provided, of course, they are well-intentioned and mentally balanced people. Our present permissive society shows, in its rejection of discipline, that the elementary conscience derived from those who should be our example is an important adjunct to the developing person. The current tendency to marital breakdown and one-parent families does not lead to the formation of a strong moral core in the offspring, who tend later to drift off into undesirable associations in order to compensate, albeit unconsciously; for the poor initial inner stability they inherited. If our attitudes are not formed around the object we should admire and love, other less worthy objects will take its place.
As the child attains adolescence so he is very likely to cast off all previously accepted religious and moral dogma. This is because the discipline set by these imposed ideas tends to be tedious and apparently irrelevant. Instead the young adult identifies himself with the spirit of the age which is incarnated in the opinions and life-styles of his peers. These may range from a socially radical stance that, at least intellectually, affects solidarity with and concern for the poor and downtrodden to a nihilistic dismissal of all responsibility that is all too common in those who become addicted to drugs. This way was epitomized in the first part of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It seemed predestined that the thoughtless youth should jettison all family responsibility, spending his inheritance on worthless things until he touched bare penury. He could, in our present society, just as easily have sacrificed his will to discern, his ability to discriminate, to the leaders of a fashionable cult or to the subtle mind-obliterating enticements of an addictive drug. In the latter instance the conscience is completely obfuscated, whereas cult leaders infiltrate and pervert the inner seat of judgement by side-stepping its fundamental power of independent choice and subtly imposing upon it a pseudo-moral system of values directed to the benefit of those leaders.
Yet God is ultimately in control of all this mess; if not, there could be no hope of healing. I believe that it was the Holy Spirit that led the Prodigal Son away from the security of the parental home in somewhat the same way as he directed Abraham from the comfort of Mesopotamia to the unknown land of Canaan. Yet what a contrast! The latter is a story of God-directed dedication, the former, of pure hedonistic folly. But it was in both cases the Spirit of God that led them to their final abode, at once known from the beginning and yet unknown until entered upon in awe and trepidation. This is because our true abode is with God, whatever country we may inhabit.
In the course of a more orderly life, the youth has superimposed upon the training that he has received from home and school the mores of his peer group. This may be a professional class, a trade union or simply the opinions of those amongst whom he lives. Group loyalty can attain an overwhelming psychic pressure. A failure to conform may ultimately result in cruel exclusion from the support afforded by the group, a devastating ostracism. Jesus had to experience this at the end of his life, when he failed to fulfil the nationalistic expectations of his followers, who had hoped that he would have been the man to liberate Israel from Roman occupation. Indeed, the factors that led the people at large to follow Jesus must have been mixed and varied: his charismatic powers must have been the source of much of his attraction, but a few genuinely loved him with as much love as unredeemed man can muster. When he apparently failed, that love, like a frail candle flame, flickered precariously, and was almost but not quite extinguished. It is a hard thing to confront the shallowness of much public opinion, see its unconscious cruelty comfortably blanketed in pious hypocrisy, and consciously dissociate oneself from it. The courage to be oneself, no longer a mouthpiece of parental conditioning or group loyalty, exceeds the power of description. As Christ said, "Whoever cares for his own safety is lost, but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake and for the gospel, that man is safe" (Mark 8:35). But the faith needed for this renunciation is enormous, indeed beyond pure human strength. It requires the divine assistance, which comes to a person in his extremity. It is the juxtaposition of the divine and human wills.
The light within, if it is allowed to burn and illumine the way ahead, cuts out all diversions and unmercifully exposes all subterfuge. It is the vision of wholeness that cannot be evaded once it has been acknowledged. It is the vocation, the call to the spiritual life, that should inform all ordained religious groups in their submission to God, to their leaving self behind. And yet the self that is exposed is of much greater validity than anything renounced. It is the very seed of life in the soul; it is the spirit fully active and in direct contact with the Holy Spirit, not unconsciously but in willed service. In most people, however, the call is not so much to an exclusively spiritual profession as to a dedicated life of service in some secular field. Such a field may have obvious healing connotations like counselling or the healing ministry itself, but it can just as well be the unspectacular work the aspirant is performing in everyday life. Is the labour of an artisan of less value than that of a professional worker in such fields as medicine, law or finance? The answer lies in the person, not in the nature of the work, for all trades and professions have their own justification, inasmuch as each is in its own way vital to the community as a whole. How often has the prompt assistance of a humble labourer brought light to the troubled person whom he has met in the course of a day's work! How often does the cold, aloof attitude of the professional worker frighten or estrange those who have come to him for help! In not a few instances it is the specialist or expert who needs help as much as those who consult him.
