God does not exist within our world. So do not be distressed that you cannot find someone named God in the world or prove God to the world. You might as well look for the storyteller in the story or argue with its characters about the existence of their author. If you think of existence as sharing time and space with others things that exist, then God does not exist in our world. Better to say that the world exists in God. Our world comes from God.
Our intellectual mistakes about God and the world have moral counterparts. If you do think that God is within the world, you will inevitably make some part of your world into an idol. And if you do not accept that you are part of the world, that you cannot step free of the world, you will not see yourself as responsible for what happens in the world. You will essentially be looking upon yourself as a god, standing outside of the world.
If you think that God is within the world, you will inevitably make some part of your world into an idol.
Both intellectually and morally, we surreptitiously try to trade places with God. Intellectually, God becomes a notion that we judge, as though the mind could take in its own origin. Morally, we blame God for the world and, with no little indignation, await some adjustment in the world on the part of its author. We become gods who judge the world and God.
Christianity takes a different path. In saying that God became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, we are saying, however hard it is to conceive, that God has entered our story. The storyteller has risked everything by becoming a character in his own tale. As author, the story belongs to Christ. Yet as character, he is carried where he would not go. He truly suffers and dies for us. Christ writes the tale by living the story.
Now consider the parable that Christ the storyteller gives us in this Sunday’s Gospel reading. Surely he is not championing the dishonesty of the steward. What are we meant to learn? It is quite simple, really. We are creatures. To use our metaphor, we are stuck in the story. We cannot just close the book out of disdain for the world. The crafty steward acts—quite decisively—in his story. He knows that his actions have consequences.
You cannot be a Christian in your heart, your mind and your soul. You can only be a Christian in your story.
To be a Christian is to accept the story in which we find ourselves. It is to know that our actions do have consequences. We cannot simply wait for a better world, a better tale, to come along. We cannot claim that we honor God and only wish the rest of the world would as well. To acknowledge that we are in the story is to take responsibility for the effect that we have on the world.
You cannot be a Christian in your heart, your mind and your soul. You can only be a Christian in your story. How you spend your time. How you spend your money. How you vote. The care you give to the environment. The concern you show for your fellow creatures. All of this matters because God does not call us from the world; God calls us into the world.
When our chapters come to a close, they will be judged, find their meaning or lack of it, in light of the entire story, Christ’s tale. So we must ask ourselves about our own stories: Did we hold the world in disdain, or did we make a difference?
Readings: Amos 8:4-7 1 Timothy 2:1-8 Luke 16:1-13
Change what? I’m not sure what Fr Klein is trying to say.