A reader of this blog recently wrote this message to me:
Hi Carl, I recently enjoyed your book Eternal Heart. I have a fundamentalist/Evangelical background and am relatively new to mysticism. Can you help me fit in the Bible passages of God’s judgment and wrath of God which seem very dualistic (Ephesians 5:1-7 comes to mind; Paul contrasts godly behavior and ungodly behavior and promised judgment on the ungodly). Are there any good articles or books addressing the subject of mysticism and God’s judgment?
What a great question, and there are many ways that I might respond to you. Let me begin with your request for writings on this subject. First off, it’s important to acknowledge that mysticism is itself a broad category of spirituality and theology, and so not all mystics down the ages speak with the same voice or promote the same theological perspectives. So it’s possible to find writings that are generally regarded as “mystical” but that nevertheless seem very judgmental or dualistic. And even mystics who are generally regarded as nondual — for example, Meister Eckhart or John Ruusbroec — can still come across as promoting a harsh, judgmental, or even dualistic image of God, perhaps just because they were writing centuries ago when different theological issues or concerns were more prominent than they are today.
For me, the best writers to help us connect with a non-dual understanding of God tend to be more recent authors, from Thomas Keating to Richard Rohr to Cynthia Bourgeault. But historically, I think C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and Julian of Norwich’s The Showings both show insight into a mystical understanding of God that transcends the ordinary dualisms of human perception. But you can also find hints of a mystical way of seeing God that transcends judgmentalism in the writings of Isaac of Syria, Bernard of Clairvaux, and the aforementioned Eckhart and Ruusbroec,
But now, let me offer a few thoughts in general that I hope will be helpful, especially in regard to integrating the Bible’s more challenging passages into a mystical spirituality.
It’s important to bear in mind that we live in the age of psychology and sociology, and the most basic intellectual honesty requires that we read the Bible (or any other ancient text) in the light of the fullness of human knowledge. This has real implications on how we try to make sense of the judgmental imagery of God we find in the Bible. For example, we have learned (on a purely scientific level) that relating to others from a place of judgment is often counterproductive: research has been done to show that teachers who assume their children are gifted get better results from the children’s performance, even if those children are not actually classified as “gifted” — and the reverse holds true, if a teacher regards children as having learning or behavior disabilities, the children’s performance will suffer, even if the only issue was the teacher’s judgmental attitude.
So we know on a purely human level that it is counterproductive to be judgmental. And yet we have a sacred text (the Bible) rife with imagery of a judgmental, angry, wrathful God. How do we make sense of all this? So I think this brings us to the larger issue of how to read the Bible in our time. In my forthcoming book, Read the Bible Like a Mystic, I make a case for why I believe the fundamentalist approach to the Bible is not only wrong, but dangerous. Fundamentalism, as I have experienced, is often willfully ignorant when it comes to knowledge that comes from non-Biblical sources (like science, psychology, or even just literary criticism), especially when such knowledge seems to contradict what the Bible says. Nowhere, in the Bible or anywhere else, are Christians ever instructed to ignore knowledge that comes from ordinary human reason and observation. Science is a gift from God. And if science has challenged some things that the Bible says: well, if we truly believe in God, shouldn’t we believe that God is big enough to accommodate how humanity’s experience of knowledge (and revelation) can grow and change over time?
Few educated people still believe that God created the earth in just six days or that a cataclysmic flood killed all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of one large boat. We have come to understand that much of what the Bible passes off as factual history is actually myth — which still can contain spiritual truth, but should not be read literally.
I think we can approach what the Bible says about the judgment of God in much the same way. From “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me” (Exodus 20:5) to “the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 5:6), it seems that the Bible has a consistent message that emphasizes God as wrathful, judgmental, and punitive. Is that really how God is? Or perhaps a mythical, primitive way of understanding God, that was accepted in Biblical times but no longer makes sense even on a purely human level?
In other words, can we really believe that God is naive about the simple knowledge we human beings have about the psychology of judgment? If God understands that judgmentalism leads to bad outcomes, then why in heaven’s name would we believe that God is judgmental?
Perhaps when we learn to read the Bible not with the literalism of the fundamentalist but with the critical discernment of a scholar, we can see that all the discourse in the Bible that goes on and on about how judgmental God is merely a representation of the limitations of the minds and wisdom of the Biblical authors. In other words, those authors who told us that God is so judgmental and wrathful were telling us more about themselves than about God.
