According to recent surveys the number of those who believe in the Jewish-Christian God is becoming a smaller and smaller every year. Many have rejected their childhood idea of God just as they reject Santa Claus and most do not bother to explore the possibility of discovering a richer meaning for the idea of believing in God. They conclude that what they are taught about God in the early years is meaningless and not relevant anymore for mature adults. Others have not been given any idea about God in the early years. It is not an idea that their parents or guardians offered them as a way of living fuller and happier lives. They lived a completely secular life without any recourse to religion or faith or God. For people who belonged to the Christian tradition, faith in God offered them a way of understanding themselves and life. They were not just drifters. Life had a meaning and purpose. They wanted to belong to a community of like –minded people who celebrated their religious faith and lived in solidarity with the poor.
For them faith in the God of Creation is very different from believing in Santa Claus. It involves serious commitments and makes serious demands. Faith in a Higher Power, often called God, is accepting in humility that there is a spiritual dimension to life, that humans do not have all the answers, that all of life including death is a Great Mystery to human beings. That it will never be fully understood by humans with their limited understanding of the world and the universe.
Those who say they believe in the Christian-Hebrew God differ greatly in their understanding of God. There are two ways of thinking about God in the Christian tradition. The first is to think of God as a separate Being up there or out there somewhere. The second way is to think about God as a spiritual presence everywhere –to be willing to see God as the poet Kavanagh says-‘in the fragments of life.’ In fact that is the way we, older people, were taught in the Catechism class in Primary School: Question: ‘Where is God?’ Answer: ‘God is everywhere’. But somehow or other that idea was replaced by the first idea that God was a remote being way out there somewhere. That was a great pity because it was different from the image of the God of the Hebrews that we find in the Bible. It is radically different from the God of Jesus Christ in the New Testament who is very much involved in the world and especially in the suffering of the people. According to the writers of the Gospels and the epistles, Jesus who regarded himself as the son of God and revealed that God was a God of Love a truth that might be conveyed by understanding God as a Trinity of Persons namely Father, Son and Holy Spirit. .
Devout Hebrews would not even utter the word Yahweh(God) because they felt so much in awe of the One who created all and was in all and through all. Yahweh was the totally other and utterly holy. Jesus brought a whole new meaning to the reality of faith in the one God. For many people, faith in the God of Love and Mercy as presented by Jesus was what gave their lives purpose and meaning and helped them deal with the reality of death.
In Ireland there has been a long tradition of Faith in God and that is reflected in the Irish language which has many expressions and greetings referring to God like Dia Dhuit, buiochas le Dia etc.There is in the Irish tradition a strong sense of the presence of God which was cultivated through years of persecution, prayer and pilgrimage. As a result of this awareness there is great reverence for Creation. There has also been a long tradition of missionary endeavour –with Irish people going out to all parts of the world to serve the poor and to bring the good news of the Gospel to many different peoples. There are now enough native people carrying on the work begun by Irish missionaries.
There are the cynics of course. Who pour scorn on faith and on those who believe. The cynics are always around. They haven’t gone away, you know. God Bless the cynics.
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