Idiomata Divina
There is little that makes me happier than when a person tells me something about God. Of course, sometimes people say things about God which are horrible, but oftentimes when they mean what they say very deeply, they are beautiful beyond compare. This much is true not just for original insights, but for all insights. As such, for about a month or so, I've been letting a comment a man I met in a metro station performing made to me about God. He had a good deal to say, largely about angels, but what struck me most was the last thing he said: that he felt good people who died were fixed by God into the sky as new stars. That idiom stuck with me. I wanted to give it the best hearing I could.
After mulling it over for a fair length of time, I think I finally know how to take it. The reason it's become salient to me now is in relation to another idiom, one which comes out of Sikhi. Among all the religions of the world, Sikhi has a special place in my heart. I admire the poetry of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib—at least, as well as I can grasp it in English translation. I love the focus on the Name of God, I'm moved the simple richness with which God is understood, and I respect the ethic of right conduct which the religion inspires. I don't want to become a Sikh, but Sikhs aren't bothered if I don't anyway, because they believe to some degree in the unity of religions and would simply hope to inspire me to be more godly, whether as a Sikh or not. I believe that is exactly what has happened, so that goal is attained, and continues to be attained every time I read their Scripture.
Unity of religions is a tricky doctrine, because it always risks erasing the unique theological peculiarities of the religions it refers to. For example, Bahá'í is forced to argue, in order to include Christianity within its scope, that Christianity is true yet Christ is also not divine—therefore declaring the vast majority of Christians incorrect in their interpretation of their own religion. The same occurs within Islam's declaration that Jews and Christians have valid revelations, yet they have been corrupted and should be put into accord with Islam. On the Christian side, Christian inclusivism which argues that Christ pulls the strings behind other religions through the Holy Spirit risks being insulting, as if to say, "Oh, don't worry silly infidels, you're Christian at heart." This risk always exists, and Sikhi is no exception, though I find it strikes a nice balance of unity and peculiarity. Of course, along with these risks there are many benefits, most notably in greatly lessening the need for religious persecution, of which Bahá'í and Sikhi are great examples. I am, on the whole, sympathetic to religious universalism. But it does have its flaws.
In highlighting the difference between religions, divine idioms can be useful. Idioms are of couse not literal descriptions of doctrine: if taken too far, they are at risk of collapse. But they are useful in showing at once parallels and contrasts in a way which does not aim to annex other idioms—we can, after all, keep in mind diverse sorts of images. An idiom that has stuck with me of this kind is a description of Buddhism I saw once from a Buddhist mutual, that of Indra's net: an infinite net of glittering jewels fixed in the sky, such that each jewel, when examined, shines with the reflection of every other jewel, the reflections of which themselves contain every other reflection, and so on forever. Is this a divine idiom? I don't know that it is, because Buddhism is not a religion of divinity. But it is the sort of idiom I'm interested in working with.
Sikhi, if I understand correctly, describes God as being like an infinite ocean. Anything that exists must be drawn from this ocean—but due to our egos, we have drawn out water from the sea and filled up cups with it. This water may be transferred from cup to cup, over and over again, yet its final destination must always be its source, back in the wholeness of the sea. How does the water return to the sea? Through the Guru, who is less like a cup than like a wave on the water. The wave is not the ocean, but it is not separate from the ocean either, and moves with the ocean's force—the force of the Name of God. The wave washes over the cups, reunites them with the Name, and allows them to be drawn back into the water. We mortal creatures are drawn back into God.
Christianity might be understood as having an idioms of stars instead. God is as the Heavens, arrayed with stars which dwell therein, and shine with a common light which might be called the Name of God. Yet in our ego, and our pride, we pluck the stars from the Heavens, and make them as jewels to be kept in hand—pretty, yet scarce and lightless in themselves, so much smaller than the stars, bound to crumble away and turn to dust. Between the jewels taken down to Earth, the Spirit of the Heavens wanders about, outcast and darkened, while the Heavens themselves seem far away. It is here, however, that Christ enters, the one who is arrayed with all the Heavens as with a cloak, shining with all the light of the Name of God, and so incomprehensible to the jewels which have foresaken Heaven and light. Christ is pierced and killed, his cloak is torn and divided, and he is buried. But he is raised again the Spirit, clod in the Heavens again, which have now been made anew, such that the wounds of the cloak are the stars brought back to Heaven. Now the Spirit of the Heavens may be received again, and the jewels begin to shine, and Creation is received back again as a new music of the spheres. On understanding the transition between stars and jewels in Christianity, I am indebted to the Anglican divine Thomas Traherne, who I have never read but listened to a nice lecture on.
