Tradition is not the same as traditions. Christian tradition is the living experience of the gospel. Its practice demolishes the false self system, with its false values and excessive demands based on our wounded sense of who we are and our consequent need to compensate. One lives tradition. One expresses it in one's life and in one's reactions to life as a genuine response to Jesus Christ. Traditions are human interpretations and are often exalted above the love of God and neighbor. Jesus inveighed against such attitudes. He said to the Pharisees, "You lay impossible burdens on people's backs and do nothing to lift them. You do not enter the kingdom yourselves and you prevent others from doing so." The Pharisees were good moralists and could make good distinctions, but the motives for their religious observance, at least according to the four Evangelists, were overlaid by vanity and pride. They went to great lengths to gain attention, even to the extent of sounding trumpets to announce when they were giving alms. Jesus excoriated the hypocrisy of the Pharisees while showing profound compassion for prostitutes and for the tax collectors, who were the chief extortioners of the time.

It is not the Western Model's self-outside-of God that initiates works that are truly inspired by God, but the self-in-God and God-in-the-self. In the Scriptural Model of Spirituality the Spirit dwells in us as the dynamic source of inspiration for all our good deeds, and we consent. The emphasis in the New Testament is on listening and responding to the Spirit rather than initiating projects that God is expected to back up, even though God had little or nothing to do with them.

Once the starting point of the spiritual life was separated from faith in the Divine Indwelling, people began to conceive of God "out there." If God is "out there," especially in some distant heaven, how is one going to climb up to God? If we fall on our faces after a few steps, as is normally the case, we may conclude, "I guess this is not for me. God and I do not seem to get on." It is impossible to pass through the trials of the spiritual life if we think that God is a million miles away and that we have to climb up to God, or that we have to make ourselves worthy of God.

The Scriptural Model of Spirituality emphasizes developing union with God here and now and working in the service of those in need. In fairness to the Western Model, we have to say that there was a certain abstract recognition of the importance of the Holy Spirit, but it was well hidden in ordinary catechetical instruction. In my youth the Holy Spirit used to be called the "forgotten guest." That is like forgetting the person you have been married to for fifty years and, as the family celebrates your fiftieth anniversary, wondering what this strange person is doing in your house.

This neglect of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in our lives did not facilitate the spiritual journey. We were more likely to conclude, "I'll leave the journey to cloistered monks and nuns." And the corollary was, "Write them a letter and have them pray for me." Then we could feel free to do our own thing as long as we subscribed to the Creed and fulfilled the required ritual obligations. We were misinformed. A good and faithful Christian is one who lives the gospel in everyday life, not one who only reads about it or tries to manipulate God to fit his or her particular needs.

In the Western Model of Spirituality the idea was often communicated that God will always reward us in this life for our good deeds. This amazing piece of ignorance or misreading of the gospel justifies the belief of some Christians that as a reward for their faith in Jesus Christ, they will be well-to-do and never have to worry about anything, that all their undertakings will be blessed with worldly success, and that trials will never come their way. What book of Scripture supports such a belief? This popular notion affirms that if we initiate good works such as giving alms, God will reward us here and now as well as in heaven. We will own a nice house, enjoy great professional or business success, and work marvels in our ministry. The Scriptural Model offers no such promises. In fact, the Beatitudes, which express the ideal of happiness as Jesus presented it, teach that the happiest people are those who are persecuted for justice' sake. The reward of the hundredfold promised by Jesus to those who give up anything for his sake is not on the level of material success. The hero of the psalms is clearly the person who suffers affliction for the sake of God. The needy, the poor, the oppressed, the afflicted, are the constant concern of the psalmist and presented as the apple of God's eye. The psalms and writings of the prophets of Israel reveal the divine concern for the welfare, protection, and deliverance of those who suffer any affliction for God's sake.

The fourth disposition that the Scriptural Model of Spirituality presents is the need to cultivate the love of God here and now rather than to work for future reward or to pile up heavenly guarantees. The whole syndrome of reward and punishment is a disposition toward God that springs from an attitude that is normal for children but should develop into a more mature attitude in adults if their religious education is truly adequate. The best way to impart a truly religious education is to communicate to students a personal discipline of prayer and the practice of virtue that enables them to understand the contemplative dimension of the gospel, which is to be guided by the inspirations of the Holy Spirit both in prayer and action.

