To Know, Love, and Serve

Ah, to be back in the 50’s, attending an RCC Parochial School! In those days, there were ready made answers to all life’s big questions, and we knew where to go to get them. The Baltimore Catechism was our Bible; it functioned as a primitive form of AI and it included our TOE (Theory of Everything). Although focused on theology, the catechism was not at all reluctant to weigh-in on matters of philosophy and cosmology.

Like the Old Testament Torah three millennia earlier, our Catechism was the definitive Users’ Guide to Living on Earth. Interested in eternal bliss? Just follow instructions: shake vigorously, pour generously, apply liberally, relax - let go and let God.

It is a persistently recurring error in the Abrahamic religions to think that the Users’ Guide is only for confessional believers, as if there were two ‘Worlds’ – one for believers, one for all others. Rather, we are all still searching for answers and we are all equally called to live ethical lives, irrespective of our various ideologies.

“I’m not religious but I’m spiritual,” has become a popular, if denotatively dubious, cliché. It’s one of those memes where N=1: everyone who says it means something different by it. But there is at least one ‘person’ who is entitled to use the phrase meaningfully and consistently and that ‘person’ is a ‘corporate person’: Alcoholics Anonymous.

AA is agnostic re religion, but it is nothing if not spiritual. Its archenemy is the inflated ego, the illusion (or dream) of control that abides in each of us, curled up like Kundalini at the base of our spines. In the real world, there are things we can change and things we can’t: wisdom is knowing which is which and virtue is having the serenity to accept what we can’t change and the courage to change what we can. (The Serenity Prayer)

In the Wild West, a few ‘woke’ bars required their patrons to check all guns at the door; AA asks you to check your ego, i.e. to sub out your ego function. But subcontract to whom? Some will be comfortable saying ‘God’ but others are invited to locate and designate their own Higher Power (HP).

And when it comes to Higher Powers, AA is agnostic. If YHWH, Creator of Heaven and Earth, is not your cup of tea and if Jesus is not ‘just alright’ with you, no problem. Find a person, place, or thing, process or pattern that works for you. Your HP might be the ancient oak at the corner of your street or an elephant you’ve bonded with at the zoo.

You may not be religious but you do have faith – faith in your Higher Power. Immediately, a great weight is lifted. You’re no longer ‘required’ to accumulate possessions, amass power, maximize pleasure, manage those around you; you no longer have to rule the world. You have turned that part of ‘being you’ over to your Higher Power; but now what?

Every sequence of events ends the same way, “But now what?” 400 Blows, one of my top 10 favorite movies, ends with an iconic shot of its 13 year old hero the moment after he has realized his lifelong dream. It is as universal a symbol of the human condition as the cross.

So now what? “Class, please open your catechisms to Section One: God and Me:

“Who made me? God made me. Who is God? God is the Supreme Being who made all things. Why did God make me? To know him, love him, and serve him…”

How do we know God? Through reason, revelation, and exploration. How do we love God? In prayer and through charity. How do we serve God? By caring for his creatures, everyone.

All roads lead back to the question of identity and purpose: Who am I? Why am I here? What am I to do?

Prior to 1960, there was no such thing as an identity crisis…“and you knew who you were then.” (Archie Bunker) Then came Vatican II… Now don’t get me wrong: Vatican II was a wonderful thing…until it wasn’t. It was absolutely necessary to reframe RCC’s unique weltanschauung in rotes, rites and roles suited to the culture and psychology of post WWII society.

Vatican II got a whole lot right but many of its most important, and least fortunate, consequences were neither intended nor foreseen. ‘That it was’ (Dasein) proved to be more significant than ‘what it was’ (Wassein)!

Vatican II shattered the illusion of intellectual hegemony. If Alpha can be questioned, why not Beta? If Gamma can be reframed as Delta, why not as Epsilon? Traditionally (and euphemistically), the Church’s weltanschauung did not suffer from a lack of clarity or structure, but it was broadly felt that the joints needed to be more flexible, more adaptable to fluctuations in the cultural milieu. 

Please do not be offended if I liken myself to the Grail King of Christian literature. According to legend, the health of the King reflected and was reflected in the health of the Kingdom. The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, and I, a single cell in that body, are mirror images of one another. I was 12 years old when JP II issued the call for Vatican II. Need I say more?

Ok, I’ll say more. With the reins of childhood loosening rapidly, my newly discovered freedom quickly devolved into a kind of chaos from which I barely emerged, both bloodied and bowed, at age 14. Likewise, my doppelganger, the Church saw its new found flexibility pushed to the boundaries of schism…and beyond. Without its structural rigidity and ideological self-certainty, Church teaching became a collection of propositions to be weighed alongside other propositions in the scales of public opinion.

There is not a single proposition of RCC dogma that is persuasive on its own. (I pardon your sarcastic guffaws!) What makes RCC dogma intellectually compelling is the way in which its propositions fit together to form a jaw dropping, Gaudi-worthy edifice. By themselves, however, many of these propositions are counter-intuitive, scientifically unverifiable, and culturally awkward; worse, they feel irrelevant to ‘real concerns of real people’, the meme that dominates political discourse in the US today.

Recently, I was mansplaining this idea to a family member who asked, innocently, “Is that how you live your life - knowing, loving, and serving God?” (Don’t worry, I won’t be trying on any undeserved haloes any time soon!) But I thought to myself, “What else could I be doing? Should I be doing? What else is there to do?” I mean, after shedding all my ego attachments (as if), what else is left?

Ok, sure, I could be consuming, corrupting, and destroying but that seems unlikely to satisfy my hunger for meaning. Purpose is conferred by an ‘other’ that transcends the self. 

Every action – mine, yours, an amoeba’s, or an electron’s – is a reaction to the world that was and an anticipation of the world to come. (Bobby Kennedy: “I dream of things that never were and ask, why not?”) Every action is motivated and steered by values that reside in your HP.

According to Thomas Aquinas, et al., from God’s eternal perspective, Value is simple…and singular: the Good. But just as white light refracts to generate a rainbow in spacetime, so Good manifests in various specific contexts as Truth, Beauty, and/or Justice.

So everything I do begins with a primal appetition for the Good, manifest in the World as Truth, Beauty, and Justice. Where I go from there is up to me (free will). If I choose, I may turn Truth into propaganda, Beauty into pornography, and Justice into power. I can corrupt my Higher Power’s values to serve the interests of the ego I have not fully shed after all. But none of this is knowing, loving, or serving my HP, God.

I ‘know God’ when I seek Truth; I ‘love God’ when I foster Beauty; I ‘serve God’ when I restore Justice. So I ask again, if not this, what?

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