Thought for the Week: Lost in translation
John Lampen considers what may be lost in translation
I sometimes hear Friends substituting ‘that of good in everyone’ for George Fox’s words ‘that of God’. Both ‘good’ and ‘God’ have such wide connotations that they mean different things to different people. But I believe that we lose something valuable by this translation.
A dear Quaker friend of mine, widely respected for her good sense, once rose abruptly in the middle of Sunday dinner and drove to the house of someone she knew – just in time to stop him from (very unexpectedly) trying to kill himself. She is a good person, but that does not explain why she went. Similar intuitions have occurred throughout Quaker history, as well as outside it. Our Quaker ‘heroes’ such as James Nayler, John Woolman and Elizabeth Fry all witness to them.
Linked to this is the experience of what we might call a ‘force-field’ linking people together. Quaker discernment and our Business Meetings are not based on the belief that there is goodness in each of us, but on trust in a power (whether within or outside ourselves) that somehow directs the group rightly.
When my wife and I committed ourselves to living with our children in a Northern Ireland torn by violence it was not because we were ‘good’, but because we each, separately, felt an unmistakable call to be there. To call this ‘that of God in us’ does not explain it; nor does it locate a God anywhere except in the human heart. But it acknowledges a power and an ‘otherness’ in the experience. The beliefs with which Friends have tried to account for this may be mistaken, but the experience itself is not. It was described by Roy Farrant in the Friend in 1974. He wrote:
‘My experience came after many years of doubting and uncertainty… It came at a moment when God, who through many people and events over a period of several months had been pursuing me, put his hand on my shoulder. I had to respond – yes or no. It was unequivocal, inescapable and unconditional. It was also completely unemotional; I was stone cold sober – no heavenly visions or lumps in the throat. It was a challenge to the will, a gift of faith for me to reject or accept – and I accepted’ (Quaker faith & practice 26.13).
You may reply: ‘The reason I can’t say “that of God” is that I simply can’t accept any of that mysterious stuff. Calling it “that of good” reduces it to something I can get my head round.’ Yes, but do you only accept things as true which you can understand and explain? If so, you must have problems believing in the law of gravity! Arthur Eddington, the Quaker scientist, is sometimes credited with the quotation: ‘The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, but queerer than we can imagine.’
There is another reason why I prefer to say ‘God’, not ‘good’, which I offer more cautiously. ‘That of good’ in me frequently struggles with my dark side, at times tries to deny it, and is often defeated. In contrast, I experience ‘that of God’ as something which has insight and power to transform the evil in me. My goodness is part of this element which I call divine, but not the whole of it.
Comments
I am grateful to John Lampen for this thoughtful and intelligent observation. “That of good in everyone” is clearly not what early Friends had in mind with “that of God…” Nor is it what most of us probably envision when we use the phrase.
The difficulty which many Quakers have (as do millions of others of many faiths) with the word “God”, is that it’s a word which when capitalised has so very many definitions that we may hesitate to employ it. This is nothing new: in the 18th century time of the Enlightenment, it became common to use locutions such as “Divine Providence” and “Our Creator” as a way of not committing to a concept of a large white-bearded figure on a throne in a mysterious place in the sky (as depicted in religious paintings) who knows all and can take purposeful miraculous action to change things. That’s why, when asked by a visiting evangelical or a Friend in friendly discussion whether I “believe in God”, I either just say “yes” to keep matters simple, or I say “Well, that depends what you mean by the word” and take it from there.
Like many others, I flounder when looking for words to clarify what that word means to me. I am surer in discerning what it does not mean. John Lampen has shone a wise light for us in our search for truth.
Henning Sieverts
Woodbridge Local Meeting
Ipswich & Diss Area Meeting
By SHSieverts@aol.com on 23rd June 2016 - 12:17
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