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Universal Suffering
A lot of the time, the theological reading I do touches something deep within me and theology becomes a way for God to speak to me and to guide me on my journey. I don't often blog about these things because, in the West, we seem to separate "theology" from "spirituality"; the Eastern Church doesn't do that but sees all theology as having consequences for our "spirituality" and vice versa. Anyway, I've decided to try to blog a bit about God speaking to me through theology. I've been going through James Alison's "The Joy of Being Wrong" with a fine toothed comb, so yet again, God has been speaking to me through this book.I was lucky enough to go on retreat today and yesterday, and one of the images I brought with me into the retreat is Alison's idea that Christianity is not about who is in and about who is out because God revealed himself to us in Jesus - who became the innocent victim of human sinfulfness. If God is encountered in the innocent victim rather than in the victorious victimiser, then God is accessible to all people. This is how Alison see's St. Paul's road to Damascus experience.This led me to meditating on Christ on the cross. God incarnate, freely gave himself to be killed by the human lust for violence. The God who we are called to pacifically imitate gave upself up to our rage, a rage born out of the fact that we think we can be God better than God. In our sin, we do not want to imitate God, we want to be "ourselves" and "have control" over our own lives and so we must kill God. In giving himself up to death at our hands, God overcame death through his resurrection. Sin and death no longer have dominion, but rather holiness and abundant / eternal life have dominion. Through Christ, we are now free to become that which we were originally created to be.During the retreat, another retreatant spoke to me about finding God in death and darkness. He wanted to go one step beyond the idea of being able to see a green shoot in the midst of death and darkness, but rather to actually find God in the darkeness, without the green shoot. If God in all things, as I believe God is, then surely God must be present in the darkness even if we cannot perceive God.It seems to me that "death and darkness" are part of universal human experience in the same way that the suffereing and death of an innocent victim is part of the universal human experience. However, it is huge leap of faith, I think, to be able to find God in the darkness without a green shoot there.My fellow retreatant's word to me has touched me deeply, although I am not in a dark place at the moment. I feel that God is slowly teaching me to have faith in His presence everywhere, and showing me that everywhere means everywhere.Thanks be to God!
11 comments:
One of the implications of the doctrine of the incarnation is that very idea; that God is found even and especially in the darkest places. This is the Christian response to theodicy. God, through Christ, did not seek to explain away our human suffering, but instead entered into it, taking it upon Godself.
This is the way I put it in what was basically another life, back when I was preaching and had a much more conventional theology, holding to a concept of an unlimited God, refering to God in the masculine and seeing Jesus as being literally God incarnate:
In Jesus, the infinite God of the universe, who makes the infinity of space seem infinitely small, takes the form of a limited man, just like me, and experiences pain, suffering and death just like I do, even the death of a close friend, and, with the cross, His own death, to show me that my suffering matters. My pain matters. My doubt matters to God. I matter to God. He cannot answer me the way I want Him to answer me, but He answers me in such a better way. He answers me with, not wit or wisdom, but Himself. When Jesus wept for His friend, God shed a tear for me.
That was the conclusion of one of my earlies and best received sermons, "Jesus Wept," a pastoral exegesis of John 11:35 (and, of course, the story surrounding it).
In that sermon I argued that Jesus himself was and is God's answer to the problem of pain. And, Jesus as God's answer is not an explanation, but rather an entering into and sharing of pain. That Jesus wept meant for me at that time that God felt pain, especially emotional pain. That God, through Jesus, did not just suffer on the cross, but also shared our suffering in life, experiencing all of the moments that we label as "bad" with us, alongside us. In Jesus' tears I saw God showing solidarity with the suffering of humanity.
I had forgotten all about that sermon, and the theology which - though I have since discarded it - gave rise to the sermon. And, though I no longer believe that God was literally made incarnate in Jesus, I can still say that perhaps the most beautiful aspect of incarnational theology is that idea; that God is manifest in the darkest places, sharing those places with us.
Sandalstraps, this post was intended to be more a post about where I am at spiritually than a theological one. I say this because I'm less interested in "correct theology" here than I am in making (what we in the West would call) "spiritual" connections for myself and others.
In the context of such a discussion, we are both are "right", because we are sharing spiritual experiences.
