Tag Archives: evil

Obama is Buddhist?

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“God has taken them home.”

So U.S. President Obama accounts for the wanton killing of grade schoolers in Newtown, CT.  But does this view sit well with us?  Does it ease our pain or explain the unthinkable?  And does it present God in a way that encourages trust or hope?

My answer: e) None of the above.

Situations like Sandy Hook are so terrifying that it can be tempting to think that God must be pulling the strings.  We want to believe that someone is in control and that somewhere there is good to be found in it.  Yet ironically, by diminishing human agency and responsibility for evil we likewise strip ourselves of our agency and responsibility for good.

For if this is all God’s will, then really we can do nothing about it: who can resist God?

No.  Far from rekindling hope or even allowing fuller expression of our grief, at best this view results in complacency.  At worst, I reckon it results in despair.

Complacency because taking what is evil and “sanctifying” it (through ascribing it to God) subverts our most natural human responses: should we grieve or feel upset about God’s will?  At best the implication is that our grief and rage are really misplaced—the result of being too limited (or if you theology is more heavy-handed, too sinful) to understand that this is all for some “greater good.”  Ironically again, such a view has more in common with Buddhism than Christianity.

Despair because, faced with this perspective, we must necessarily understand our emotions, goals, and even our children as insignificant—unimportant before the lofty designs of God.  For a god who “calls home” little children via such murderous and seemingly purposeless action is, like a maleficent version of Zeus, a fearful entity indeed.  Before such a God we cannot but despair.

Many reject this god.  And those that accept it?  Well, is it any wonder that so much of evangelical Christianity seems based on fear and rule-following rather than on love and truth?

In reality Obama’s view denies us the very substance that the Psalmist would have us rely upon, both in coming to embrace God and as that which fosters and furthers right relationship with God: the created order, within which we are called to “taste and see” God’s goodness.

Now hear me rightly: I see no goodness in this situation.  It is not something “in light of which” I believe in God but something “despite which” I still believe.  But neither is this a situation where Christians should encourage complacency or despair.  Rather, I think the first step is to recognize that the problem of evil is not simply an issue or even a big issue.  To my mind it is the issue.

And if my personal experience with evil is any guide, the second step is for Christians to stand against it and—in evil’s overwhelming shadow—to tell our tales of how God has acted in our lives to heal and mend us.

And this, I think, is where goodness can possibly be found amid evil: not that God solves our issues or addresses all our concerns, but that in place of evil God offers Godself.  Not through the historical work of Christ or theological explanation, important as these are.  But rather as acts of healing and liberation within our everyday existence that convince our minds, inspire our imaginations, and win our hearts—acts of knowing us more truly than we know ourselves and loving us more deeply than we love ourselves.

So against the view that God’ goodness is invisible or, at best, unfathomable, Christians must not only claim with their words but demonstrate—and attest to how God has demonstrated—in their lived existence that God is good.  And we do so not because of but despite the wanton evil that we are able (and clearly, all too wiling) to inflcit upon each other.

Atheism’s “religious” significance—Part 2

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Q:  What might happen if Christians first dialogued with atheists about our points of agreement, rather than disputed our disagreements?

From the average Christian, stunned silence.  Or questions like: What would be the point of that?

The point, actually, would be learning something.  And not simply something trivial about “those poor atheists” en route to witnessing to them, but something deeply true (and perhaps even essential) about ourselves as Christians.

More stunned silence, I wager.  But consider this:

Where the Bible indicates that Christians (and all people) “know in part”[1. 1 Cor 13:12  NRSV.] it is calling for Christians to hold confidence and humility in flexible and variable tension.  Thus “knowing in part” implies that all truth is God’s truth (and not ours, as Christians)[2. “Christians should understand that truth, wherever they may find it, belongs to their Lord”  St Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, p 144; II, 18 (28)] and therefore that Christians should welcome truth wherever it is found (even, as Augustine notes, within “the teachings of the pagans”[3. “Some true things are to be found among the teachings of the pagans about worshiping only the one God.”  De Doctrina Christiana, Ibid., p 160; 40 (60)]).

Hence the need for “tension”: maintaining suppleness regarding how much confidence versus how much humility we apply in any given situation, with the practical upshot that we cultivate the flexibility to adjust this proportion based on new contexts and new information.

In the most general sense, the result of maintaining this tension (and not assuming that we know all that we need to know about atheists) is that we hold off our criticism long enough to listen.  And in listening we find some shocking similarities.  For example, we learn that even the most ardent atheists are concerned about the same things we Christians are.

So where Bertrand Russell vouches that “‘the good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge’ ” (of which he claims love is the greater)[4. “He has no hesitation in pronouncing love to be the more important of these two attributes.”  Bertrand Russell, What I Believe, in James Sellers, The Outsider and the Word of God: A Study in Christian Communication, 15], a discussion with such outsiders to Christianity embraces considerations (like love and truth) with which Christians may competently and enthusiastically engage.  Moreover, when we attain Bertrand Russell’s goals we are actually faced with “the problem of good:” having to account for and express wonder at truth, and at the reality of being loved and in love.

Next, where Christians can acknowledge that the atheist’s demand for proof of God’s existence amounts to a common need to “taste and see” God’s goodness (“common” because such experiences of God not only strengthen but create faith), Christians learn not to subordinate experience and sense perceptions to theology.[5. Stated differently, Christians learn not to subordinate creation to salvation but to regard both equally and maintain them in productive tension with each other.]

So rather than disputing atheists with Scripture Christians can agree, in our post-Shoah world, that God’s love must “show up” in opposition to evil.  Thus instead of disdaining the human need to validate–and the created ability to perceive–goodness in our lived experience, Christians can foster dialogues about what counts as goodness in the ‘here and now’.

Last, given that “no one is born a Christian”[6. Tertullian] and that God approaches humanity in creative and surprising ways, Christian must not insist that atheists “think like them” before these outsiders can understand or love aright.

Rather, productively dialoging with outsiders requires Christians to recognize their own conversions (i.e., the situations and understandings that enabled new experiences of God’s truth and love for them) as the gold standard that underwrites their arguments and validates their theological viewpoints.  Thus defending our Christian convictions requires not theological but personal explanation (which in turn contain theological, philosophical, psychological, historical elements and so forth).

This personal content is not superfluous but is intrinsically necessary as that which renders our philosophical arguments and theological viewpoints plausible and enticing to those outside of Christianity.

So by listening to atheists Christians first understand that they have misjudged how much we share in common with them.  Second, the conversations arising from an awareness of shared interests are less disputes fueled by our need to defend God’s truth (and to present biblical truth claims) as dialogues explaining our experiences of God’s truth and love (as our personal, embodied examples of biblical truth values).

To conclude,

When we first dialogue with them, Atheists then become people that need to be understood and loved rather than enemies that need to be contradicted, defeated, or converted.  In other words, we are able to treat them as God sees them: tremendously valuable and worthy of respect… just like us.