This is from chapter 11 of Across the Plains, memoirs of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels from New York to California.
...And we look and behold [humankind] instead filled with
imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often admirably valiant,
often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to
debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising
up to do battle for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his
friends and his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in
pain, rearing with long‐suffering solicitude, his young. To touch
the heart of his mystery, we find, in him one thought, strange to
the point of lunacy: the thought of duty; the thought of something
owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God: an ideal of
decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of
shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop.
...[However,] I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and
misconduct man at large presents: of organised injustice, cowardly
violence and treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of
the best. They cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked
for failure in his efforts to do right. But where the best
consistently miscarry, how tenfold more remarkable that all should
continue to strive; and surely we should find it both touching and
inspiriting, that in a field from which success is banished, our
race should not cease to labour.
...
Friday, December 23, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Church, scripture, suffering, and prayer -- Pt. 4 of 4
PRAYER
In the meantime (while we are here), prayer is not meant to be magic, and it doesn’t manipulate God to make him do what we want, no matter how good or faithful we are. It's conversation, and—like talking with friends—it can often help get us through tough times. I think it’s okay to ask God to intervene, and even to complain to God; that’s just being honest, and he has asked for honesty. However, even Jesus got turned down, (Matthew 26:39) and more mature prayer—like any conversation—isn’t all about me, and what I want from you or from God. Our best friends do help us out, when they can, but what we value most is that our very best friends weather the storms of life with us, and we with them! Prayer is not just a help-line or order catalog.
Prayer is the conversation between the Creator and his beloved.
On the other hand, I also think it’s also okay to ask for what we want because we are a part of the conversation, and God may answer in surprising and deeper ways: through people or other things. What if people had never had the faith or desperation to ask Jesus for his help? However, even when they did ask, his help usually went beyond their requests. They asked for healing in their bodies. Jesus usually went beyond physical or surface healing, and ended up giving them a relationship with God.
We held a healing service for a man who eventually died from his cancer. Before he died, he said that after the service he felt completely “healed” and "whole"—not because the cancer was gone, it wasn’t. But his relationship with God and the world was healed; he was still dying, but he was able to accept it with a sense of peace, knowing that God didn’t cause it, but trusting that God would walk with him through it all the way to "the other side.”
Jesus may have raised Lazarus from the dead (pointing to a deeper truth about God's re-creative power), but eventually Lazarus died again. That suggests that miracles are never meant to be an end in themselves, but only important signs of hope for something bigger than us, beyond our words or knowledge. It suggests that unfairness can be reversed, and that both healed and unhealed people will be permanently restored in the here-after ...just not yet.
There are miracles for specific times or reasons. However, too much emphasis and faith in the miracles themselves misses the point. Instead of having an unconditional relationship with God, we are tempted to love him for the stuff he might give us, or distrust him for whatever he doesn’t give us.
To sum it up, life and how we live it is all one long prayer, anyway. It is a response to God. Ignoring him, saying nothing directly to him, is a message. Caring for the people and critters in our lives, taking care of the earth and water, or not, is talking to the Creator, with more than words. We might as well accept that, and welcome his presence, both with words and also comfortable silence. And he is talking to us, telling us many things through all the people, critters, creation, books, blogs, etc.
Ultimately, I think he's telling us that he loves us, and that there is more, much more, to life and creation, and to the dimensions that are yet to be discovered, whether on this side or the next.
We are all going to be surprised... I believe in a good way.
Church, scripture, suffering, and prayer -- Pt. 3 of 4
SCRIPTURE & SUFFERING, cont.
Here is a central thought from scripture. When confronted by a man born blind, Jesus' disciples asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, so that he was born blind?" Jesus answered "No one." Jesus did suggest that, by this man's eventual healing, God's works would be displayed (John, chapter 9). However, I don't think Jesus meant that God made him blind so that Jesus could heal him and show off God's power. Rather, he was simply born blind for any number of unknown causes, but his healing would reveal both Jesus' compassion, and also would be a sign to a future beyond this life where blindness will not be an issue. In fact, later in the story we find that the primary miracle and healing occurred, not when the man was given sight, but when he was given a new and healed relationship with God.
