June 5, 2011
Dr. Charles Hedrick:
The answer given by the Bible and orthodox Christian theology is an unequivocal, yes! God directs the affairs of human history and regulates the course of the natural world--although Jesus did once say that the "the wind blows where it wants to" (John 3:7)--suggesting that there is no control over the natural order. In the light of the devastating tornado in Joplin, this question about the wind is really about "theodicy," or in the language of faith: why does God do what s/he does? Or, how is God evidenced, if at all, in the natural world? Here is the question simply stated: was the tornado in Joplin "an act of God" or a "natural disaster"? Who destroyed 25% of Joplin, killed 132 people, and caused millions of dollars in property damage, God or Mother Nature?
Those of us who consider ourselves people of faith and at the same time post-enlightenment human beings, who tend to think of the world in scientific categories rather than theological categories, simply reject out of hand the notion that God is responsible for the disaster in Joplin. But, quite frankly, we have difficulty explaining how God is related, if at all, to the natural world.
This difficulty is caused by the excesses of nature--of which the Force 5 winds in Joplin are but one instance. Nature is both benign and deadly. On the one hand, it blesses us with its bounties of field and orchard, but on the other hand, it is "red in tooth and claw." Nature has always been dangerous, capricious, and ethically blind. In recent memory Mother Nature, or God, destroyed New Orleans by flood, caused massive loss of life in Indonesia and Japan by earthquake and tsunami, and massive loss of life by earthquakes in Russia, China, Haiti, and by tornados and winds in Alabama, and Georgia--and now in Joplin, Missouri. It is not possible in a single sentence to enumerate all the "natural disasters," or "acts of God," occurring in recent memory.
Nature does not reflect the character of a God I would care to associate myself with--assuming it is true that God controls nature.
Such aberrations in the regularly occurring benign cycles of nature pose the greatest challenge to both the traditional understanding of God and to the traditional Christian and Jewish belief that God personally regulates nature. Such disasters have always played the Devil (so to speak) with the belief that the Judeo Christian God, who by most accounts is gracious, controls nature. If God controls nature and such unconscionable disasters occur, how can God be considered "good"? On the other hand, if Mother Nature regulates the world, disasters make better sense. Mother Nature is ethically blind, and in a natural disaster the righteous suffering along with the wicked is understandable. Mother Nature is the real culprit here. But this solution leaves unanswered how God is related to the world. Traditional answers are simply inadequate.
Dr. Roger Ray:
One of my daughter's friends recently posted on FaceBook page that she was "not lucky" but rather, she is "blessed." This fairly common and seemingly benign religious sentiment prompted me to try to exploit it as a teachable moment. I asked her why God loved her so much that He made her smart and beautiful, healthy and relatively wealthy and why then God hates most of the other young people in the world in our cities' crumbling ghettoes, in Africa and South America and most of Asia.
She took the question as being a huge insult and insisted that she was only wanting to give credit where credit is due but she totally rejected the other side of that coin, which is what, I believe, you are asking us to come clean on.... That if God blesses some with good fortune, doesn't God similarly curse many others? How can we applaud God for the healing of one cancer patient and not decry the death of another? Or, in our own neighboring community's recent disaster, how do we pray in thanksgiving for those who were spared without demanding an explanation for those who were killed?
This is, as you know Dr. Hedrick, the central question in the book of Job. If God is good, why is there so much suffering? The question is asked through 48 chapters but never really answered. I hope you are more satisfied by my responses today!
As one who has now twice toured the destruction in Joplin and as one who has seen, up close, the disastrous consequences of Hurricane Katrina in the USA and Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua, and I have seen the violent poverty of Palestine, Africa, Central and South America and our own American urban blight and in Appalachia, I can only conclude that God is not in charge of either nature or human history.
I would be remiss in this exchange not to recount the story Ellie Wiesel recorded of a rabbinic trial held in Auschwitz. Three rabbis formed the judiciary and they brought charges against God for not showing up to end the holocaust against the Jews. The trial went on for several days and everyone was allowed to speak to the charges. Wiesel noted that not a single prisoner spoke in defense of God and, in the end; the presiding rabbi pronounced that God was guilty of crimes against nature and against humanity. Following the pronouncement there was a long silence and then the same rabbi called everyone to join him in evening prayers.