It is not uncommon for a person to wonder whether he is doing God's will or whether he has not heard the divine voice and has failed to obey the call to a more spiritual kind of life that God had prepared for him. The answer is invariably this: be still and know the presence of God in the moment of doubt. The work that we have to do is what is at present within our compass. To please God it should be done efficiently and with concern for others; in other words, there should be a love of the work itself no less than for those whom the person is serving in that work. This is all that is required of us. If we prove ourselves worthy of this apparently minor task, God will show us the way to a more exalted spiritual work, according always to his will. In this respect the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25.14-30) is especially relevant. The servant who worked profitably with a small sum of money was commended by his master, and as a reward, as well as due recognition for his trustworthiness and competence, was given an even larger responsibility. By contrast, the servant who was lazy and hid his master's money in a hole in the ground was roundly condemned. Even what he had was taken from him, and he was cast ignominiously out of the property. The parable also teaches us how important our period of incarnation is for our eternal destiny. We are expected to learn something from every circumstance of life, so that at the end we may emerge as wise, compassionate people. Our manifold experiences are here to make us respond with sensitivity to the problems and suffering of our fellow creatures. In this way we too may emerge as profitable servants, fit for the kingdom of God in the life eternal. It is a strange thought that the talents with which we are entrusted include the painful stripping experiences of the past. These, far from being disastrous, are the very basis of the work ahead of us when we have attained sufficient balance to accept them and use them constructively.
The intimation, then, of God's light in the soul leads to a radical reappraisal of the person's conscience. To be sure its basic lineaments - honesty, charity, courtesy, loyalty and a warm compassion towards all living creatures - remain unchanged. It is the approach to these great moral virtues that is reconsidered. The loyalty now transcends family or group pressures, the honesty goes beyond a merely formal lip-service to various ideals, even those connected with traditional religious observance, to an investigation of the entire edifice of truth as is apparent to the person's inner discernment. The essential theme is awareness; the intimation of God's presence serves to awaken the sleeping one not merely to the divine invitation to enter into a new life, but also to the responsibilities inherent in his present situation. The present reality and the future promise are superimposed to illumine the moment in hand: time is shown as a vital part to the overall scheme of salvation to prepare the creature for the knowledge of eternity. Where the fully aware mind touches the things of everyday life it also touches eternal nature, the mystical form out of which all phenomena emerge. This awareness is not simply a down-to-earth, essentially practical application of common sense, vital as this is for our life day by day. It is also an awareness of the divine providence that sustains the world, the love that moves the sun and the other stars about which Dante writes in The Divine Comedy in respect of his great vision of paradise. Then at last our daily toil, frustrated as it so often is with worry and apparent failure, takes on a completely new perspective. It is our mounting of a small step on the ladder of perfection. The inner attitude is the important gauge of success rather than the outer achievement. The diminishing years of ageing thus present a greater challenge than do the satisfying achievements of youth: how do we respond to outer impoverishment, to the anonymity of retirement, the impotence of senescence? Do we emanate frustration or serenity, resentment or peace? When the crowds derided Jesus on the cross, he called out to his Father to forgive them for they did not know what they were doing. When Jonah accused God of back-pedalling in not destroying the Ninevites, he was told by God, "Should I not be sorry for the great city of Nineveh, with its hundred and twenty thousand who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and cattle without number?" (Jonah 4.11). This figuratively bovine stupidity of the people of Nineveh is the type of all purely worldly awareness. They are blind, not because they have no eyes, but because they are too witless to open them and start to see the true life.
