[Dialogue] Weeping Over the Grave of God (Spong on the Tsunami)

[KroegerD@aol.com]

January 12, 2005


Weeping Over The Grave of God 


Part II of a series about the Tsunami

In a 20th century drama entitled, "Conversation at Midnight," playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay had her character Ricardo speak these words: "Man has never been the same since God died. He has taken it very hard...He gets along pretty well, as long as it's daylight...but it's no use. The moment it begins to get dark, as soon as it is night, he goes out and howls over the grave of God."

Those words have been very poignant for me through the years, rising every time I experience the tragic dimensions of life that in the past were cushioned by the traditional understanding of God. The earthquake in the Indian Ocean, which spawned the Tsunami waves killing more than 150,000 people, was the latest occasion for calling to mind these words.

Had such a tragedy struck our world 500-600 years ago, two things would have been quite different. First, the probability is that most of the people of the Western world would never have known about it. The world was so vast in that period of history. Oceans and language were great barriers. Communication systems were quite primitive. This Tsunami would have made its way only into the remembered history of the affected areas, entering the folklore of the people and producing perhaps another story like the one about Noah. 

In the 21st century, however, the press covered this enormous disaster relentlessly. Pictures of its horror invaded our homes via television. The story journeyed with us on through our car radios. It dominated the front pages of newspapers across this planet. There was no escape from the searing reality of the carnage, the cries of the victims or those newly bereaved. No one could avoid staring at the mass graves or trying to embrace what it means to lose so many lives so suddenly. People's emotions were numbed. This was not an attack by a foreign enemy to which people could release the frenzy of their pent up anger. It was the work of an impersonal force tearing up the earth miles beneath the ocean floor and unleashing waves of such height, power and fury that they destroyed everything in their path. Elderly people died. Babies died, sick and crippled people died, mothers died, fathers died. Rich vacationers died, poor peasants died. It had no rhyme, no reason and it lent itself to no rational process of thinking.

The second thing that was different was that in the past this tragedy would have been understood in the context of a religious worldview. Theories would abound as to what its meaning was and why God was so displeased that this divine punishment was hurled at the world. That was the way that Europe understood the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century and the way the storm that sank the Spanish armada in 1588 was interpreted. In the Tsunami coverage this religious dimension was totally missing at first, a clear indication that the religious worldview of the past no longer exists. Instead we were given geological lessons about the collision of tectonic plates. No one assumed that the victims were being punished. No one offered a rational explanation implying any purpose. Only after the passage of several days did the religious spokespersons begin to present their explanations on television and radio talk shows, but these voices were singularly lacking in both profundity and credibility. Larry King, interviewing not clergy but former Presidents Bush and Clinton, kept pressing both of them to say what this tragedy had done to their faith. President George W. H. Bush in response referred to the time he had lost a daughter and it "did cause me to wonder why...an innocent child." President Clinton referred to the unfairness of life at all times and urged Larry King to have on his program representative theologians from the religions practiced by most of the victims, Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist and Christian, to have them discuss how their faith helped them to understand this disaster. This tragedy simply did not lend itself to their pious but threadbare explanations. This was simply nature acting with the fury for which nature is well known. 

Perhaps the last gasp of that traditional, pre-modern religious thinking occurred after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, when Jerry Falwell, appearing on Pat Robertson's 700 Club, offered the opinion that God had removed the shield of divine protection from America because its leaders had begun to tolerate "feminists, abortionists, homosexuals and the American Civil Liberties Union." The nation gasped at this level of religious arrogance and the current Bush administration distanced itself from these remarks, saying it did not want to be associated with that kind of response. Yet, years ago that was the typical and almost universal explanation. It is the common explanation that one encounters in the writing of the biblical prophets.

What has happened in the intervening years to change public perceptions? I think it is fair to say that God, understood as an external, supernatural, miracle-working deity has died. The death of this God was not sudden. The realization of this divine demise has slowly trickled down over the centuries from the intellectuals to the masses. The death of this God has spawned two seemingly opposite responses in our day. One is the development of a radically secular society. The other is in the hysterical rise of fundamentalist, evangelical religion that represents a denial that the death of God has occurred.