Some suffering is caused directly and indirectly by choices we or others have made. When my son is on the time-out bench (suffering horribly, of course) it is because of a poor choice he made; it is both a consequence and a punishment. A couple decades ago, many of my sinus infections were a result of smoking cigarettes, and my body's intolerance of that smoke. That was a consequence, perhaps deserved, but not actually a punishment, even if my own guilt made it feel like it. Drug use can affect fetal development. That is consequence, the child certainly did not deserve it, and I don't believe it is a "punishment." The penalty does not fit the crime; and it's attached to the wrong person!
Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:19-20 both say that we are not responsible for our parents' sins, nor are parents responsible for their childrens' decisions and sins. We are very often affected by others' bad choices, but these are results and not punishments, even when they feel like it. They remind us, though, that our lives are intimately and inescapably connected to each other.
Then, there is suffering that results from causes outside of anyone's decisions or control; suffering can occur even after good choices and intentions. Are these punishments? Are they learning tools; did God send them to teach us lessons or to make us stronger? While we can learn, and we often can rise up "stronger", that doesn't mean that God sent the suffering; and it doesn't change suffering into a blessing. The fact that my wife and I adopted two wonderful boys did not make our infertility into a "blessing."
The stories in scripture about God opening wombs and giving miraculous babies to barren couples were--and sometimes still are--hard for my wife and me. I avoided preaching and teaching on those texts for a long time. On the other hand, they now serve as a reminder to me that God cares, cares very deeply about the wounds that life delivers to us, including infertility. I love my boys beyond words, and I still miss the biological children we never had. But I don't need God to give us a miracle baby now in order to prove his compassion for us. (Actually, at this point, I think I'd rather he didn't.) I take more comfort in the idea that, all along, he has been walking this path of infertility, adoption, and parenthood with us--even when I couldn't sense it.
The image we're given in Jesus is that God himself is not above suffering, but that he is found in all human experiences: including love, laughter, pain, disease and death. And after resurrection, Christ’s bodily resurrection is meant to show that God takes into himself all human experiences, with its wounds and scars, so that we have a God who understands. He walks beside us; he does not cause suffering, nor abandon us when we are lonely, hurting or dying. In Jesus, God had to watch his child suffer torture and death. Through Jesus, God experienced all this. He gets it.
Ultimately, I do believe in a resurrection life that we can only imagine or symbolize. There is a bigger story to be told. For now, one of our main purposes, like Jesus’, is to take care of each other (including family, friends and strangers) and creation the best we can, and along the way, we point to a God of love and mercy. We are not here to tear each other down, or to lay blame, or to prove our way of thinking.
After Jesus quoted the greatest commandments: 1) Love God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul, & 2) your neighbor as yourself, he added this very important statement: “ALL the Law and Prophets are to be interpreted through these greatest two.” Also, over and over again, we are told that God is creative, loving and merciful, and that these are his central characteristics. These describe the best and most helpful ways to understand God and to use scripture.
But does God “allow” suffering? Perhaps, character aside, God would be able to constantly intervene, but--as hard as it is to believe when we're in the middle of it--his love may prevent constant intervention. Free will, biological life, and creation can all result in suffering and death. I maintain that the Creator God is against suffering and death, and therefore provides an ultimate hope and promise beyond it. However, while we are here, puppets cannot love. A god who forces or constantly manipulates his people or creation in order to make them worship him cannot be loved; feared maybe, but not loved and truly honored.
I don't believe this life is just a test, or a trial run. It forms and shapes the eternal personality and people we become. 10,000 years from now, we'll have a better perspective on suffering and what we're going through. I have to believe that it is heart-wrenching for God to endure both our violence and our suffering, but the thing that motivated God to create is the same thing that keeps him from removing all our free will and suffering: Love. Love is the thing that also places him in the midst of our suffering.
