[Dialogue] God and Tsunami

[KroegerD@aol.com]

January 19, 2005


Re-Imaging God in a Post-Tsunami World 


The final part of a three-part series about the Tsunami

"If God is God, he is not good! If God is good, he is not God!" These words, from a 20th century adaptation of the Book of Job entitled "J.B.", were written by Archibald McLeish.

"God no longer has any work to do." A quotation from Michael Donald Goulder, Professor of New Testament Studies at the United Kingdom's University of Birmingham, when he announced in 1981 that he had become a "non-aggressive atheist."

Both the dramatist McLeish and the biblical theologian Goulder were stating that they no longer find significant meaning in the traditional way of understanding God. If God is a Being, supernatural in power, living somewhere external to this world, who invades this world periodically to answer their prayers, to accomplish the divine will, or to protect them from peril or their enemies, then God has, to these two gentlemen, become inoperative. They will no longer share in this human illusion. If there is nothing more to God than this, then they will choose to be atheists. They have articulated the religious crisis of our time. Unwillingness to believe in this theistic God seems to leave us with but the single option of embracing atheism. The theistic God, because of the great advances in human knowledge, has been rendered unbelievable. A natural catastrophe like the Tsunami brings these issues dramatically and urgently into full view. 

The defenders of the traditional understanding of God try to make sense out of this tragedy by postulating a deserving guilt on the part of its victims or by telling us that the will of God in this tragedy will be made clear in time. These arguments are simply not convincing. 

Let me, as a believing Christian, say it bluntly: the skies are empty. There is no supernatural parent figure waiting to come to our aid or to answer our prayers. The God, quoted as the final source of all authority, is no more. When we recognize these dimensions of our spiritual crisis, then much of the human behavior observable today becomes comprehensible.

Those in our world who are emotionally capable of laying aside the now outdated religious explanations of antiquity are called 'secular humanists.' They come in two varieties: some are stoical humanists who work for the common good and who are willing to serve the whole society. In them we see that idealism is not dead. Others, driven by their deep survival instincts, become corrupt, grasping specimens of humanity, looking out for themselves alone. If the judging God is gone, they reason, so is the ethical system that purported to reflect the will of God. They recognize no binding ethic so long as they do not get caught. They give us the Enrons, the WorldComs and the politics of greed that mark our recent history.

Those on the other hand, who are not capable of living without the security of their religious myths of antiquity, become the fundamentalists and the religious fanatics of out time. They vigorously deny their doubts and fears, and cover their insecurity by seeking to impose their particular form of religion on all others. Examples of this mentality abound in acts of terror and in the religious imperialism that we now observe in our own elections. Neither alternative offers much hope for the future. We cannot return to yesterday. We must enter the world that is being born before our eyes and engage the faith crisis of modernity.

It was a Greek philosopher named Xenophanes, who wrote: "If horses had gods, they would look like horses." This was his way of urging us to recognize that the gods of human beings also and inevitably will look like human beings. Human beings are finite and mortal so we envision God as infinite and immortal. We are limited in knowledge, so God is omniscient. We are bound to a single place but God is omnipresent. We are limited in power, but God is omnipotent. We account for this similarity between God and ourselves by proclaiming that we were created in God's image. However, the reality is that God has been made in our image. If that is true, as it so obviously is, then perhaps it is not God but our very inadequate image of God that has died. That should be welcomed insight, for any God who can be killed ought to be killed. So the first step in building a new, authentic way to think about God is to cease trying to keep yesterday's image of God alive. Divine artificial respiration is a waste of time.

We understand this rationally, but the uniqueness of self-conscious humanity is to tremble at the vastness of space and our smallness in the scheme of things. That is why we invented the parent God in the first place. We needed a sense of divine security. We would rather be 'born again' into a continued child-like dependency than to be forced to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves. It was the theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who urged us to separate God from religion. "God would have us know," he said, "that we must live as those who manage our lives without God." That is quite a challenge but that is where we are today. 

Much of western religion has been predicated on a definition of human weakness. We have portrayed ourselves religiously as broken, inadequate and fallen. Our angst has created in us a need to denigrate ourselves. For centuries the church taught us that God's greatness could best be seen in response to human depravity, exhorting us to gratitude for the "amazing grace that saved a wretch like me." We are told "there is no health in us" and "we are not worthy to gather up the crumbs" from the divine table. The first step in the quest to build an authentic spirituality is to banish this negativity and recognize how incredible human life really is or can be.

When human life first emerged into self-consciousness, a creature had finally evolved who was not bound by time and space. Our minds can soar beyond our boundaries. We live inside the flow of time remembering a past that is no more, and anticipating the future that is not yet. We know something about the life force that surges within us. We recognize the power of love that enhances our life. We are aware that we can receive love, and once received we can give love away, but none of us can originate love. Love is a power that flows into us from beyond ourselves. We contemplate what it means to be unique. We have both a sense of who we are and a vision of who we want to be, which is the source of our discontent. These are the authentic parts of a God experience, which no other creature can share. Yes, we have created our image of God, that miracle working supernatural one, but we are not the authors of our experience of God. God is the name of the life within us that opens us to the miracle of transcendence. God is the name of love that comes to us from beyond ourselves. God is the ground or source of being out of which our own sense of being has emerged. Those are the moments when we discover oneness, embrace eternity and know why it is that we call ourselves spiritual beings.