How did this death of God occur? It began in the 16th century with Copernicus and his later disciples Kepler and Galileo, who forced us to see that the earth was not the center of the universe and that God did not live just beyond the sky, engaged in the tasks of watching, planning, intervening, keeping record books, punishing and rewarding. This insight posed a mighty challenge to the God we met in the pages of scripture. This God was quite capable of splitting the Red Sea to liberate the Chosen People and of dictating the Ten Commandments to Moses. As the understanding of the universe expanded, we no longer knew where God was and more importantly who God was. The universe seemed very large and we began to feel very lonely. Then Isaac Newton explained how the laws of nature operated in this universe, leaving little room for miracle and magic. Next Charles Darwin challenged our assumption that human life was just a little lower than the angels, suggesting instead that it was just a little higher than the apes. Finally, Albert Einstein took away all certainty, replacing it with relativity. With each new insight, the traditional concept of God faded into the shadows.

The next step in the desacralization of our world came when we could no longer explain evil with our appeals to this supernatural deity. Life seemed more and more governed by chance and less and less by purpose. Analyzing who survived the attack on the World Trade Center, we discovered that it was the chance factor of whether they worked on the upper floors or the lower floors, not whether they were deserving or not. Passengers on the doomed 9/11 airliners prayed fervently but no divine hand reached down to give them aid. They were the chance victims who booked passage on the wrong plane. Then came the earthquake and the Tsunami. It erupted beneath the sea. It killed religious people and non-religious people. It killed Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists. No God stopped it. When people thought about it they concluded that no God could stop it, which posed a provocative theological issue in such a way that it was inescapable. If God has the power to intervene and does not, then surely God is malevolent. If God does not have the power then God is impotent. Either way the traditional God explanation fails. What we had long suspected intellectually we began to embrace emotionally. There is no supernatural divine power that stands at our side to be our protector. Thus the traditional religious worldview died and people began to cope with what it means to be citizens of a lonely and seemingly empty universe. As the days pass and the world begins to return to its normal routines, voices will surely try to respirate artificially the old world view in order to make sense of this disaster, in an effort to preserve the remaining shreds of divinity to which we cling so tenaciously. Their words, however, will inevitably sound empty and hollow because they will be spoken out of a religious context that is no longer believable and is no longer ours. 

Does this mean that there is no God? That is a common conclusion of those who today inhabit the 'secular city,' but I don't think so. I am convinced, however, that it does mean that the primary way we have thought about God for almost 10,000 years is dying or is dead. Since most people do not or cannot separate God from our traditional definition of God, it feels to many like there is no God or that God has died. God and the human definition of God are, however, not identical.

Perhaps God can be met and experienced in ways beyond the theistic definitions of the past. Perhaps it is still possible to encounter transcendence, otherness, holiness or timelessness without locating these realities in an external supernatural, miracle-working, invasive deity? That is where their inner quest has led many people in the modern world today. I stand with them. This means, I believe, that we stand on the edge of the most profound spiritual revolution in human history. It is dawning with rending power in the human psyche. We will, however, never be able to encounter this reality until we allow the traditional God concept from the days of our childlike humanity to die. For many that is a fearful transition to be avoided by all means including denial, but for me and for others it represents a new chapter in human history for which we yearn with deep anticipation. I will seek to open a door into that scary place next week.

-- John Shelby Spong


Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong

Wilbur D. Wheaton, via the Internet, writes: 

Love your comments on the Tsunami but you need to understand that the Tsunami is not a tidal wave. A tidal wave is caused by the same force (moon related) that causes all waves. A Tsunami is caused by an eruption, usually on the ocean floor, that forces water to develop a huge surging of a water mass. If a little fluid can raise your 3000-pound car at your local mechanic shop five feet into the air, the Tsunami carries millions times more power. 

Dear Wilbur, 

Thanks for that clarification. The whole world, including me, has been on an extreme learning curve about earthquakes, tectonic plates, tidal waves and Tsunami surges. Your clarification helps a great deal.

-- John Shelby Spong


-- 
Dick Kroeger