“A View of God” [1939] by Norbert Fabián Čapek

The Sistine Madonna (1513-14), Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

“Pohled na Boha” (A View of God) by Norbert Fabián Čapek’s as reprinted in Poutník 5/2014, from the original in Cesty a cíle, Vol. XVII, no. 9, 15 November 1939, p.129-136

In the Gospel of John 14:8 we read that Jesus’ disciples expressed a strange request. When Jesus was speaking about the Father, God, one of the disciples said: “Show us the Father!” What was Jesus’ answer? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” But the disciples evidently saw only a human being. Jesus also never presented himself as “the Father”. For, in another place, he says: “The Father is greater” … “for I am going to the Father”… Jesus, then, did not wish to say that he was identical with the Father, but that in his actions there was something in which they could see the Father at work and Jesus – God’s labourer – intimately connected with God. Up to that time Jesus’ disciples had not trained their spiritual sight to the point where they could see God in the actions and activity of their Master.

You may ask why the theme “A View of God” [Pohled na Boha]? This has a special meaning. I want to say that we are to be content with a view. For our earthly existence, a view is sufficient. Someone might say to themselves: I want full understanding, I want, so to speak, to take God apart as I would anything else. As a chemist analyses a compound, as a mechanic dismantles a machine, a watchmaker a watch. Some theologians do precisely this. They know God better than themselves. They will ennumerate for you all his attributes, justify them, and then tell you that a God who cannot be analysed and perfectly understood is one they cannot accept. Such people, of course, cannot even understand the life of a little beetle.

A view is enough. And that view will be in keeping with our spiritual maturity. A father with his five-year-old little son was at an exhibition of aeroplanes. Of course, the boy had many questions. But understanding? He had to content himself with a view.

And so it is with adults as well. You have been to a concert. You have heard a symphony by Dvořák. You have had enjoyment; it was a musical hearing, something like a view is for the eyes. But who among you, while listening, understood counterpoint and other musical subtleties?

I remember my childhood views in my native village. At that time I thought about all that I saw and how I saw it. But when in later years I had seen London and Paris, New York and Rome and other great cities, and then returned to my native village, thinking back on my childhood view, I could hardly recognise those little streets. They were quite different. It was a different view, because I was different.

Is not this view of God similar to our view of the world in general? What was our view when we were five, fifteen, twenty-five and fifty years old? Always it was dependent on what we had learned about the world and where we had travelled. And that is only this material world.

Imagine what a reactionary I would be if, after a whole life of searching and of all kinds of experiences, I still had the same view of God as I had when I was eleven, when as an altar boy I knelt at the altar.

Some people look at God through the spectacles of mediaeval monks. Some through even older spectacles. But old views are long insufficient for today's thinking person. – When you walk through the streets of Prague today, you can see on many houses the notice: “Flat to let.” Sometimes it has already been hanging there for a long time. The flat is empty. The tenants have moved to a better one. In the old flat they were for some time content. I once very much liked my grandmother’s talks about what views of God she had. I was very fond of her and have the loveliest memories of her. But her views of God no longer suffice for me today.

Some people have moved out of the old flat, or – in other words – out of their old notions of God, and are now outside. They have no roof over their heads; spiritually, they have nowhere to live. Some say: We will live in nature. That is our God. The view of hills and valleys, of forest and river, is beautiful, but it is not a view of God.

Some who have moved out of the old have been left with only a view into emptiness. – [But] I am unspeakably happy that a view of God has remained for me. It has changed; it is different; it is better; it is more worthy of a thinking person; but it is still a view of God.

Even among those who sincerely believe in God, there are various views. There is, for instance, the view of the spiritual beggar. I also once had that. A person, at every looking towards God, begs for something. Someone would kneel the whole day and would most gladly pray for everything out of God, even their daily wage. 

A rather different view of God is held by religious whiners. These do not beg so much, but constantly display their wounds. In that whininess there is a certain lack of self-respect and a lack of trust in God. I would almost say that a whiner is a cousin of a beggar. I once made up a little song for our children, and it goes: “Who wants to whine, let them whine, let them cry the whole day, let them keep a bee in their bonnet (lit. beetle/bug in thir head), I go at everything with humour.”

