Here are the questions. Post links to your blog posts - or post your responses - in the comment section. My response is in another post. Thanks to Donald and Fr E for sharing their responses as well!
1. if the nature of god is omnipotent, benevolent, and anthropomorphic (that god is a person, who sees suffering as wrong, and can change all of it), why does god not act to relieve all suffering, or at least the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of time?
2. if you were god, and you were omnipotent and benevolent, how would you respond to suffering?
3. if this is not the nature of god, what is the nature of god, that allows suffering in the world?
4. if these are the wrong questions to ask, what are the right ones?
Would the book of Job make sense as the story and questions of a peasant or serf or share-cropper Job? My question comes from visits to churches and development projects in Cuba, El Salvador, Malawi, Ethiopia, and among native peoples in Canada. These visits leave me wondering whether theodicy – the theological and philosophical work of justifying the goodness of God from (or against) our experience of what happens in the world – is the dilemma of privilege, whether comfort and abundance provoke the question. I readily admit I am reflecting from relatively brief visits. Total time spent is more than two months but under three months. Beyond the visits, this question is shaped by my wife’s continuing work in Malawi – so close working relationship and friendships with Malawian church and community leaders and a month-long visit yearly for the past six years. The question has also been reinforced by conversations with friends who have worked in Peace Corps and done extended church work in poverty settings outside the U.S.
I have returned from my visits with these sisters and brothers humbled and inspired by the unexpected but seemingly steady renewal of joy that people can find despite living in extremely simple circumstances and facing loss and tragedy and simple want. So my question is whether the dilemma of theodicy is a luxury or at least a question conditioned by circumstances, something that only becomes askable after an extended experience of plenty? Did the writer of Job need to set Job up as a very rich man who lost everything for the book to be plausible? Is that what it takes to get us to the wrenching (so yes, very real) questions of theodicy?
if the nature of god is omnipotent, benevolent, and anthropomorphic (that god is a person, who sees suffering as wrong, and can change all of it), why does god not act to relieve all suffering, or at least the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of time?
Why does seeing God as “person” mean we are seeing God in an anthropomorphic way? Why do we assume that relieving “at least the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of time” would be benevolent?
The basic assumption of Christianity is that while God, in his essence, is unknowable (as are all persons), he decided to reveal himself to us in Jesus and thus it is possible to know God as well as it is possible to know any person. This revelation is that God is love.
Having said that, why assume this partially anthropomorphic deity is, in fact, omnipotent?
We have no reason to assume that based on Scripture: for other than creation itself and the recordings of the apocalypse, God does nothing without human co-operation. It might even be better to say God does nothing save through human co-operation. Even the greatest acts of liberation - the Exodus, the return from the Babylonian Captivity, the Hanukkah Revolution, and the action of Jesus’ death and resurrection - require human participation, human action, human co-operation with God. God does nearly nothing by himself in even the most anthropomorphic stories of the Bible.
Yet God does nearly everything out of love, at least in human hindsight.
Love is not strong in the common sense of the wold. In fact, love is pretty weak. (How many soldiers have been protected from harm by their mothers’ love?) Yet love is stronger than death. Many waters can not quench love.
God is love.
2. if you were god, and you were omnipotent and benevolent, how would you respond to suffering?
Me, now, insists that I would fix it. But then, I’m not benevolent. If I were - and let’s add omniscient to the mix - I don’t know what I’d do. We act as if we know what “benevolent” is. We act as if we know what “good” is and would, in fact, want to do it.
3. if this is not the nature of god, what is the nature of god, that allows suffering in the world?
What I do know is that God weeps. That God-is-Love is a powerful statement not of “let God fix everything” but rather that God weeps watching the world get messed up. God weeps at the best of his best friend, Lazarus. God is afraid of death. God knows that humans are clueless a lot and weeps for that. God knows what it means to go hungry, to skin his knees, to teethe. To have his teeth fall out and be replaced. And God knows how to Cry.
I can’t think of anything more powerful than this image: a God weeping in love at our broken lives.
4. if these are the wrong questions to ask, what are the right ones?
1. It is my assumption that God wishes to maximize the number of people saved but not at the cost of creating robots. That is, it seems to me that there are at least two imperatives at work. God wishes all to be saved. God wishes all to have free will. I suspect that there are a few more imperatives than that. For instance, it may very well also be a value for God that those people of free will who are saved also have a desire for holiness and service.
2. There is the additional problem that we would see those as competing values, which would tug at us were we to be in God’s position. However, that is indeed an anthropomorphic way of phrasing it. For, we also believe that God is the only truly integrated personality. That would be my personal updating of the medieval statement that God is “simple.” Thus, for Him, these values would not be competing values that pull and tug at him as they would at us.
