Sof 57 January 2003 Chris Mearns reviews A Reason for Living and Hoping:
A Christian Appreciation of the Emerging New Era of Consciousness by Adrian B. Smith St Pauls Publishing, London, 2002, pp.239, pb. £8.99, ISBN 0-85439-642-X Adrian B. Smith is a Catholic mission-priest, lecturer and author of several books. His sweep here takes in a broad, panoramic view of the present state of our culture in relation to the challenges it faces, especially in its present rather weak churches.
His view is exciting in the breadth of its vision and in its critical attitudes to many formulations of Christian faith in traditional modes, especially in the Roman Catholic Church. The words of the Second Vatican Council, 1965, echoed Teilhard de Chardin when they stated: ‘The future of humanity lies in the hands of those who are strong enough to provide coming generations with reasons for living and hoping’. Hence the title of this book.
Smith’s style of writing, though addressing tough issues, is reasonably fluent and easy to understand. His appetite is quite voracious, assimilating many great issues. The book has three sections.
Part one interprets our times. Under ‘what's new?’ he highlights the place ecology has taken as focus for world-concerns of modern thinking and practice. ‘Pantheism’ he commends. Smith has the habit of introducing useful summary lists identifying trends in society (eg. pp.32-33). Global consciousness and spiritual awareness goes along with more emphasis on ‘right brain’ intuitive thinking as necessary to complement ‘left brain’ rational thinking. Using many ‘new consciousness’, ‘new age’, ‘age of Aquarius’ terms, the author may appear somewhat credulous. For example, ‘Uranus is related to breakthroughs and revolutionary changes of life-enhancing nature. Jupiter tends to magnify and expand everything with which it comes into relationship’ (pp.49-50). The Taurus Age, 4000-2000 BCE, is said to be succeeded by the Aries Age, 2000 BCE to the common or Christian Era; then by the Age of Pisces; and now we are entering the Age of Aquarius, the Age of the Spirit (pp.53-54). He distinguishes spirituality from religion, and defines spirituality as ‘that dimension of nature... which awakens us to wonder, gives our lives meaning, and calls us towards our higher self, usually expressed as a relationship with the Transcendent (sometimes named "God"). ‘The pendulum is swinging back to the spiritual element of human life, but not to institutional religion’ (p.62). ‘Christianity has become church-orientated instead of being kingdom-orientated’ (p.80). ‘Spirituality unites people, religion divides’ (p.82).
Jesus uses the term Kingdom as a dynamic term. It refers to rule or reign, and not to domain. ‘The key to understanding the kingdom is the unity of the whole humanity of God’ (p.120). ‘Unfortunately, preachers in our own time do their congregations a disservice by using the expression "Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew’s term) as frequently as "Kingdom of God" and thereby unwittingly cause the vision of our future to be presented as a beyond death reality’ (p.123).
Thus the old body /spirit division is re-inforced. But the Kingdom of the gospel according to John is expressed in terms of "Life".
Against the traditional understanding of Jesus, the author sets ‘an emerging contemporary understanding’. About the Christmas story, he says ‘Jesus was conceived naturally and born as a human baby to a young woman (the original translation of "virgin")’. The nativity stories ‘were constructed later to explain divine nature in mythological terms’. For, he says, ‘Jesus in his humanity is one who is transparent to the Divine’. He continues, ‘The way to God is also found in other religions which have different perspectives on the one Truth. But for Christians its manifestation in Jesus is the most accessible, powerful and inspiring’. A helpful list of contrasts between traditional and emerging contemporary understandings about ‘What can we know about Jesus?’ is set out in summaries on pages 137 and 138. Kingdom living means discerning (to adapt George Fox’s words) ‘that of God in everyone, and (today) that of God in everything’. He says forthrightly, ‘the righteousness of Jesus is love for others’ (p.141). ‘Only by getting into the water and sof 57 January 2003 starting to swim do we get the feel of swimming and so learn to swim. No amount of telling us about it turns us into swimmers.
But living it we become actualizers of the Kingdom’ (p.144). Jesus’ actions re-inforce his teaching. ‘The parable of the wedding feast (Matthew 22:2-10) in which the king’s servants are sent into the streets to invite just anyone to sit at the same table - female and male, married and unmarried, slave and free, pure and impure, rich and poor - reveals Jesus’ radical egalitarianism in which discrimination and social position no longer have place’ (p.165). On the ‘hot topic’ of globalization - (good or bad?) - Smith distinguishes corporate globalization from the broader sense of the world becoming a global village, ‘which embodies a spiritual dimension’ (p.173).
The theology of the human person understands ‘its task as being concerned not simply with soul matters, but with the development of the whole person and of the whole of humanity’, Smith affirms. Most readers of this journal will applaud the shift from the Church as a sanctuary from the world to ‘a sign Church, an announcement by its message and by its community life, of the Kingdom life-style that God wishes for all humanity’ (pp.194-5).
The Church’s concern ‘must be equally with the spiritual and material development—with the development of the whole person’ (p.197). Smith lists Church-orientated values compared with Kingdom values on p.198. I select two instances. ‘Settle for the status quo and their own (respectable) kind of people’, compared with ‘more concerned with the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized’. The traditional Church-orientated view that ‘worship is primarily for God’s glory’ is re-directed: ‘worship is primarily for people’s spiritual growth’. The author lists the challenges posed by the Kingdom values to the present-day church as: 1) to recognise and encourage holistic right-brain value; 2) to accept the ecological dimension of spirituality. On p.214 he states ‘The Church is not simply a wagon for people to clamber aboard in order to be taken ‘to the other side’; 3) to be open to the necessity of continually re-assessing and then challenging Church structures so that they are life-supporting, not life-draining; and 4) to be open to the Spirit. This involves seeking ‘growth in love and easing the burden of guilt and of divine retribution’; also removing ‘any inhibition about expressing doubts in belief’. ‘We must be alert against the danger of making absolute, what is relative’. Also, ‘Promote dialogue between different faiths, not on a basis of superiority, but as equals searching for Truth’ (pp.214-217).
Smith speaks of a new relationship with God: ‘Regarding God only as a father can hold us in a parent-child relationship, which in a subtle way can impede growth to maturity in adults. More Christians today who still prefer to personify God, think of him as a friend, a partner in life who invites us to be co-creators of our world’ (p.255). Considering emancipation, he sets alongside the freeing from colonialism, racial and colour prejudice, ‘the movement of emancipation of homosexuals from heterosexual righteousness’. He sees change being propelled by ‘networking’—a form of "people-power" effective not from above to below, but as ‘power exercised horizontally’ (p.171).
Smith’s book is comprehensive and comprehensible, contemporary and relevant. His concerns and proposals coincide with those of many in the Sea of Faith movement and will resonate especially with those who hold religious beliefs as well as those who still value church links.
A Reason for Living and Hoping: A Christian Appreciation of the Emerging New Era of Consciousness, by Adrian B. Smith. St Pauls Publishing, London, 2002, pp.239, pb. £8.99, ISBN 0-85439-642-X.