The sixth chapter of the Book of Isaiah has much to tell us: first there is the wonderful account of the prophet's vision of God in the temple and of his awareness of his own and the national uncleanness, the purging of his personal unworthiness, and his commission to serve the Lord unconditionally. He says, "Here I am, send me". Then God says to him concerning the people, "You may listen and listen, but you will not understand. You may look and look again, but you will never know. This people's wits are dulled, their ears are deafened and their eyes blinded, so that they cannot see with their eyes nor listen with their ears nor understand with their wits, so that they may turn and be healed." When Isaiah asks how long this sad state of affairs is to last, God indicates that a terrible destruction has first to take place before any true repentance may occur. The people in fact gaze at trivialities as their attention is seduced by falsehood. Their hearing is diverted into unprofitable fields of frivolity, in order to escape the voice of the living God. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is the only Lord" (Deuteronomy 6.4), the watchword of Judaism, is quoted directly by Jesus in his definition of the greatest commandment of loving God with heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12.29-30). The text in Isaiah, quoted on several occasions in the New Testament, almost sounds as if God had deliberately perverted the awareness of the people in much the same way as he was said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart against granting Moses' requests. In fact, it is much more probable that he had foreseen the stubborn intransigence of the people (and Pharaoh) and had made contingency plans accordingly. The ultimate plan was the incarnation of Christ himself, whose ministry had at least helped some to move beyond the death of the physical body to the eternal life of the Spirit. But even today the blindness and deafness to truth is still widespread among most people including some who believe they are following the spiritual path.
The period of Advent that finds its completion in Christmas reminds us especially that now is the time. We have to awaken now to be in attendance on our Lord, whose coming is eternally near and yet cannot be defined on any temporal scale. Lest we should be lost in the frivolity of the heedless world or trapped in improvident folly, like the Foolish Virgins who neglected to bring oil with them to fill their lamps, we are admonished to be prepared at all times for the great moment, which is in fact every moment, the intersection of time and eternity. The intimation of God's presence and his unceasing providence in the course of our lives is our Advent call; we have to stay awake to welcome the Lord into our lives. He knocks at the door of the soul and patiently awaits our invitation to enter. Usually we are deaf to his courteous knock, but once the intimation of his radiance has penetrated our obtuse sensitivity, we become more alert to his presence and more prompt in our response. As we reflect on our past, so we begin to see the inadequacy of our previous style of life. The tenor of our deeper inner responses, as well as our immediate conduct, to the various contingencies that punctuate daily life, is a measure of the development of the conscience in power and authority. What was a mere repository of attitudes assimilated from the outside world and inherited from our parents is becoming fashioned into a well-contoured conscience of independent stature. The conscience in this way becomes the mirror in which we see our behaviour reflected to ourselves moment by moment in life's unending show. The impingent ray on that sensitive mirror modifies our subsequent response and the conduct that follows from it; and so we are able to cope with life's crises in a constructive, adult way, being of increasing use to our neighbour, who is in fact the whole created order, when we are fully alive to the moment upon us.
The conscience so purified and strengthened becomes our inner lantern. By it we can proceed forward to the place of truth. No longer need we be attracted by the promise of worldly rewards, for a greater prize is distantly in view. The pearl of great price far outstrips the finest treasure that the world has to offer, for it alone points to a life of meaning, whose end is the raising up of the whole creation from death to immortality. If we think again about the Wise and Foolish Virgins with their lamps prepared to escort their Lord into the wedding chamber, the oil can be equated with their preliminary discipline in prayer and daily work. The alert ones are available to greet the bridegroom, whereas their sluggish companions have no spiritual resources on which to call in a time of emergency. When we are put to the test, it is the inner life that alone can sustain us. If, like so many people, we have virtually no inner resources to strengthen us, we will be overcome by the magnitude of the present demand. But when God is near us, we can call upon him in confidence, and his Spirit will support us.
But now this is the word of the Lord,
the word of your creator, O Jacob,
of him who fashioned you, Israel:
Have no fear; for I have paid your ransom;
I have called you by my name and you are my own
(Isaiah 43.1).
As the conscience becomes more acute in response, so does the presence of God become clearer to the person. He shines in the "new man" that is emerging from the shell of a past life like the chrysalis of a caterpillar out of which the radiant butterfly bursts forth.
The conditioning that we received in childhood, provided it was based on integrity and administered with concern, is reinforced as we grow into our own identity. But what had initially to be imposed on us for our own good now becomes the foundation of an edifice of our unique construction. On the other hand, what was prejudiced and spiritually unsure is cut away, so that the truth can be revealed and sustained. This is the truth that sets us free to be ourselves, enslaved neither to another person nor to any alien ideology. These tend to insinuate themselves as a way of release, but their end is subtle bondage. The truth of God alone brings us the liberty to be ourselves and to grow into authentic persons.