3. On top of that because He is a fully integrated personality, each of those things that we would see as separate values, which added together form the “set” of our values, when applied to Him somehow express his nature in full. That is, when we speak of God and say, “God is Love,” or say, “God is Justice,” we do not mean that He is somehow partially love and partially justice. It is obvious that when we speak and say that “God is Love,” we mean that God is totally and fully Love in a way in which we cannot understand, for it is a fully integral and integrated part of his nature. The same is true when we say, “God is Justice.” And yet, these are in Him without contradiction. This is where those who enjoy saying that “God is Love,” therefore He would not do some action, are mistaken. They have picked out what is, for us, one value and separated it out from His nature while excluding that which is equally part of His nature, which is His justice, and His [fill in the blank]. He is Love / Justice / Wrath / Healing / Judge / Lord / King / Master / Shepherd / Friend as one unseparated integrated nature. This is where we hit our limits as human beings because we cannot really conceive of that in our minds.
4. At least one philosopher, Alvin Plantiga, has made an argument with which I think I agree. “This is not the best of all possible worlds, but this is the best of all possible ways to get to the best of all possible worlds.” Apparently the suffering in this world is of the type and intensity that maximizes the number of people to be saved who also will fit whatever other parameters God has. In other words, despite its apparent evil, the total level of human suffering at this time (and in the past, and in hell in the future) will be more than matched by the resulting joy of the numberless crowd from every people, tongue, tribe, and nation which will be with Him in the future. Unfortunately, this is a faith statement on my part. It is the type of statement that can neither be proved nor disproved at this point in time, though if it is correct, it will be demonstrable in the future. However, while not immediately demonstrable, it is nevertheless a philosophically sound position. I think it is also Biblically sound. But note that, like all philosophical positions, it is a human construct and derivation from Scripture, so it has some strong limits.
Fr Erenesto Obregon is an Orthodox priest in Florida.
And a reminder - the posting deadline is 15 June. We’ve two respondents, anyone else?
–
Now! Here’s a meme for you! I picked it up at Jspot. I’m not going to tag people because this isn’t the sort of thing we can respond to in a couple of easy blurbs.
Sign up here to respond by June 15th: post your name in the comments to this post. I will repost these questions on June 15th… and, hopefully, my own attempt at an answer. If you do not have a blog (Fr E, Donald!) and you want to respond to this meme - I will be happy to allow you a guest post on that day - or else you may post in the comment section on that day. There are some bloggers I’d like to hear from (Bp Alan, Elizabeth!), but I think this needs to be a voluntary thing.
I will repost this invitation every few days. June 15th is the day.
1. if the nature of god is omnipotent, benevolent, and anthropomorphic (that god is a person, who sees suffering as wrong, and can change all of it), why does god not act to relieve all suffering, or at least the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of time?
2. if you were god, and you were omnipotent and benevolent, how would you respond to suffering?
3. if this is not the nature of god, what is the nature of god, that allows suffering in the world?
4. if these are the wrong questions to ask, what are the right ones?
Your Score: Owl
You scored 17 Ego, 11 Anxiety, and 11 Agency!
“Correct me if I am wrong,” he said, “but am I right in
supposing that it is a very Blusterous day outside?”
“Very,” said Piglet, who was quietly thawing his ears,
and wishing that he was safely back in his own house.
“I thought so,” said O-wl. “It was on just such a
blusterous day as this that my Uncle Robert, a portrait of whom
you see upon the wall on your right, Piglet, while returning in
the late forenoon from a– What’s that?”
You scored as Owl!
ABOUT OWL: Owl is considered highly educated because he can spell his own name (WOL) and he can even spell Tuesday… although he doesn’t always get it right. Owl is a good sort, really, although he can be a bit of a stuffed shirt, and he tends to overlook the smaller details in life - like the fact that his bellpull is actually someone’s tail.
WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are confident and you feel capable of dealing with whatever life throws at you. You know that you can handle just about everything… mostly because you know how to delegate the job of actually handling things to the people around you. You aren’t one of those Bisy Backsons, who rush around trying to do everything at once. You prefer to stay at home and reflect on life, rather than go out and live it.
Sometimes, you know, you need to stop waiting for things to come to you and go out and get them. You need to go enjoy the weather, smell the fresh air, and pay attention to the little people in your life. They may not be as great as you… but maybe they could use your help.
This was actually a very enjoyable test/meme thing.
Update: there are two owls at work (including me), two rabbits and a house FULL of Tiggers.
Why do you think gay men of a certain sort seek religious affiliation despite the rejection we experience on almost every hand by the groups we seek to join?
Within myself I feel the struggle to find a spiritual home battling with the desire to be honest about the inadequacies of so many spiritual options. A desire for rigorous honesty makes me unwilling to “play at” a pleasing religious style that requires excessive “willing suspension of common sense”.
You are too subtle a thinker to give me a cheap grace answer, so I look forward to your reflections.