Here is a central thought from scripture. When confronted by a man born blind, Jesus' disciples asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, so that he was born blind?" Jesus answered "No one." Jesus did suggest that, by this man's eventual healing, God's works would be displayed (John, chapter 9). However, I don't think Jesus meant that God made him blind so that Jesus could heal him and show off God's power. Rather, he was simply born blind for any number of unknown causes, but his healing would reveal both Jesus' compassion, and also would be a sign to a future beyond this life where blindness will not be an issue. In fact, later in the story we find that the primary miracle and healing occurred, not when the man was given sight, but when he was given a new and healed relationship with God.
Some suffering is caused directly and indirectly by choices we or others have made. When my son is on the time-out bench (suffering horribly, of course) it is because of a poor choice he made; it is both a consequence and a punishment. A couple decades ago, many of my sinus infections were a result of smoking cigarettes, and my body's intolerance of that smoke. That was a consequence, perhaps deserved, but not actually a punishment, even if my own guilt made it feel like it. Drug use can affect fetal development. That is consequence, the child certainly did not deserve it, and I don't believe it is a "punishment." The penalty does not fit the crime; and it's attached to the wrong person!
Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:19-20 both say that we are not responsible for our parents' sins, nor are parents responsible for their childrens' decisions and sins. We are very often affected by others' bad choices, but these are results and not punishments, even when they feel like it. They remind us, though, that our lives are intimately and inescapably connected to each other.
Then, there is suffering that results from causes outside of anyone's decisions or control; suffering can occur even after good choices and intentions. Are these punishments? Are they learning tools; did God send them to teach us lessons or to make us stronger? While we can learn, and we often can rise up "stronger", that doesn't mean that God sent the suffering; and it doesn't change suffering into a blessing. The fact that my wife and I adopted two wonderful boys did not make our infertility into a "blessing."
The stories in scripture about God opening wombs and giving miraculous babies to barren couples were--and sometimes still are--hard for my wife and me. I avoided preaching and teaching on those texts for a long time. On the other hand, they now serve as a reminder to me that God cares, cares very deeply about the wounds that life delivers to us, including infertility. I love my boys beyond words, and I still miss the biological children we never had. But I don't need God to give us a miracle baby now in order to prove his compassion for us. (Actually, at this point, I think I'd rather he didn't.) I take more comfort in the idea that, all along, he has been walking this path of infertility, adoption, and parenthood with us--even when I couldn't sense it.
The image we're given in Jesus is that God himself is not above suffering, but that he is found in all human experiences: including love, laughter, pain, disease and death. And after resurrection, Christ’s bodily resurrection is meant to show that God takes into himself all human experiences, with its wounds and scars, so that we have a God who understands. He walks beside us; he does not cause suffering, nor abandon us when we are lonely, hurting or dying. In Jesus, God had to watch his child suffer torture and death. Through Jesus, God experienced all this. He gets it.
Ultimately, I do believe in a resurrection life that we can only imagine or symbolize. There is a bigger story to be told. For now, one of our main purposes, like Jesus’, is to take care of each other (including family, friends and strangers) and creation the best we can, and along the way, we point to a God of love and mercy. We are not here to tear each other down, or to lay blame, or to prove our way of thinking.
After Jesus quoted the greatest commandments: 1) Love God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul, & 2) your neighbor as yourself, he added this very important statement: “ALL the Law and Prophets are to be interpreted through these greatest two.” Also, over and over again, we are told that God is creative, loving and merciful, and that these are his central characteristics. These describe the best and most helpful ways to understand God and to use scripture.
