When Saint Augustine spoke his well known, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.” – it sounded like he was saying that the human person is, in modern speak, ‘hardwired for God’. It sounds great to say that humanity cannot be reduced to physical, social or psychological models. We are much, much more. We are made in the image of God. It is good to say and believe these things, but we have to be able to say something about the other drives that are in us and how they work together or not.
Sacred Scripture speaks of the human face bearing the Sacred Imprint and that the God Drive in each person demands that we give them endless respect. And while this is true, it is also true that there are other ‘drives’ in us. We have physical drives for food, air, water, and sex. We have strong social drives to be liked and respected, to wear decent clothes, and live in decent houses. To be in control of our own lives, rather than being controlled by another. Our physical and social drives move in unique ways in each of us. Our minds, sift through these drives, trying to put them in order and lining up the ones that are most important. So, we are hard wired for God, and we are hard wired everywhere else. How do we hold these different drives in such a way that we are real?
Well, it isn’t easy! There is a real temptation to get into worshipping idols. This isn’t fanciful Old Testament theatrics. When we do not reserve our God drive for God but attach it to money, family, power, food or sex, we ask these social realities to do for us what only God can do for us. We ask that they give ultimate meaning and worth to our lives. But they cannot. The invitation of Jesus to ‘store up treasure for ourselves in Heaven ‘. (Matthew 6,19) is a call to see through the temptation to give our wealth, our position or even our family too much importance. On their own they are fine. But they must take second place to what comes first.
This is no put down. When families, communities and nations are not distorted by giving them undue importance they can be what they are. They are the relational field where our deeper spiritual identity acts with love and justice. We do not pull our father, mother, daughter, son, or spouse into an ultimate void and ask them to fill it. Just a little bit too much pressure there! Rather, they are the relationships where the one loved by God loves in turn. We do not ask any created thing to grant us eternal worth. Rather, the places where we meet as communities and nations are places where, the one rooted and grounded in God, expresses their sacred self in compassionate and just behaviour. Things fall into their right place, and life, and the life of God in us, flows freely.
This life flows in us and through us. We join the transparent Prophets, the Just and the little ones. People welcome us, not because we have blood ties, or power. They welcome us because the Prophets, the Just and the little ones come from God, – the first in our hearts. This is what they seek, and this is their reward – the right ordering of spiritual, physical, psychological, social and moral life.