Instead of worrying about guarantees for the future life, we need to trust God and believe that if we do what we can to love and serve God and our neighbor in this life, God will take care of the future. Why desire a future that God does not want for us? We must seek God more and more in the present moment, which is in fact the only place where God can be found. Since God is eternal, God is not to be found in the future but in the present. A suitable discipline should concentrate on the work that we can do now to develop mature Christian attitudes, especially a relationship to the Ultimate Reality whom Jesus calls Abba, "Father." Abba is passionately concerned for every creature, especially human beings, who are called to manifest God's goodness more than any other aspect of creation. God is part of the human adventure. Through the Incarnation, God manifests his identification with the human condition just as it is. Our attitude toward God has to be governed by that revelation and not by some philosophy or by some scientific discovery that might change in the next generation.

This generation has finally been delivered by the Second Vatican Council from the destructive teaching called Jansenism, a distortion of the gospel and one of the heresies that insinuated itself into seminaries and the mainstream of Catholic teaching. Jansenism taught that the body is totally corrupt and that the salvation brought by Jesus Christ was not universal. The symbol of the latter doctrine is the crucifix with the arms of Jesus lifted straight above his head, indicating that he was not embracing the whole world, but only a chosen few. This negative view of human nature as hopelessly corrupt led to the practice of extreme penances. The doctrine took hold in France and spread throughout Europe through the emigrés fleeing the French Revolution. It infiltrated Irish seminaries and eventually came to America through immigrant priests. This pervasively distrustful attitude toward human nature, together with a pathological fear of God, dominated most Catholic educational institutions prior to the Second Vatican Council, long after Jansenism was condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities.

The attitudes of the Western Model of the self-outside-of-God tended to produce caricatures of God. In childhood we may have picked up these wrong attitudes toward God from parents or teachers. Well-intentioned but ill-conceived religious instruction can make God seem like a tyrant demanding instant obedience to his will, however arbitrary. Through myths and fairy tales, children know what tyrants are. A child who sees God as a tyrant is not going to want to go anywhere near him unless forced to do so.

Another attitude that may be communicated to a child is that of God as an implacable judge whose gavel is ever poised to bring down the verdict of guilty. Here again God is presented with intense overtones of fear or even terror. A third attitude is that of a policeman always on our trail, always on the watch to catch us in the least fault. Whenever this child thinks of God, off goes the emotional judgment that says, "This God, whatever they say about him in church, is dangerous. He is a tyrant, a policeman always on my trail, and a judge, ever ready to condemn me to eternal hellfire."

These attitudes persist. Even theological training may not affect the emotions that have recorded the programming of early life and substantially condition one's capacity to hear the teaching of the gospel. This belief system is like carrying a ball and chain around our feet. God has to go to incredible lengths to dissipate these unhealthy ideas, all of which could have been avoided if children were encouraged to develop a relationship of trust toward God, which parents and teachers, by their goodness and care, should model and nourish. The vocation of parents is to manifest in daily life the kind of love that God has for their children. That is surely one of the principal graces of the sacrament of matrimony.

There is a genuine fear of God, but this is designed to alert people with dispositions that are cruel or malicious to the realization that there will be an accounting for violence, oppression, and every kind of premeditated malice. But once anyone has been converted to God and has begun the spiritual journey, fear is useless, while faith expanding into boundless confidence in God is life-giving. In actual fact, "Fear of God" is a technical term in the Old Testament meaning "the right relationship with God." It does not refer to the emotion of fear, which automatically gives rise to the bodily reactions of fight or flight. The emotion of fear tends of its nature to keep one as far away from God as possible. Trust grows through efforts to serve God out of love and to deepen the relationship. This cannot be accomplished if we are afraid of God.

The spiritual journey has great difficulty in getting off to a good start if we are carrying a load of unexamined and unquestioned negative attitudes toward God. Our basic attitudes toward God are frequently solicited by circumstances and temptations to regress to former levels of relating that were childish and unworthy of God. We easily make judgments about God that are actually projections of our childish levels of consciousness. We also project on God the models of authority that we saw around us. If we had a dominating and authoritarian father, then God is easily felt to be dominating and authoritarian. If these influences were horrendous, then it becomes more difficult later in life to relate to God as God. Recognizing childish attitudes toward God and laying them aside will enable us to re-evaluate our relationship with God and to consider the possibility of making friends.

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Excerpted from Intimacy with God by Fr. Thomas Keating

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