Are we resistant to God?

In the Gospel of Mark, 9: 2-10, Jesus has a profound experience of God, and God is heard saying, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him.” God speaks to you too and says, “You are my son whom I love” and “You are my daughter whom I love”. But often we can’t hear God say that, or we won’t hear it. The human mind is an endless source of inventiveness when it comes to avoiding experiences of God. Often, we resist because we don’t want our self-image to be transformed.

God gently draws us into intimacy but such encounters with mystery can be too much for most of us and we avoid them. We may instinctively withdraw from God’s presence. Experiences of God as mystery evoke awe, and even fear, in the face of the uncontrollable otherness of God.

This fear of and flight from intimacy with God — the holiness of God, the unpredictability of God, and even the tenderness of God — occurs because our small, conditioned sense of self is threatened in both obvious and subtle ways by such encounters. In short, we resist God.

Fr Michael Smith SJ

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