RITE AND REASON:No amount of anguish in human affairs can ever destroy the reality of God, writes MARTIN HENRY
THE SEASON of Lent has traditionally been linked with the 40 days that, according to the first three gospels, Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public ministry. It is this number that lies behind the word for Lent in Latin countries (cuaresma, in Spanish, for example).
“But why 40 days?”
The 40 days, no doubt, were a reminder of the 40 years the Hebrew people in earlier times had spent in the desert, after their escape from Egypt and before their entry into the promised land.
The first Christians – like Jesus – had grown up in the Jewish faith and would have been conscious of the association of the 40 years the Hebrews of old had spent in their desert with the 40 days Jesus spent in his.
We might go a bit further and ask perhaps more pertinently: “Why does the desert play such an important role in the history of our religion, and why does it still exercise a certain fascination over many people?”
Part of the answer would seem to be that the desert can help clarify life’s great issues.
The advantage of an empty place, like a desert, is that it is often easier in such a location to listen to the voice of God. It is surely no accident that it was in the desert of Sinai that God first revealed his name to Moses.
On the other hand, it is also true that the desert is, in the biblical witness, a privileged site of temptation and falling away from God.
And perhaps these two possibilities are more closely linked than is often conceded.
To experience desert-like conditions, however, it is not absolutely necessary to head off into a physical desert.
The desert is often visited violently on people when they least expect it, as in times of great natural catastrophes or wars, or the collapse of a human mind into an unchartable wilderness. In such circumstances, familiar supports are swept away and, in the significant cliche, one has to “face oneself” and the vast desolation of one’s universe.
Yet such harrowing experiences can reveal unexpected possibilities. Because of the magnitude of human need, one can feel the inadequacy of all phoney solutions to intractable human questions.
The possibility of resisting such solutions definitively can indicate the reality of a path beyond despair. “What doesn’t destroy me, makes me stronger” (Nietzsche).
This connects directly with the belief that God is the creator of the world, not the world itself. If the world itself were God, then, were it to be destroyed or reduced to the condition of a desert, God would also be destroyed or reduced to the state of an empty desert. There would then be no possibility of finding anything or anyone beyond this desert to place our hope in.
But in believing God to be beyond this world, we still have the possibility of finding God, and of finding then in God our human happiness and the goal of our lives.
God, in other words, is, for biblical faith, greater than our world, and other than our world.
So, even if our world were to seem hopelessly damaged, and even if living in this world were to seem increasingly pointless, nevertheless with faith in God it is always possible not to lose hope in the value of living, even in the wilderness of existence.
The good news of Christianity is not only that God can be found in the desert as well as the fullness of earthly life, but also that no amount of anguish in human affairs can ever destroy the reality of God who became man for us in Jesus Christ. In his life, death and resurrection, Christ endured the often sordid realities of human history and in doing so changed them into the means of our salvation.
In the season of Lent, we can reflect on these truths and let them sink into our own lives. We may then find that our lives too can be changed and become the means God uses to guide us to heaven.
The Rev Dr Martin Henry is lecturer in systematic theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth