On Sobered Religion and Moving Beyond Anthropocentric Theology:
When we bear unaware witness to the unraveling of our assumptions of solidity, peace, and predictability, anthropocentric theologies lead us to cry out “Where’s God?” and to invoke the ever shallow prayer “How long, O Lord?!”
Of course God is always right here, answering us, “right now, right now!”
Christ’s entire ministry was a pointing to the Kingdom of Heaven within. And there it still waits for us, just deep enough to bypass our errant self-images and ego-centrism, so that in finding it we may consciously rejoin the rest of creation in reality’s fullness, ever unfurling.
The call of good religion is a call to sobriety, to awakening, to doffing the construct of individuality insomuch as it parades around as something fundamentally real- plainly, it’s not!
Anthropocentric theologies keep us stuck on what God can or even should do to enact a reality fitting to our imaginations.
When we step beyond the mere confines of human individuality and situate ourselves within the whole of creation, we can find ourselves at home not only with the myriad worms munching on leaves, but too with the hawks swooping up squirrels, with the serpents entangling gazelles, with the volcanos enveloping civilizations, with the all consuming explosions of supernovas, and with the jagged fluctuations at the very edge of the universe.
The Kingdom of God is ever here, and ever now. And in it everything fits, just as it is…if not beyond our demanding visions for how, exactly.
Perhaps it’s with that sobered vision that we can finally realize the pointing of St. Teresa who reminds us that “Christ has no body now but ours,” all of ours. It’s perfect as it is, and, we can do something with it, knowing that whatever that something is, it’s sufficient and enough.
In short, we can cry out for intercession for our entire lives and receive nothing but sore throats and achy heads in return. Alas, such cries can bear fruit, but only on those rare occasions where they come to act as the substrate upon which our hearts can finally break, and in our seeming destitution, allow us a glimpse of the world beyond the confines of how we think we need it to be.
~Sunyananda
