FREE IN TRUTH
© Peter G. van Breemen SJ
If you make my word your home you
will indeed be my disciples, you will learn
the truth and the truth will make you free. (John 8:31-32)
The word “emeth” is a Hebrew word which until recently was considered synonymous with the Latin word “veritas” (truth) and is now translated “fidelitas” (fidelity). It communicates a knowledge of God. It is for the Hebrew an existential word. His life, his whole existence is rooted in the fidelity of Yahweh. He can trust Yahweh. Yahweh will never let him down. That's “emeth.” To Westerners, truth is something intellectual. Truth means that the idea and the word correspond to reality. This is less profound than the eastern meaning of the word. John in his Gospel uses the word many times, e.g., “the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). We miss the whole point if we interpret truth in this context as meaning intellectual truth. The truth John speaks of is this: the reliability of God's love. When I really know that I can trust Yahweh, that he still accepts me even though I have sinned— then I am a free person. “Emeth” is the noun, and the corresponding verb is “aman”—to confirm. Our “amen” stems from this same verb. God says “amen” to my existence, and he will not go back on his word.
I really do matter to God. He cares for me with all that he is. The most genuine experience of God in mankind points to this unshakeable reality. He has never revealed himself except in terms of love. Once the Chosen People learned this “emeth” of Yahweh, they never forgot it. Though they broke the Covenant, not once but many times, they were always sure of that “emeth.” They always knew they could return to Yahweh. He would be there waiting for them. The fullness of this “emeth” has come through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:14,17), the new and everlasting Covenant. St. Paul summarizes beautifully what this “emeth” means: “We may be unfaithful, but he is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self” (2 Tim 2:13).
This truth in the biblical sense will make men free. The best example of this is the life of Christ. He was a free man—open to everybody. He wasn't bound by rigid laws. He was available to every human person and rejected no one. How did he manage to be so free, so available, so accepting? What was his secret? When Christ speaks—and he speaks through every page of the Gospel—he gives away his secret. He talks about his Father who is the center of his life. He lives in the favor of his Father: “The Father and I are one” (in 10:30) and that makes him free indeed. There is no self-concern in Christ, no worry. His heart has found perfect peace through his abandonment to the will of the Father. This is his food (in 4:34). It means everything to him.
When I do not feel completely accepted, I find ways to assert myself: 1) I become adamant on certain principles. I cannot yield for fear of losing something of my own personality. If, instead, I were to live on God's acceptance I would have no need to assert myself. God has made me worthwhile. I know this in faith, and that is sufficient. 2) I spend my energies not just for the kingdom 'of God, for the apostolate, but also to build up my own image. How many tensions arise from this! When I really believe in the personal love of God for me, then I am relieved of that part of my work which is nothing but self-assertion. God's love for me is not based on my work. God's love for me is based on nothing: “If Yahweh set his heart on you and chose you, it was not because you outnumbered other peoples: you were the least of all peoples. It was for love of you and to keep the oath he swore to your fathers that Yahweh brought you out with his mighty hand and redeemed you from slavery, from the power of Pharaoh, king of Egypt” (Deut 7:7-9). God loved me even before I existed. St. Augustine says, “You created me because you loved me. ” God doesn't love me for what I am, but I am because God loves me. When the love of God is based on nothing, it cannot be destroyed. I can never, lose it because it is not due to any achievement of mine. No matter how I behave, that love will remain: “Love consists in this: not that we have loved God but he has loved us” (1 Jn 4:10 NAB). The love of God is a free gift. It gives me freedom, peace and happiness.
As soon as the love of God is no longer the basis, the center of my life, then I become enslaved.
I have to cling to something or somebody in order to save myself. When God is the Ultimate Concern in my life, I do not have to save myself. He will do it. In the day-to-day realities I risk losing this freedom. There is a danger that, eventually, secondary values become absolute and thus lose their relationship to the Ultimate Concern. The real problem underlying the confusion is simply that I who possess infinite depth—God is the deepest Ground of my being—identify myself with something limited, something small. I lose not only my freedom but my humanness as well. There are two types of freedom: the freedom which admits of no external forces in my life—no boss, no superior, no commitments (the limit of this is the spinster!)—and an inner freedom which is capable of surrender, of not being bound by my own likes and caprices. Some “apostles of freedom” are not truly free. The so-called freedom they shout and sing about turns out sometimes to be their personal addictions, their ultimate concern. St. Paul reminds us : “My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty; but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence” (Gal 5:13).
We find in the Gospel an example of persons who are not free at all—the pharisee. He is the counterpart of that freedom which Christ embodies. The most obvious thing we can say about the pharisee is that he is a hypocrite:
Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You who are like whitewashed tombs that look hand-some on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of corruption. In the same way you appear to people from the outside like good honest men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matt 23:27-28).
The pharisee is self-complacent. He is convinced of his own righteousness: “The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, ‘I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here’ ” (Lk 18:11). The opinion of other people is very important to the pharisee: “Everything they do is done to attract attention, like wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassels, like wanting to take the place of honour at banquets and the front seats in the synagogues, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and having people call them Rabbi” (Matt 23:5-7). The pharisee is very concerned about his own image and will even use prayer to improve it: “And when you pray, do not imitate the hyprocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them” (Matt 6:5). He is convinced that, in the kingdom of Yahweh, he has a very important place. It is too bad that the rest of mankind cannot equal him.
