Readings:
• Gn 18:20-32
• Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8
• Col 2:12-14
• Lk 11:1-13
According to atheist Richard Dawkins in his best-selling book The God Delusion, the God of the Old Testament is “arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
That remark indicates far more familiarity with the dictionary than with the Bible. I wonder: how much fiction has Dawkins read? More seriously, how carefully has he actually read the Bible?
Sadly, Dawkins merely appeals to the tired notion that the “God of the Old Testament” is a cruel tyrant, with little love for His creation. I suspect that even many Christians have the vague sense that such is the case. And today’s reading from the Old Testament is the sort of passage that can, rather easily, be misinterpreted to provide evidence for that view.
In fact, some commentators have understood the conversation between the Lord and Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah as a case of the cool-headed patriarch talking the hot-headed deity out of rash, murderous judgment—or, as Dawkins might put it, “an act of vindictive genocide.” But as difficult as the text is, it presents something quite different: a calm and deliberate conversation between the “Judge of all the world”, responding to the outcry of those anguished by the deviance practiced in those infamous cities, and the bold servant of God, whose questions seem as much theological as personal in nature.
Far from being petty and unjust, God was responding with patience and love to two different but related sets of questions.
The first, as noted, came from those inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah crying out for justice, apparently due to a combination of sexual immorality and social inequality (Gen 19:4-11; Ez 16:46-51). God did not intend to simply destroy the cities and all of their inhabitants. Rather, as in the days of Noah, He desired to put an end to lawlessness, yet with the knowledge that a few just men could be found among the wicked. And so Genesis 19 depicts two angels sent to rescue Lot and his family from the coming destruction—and that after saving them from the advances of a lustful mob.
The second set of questions, from Abraham, was concerned with whether the Judge of all things would indeed be just. That remarkable conversation reveals an intimacy between man and God that is unique among ancient religious literature. “After that, once God had confided his plan [Gen 18:17-21]” the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes, “Abraham’s heart is attuned to his Lord’s compassion for men and he dares to intercede for them with bold confidence” (CCC 2571).
Through both divine revelation and his natural intelligence, Abraham learned what it meant to be just and compassionate. Satisfied that God would act justly, Abraham did not stay to witness the salvation of his relatives, but returned home (Gen 19:33).
The intimacy between the Creator and the recipient of the Abrahamic covenant (cf., Gen 12, 15-17; CCC 72) foreshadowed the unique revelation about the Father given by the Son, who not only prayed to the Father but also taught His disciples how to pray to the Father. Luke’s account of the “Our Father,” in today’s Gospel, is shorter than that given by Matthew, which is the version commonly known and said. It first acknowledges God as Father, as well as the holiness of His name, along with the desire to see His kingdom realized in fullness. It then asks for three basic needs, without which man will perish, both physically and spiritually: nourishment (“our daily bread”), forgiveness, and salvation—“do not subject us to the final test.”
Their heavenly Father, Jesus told the disciples, gives good gifts to those who ask and seek with the humble, trusting heart of a child. It is a humility and trust based in prayer and conversation with God, who is not an unpleasant fictional character, but a caring and merciful Father.
(This “Opening the Word” column originally appeared in the July 29, 2007, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
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About the mentioned Richard Dawkins, we have this from the psychologist Paul Vitz who has researched such nihilists or atheists as Friedrich Nietzsche as well as our modern evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.
Vitz finds that in neither case “do we find a strong, beloved father with a close relationship with his son or daughter.” Even the atheist Sigmund Freud said that psychoanalysis “daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down” (Paul Vitz, “Faith of our Fathers,” Ignatius Press, 1999). The author of the fictive “Social Contract” (1762), Jean Jacques Rousseau, assigned each of his own five illegitimate offspring to orphanages because, he said, he did not want them to be raised so poorly as himself (the autobiographical “Confessions,” posthumously in 1782).
Do we see a link between the accidental “universe” of Dawkins and incidental LGBTQ tribalism—much of which also traces back to abusive or absentee fathers? Meanwhile, the fault surely must lie in fatherhood itself and the Bible…
Isaiah gave us clear warnings when he said: Woe! To those who call evil good, and good evil,who change darkness to light, and light into darkness.
Is.5:20
Today’s theology too often celebrates the so-called “anthropological turn,” where God no longer comes first, but rather man—with his problems, his grievances, his demands.
But in the beginning, God (Gen 1:1; Jn 1:1). The Spirit of God hovers (Gen 1:2)—the principle of creation, of salvation (Lk 1:35), of redeemed humanity, of the Church (Acts 2:1–4); He is King (Is 6:5).
Without God—behaving ut si Deus non daretur is nearly comical—the universe becomes a desert. Man cannot fill it, nor even himself. Hallelujah!
One who, to exalt the splendour of the moon, proposed extinguishing the sun, would be more sensible than one who seeks to shroud God in shadow—so that man might emerge as the lone hero of a cosmic void.
The world is not a heap of disconnected facts. From any honest starting point, we are led to the unified and totalising plan of God.
Even Collodi, beginning with a block of wood, leads us to the Father. I am inspired here by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi’s beautiful theological reading of Pinocchio, in which the puppet’s journey symbolises fallen man’s restoration through obedience, suffering, and love—ultimately discovering the true face of the Father.
Every truth, if not mutilated but accepted catholically, leads to its full consequence in Him.
The only true anthropological turning point occurred when the Father, before all time, established the crucified and risen Christ as “the beginning,” “the firstborn,” “the preeminent” (Col 1:18).
The prevalence of materialist, physicalist, and scientistic philosophy—Master Cherry’s mindset—is the source of many aberrations that afflict our time.
An interesting, tutorial dynamic in “the cool-headed patriarch talking the hot-headed deity out of rash, murderous judgment—or, as Dawkins might put it” [Olson], is repeated by the other great patriarch Moses who talks God out of destroying the Israelites for worship of the golden calf.
God apparently is teaching us that intercessory prayer, appealing to the Father to withhold just punishment on evildoers is a great virtue. Charity. God wills that we intercede for eachother. That divine inspiration reveals God is far more disposed to forgive than condemn.