Musings on Faith, Love, and the Wrestling God

I am a Catholic.

After 55 years, I've only been able to grasp two aspects of God:

1) Entropy, and 

2) His Compassion for His Creation

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Hinduism offers a delightful parallel to this belief system.

Brahman is God—

the infinite, formless totality of all that is.

Brahma is God the Creator,

Vishnu is God the Nurturer and Protector,

Shiva is God the Destroyer and Transformer.

Ātman is the divine spark within us, forever craving oneness with Brahman.

Śūnyatā(शून्यता) is the realization of this reality—the embrace of emptiness, of nothingness.

Karuṇā(करुणा) is our response to this truth—compassion, the only fitting reaction to existence.

That is my philosophy.

My Übergedanke is Śūnyatā.

My Überwerte is Karuṇā.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, 

“We are all part and particle of God.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

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While I believe there is truth in Hinduism, I don’t agree with all of it

—especially the human interpretations.

I don’t believe in the traditional Hindu notion of reincarnation, though I do believe that our atoms return to the universe and recombine into new forms.

I reject the strictness of varna, the caste system.

The same applies to Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and other wisdom traditions.

I believe there is one true form of God.

But we humans do not—cannot—fully understand it.

What we are given, in brief glimpses, always carries two eternal qualities:

Śūnyatā and Karuṇā.

Entropy and Homeostasis.

The incomprehensible realm of God, and His boundless Compassion for Creation.

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I do not believe God cares enough to condemn gay people as sinners.

He cannot condone slavery or any form of bigotry among His creations

—especially us, for we were made in His image.

Anything rooted in hate is a human construction, a mistaken projection onto God.

In fact, I believe He deliberately inserted contradictions into the Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedas, and the Buddhist Sutras—to teach us this very lesson:

That what we claim as divine is often only a shadow, a misinterpretation, of the divine.

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That’s why I can hold these beliefs and still remain a committed Catholic.

I distinguish between God and what we, as fallible humans, have written about God.

God is immutable.

Man is fallible—prone to suffering, confined by his time, and shaped by the limits of his understanding.

Even concepts like Heaven and Hell—I interpret differently:

To return to nothingness without transcendence is Hell.

To unite with God in full awareness is Heaven.

Angels with wings, devils with horns, fire and brimstone—these are artistic visions.

More Dante than God.

God calls us to question.

From Ambrose to Augustine to Aquinas, the true saints always challenged orthodoxy.

Religion is a living tradition—created by God to address the needs of the day, to guide lost souls, to offer meaning and home.

That too, I believe, is part of His plan.

That’s why the magisterium continues to reinterpret God.

What the Church teaches today will not be what it teaches in the future.

Even now, there are many views within the magisterium itself.

We are all Jacob, still wrestling.

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To me, Catholicism—or any religion, truly—is simple:

Faith first.

Love and Compassion second.

Rules third.

If you don’t have Faith, don’t move on to Love.

If you don’t have Love, don’t move on to Rules.

My issue with many modern interpretations of religion is this:

They start with Rules, touch on Faith, and rarely ever practice Love.

We are all Jacob, still searching for Love.