To another category belong superficial onlookers. Look and go away. They are curious. Today they look at a beautiful picture, tomorrow at a slaughtered cow, then again at dogs chasing each other in the street – and with just such curiosity they would like to look at God as well. It is natural that they will see nothing.

I shall mention yet another sort of undesirable view. It is the view of people who, as it were, seek in God only their servant. In whatever form, even in prayer, they are telling God all that he ought to do. And a variety of such person is also to be found among those who do not pray at all. 

God has given people this earth to live on. But the cultivation of that earth he has left to people. Somebody will say, of course, “I would cultivate it, but I have nothing to cultivate.” To this I answer that God also left the distribution of the land to people. – It will be a long time of learning and trying. The world is God’s field, left to humankind; the world is God’s workshop, into which humankind has been placed; and the rest is up to us. It is good that for this we [i.e. humankind] have more than one life.

How much more quickly would people advance if they did not project their narrow and distorted notions onto God. How much faster would they advance if they could more quickly take off their childhood shoes.

Yet some do something even worse. For a time their thinking found itself in a world appropriate to the twentieth century, but it wasn’t comfortable enough for them. 

The view of God is bound up, as has already been suggested, with our life-experiences, with the experiences we have had in connection with the word and concept of “God”. Let us make this clear with a few examples.

You have perhaps heard at some time of Mark Twain. He was the greatest American humourist, and also one of the greatest humourists of all time. By the way, Mark Twain was also a Unitarian. Those who knew him said of him that he smoked the worst cigars there are in the world. And now pay attention to what superstition, bound up with the reputation of a famous man, can do. “One evening,” Mark Twain relates, “I invited twelve of my friends to dinner. One of them was especially known for his liking for the most expensive cigars, but I was known for my liking for the cheapest and worst. When earlier I had been visiting at his house, and no one was looking, I borrowed a handful of his most precious cigars, each of which cost forty cents (about fifteen crowns). I removed from them the bands which indicated their value and put them into the box in which I kept my cheap brand, which all my friends knew perfectly well. And after that dinner, as is customary for a host, I offered cigars. They took them, lit them, and wrestled with them in dreadful silence for a short while. Then they excused themselves and slipped away one by one. The next morning I found all those precious cigars, only slightly burned, in front of the gate except for one, which lay on a little plate at the place of that guest who delighted in the most expensive cigars. He told me later that I deserved to be shot for such bad cigars.”

What does this simple little story about cigars tell us? Because everyone without doubt believed that Mark Twain could only have bad cigars, even the most expensive and best cigars were repulsive to them, because they believed that they were cheap and therefore repulsive.

Mark Twain’s story is enormously instructive. I have spoken with people to whom who felt ill at the mere mention of the word Hus. And, of course, I have also spoken with people who can utter this word only with the greatest reverence. And it is always the same Hus. – Can we wonder that people’s view of God is so various? – I have come to know people to whom any person at that moment was repulsive if they seriously uttered the word God [Bůh]. In their childhood years this word was associated with ideas that today seem ridiculous to them. Therefore the word God [Bůh] still has for them a strange aftertaste, whoever uses it. Yet the Slavic word Bóg means wealth, abundance, the fullness of all good, the highest wisdom, the greatest love, the greatest power. [Note: both Bůh and Bóg come from the Proto-Slavic bogъ, originally meaning something like “god / deity / fortune / wealth”.]

Of course, the view of God depends not only on life-experience, but also on love for the Highest [Nejvyššímu]. We all know how a native of Prague, a good Czech who loves Prague, the little mother of Czech cities, looks at Prague from Petřín or Letná.

She is beautiful! No foreigner can deny that! She belongs among the most beautiful cities of the world and was and is admired by everyone who comes and has a sense and understanding for beauty. But she is admired in quite another way by the one who loves her. According to how great, how broad and deep one’s love for God is, such is a person’s view of God.

