Reflection
“Enlightenment is the ability to see beyond all the things we make God to find God. We make religion God and so fail to see godliness where religion is not, though goodness is clear and constant in the simplest of people, in the remotest of places. We make national honor God and fail to see the presence of God in other nations, particularly non-Christian nations. We make personal security God and fail to see God in the bleak and barren dimensions of life. We make our own human color the color of God and fail to see God in the one who comes in different guise. We give God gender and miss the Spirit of God present everywhere and in everyone. We separate spirit and matter as two different things …We are one with the Universe…not separate from it or different from it.…To be enlightened is to see beyond the forms to the God who holds them in being.”
fJoan Chittister, OSB
Prayer
Come Holy Spirit, enlighten our minds and open our hearts.
Action
What are the things that I “make God” in my life? How can I achieve a whole perspective and let go of my delusions?
Suggested Reading
I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me.
Exodus 20:2 -17
Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived.
Deut. 11:16
We Christians can ask ourselves: what is really my God?
Pope Francis
False gods must be repudiated, but that is not all: The reasons for their existence must be sought beneath their masks.
Alexander Herzen.
Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.
Paul Bowles
Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.
Gilbert Chesterton
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
George Bernard Shaw
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare