Archbishop of Sydney

God

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
24 June 2001

It never entered the heads of the ancient Romans that these gods required humans to love one another. Today some reduce the whole of religion to being loving and tolerant, while god, distant and friendly, is an optional extra.

Most Australians believe in God. We are monotheists, who acknowledge that the one true God is worshipped in different ways by Christians, Jews, Moslems and Sikhs, etc. There is not a Catholic god, and a Protestant god and yet another for the Moslems. We believers have to share.

God is rarely mentioned in Australian public life and in the press, unlike the United States. Even their coins proclaim "In God we trust". They have a national Thanksgiving Day.

Because of this silence about God outside church services a always ask the senior primary confirmation classes "What's God like?". A remember one twelve year old boy answering "unreal" and a suspected he meant it literally!

It is difficult for all of us to begin to explain what we mean when we say God is a spirit, not physical or material, and therefore neither male nor female.

Recently a talk back radio host was surprised when a said that God is a spirit. Because Christians call God "father", he had always thought Christians believed God is a man.

"Ghost" is another word for spirit, but even youngsters know God is not like Casper the friendly ghost. Most also seem to realise that God is more than the mighty forces of nature.

My regular staring point for children is to compare God to their parents' love for them; something very real, very powerful, quite invisible, but absolutely necessary, in some form or other, for the children's' well being. Nearly all youngsters understand what a am trying to say.

For the ancient Romans the gods were not at all godlike, by our present way of thinking. These gods were often cranky, even cruel. The origin of our practice of wrapping Christmas presents comes from the necessity of covering up the offering to a particular god so the other gods would not see it, become jealous and punish the donor. Gods only needed to be kept happy by sacrifices. Not surprisingly many ancient resented this and were irreverent towards them.

Therefore the Christian teaching that God loved the world, and all of us, was an absolute novelty 2000 years ago. For the pagans mercy and pity were defects of character, to be avoided by rational adults. That this merciful God required humans to be merciful to one another was a double shock.

But, if God loves us and is not cruel or capricious, why is there so much suffering and evil?

No one can provide a completely satisfactory answer to this but the Christian response is found more in loving service; in the battle against evil, injustice and suffering; in the quiet, dignity of the sufferers, than in theories.

These actions show that in a universe created by our good God there is much more truth, beauty and goodness than evil and suffering, and that this goodness will finally prevail, often through suffering.