GOD IN OUR PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING

I remember the early days of computers when I could master the programmes I purchased and do a whole range of things simply and with complete understanding of what I was doing. I could tweak the programme at will. Those days are over. Programmes have gotten very complicated, and programmers are constantly trying to anticipate what users are likely to do. They develop complicated routines which only they can understand, in an effort to anticipate many of the errors anyone might commit. In the process they create problems which require further complexities. The software becomes bloated, and its user often feels helpless. We have no choice but to submit to the paternalism, no matter how well-intentioned, of the computer programmers. Microsoft, or whoever, knows best, so it seems. This illusory quest for perfection leads to programmes which are not only bloated but full of unexpected bugs. This means frustrations and updates, and the time we save at one end we waste at the other.

This is an image for what too easily happens in our own lives and the decisions we constantly have to make. (It certainly applies to me.) I try to be an all-knowing programmer, and fail time and time again. If I were God, I would know all the possible alternatives, explore each one, and come up with decisions that are always the best ones. There would be no risk, because I know how every decision would play out in the end. But I am not God, and such knowledge is not accessible to me. I need to take risks, to cast my nets into unknown waters, to acknowledge that my compulsion to check out every possible alternative and to account for every possible thing that could go wrong is a recipe for paralysis. Room must be found for faith, for trust, for hope, for a mystery which I do not control. Ultimately when I face a future which I do not fathom, what I am facing is the living God and an invitation to let go.

This is only part of it. Ultimately in my efforts to minister, to serve, to make good decisions, it is not me that is ministering and serving others. My personal role is secondary. The best I can do is to allow God to operate in me, to do God’s thing. Yes, I have to make decisions, anticipate and plan as best I can, but my role is secondary, caught up in a much broader agenda which is God's plan. Whatever I anticipate will happen will generally meet up with surprises that often stun me. But then they often stimulate me. I regroup and allow myself to be drawn into the sacred space where I realize that ultimately I am not in control. If I am willing to inhabit that space, I will often discover and treasure the subtle ways in which God shapes my life both as an individual and as a member of a community. I will often exclaim "This is what I would have planned had I known or did I possess the resources to pull it off."

Often the issue is one of patience. My objectives might also be God's objectives, but I want the objective to be realized right now, in my own defective way. God is ready to wait, respecting the rhythms and needs of all those involved, so that when the objective is realized it will not be something ephemeral and likely to fall apart as something planted in good soil that will bear lasting fruit. A hundredfold.

There are beautiful scripture passages which invite us to take on this attitude of patience and surrender. Who is not aware of the beautiful passage on the lilies of the field and on the uselessness of worrying about tomorrow: tomorrow will worry about itself (Mt 6). And we are told that God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, God's ways higher than our ways (Is 55:9). But Psalm 139 is perhaps the best antidote to our tendency to take ourselves, our plans, our decisions too seriously. God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves, surrounds us, lays his hand of protection upon us. Indeed "such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high I cannot attain it" (v.6).

So ultimately what counts in the end is not my doing this rather than that, but allowing God's Spirit in me to use me to achieve the divine purpose. What I end up deciding or doing is not a matter of life and death, as if my success or failure will change the course of the universe. I am a human, not God. God uses my energy, my good will, my intelligence in ways which escape my understanding to achieve purposes that are beyond what I can imagine. So let go and let God be God. I can relax and let God be in charge. I can develop a sense of humour rather than be given over to frustration.

This was a lesson which Ignatius Loyola learned during a long life where he had to provide for a newly established religious order, growing very quickly, responding to many urgent demands. He told us to pray as if everything depended on ourselves, but act as if everything depended on God. (Some popular versions of this saying have it the other way around).

Thus when we plan and make choices, we are to do so with a felt experience of depending on ourselves. Our choices, no matter how much God is present in them, are the acts by which we define ourselves as adults, as responsible agents. We are taking a risk, venturing out into the unknown. We take this risk as if God were not there, though we know He is. But when we move into action, implementing our plans and choices, we should do so with the sense that though it is really us who have rolled up our sleeves and are now engaged in the process of implementation, ultimately unless God is also there in His providence to guide the way, we are helpless and all our efforts will come to nothing. It is in the stage of implementation that we are to entrust ourselves most radically to God’s care for us and for our projects of service, because it is in that stage that we are most prone to over-relying on our insights and our strengths. (more on this: http://www.jesuits.ca/orientations/hevenesi.pdf)