And now something about what I gain from the spiritual view of God. That view breathes into me trust that in God’s world there is a place for me and there are endless possibilities. There is struggle here, there are many disappointments – there is enough freedom and opportunity for joyful contests, and what one person does not succeed in today, two will accomplish tomorrow, and in the end we shall all come to know that the world is well governed, that everything that has grown out of love and better understanding has enduring existence.

I maintain that this universe of ours is friendly to the human being. We only have to know how to distinguish. There are many things that can only be expressed figuratively. Once I visited a manor house. Hardly had I entered when a dog snarled at me and barked fiercely. He ran towards me, and I was quite frightened. But I soon noticed that he was on a chain and could not run farther than about five metres. I said to myself: just you bark; I am not going over to you; you are not the master of my friend, you are only a dog.

The view of God further assures me of the value of the human soul. How poor I would feel if I knew only the view of the average scientist who everywhere sees only matter and blind force. – I would have to despair over the nothingness of the human being. According to some opinions our whole solar system is only an insignificant fragment, a tiny crumb, a Cinderella among billions of much greater worlds. And our planetary world, they say, is a bit botched. Supposedly by chance, through some catastrophe, the earth was torn away from the sun, and here conditions for human life were created such as are, they say, found nowhere else in the whole universe. And the human being, they say, is not even something normal. Such things I have read and heard many times. And just as the human being came into existence by chance, as if by a mishap, so, they say, he will again pass away and, for all eternity, not even a memory of him will remain.

I listen to such talk with a smile. Something in me, something in you, brother, sister, says that we are more than all those fiery balls, more than the matter of all worlds. And with Kant I cry out that the view of the starry heavens and into my own inner self, to the moral law of my being, lets me glimpse another world which is the true world, and all that my mortal eye sees is only the periphery, only the peel or husk, is truly something transient. It will change many times and perhaps disappear, but my world and my God, with whom my soul is kindred, will remain.

And therefore with Augustine I cry: “O God, you have created me for yourself, and the soul is restless until it rests in you.”

If I were truly only a paltry little bubble, I would have to be formed differently; but in my inmost being I hear a voice: be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Perhaps this or that star up there will sooner or later go out, but within me, in my soul, new stars will rise which will shine into eternity.

Someone has said: my head is wounded, but it is not bowed. And we can say: my body they could bind with iron, but no one will bind my spirit; only God could have such power – but because God is my friend, that is impossible.

In this lies the immense worth of the human being: that nothing can happen to him that cannot be put right. Should he fall ninety-nine times, he will rise again the hundredth time.

I am not God, I am not a part of God; God does not live in pieces; he is a being altogether one and whole and distinct from all other beings and things. In this lies the glory of the human being. Only in a figurative sense can a person at times be called a part of another. But in the original and essential sense each person is a whole, a unit, is something of his own, is his own. He proves this also in that he has the ability to set himself against God, or to work with God.

The view of God tells me that I am not a plaything of chance, but a son of the great Spirit of all spirits [elkého ducha všech duchů], Lord of all lords [pána všech pánů], that each of us is a son or a daughter of the Most High [Nejvyššího].

The view of God is for me a further sign and assurance that in seeking truth and good I cannot be overcome. The view of God tells me that life is not a gamble according to the motto: Stake, you may perhaps win. It is a way on which I cannot lose my way.

A pioneer goes and sees a wilderness or a marsh, just as any other person sees it, but at the same time they already see into the future, and before their mind’s eye there is drawn the image of its being changed into a field and the wilderness into a blossoming orchard and beautiful villas.

I see misery, but I do not see only that. I see further, and where today there is misery I see well-being. I see quarrels, yet where brothers hurl themselves into conflict against each other, I see how they will clasp each other’s hands for a common work. I see sadness on many faces, but I also see how these faces will be radiant with joy, how they will shine, how they will laugh. I see a little bird drawing in its wings and crouching on a twig, but I already see too how it will spread its little wings and fly up high and sing the song of a new spring.

All this will not come of itself. God will not do it in our place. That is what it means to be God’s labourer. It means not to take things only as they are, but to ask what they might be and what I can make of them. Jesus once said: “My Father is working still, and I also am working.” So let us work, seeing the invisible as if we already saw the reality.