I will not defend the classic monotheistic paradox of thanking God for good fortune and exonerating God for calamities of nature and of human will. And yet, like the rabbis at Auschwitz, I am still compelled to worship and to seek out a relationship with God. Not so much because I believe that speaking to God will change any specific aspect of human history but because drawing near to the God to whom we ascribe goodness, compassion, life and generosity changes me, and us, and we change the world.
Dr. Hedrick:
I think we agree. For some reason God has abandoned the world of nature to itself. Things pretty much run themselves without oversight by powers higher than the natural order of the universe. In many ways the thought is frightening, but nonetheless if we are honest, it appears to accord with our experience. We must make our way in the universe with no help except from ourselves. If we insist that God is good, then we must logically conclude that for some reason the natural world is, or has become, impervious to God. The one area of our experience that seems to be pervious to divine initiatives is our human state--as flawed as it may be.
The Bible is the one ancient collection of writings that has most influenced our Judeo-Christian culture. It reflects many religious ideas of questionable value, but in the ancient Book entitled First Kings is found an idea that may have some relevance for our exchange. The prophet Elijah had fled from Queen Jezebel, who wanted to take his life. For 40 days and 40 nights he put as much space between him and Jezebel as he could, and finally took refuge in a cave on Mount Horeb.
The word of the Lord came to him! In those days people apparently believed that God communicated audibly. In our day, however, the audible voice of God has fallen silent, and usually we institutionalize people who claim to hear audible voices coming from out of nowhere. God asked, "What are you doing in this cave, Elijah?" Elijah complained that he was the only faithful Israelite left in the land, and now his life was threatened. So God told him to go to the front of the cave:
And behold the Lord passed by! A great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord--but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake--but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire--but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still, small voice. (1 Kings 19:12)God was not in the forces of nature, but apparently was in the still, small voice.
The human species has shown itself throughout its existence to be incurably religious. The question is: will we grow out of our religious attitudes as our species matures, or is our propensity to religion of some sort indelibly imprinted in our genes? I do not know! But there is no question that the human psyche has demonstrated itself to be pervious to divine initiatives, which we think come from outside ourselves. For good or ill, we claim to experience divinity. Often the divine communication, if such it be, is clearly garbled. Here is the difficulty: there is as much of us as there is of the divine in the communication.
Our problem is the sorting of the wheat and the chaff.
Dr. Ray:
This may be the point at which I must respectfully disagree though I do so with more than a little self-doubt. I would not say that God has abandoned the universe to the mere forces of nature. The larger question the two us seem to try to wrestle to the ground fairly regularly is more about the nature of God. Does the God whom we confess to believe exists, exist in the form of a self conscious intellect with a particular will or do we tend to think of God in a more Buddhist sense of a collective good will so that a little of god is in each of us but nowhere is there a whole and intact entity that decides that it would be good to make it rain in Missouri and make the sun shine in California today.
Clearly, the world is not universally "good" and so I do not believe that God is a sentient entity possessing both omniscience and omnipotence. But it is not enough for me to say that god is a concept under which we gather good and loving concepts. With some fear and trepidation of stepping a bit too closely in the direction of the "intelligent design" folks, I am unwilling to give up on the notion of God existing with both self-awareness and creative power so that God may enter into history and affect the outcomes of events. Where I draw the line is when any mere mortal pretends to be able to either dictate or influence God's entry into human events or even to assume that they can point and say accurately that "God did this" or "Didn't do that."
Two people are diagnosed with terminal cases of cancer, one dies quickly and the other survives for many years. Is that God? Is that nature? Is that medicine? I plead with spiritual people to take a humble position on these things and accept that we cannot trace God's footprints through history but I would not philosophically deny God the right or the ability to mix it up with us at will.
I do not wish to belittle the tragic natural disaster in Joplin by discussing the event in any flippant way. With all respect, I would argue that it is impossible to believe that God caused the tornado to smite Joplin. If, however, I may speak meaningfully of an act of God, I would say that the thousands of well meaning people flowing into Joplin to give aid to the victims and survivors is a godly act, acts inspired by a loving, compassionate and generous Deity.
The fact that we must live with uncertainty and that we must always question our too comfortable beliefs, always, as you say, sorting out the wheat from the chaff, is why religious communities will continue to exist. We gather in faith communities to learn, challenge, correct and encourage one another to live out the values which we believe to be near to the heart of God.
