Pursue personal piety for its own sake, not for reward

Q: Raised in the Catholic faith (though I am not a Catholic), I was taught to believe in a God that rewarded you more the harder you believed/prayed. And the more you adhered to the teachings of the church, the more you'd be rewarded. Now, in my 60s, I have fallen on hard times, financially and healthwise, and it seems I am spiritually barren. I want to pray and ask for guidance and get a feeling of peace, but feel I have nothing to give and cannot even put my hands together. Is it true that God is a God of Tit for Tat? If I do my part as fervently as possible, then he will reward me by getting me through this? Somehow I feel that there is a balance in the universe, and whatever I beam out comes back to me. So if I beam extra forcefully, will extra good things come back to me, and how do I do that? -- S.A., Las Vegas

A: I probably should be more poetic and polite, but I have only about 750 words. So, I'm going to "try on" some provocative answers in an effort to deliberately startle and maybe derail the line of thought that made your question even plausible. Please, I'm not making fun. I want these "answers" to make you examine your question, because I'm wondering if you already know the answer.

Answer No. 1: The reason you've fallen on hard times is because you haven't believed or prayed hard enough nor consistently adhered to the teachings of the church. This is why God is withholding your reward. You need to beam more fervently.

Answer No. 2: There is no apparent and predictable relationship between belief or prayer or adherence or faithfulness ... and reward. I say "apparent and predictable relationship." The Christian story promises a kind of "reward" to the faithful -- eternal life. But that is not an apparent and predictable reward, it is a hope apprehended only in faith.

Do you know anyone who prayed and believed and beamed harder and more fervently than Jesus? Do you remember what happened to him? According to the Christian story, he offered his last breath to an unspeakable suffering for the sake of truth, love and obedience to his felt calling from God. The capper was he died commending his spirit into the hands of a God who had skeedaddled. Forsaken him.

Ask yourself: What measurable positive change did his faithfulness effect in the world? Does the world have less, more or about the same evil since he lived and died? Less, more or about the same violence and stupidity and genocide and despair? Less or more reality TV? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

For Christians, Jesus' life and death and life affects the possibility of being properly and joyously related to Maker, to neighbor, to cosmos, to self. But the secular view is Jesus was just another really good person -- beautiful and hapless and kind of naive -- who got run over, chewed up and spit out by our world, which, apparently and predictably, is terrified by anything or anyone who invites us to look at ourselves as a strategy for real human freedom.

The Hebrew Scriptures were kind enough to include Ecclesiastes, a book that examines your very question, S.A. The essential answer is something like this: Seems like all a bunch of wind blowing to me, or vanity. Because really good people suffer for no reason and really wicked people die in silk sheets. Every day. If there is, as you "feel," S.A., a "balance in the universe," it's certainly not very often a balance observable in this life.

Jesus picked up this same theme in the Sermon on the Mount: "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

Tit for tat? Hardly. Causality is best left to the inquiry of science. Serious spirituality inevitably places our journey on the via dolorosa ("the way of grief"), the end of which is categorical surrender to mystery and grace -- not balance, not rewards, not answers.

Personal piety -- belief, prayer, practice -- is not a roll of quarters we drop into the Divine Vending Machine dispensing peace and prosperity. We pursue personal piety for its own sake.

The only reward we can count on for living with integrity is that we get to have integrity.

But why do I think you already know all of this? Was your question rhetorical? A way to tell me you're suffering, and you're tired of suffering, and you're feeling forsaken in your suffering? And that you'd like to speak to the manager?

Me, too, S.A. On many days. Me, too.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal. com.