But does God “allow” suffering? Perhaps, character aside, God would be able to constantly intervene, but--as hard as it is to believe when we're in the middle of it--his love may prevent constant intervention. Free will, biological life, and creation can all result in suffering and death. I maintain that the Creator God is against suffering and death, and therefore provides an ultimate hope and promise beyond it. However, while we are here, puppets cannot love. A god who forces or constantly manipulates his people or creation in order to make them worship him cannot be loved; feared maybe, but not loved and truly honored.
I don't believe this life is just a test, or a trial run. It forms and shapes the eternal personality and people we become. 10,000 years from now, we'll have a better perspective on suffering and what we're going through. I have to believe that it is heart-wrenching for God to endure both our violence and our suffering, but the thing that motivated God to create is the same thing that keeps him from removing all our free will and suffering: Love. Love is the thing that also places him in the midst of our suffering.
Church, scripture, suffering, and prayer -- Pt 2 of 4
SCRIPTURE & SUFFERING
People, religious or not, try to find meaning in everything, especially in suffering and in things that are unfair. Kids are sensitive to what is “fair” or not, and they will latch onto careless explanations that they hear from each other and from adults. They see kids and people that are “made different” or that don’t have it the way they do. The differences both fascinate and scare them, and it all seems unfair. Both kids and adults want some assurance that "it" probably won’t happen to them, and that it was, somehow, earned or deserved by the other, and thus can be dismissed or avoided. Unfortunately, I don't think faith is meant to be a bridge over troubled water, but a path through it.
The Bible offers many of these paths. The psalmist often asked God to “come back,” not because God actually abandoned him, but because he truly felt abandoned by God (i.e. Psalm 13:1). Even though he's always there, when things are going badly for me, I often wonder, “Where are you God, when I need you?” I can relate to what the psalmist was feeling and saying. The "truth" is reflected in how that biblical psalm allows and helps me express that feeling to God and others. I can feel heard and understood.
When things are going badly, I will sometimes wonder, "Why are you doing this to me?" God probably isn't doing anything to me at that moment, except listening to me complain. He isn't the one hiding my car keys or putting me in the hospital.
The Bible is the conduit for God's Living Word to engage with us. God's living Word speaks through scripture in great and powerful ways, especially when you trust that this living Word resides in, through and beyond these written words. God's Word includes the entire process of the events, the writing, reading, interpreting and applying of Biblical stories, lessons, and prayers to his peoples' lives.
The central goal of the Bible is to point beyond itself to a living and true God, who is merciful and loving, a living God, beyond words.
People, religious or not, try to find meaning in everything, especially in suffering and in things that are unfair. Kids are sensitive to what is “fair” or not, and they will latch onto careless explanations that they hear from each other and from adults. They see kids and people that are “made different” or that don’t have it the way they do. The differences both fascinate and scare them, and it all seems unfair. Both kids and adults want some assurance that "it" probably won’t happen to them, and that it was, somehow, earned or deserved by the other, and thus can be dismissed or avoided. Unfortunately, I don't think faith is meant to be a bridge over troubled water, but a path through it.
The Bible offers many of these paths. The psalmist often asked God to “come back,” not because God actually abandoned him, but because he truly felt abandoned by God (i.e. Psalm 13:1). Even though he's always there, when things are going badly for me, I often wonder, “Where are you God, when I need you?” I can relate to what the psalmist was feeling and saying. The "truth" is reflected in how that biblical psalm allows and helps me express that feeling to God and others. I can feel heard and understood.
When things are going badly, I will sometimes wonder, "Why are you doing this to me?" God probably isn't doing anything to me at that moment, except listening to me complain. He isn't the one hiding my car keys or putting me in the hospital.
The Bible is the conduit for God's Living Word to engage with us. God's living Word speaks through scripture in great and powerful ways, especially when you trust that this living Word resides in, through and beyond these written words. God's Word includes the entire process of the events, the writing, reading, interpreting and applying of Biblical stories, lessons, and prayers to his peoples' lives.
The central goal of the Bible is to point beyond itself to a living and true God, who is merciful and loving, a living God, beyond words.
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