There is an across-the-board quality: I think that many gay men spend part of their life being so introspective - wondering what the heck has mis-fired, grown up different, changed, etc, between them and others. Why am I different from other boys? This isn’t true of all gay men, but a lot of them get it. And they hit religion seeking answers. There is a zen quality to figuring out *that* you are gay. You just don’t think the same way as others. And then there is a moment where you think “What does this mean?” I notice in many of my younger friends, who grew up in a more accepting society, that they do not have this issue or pattern. My friend, Patrick, was out to his parents when he was in middle school. He never went on a quest for meaning…
But some of us wonder a lot: reach and stretch, and, more than straight people, decide to risk something on the possibility that love might be “over there” instead of “over here”. No straight person ever had to ask “who are you and what are you doing in my hormones?” for longer than it took to get to sex ed or have the Birds and Bees talk with the Parents or, maybe, just see the most recent Time magazine or newspaper. Older than a certain age, every gay person has had to ask “What does this mean?” For straights, they just keep moving forward: they never have to wake up or look around - they run on instinct and never have to grow up. For gay, they mostly wake up a little more. And stay there. If the former are “never grow up” the latter only get to puberty. Again, I don’t see this problem in much of the younger gays.
And then it all breaks into three parts: I don’t know what you mean by “of a certain sort” so I have to read that in four various ways - most of which are mutually exclusive.
Some of a certain sort are beating themselves up. They have accepted God is real and they are thinking like the Apostles around Jesus when faced with the man born blind. They ask, “Who sinned, this fag or his parents, that he should be born this way?” They think something must be wrong - and so they attempt to appease God and they put up with just about every piece of crap thrown at them.
And they think, “Oh, I’m getting beat up for my sins. Good. Praise Jesus”
These folks are masochists.
Then there are those, of a certain sort, who get off on the oppression and the anger they feel. They want to be oppressed by “straight white males” so they can be angrier at same.
These folks are passive-agressive and they often do things like hold protests in churches when the Cardinal is visiting. They also often end up in gay-only churches later, still fuming about “them”.
A third sort usually end up Roman Catholic or Anglo-Catholic or Orthodox. Having spent much of their life in the closet, they are used to relating through a filtre, to communicating, as it were, sacramentally or through extra layers of symbol and code. They experience much of their life this way: and so they follow through with their spirituality. This is the way they know how to relate. SO they continue. These sorts often have don’t-ask/don’t-tell relationships with their clergy or religion.
I have been #1 and #3.
Styles 1 and 2, at least, and maybe 3 (but more later) can tend to keep the self inwardly-focused. Never focusing outward not only prevents one from growth or change, but it also keeps one from seeing that there are other ways to deal. Nos 1 and 2 also are just exaggerations, reaction formations. They are as much out of whack as all sex all the time parting.
A fourth option - selecting a spiritual community where all (gay and straight) are nurtured into spiritual adulthood together. The result can be something akin to “the younger gays”. A life lived “as oneself” doesn’t need sacramentalism or filtres or even confession of faith. They are themselves as God made them - pardon the phrase, but “in dios”. It’s rather refreshing to watch. And they don’t need the masochism or the passive aggression. I fancy myself here, now and then, but I know that I dance between here and #3. There are still times in my life when I feel it’s important to be closeted for a time - until it’s clearly safe to come out into the open.
As I said to the Preacher Lady yesterday: it’s a desire for integrity, or even self-integration. I think you can dance between 3 and 4 as an adult, seeking to be whole, but also mindful of those others who might stumble. And mindful of the ways in which one is expected to grow.
Ask me questions and I’ll blog answers. No holds barred: but I reserve the right to dodge in a creative manner. Post your questions here or, if you wish to be totally anonymous (at least as far as the other readers go) send me an email: arkouda (AT) doxos (dot) com
How many songs total: 6181
How many hours or days of music: 22.2 Days
Most recently played: Chris Cornell - Postmodern Testimony
Most played: Dream Theater - Angelus (plays 3 times a day)
Most recently added: Slipknot - Postmodern Testimony
Sort by song title:
First Song: A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
Last Song: The Last song in the list is “1974″ by Amy Grant. The last track listing is 061231 - 1030 By Donald Schell (a sermon)
Sort by time:
Shortest Song: Song intro - 2nd Chapter of Acts 0:02
Longest Song: Shike - (Audio Book) 6:45:48
Sort by album:
First album: ABBA-esque - Erasure
Last album: Justice - †
First song that comes up on Shuffle: Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death - 6
Life - 77
Love - 316
Hate – 2 (”hate” doesn’t show up, but two songs have “whatever” in the title.)
You - 527
Sex – 11
This is the self-ruled blog of an Christian attempting to follow God in the Way of Jesus... sometimes. I most identify with the Anglican and Liberal Catholic flavours.
«Orthodoxy is before all else, not a doctrine, not an external organization, not an external norm of behavior but a spiritual life, a spiritual experience and a spiritual path. » Nicolas Berdyaev,The Truth of Orthodoxy
I who have written this story, or rather this fable, give no credence to the various incidents related in it. For some things in it are the deceptions of demons, other poetic figments; some are probable, others improbable; while still others are intended for the delectation of foolish men. (Closing lines of the Táin Bó Cúalnge)