There are people who take their own lives because they do not see a way before them. I see that way, and I would rather perish than swerve from the way after God.

For this very reason that way is a way towards perfection, because I am accompanied on it by trust in the moral order that is rooted in God, in that God who may long remain unknown, mocked and dishonoured.

The view of God further means the awakening of creative powers. The view of God, the eternal ideal of good, truth and perfection, produces vision, produces in us revelation. – A painter looks at a canvas, and there is nothing on it. But he already sees in it a picture, a landscape or figures. An ordinary person sees only a block of stone, but the sculptor-artist already sees in the stone the future beautiful, perfect statue; otherwise they would not be able to hew it from the stone.

In the view of God I see the secret of bliss and happiness. Happiness is where we wish to find it. That is the lesson of a long life. A person seeks here and there, and when they find it, they recognise that it is not what they was seeking. You see a happy child. Stand still and watch it at play. A little heap of sand, a bowl and a little spade – that is all you see. Is there blessedness in that sand? Not at all. Is it in the child? – It is in the imagination, it is in the view that the child brings into that sand. – A pilot flew from Moscow to America. Is the happiness in that flight? Have they not flown enough already? Happiness is in him; for him it is a delight to overcome difficulties. Or look when they are playing football. Is their happiness in the ball or in the kicking?

I observed two street vendors. They were close to each other. In the eyes of the one I saw how he had to force himself, what a torment it was for him to call people over and show them how to mend a hole in a pot. And near him stood the other vendor. You can see that he is in his element. For him it is a delight to recommend metal polish, to draw people by his talk and to show how the pot will shine when they rub it with his paste. Is there any blessedness in that pot? Or in the paste? If the other man took it into his hands, he would be just as plagued and bored with that paste as with the little rivets he recommends. He has no true view of his merchandise.

Many people do not have a joyful view, because their eyes are blinded by selfishness. I realised this recently. We were talking about a foreigner who makes great sacrifices for a nation foreign to him. And someone, with the eyes of a selfish person, kept poking and poking: why on earth does that man do it, what does he get out of it, how can it give him pleasure, why does he not sit at home and water the tulips in front of his windows. But I and others, in looking at that benefactor, saw God at work and said to ourselves: if a foreigner does this for our nation, what are we doing?

I shall end with an experience that I had when visiting the picture gallery in Dresden, in which there is Raphael’s world-famous Madonna. People had taken a child along. It was interested in the fur coat of the lady who was sitting next to it. I think it was fox. The child was mainly interested in the fox’s head. There was also a little lad from some village in the back-of-beyond; he remembered that the little Virgin Mary they had been selling last time at the fair was prettier because she had very gaudy colours. And I too was looking and looking. It was a beautiful painting; but for all the praise I had heard of it, it did not seem beautiful enough to me. Until someone quietly said to my neighbour, and I too overheard it, “You must look calmly, with concentration and for a while (I no longer know how many minutes), and not let yourself be distracted by anything.” And I too began to look calmly, with concentration, for a good while, and did not let myself be distracted. And as I went on looking, the picture came to life before my eyes. The Madonna’s eyes seemed to be opening, and around her head there appeared the faces of angels which I had not at first seen.

That is how it was, and is, with the view of God. At first, just like that child, I saw all sorts of things, but I did not see God. Then I saw only a garish little picture such as the priests had painted for me. It was very tangible; one could almost take hold of God by the legs. But then I heard a quiet voice: you must become still, you must concentrate, and you must look long enough – and there, where other people saw only mountains and seas and beautiful cathedrals, I had a view of God. Whether then in nature, or in a quiet little room, whether among others when I met with kindred seekers after God, I have always had a view of God. Sometimes clearer, sometimes less clear, sometimes with greater enthusiasm, at other times with greater humility; but it has always been the most beautiful and most precious thing which I value most highly in life: it was a view of God. 

Cesty a cíle, Vol. XVII, No. 9, November 15, 1939, pp. 129-136