Clearly the second is more convoluted. Partially that's because I understand the idiom better, and partially because I think it genuinely is a more convoluted idiom. But I think to compare and contrast the two reveals the differences and similarities between Sikhi and Christianity in a way that is respectful and minimally conflictual. The first commonality is a state of communion with and non-separation from God, which is broken by the acts of the ego. Something is taken from God in this moment, falls away from God, and draws something of God into a mortal world bound to crumble and die. Yet God restores and saves the fallen through the Guru, or the Christ who, from a Sikh perspective, are not so different, since they see Jesus as a Guru: "Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!" By this saving action, communion with God is once again restored, drawn back by the Name. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Nothing saves but the Lord's true Name.
And then there are the differences. Both stars and water, in their original and final states, intermingle and interact. The light of each star reaches out to every other star, and they appear to us not divided against each other but constellated, in tandem with each other. Yet the stars of Heaven also do not lose their distinctiveness relative to one another. Nor do they lose their distinctiveness relative to God: for what is in each star is God as light, and each star is itself in God as Heaven, yet the star is neither the Light nor yet the Heaven. The cup which returns to the sea, however, loses its particularity, and so returns to a state of not only perfect harmony with God, but non-distinction from God. There is likewise then a difference in the role of the Saviour. The Christian Saviour is not merely a shining star of God amid the jewels, though Christ in his humanity has this quality as well. Rather, the Saviour is God himself in the act of a new Creation, one which occurs not by dissolving the jewels back into God, but by bearing the imprints of those jewels, as wounds, and by those imprints making the Heavens anew. The cup is able to be returned to the sea by the wave because it is full of water. But the light of the jewel cannot be returned to Heaven because the light in it has died, and must be restored, by ending the exile of the Spirit of God, allowing her to be received again. God is not trapped in our ego, but exiled from our ego.
Here is where I stop with the idioms. Because if we become too fixated on the idioms, we lose the truer content of religion. God is not an image in Sikhi or Christianity, neither the Heavens nor the Sea, but the Self-Existent Substance, that which is God in God, the "I Am What I Am." God is for us both, "O Creator Lord, Cause of causes, O Lord and Master, Inner-knower, Searcher of all hearts: You alone know Your own condition and state. You Yourself, God, are imbued with Yourself. You alone can celebrate Your Praises. O Nanak, no one else knows" (SGGS, Ang 266). We must not make God a role within an imagistic system. The imagistic system is a temporary tool by which to understand the God we share with all other things, and cannot possibly comprehend by means of any of them. Therein lieth idolatry.
Yet I do think the contrast is helpful, because I think, if the idiom is not taken as an end in itself, it shows where Christians and Sikhs depart without truly setting either at odds. We agree: one God, from whom we are exiled by ego, to whom we are returned by the Saviour, who comes in the Name of Lord and is one with God. We disagree: what is the character of the intimacy which we seek to foster with God, and thus, what must be the character the oneness of the Saviour with God? These are real distinctions, of real theological consequence. But they are not total schisms over which no voice can travel. Sikhi already recognizes this much; I have been heartened, for example, by Sikh commentary on the Lord's Prayer, which Sikhs often appreciate tremendously. I'm happy to say the very same about the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, some of whose comments on God speak to me so profoundly as to break my heart. There are so many sections I could include, but one sticks out to me:
You are the River, All-knowing and All-seeing. I am just a fish—how can I find Your limit?
Wherever I look, You are there. Outside of You, I would burst and die. Ang 25
Our grammars are divergent, but related. Something is lost in translation, but what does come through is enough. For we are both comprehended by that which neither of us comprehends—we are both in the Lord our God, and the Lord our God is One. "In Thee, O Lord, have I taken refuge; / Let me never be ashamed Psalm 71:1, Jewish Publication Society translation.