Today’s readings: Exodus 22, 20-26; 1 Thes. 1, 5-10; Matt. 22, 34-40.

The way faith is transmitted in our communities may at times be the perfect recipe for a religion of apathy and indifference. It sounds tragic, but it is very likely to be happening.

The phenomenon of apathy has been a target of those theologies that take as a starting point for their reflection the ills that dominate our culture. We cannot confine faith to the individual or existential horizons that may leave people separate from one another, crippled in conscience, and blind to their complicity in the unjust divisions of our planet.

There may be mixed motivations in the Indignados movement which in the past weeks have rocked major cities and sowed rebellion and violence against sky-high levels of unemployment and brutal austerity measures. Underneath the anger, the unrest and the discontent there is a cry that needs to be heard.

The political and economic world scenario currently unfolding is a writing on the wall that can no longer be ignored. The Lord should be watching and His major concerns are not the arguments over doctrine or orthodox liturgies. What today’s readings state clearly is that if love of God and love of neighbour are not fused, then our religion may have all the features of a false religion.

Culturally speaking we have always thought in terms of those who believe or do not believe in God. But the bible includes idolatry as part of the equation. We have to acknowledge that we sometimes turn God into an idol, not the living God creator of heaven and earth.

It is in some sense that same God who 19th century philosophers declared dead and whom we still keep breathing artificially in the intensive care units of our churches. Is the God we preach that same God who in today’s reading from Exodus identifies Himself with the miseries of peoples and who declares that He will hear the cries of the distressed?

The real dichotomy highlighted in the Bible is not between faith and atheism, but between faith and idolatry. Religion itself and the spiritual life can easily become idols that distract us from our true selves and from others. What Jesus today is saying in the gospel is that love of God that is not at the same time openness to the world, is alienating.

Without the dimension of justice, faith could remain lopsidedly personal and spiritual. God-talk would remain insulated from the wounded world around us. As Dorothe Soelle writes in Choosing Life, faith means fighting against the prevailing cynicism and standing up to it.

In some Christian circles, particularly in the late 20th century, the agenda of faith has shifted from the zone of truth to that of freedom. Freedom in this case, as Michael Paul Gallagher argues in his book Faith Maps, is not just an inner quality of the self but an active quality that can resist a consumerist dictatorship and create alternative embodiments of the Christian living.

That individualist religion, which provided the framework of the faith transmitted to us, lends itself easily to the lifestyle that in turn leads to indifference. The real danger for the faith in our times is not secularisation or laicism, but apathy and indifference, which stifle the real power of the Gospel and lead to an incapacity for compassion.

When faith goes beyond the individualist religion, even sin assumes a new meaning. It is no longer just something I commit and of which I need to repent. Wearing blinkers that keep me from seeing people’s suffering becomes sinful. Reducing belief to a vertical link between me and God becomes idolatrous. Jesus today speaks of structural love, the remedy for structural sin.

To grasp the true meaning of Christ’s redemption, we should beware of relating the cross too much to the bearing of individual suffering and cutting it off from the struggle pertaining to collective responsibility. Faith needs to break the stranglehold of individualism and unmask the falsity of neutrality. This is the new agenda for Christians in the secular city.

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