Dr. Hedrick:
There is still an elephant in the room! Let me rephrase: "God has abandoned direct hands-on management of the natural world. It runs itself with no direct divine oversight." One must affirm something like that to avoid making God responsible for Nature's disastrous excesses. People of faith usually separate the problem of Nature's excess from the idea that a benevolent God is running the world in two ways. One way is to avoid calling them "acts of God" but rather "natural disasters," which is a way of affirming that God is not responsible--but without bothering to address the nature of God directly. The other way is to appeal to human finitude: "The ways of God are beyond human comprehension," which is a way of admitting that God was responsible for the disaster but appealing to the idea that somehow the disaster fits into a divine plan.
I do not think the idea that God is integral to human existence is easily separated from the idea of God's relationship to the universe. If God is related in some way to us, we must also acknowledge that God in some way is related to the natural world. If we describe how God is related to one, we must also be willing to describe how God is related to the other--in order to be intellectually honest.
You use the word "exist" to describe God, which is a way of bringing God into the world of time and space. I have given up the use of that expression and simply say "God is." To claim that God "exists" in a world of time and space is to attribute "creatureliness" to God. To say God "exists" raises the question: Where? Converting God into Creature-Who-Wills makes God pervious to the same ailments that afflict us: mutability and decay. Rather, God is outside, over, and around the world of human decay and renewal. God does not exist like we do!
However, God is clearly within the world of time and space in our human consciousness, or, to put it another way, in the fertile concept "God"--a concept that seems to endemic to the human condition. If I may use your word, our concepts of God "inspire" human beings to sacrificial humanitarian acts, but also to acts most would regard as unconscionable--both done in God's name!
I respectfully disagree: "the thousands of well-meaning people flowing into Joplin to give aid to the victims and survivors" is not an "act of God," but an act of average people "inspired" by a particular concept of God. Construing their acts as "godly" is your hermeneutic--the Westboro Baptist Church folk regard their acts as "godly," as do all folk who name God as sanction for their behavior. As I said: our problem is sorting the wheat from the chaff.
Without a spin, Mother Nature's--or God's, destructive footprints in history are easily seen. What the concept "God" inspires in us positively, however, is more difficult to see. Those things are mostly personal, unknown, and usually unsung.
Dr. Ray:
I appreciate the distinction you are making between saying that "God exists" and that "God is." But, with all due respect to our former president, it does rather depend on what the definition of "is" is. If we ask, "Does the color blue exist?" Then we can certainly say that we have seen blue in the sky, in the ocean, in a corpulent cleric's eyes and elsewhere but we would not claim that there is a singular being which is, by character and nature, THE blue. When we say that "God is" it remains to be said whether or not the word "God" is used to describe our concept of ethical values, good intentions and the places, things and experiences that we regard to be most dear to us or does the word "God" describe an entity which might actually prefer good over evil or perhaps even might prefer red carpet in here over our current purple and pink carpets.
I realize that we have come to the end of our public conversation but it seems to me that when you say that both thousands of volunteers streaming into to aid victims in Joplin and the Westborough Baptist Church members coming to condemn Joplin might be seen as "acts of God" from different perspectives, it leaves me to suspect that your view of God's "is-ness" is as a term under which we gather those things and ideas which we personally hold to be sacred but that there is not a sentient entity who prefers love and charity to judgment and hostility. And this may be where we continue to disagree.
While I dismiss any anthropomorphic or sectarian descriptions of God, i.e., God is neither male nor female, nor is there a Jewish deity, a Muslim god or a Buddhist god, but that we are all striving to describe our sense of the "Thou." And saying that, I would like to add that while I agree that you cannot defend a notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing and simultaneously all-loving and good deity because the world contains a lot of undisputed evil. What seems to be absolutely necessary to sacrifice from this trinity is the notion of being all-powerful. That's disturbing to many religious folks but it is basically the answer offered by Rabbi Kushner and others who prefer to say that God weeps with us in our sorrows but does not cause them and cannot always prevent them. In many ways I think our essential problem here is monotheism.
The ancient polytheistic religions did a better job of accounting for both good and bad in the universe by describing both good and bad gods.
However, the other side of your argument about the limitations of human understanding is not quite so easy to dismiss.
I regularly affirm the comedian, Bill Maher's, observation that "I believe in God and yet I don't think that anyone on earth knows as much about God as my dog knows about how I balance my checkbook." It could be, as you have suggested, that humans are simply "hard wired" for religion but both through a priori awareness and personal experience, the existence of the Holy who is both external and yet eminent seems to be persistently persuasive. We cannot know, we cannot prove, we cannot accurately describe, manipulate or control and yet neither can we persuasively deny and therefore, we continue to have faith.
