Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God

by Brennan Manning

The human tendency toward projection—ascribing to God our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes about ourselves and others—is unmasked in all its absurdity. Distorted images and caricatures of God as vengeful, whimsical, fickle, and punitive (images that cannot fail to engender anxiety, fear, scrupulosity, and unhealthy guilt) are exposed for what they are—puny and pathetic human constructs. The same judgment is passed on the illusion of control. When life is tranquil, relationships intact, finances secure, and physical health flourishing; when the enemy is not at the gate; when the war drums are not rattling; when the Calvin Klein perfume advertisement for Eternity for Men seems plausible—then a sense of complacency, self-sufficiency, and personal command of one’s destiny deludes and lulls us. But the reality of kabōd shatters every delusion. As previous certainties desert us, we become vulnerable and open. The glory of God makes possible the primordial act of religion: the realization that we are not sufficient unto ourselves, that we have received our life and being from another. In a decision that reaches the roots of our most intimate self and demands the renunciation of belonging to that self, we freely ratify our condition as creatures. Through this fundamental act of dispossession we acknowledge the illusion of control and open ourselves to the reality of God.