Meanwhile, even the Bible seems to contradict all the judgmental imagery of God. For example, we have Jesus instructing us not to judge one another (good psychological sensibility there, especially for someone living in the first century CE). Some of Jesus’s parables, like the Prodigal Son and the Workers in the Vineyard, also seem to contradict the normal logic of performance/judgment/punishment and reward. So even if we accept that the Bible promotes a judgmental image of God, we also have to reckon with the fact that no less an authority than Jesus himself seems to speak out against that image of God.
So if ordinary critical thinking can begin to see all the Biblical teachings of God’s wrath and judgment are equivalent to the mythology about Noah’s Ark or the Garden of Eden, then what of the mystics? And again, I acknowledge that many mystics reflect the limitations of their age, but there are still mystics that offer us an image of God that is radically loving rather than dualistically judgmental. For example, there’s the wisdom of Julian of Norwich, who bluntly declares that in all of her mystical visions, she saw “no wrath” in God. Which was a pretty bold and courageous statement for a woman in the middle ages to declare, living as she did in a time when “heretics” were burned at the stake. Especially in our time, it seems that more and more contemplative writers are beginning to agree with Julian: God is not a God of wrath, but a God of infinite (read: nondual) and unconditional love.
But does this mean that “anything goes”? Not hardly. Because even if God is not a god of wrath and punishment, God is still a God of love and compassion and mercy. Any nondual teacher, east or west, will tell you that nondual consciousness does not erase the ontological difference between love and harm: some actions cause suffering and harm, and when those actions are intentional, it is a cause for great sorrow and grief. Nonduality does not absolve us from the need to foster compassion, goodness, and mercy in our lives, nor does it let us off the hook of doing good work to promote justice, combat injustice, and care for those who suffer and have been hurt by the unjust actions of others.
Here’s the difference: to live in nondual consciousness means that we no longer get to dismiss some people as “evil” as if they are irredeemable and therefore worthy of rejection or elimination. A nondual understanding of God is found in the Sermon on the Mount:
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,[o] what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:44-48)
Incidentally, I know many people recoil at Jesus instructing us to “be perfect” as if this is an impossible demand. But I believe the “perfection” that Jesus is calling us to is not mere moral rectitude, but rather the adoption of a deeply nondual mind and heart. “Be nondual, as your heavenly Creator is nondual.” I think that gets much closer to what Jesus was trying to say.
Finally, I think a mystical reading of the Bible is based on the good common sense of a historical/critical/scholarly reading, but it also employs the heart and the imagination to seek greater intimacy with God. And who wants to be intimate with a judgy God? But the kind of God that Jesus presents: who sends sunshine and rain on everyone, in other words, who loves everyone non-dually — now that’s a God who we find joy in becoming close to!
In the history of Christian spirituality, beginning with the Bible itself, we see two overriding metaphors for God and how God deals with humanity: one is a legal/juridical metaphor, and the other is a healing/therapeutic metaphor. The issue is sin: the human capacity to cause suffering, destroy relationships and in many ways cause harm both to ourselves and to others. So is sin like an illness, or like a crime? If we see sin as an illness, then God becomes the great physician, the healer who wants to make us well. But if we see sin as a crime, then God becomes the implacable judge who has to listen to both the prosecution (the devil) and the defense (Jesus) to decide whether we get sent to jail (hell) or get acquitted (heaven).
Like I said, both metaphors can be found in the Bible and certainly in the literary tradition of Christian theology, spirituality and mysticism. Maybe both metaphors have something of value to teach us (I, for one, find it encouraging to think that God will judge the forces of power and privilege that cause oppression and systemic harm in our world, although even here I see that people who are complicit in oppression need healing more than just being judged). But I think for most human beings, God-as-healer is so much more appealing and encouraging of an image than God-as-judge. And for that reason, I would argue that the mystical approach to theology and spirituality places God-the-healer as the first and best image for God. What then do we make of God-the-judge? Perhaps this imagery is simply evidence of our own need for healing: we need healing not only from our sins, but also even from our fear-based approach to God. God the healer wants to give us a healthier and more sustainable way of relating to God. When we truly accept that healing way of understanding God, then the judgmental god will lose its power over us.
Again, thanks for a great question!