That the pharisee fulfills the law is to his credit. But he believes that by keeping the law he saves and justifies himself, and this is his mistake. The pharisee is the man who kills himself in order to observe the law. The law means everything to him. He is conscientious in observing it in every detail. He fasts twice a week; he pays his tithe of mint and dill and cummin. But the emphasis is solely on himself who accomplishes all these things. What is lacking is surrender, abandonment. And he doesn't dare to surrender.
Why? It is the pharise’s idea of God which keeps him locked in. God is a very severe judge, a most cruel critic who is very careful to find fault with man. When he has found fault, he is glad, and he punishes man for it. The whole purpose of the pharisee’s life is to live in such a way that he makes no mistake at all. At the end of his life he can show God a perfect slate, and God will have to accept it. His real trouble is that he doesn’t believe in any love of God. When we understand the psychology of the pharisee, then the subsequent stages become obvious. When God is cruel, when there is no mercy in God, then the pharisee must keep the law. He must make himself safe. When he does commit a fault, he must repress it because every mistake is fatal. His whole life would be lost. What appears to be hypocrisy is actually a sign that the pharisee cannot accept himself. He needs to tell himself how wonderful he is and he needs to hear this from others because deep inside he is very insecure. There is that fear of God, that terror. He is frightened, but he hides his fear behind a facade of self-complacency. Basically that, too, shows a lack of faith, of feeling accepted.
We can approach this same reality from another angle. When God made a covenant with the Chosen People, they knew themselves loved by Yahweh—they were the apple of his eye! They had but one desire: “How can we please Yahweh.” The law explained to the Chosen People what was pleasing to God, and they were happy to receive it (the whole long Psalm 119). It was experienced not as a strain but as a joy: “Listen, Israel: Yahweh, our God, is the one Yahweh. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength” (Deut 6:5).
Originally, then, the covenant of God’s preferential love was basic, and the law was the response of the people to that covenant. As time went on, however, the covenant lost its significance for their lives. To be chosen by God didn’t mean much any more. The wholehearted response in joy was gone. The law, however, remained but it had become an obligation, a harness. The law was experienced as a burden and a very heavy one, too. Whereas in the past when the spirituality of the covenant was alive the people felt safe in the shadow of God’s love, now in the pharisaic times as the Old Testament deteriorated, the Chosen Ones felt safe in the shadow of the law. The law served as an escape. The law became a shackler. The letter of the law which Christ attacked so vehemently was typical of the pharisee. He saw only the law. But the law has no raison d’être when we do not believe in the covenant of God’s love.
The pharisee, then, keeps the law and thinks that because of this he is agreeable to God. God's acceptance is secondary for the pharisee whereas, for Christ, it is exactly the opposite: being agreeable to God comes first. Suppose a child has never experienced any love from his parents, and he sees other children whose parents shower them with affection. The child becomes jealous. He thinks, “I want to be loved, too. I’ve never experienced it, but I'm going to deserve the love of my parents, to evoke it by my good behavior. ” The boy works on behaving perfectly to gain the love of his parents. This is the way of the pharisee. He is behaving in such a manner that he is going to induce God’s love. The initiative is his.
What a terrible world! What an impossible burden! The whole outlook of the Gospel, however, is that of a child who has never experienced anything but love and who tries to do his best because he is loved. Sometimes he makes mistakes but they cause little harm. They do not endanger the love of his parents. The possibility that his parents may stop loving him never enters his mind. For the pharisee, the emphasis is on his own strength and his own achievements, whereas in the Gospel the emphasis is on God’s love.
What is primary for the pharisee is his own effort but for the man of faith what comes first is his trust in God’s love. There are many types of phariseeism in our lives, many subtle ways in which we succumb to the “Do It Yourself” kit: we observe the law, the rule, better than others perhaps; we run a well-kept prayer life; we keep up with the latest theology of renewal; we live for others and are always available! In a word, we are in the process of making it! We achieve our own salvation. Now all of these four areas are essential. We have to keep the law: “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them. I tell you solemnly, till heaven and earth disappear, not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the law until its purpose is achieved” (Matt 5:17). Christ tells his disciples in a parable of the need to pray continually (Lk 18:1). It is also necessary to read the signs of the times: “Hypocrites, you know how to interpret the face of the earth and the sky. How is it you do not know how to interpret these times? ” (Lk 12:56). And we will be judged on love: “And the king will answer, ‘I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me’ ” (Matt 24:40). When we finish our works of obedience, prayer, renewal or charity, we must smile. This is what the pharisee cannot do. He cannot smile about his own achievements. His whole eternity is at stake, so he is always dead serious and very tense. He is managing his salvation. The man of faith performs like tasks but when he has completed them he says: “This isn't what really counts. What matters is the love of God. ” In like manner St. Luke tells us, “When you have done all you have been told to do say ‘We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty’ ” (Lk 17:10). The basic question is not so much “Is God content with me?” but rather, “Is it enough that God is God and that he loves me?” Faith is to believe that God says “Yes” to me, to my being, that God confirms me. When I really believe this, then I, too, can respond “Yes” to God.