For me, this post wasn't just about theodicy, but it was about idea that God is universally "available" precisely because suffering is universal. I don't think it's as conventional as a straightforward theodicy - although I may be flattering myself or not communicating well.
You said: This is the way I put it in what was basically another life, back when I was preaching and had a much more conventional theology...
Which is intriguing. Where is your theology now?
This is the best incapsulation of my theology, though because it is so short it is by no means complete. It focuses both on the mysterious nature of the divine (we can't know anything about God propositionally, though we can experience the presence of God mystically) and the metaphorical/mythological nature of descriptions of God. With that there are also some negatives, some rejections of traditional Christian doctrine that have crept it.
Most importantly for the present discussion, I no longer believe that Jesus was or is literally God. While I still see Jesus as the Christ, the Annointed One who reveals God to us, I cannot believe that a human can be God, or that God can be made literally manifest. I can appreciate incarnational theology, but I cannot treat it as being the literal truth. That rejection initially pained me greatly, because so much of my former ministry was built on the pastoral implications of the incarnation.
I have also rejected the notion of a traditionally theistic God who is
1. omnipotent
2. omniscient, and
3. benevolent,
as such a being is incompatible with the problem of pain/suffering/evil.
I did not intend my comment to contradict or challenge your post, to set up a zero sum game in which one of us is right and the other wrong. I instead intended it to compliment your post, sharing with you where your post led me. It is my way of saying thank you for writing something so well considered.
(How do you make links in these comments? I keep trying to use HTML code and Blogger won't take them?)
This is the best incapsulation of my theology, though because it is so short it is by no means complete. It focuses both on the mysterious nature of the divine (we can't know anything about God propositionally, though we can experience the presence of God mystically) and the metaphorical/mythological nature of descriptions of God.
The post on your blog is interesting, because I'm actually far more "orthodox" than you are, yet I can own what you said and could have written that text without a problem.
I have also rejected the notion of a traditionally theistic God who is
1. omnipotent
2. omniscient, and
3. benevolent,
as such a being is incompatible with the problem of pain/suffering/evil.
That combination of attributes, set within the more traditional narratives, probably is difficult to reconcile. I suspect that I've not thought about it as much as you have done. Partly because I have the impression you are more intelligent and well read than I am. Partly because theodicy has never really been a problem for me at a "gut level" (which isn't necessarily a good thing for a pastor, as many people do have great problems with it!
I'd be fascinated to see your reaction to Alison. In in the end, he remains orthodox but nonetheless rather edgy. He speaks from a place that is, in my opinion, quintessentially theological: trying to use human language and constructs for a God who is ultimately unknowable through those constructs. I wonder whether Alison would be sufficiently "mysterious" for you or whether you would find him too conventional.
I did not intend my comment to contradict or challenge your post, to set up a zero sum game in which one of us is right and the other wrong. I instead intended it to compliment your post, sharing with you where your post led me. It is my way of saying thank you for writing something so well considered.
Thank you for saying that. I feel greatly flattered by your words. I'm not sure it was "well considered" in an intellectual sense, it was really a feeling about where God is leading me in prayer.
But I did understand your good intentions and I really value dialoguing with you. Although we do not agree on everything, I feel a bit of a kindred spirit.
For the links I use HTML, the a href command. I'm not sure how to render it here, so I'll try doing it using ( instead of < and ) instead of >. If this shows up right, just substitute < for ( and > for ), and you'll have the right command for inserting a link.
Say you want to link to one of your earlier posts, say this post on Universal Suffering, with the URL
http://pambg.blogspot.com/2006/11/universal-suffering.html,
and you wanted the link to be the words Universal Suffering. The HTML, with the above substitutions, would look like this:
(a href="http://pambg.blogspot.com/2006/11/universal-suffering.html")Universal Suffering(/a)
If you substitute < for ( and > for ), you get
Universal Suffering
Now I'm going to post this comment to see if the example worked.
Good, it worked. Now see if you can do it.
Let's see:
Sandalstraps’ Sanctuary
If it works, it's just a slightly different coding than I was using. Mine worked on original posts, but not on the comments pages.
It works! It works!
Interesting discussion. I don't mean to butt in, just to mention one theodicy article I've read which almost worked for me :-) was David Bentley Hart's Tsunami and Theodicy at First Things.
Thanks, crystal. And welcome!
It works! It works!
Yay! Thanks, Sandlastraps.
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