What a difference this new angle of vision makes. Instead of seeing God as our judge eliciting our guilt, we begin to see God as the source of our empowerment. Instead of seeing Jesus as a divine visitor who came to rescue sinful humanity, we see him as the fully human one inviting us into his divinity, which is nothing but humanity transformed by wholeness. Instead of seeing the Holy Spirit as the source of our piety, we see Spirit as the source of expanding life. Instead of blaming God for tragedy and pain, or seeking to exonerate God from blame in an unjust universe; we accept our responsibility for building a world where every person has a better chance to live, to love and to be all that each of us is capable of being. We will use our intelligence and our ingenuity not to defend our dying God images, but to understand our world so deeply that we, not some distant mythical God, can be the needed bulwark against the natural fury of earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and drought. Instead of being angry when we are victimized by evil or destruction that we cannot control, we will work together to build a safer world. Instead of seeing ethics as following some divinely established rules to please a parent God and avoid punishing wrath, we will learn to see goodness as those actions that enhance life making all of us more fully human. This means that we will also see evil as those actions which diminish our humanity making us more willing to hate than to love, more able to destroy than to build up. Instead of seeing life after death as a time to receive divine reward or punishment we will see it as humanity merging into divinity, and finitude entering into eternity.

This coming new spirituality will not promise us security, but it will give us the ability to live in a radically insecure world with hope and meaning. It will not promise reward to entice our self-centeredness, but it will invite us to risk discovering both life's heights and depths. It will not mean that our lives are safe, but it will mean that we do not die without meaning, without communing with that which is finally real. That is where God is found for me. Someday we will recognize that the God of our past could only be God for the weak and the lost, one who could only win our loyalty by keeping us in a state of emotional childishness. Perhaps the crisis in faith through which we are going today is nothing but the adolescent pangs of a new maturity being born. Surely the God of the past must die if this new day is to arrive.

Is this enough to make us capable of living in this frightening world? Do we not still need a supernatural protective Being out there somewhere? That is the question that each of us must answer. If we are still emotional children who need a protective parent, we will continue to create whatever illusions we require to survive and we will try to force all people into our religious mold. If on the other hand we are ready to grasp a new maturity and become a new creation, then we will find in this moment in history a freeing and awesome call to be the God bearers in this world, the co-creators of life; and we will eagerly enter the next stage of our human development. It is my hope that this will be the conclusion and the vocation to which the tragic earthquake and the terrifying tsunami will finally drive our world.

-- John Shelby Spong


Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong

Diane, via the Internet, writes: 

Once upon a time, I read something Jesus was supposed to have said, "When you give a feast... invite the outcasts." What is so hard about this that it has taken "Christians" so long to "get it"? I am Roman Catholic (although some conservative RCs would question my definition) and I pray the Holy Rosary perhaps more than the average Catholic. Yet, the more I pray it, the more, I am convinced that the Roman Catholic Church needs serious reform.

I wish that you (John Spong) and Andrew Greeley could be co-popes. 

Dear Diane, 

Thank you for your confidence, though I'm quite sure the Roman Catholic Church is not ready for co-popes. They tried that once in the 14th century and the results were disastrous. Neither Andrew Greeley nor I are candidates for the position anyway - nor do I believe the Church likely to look in either of our directions when the new 'Holy Father' is chosen!

I believe that it is not just the Roman Catholic Church but the whole Christian Church that is in need of serious reform. Our faith tradition is badly compromised by both our ancient tribal mentalities and by the historical accommodations that tribal mentalities made centuries ago. In the Scriptures, Christians were taught to think of themselves always in minority images. We were to be the 'saving remnant;' the 'salt of the earth' that flavored the soup; the 'leaven in the lump' of dough that gave its yeast to the bread, the 'light of a single candle' that shined in the midst of an overwhelming darkness. Then, following Constantine's Edict of Milan in 313 CE, we became the dominant religion of the western world. That was when Christians began to feel that it was our duty to create uniformity within the church and then to impose that uniform Christianity on those outside.

We took biblical texts like the one you mentioned (it is found in Luke 22: 24-27) and made the outcasts unwelcome. Sometimes, the outcasts were lepers; sometimes they were the mentally sick; sometimes they were members of different races; sometimes they were women; sometimes they were homosexuals. We have never done well welcoming outcasts or even strangers.

On another occasion, according to the gospels, Jesus also asked, "Who is greater, the one who serves at the banquet or the guests" (Luke 22: 24-27)? The answer was obviously the guests who sat at the table but Jesus identified himself as the one who serves. In the sacramental meal of the Church, however, we have made the one who prepares and serves the meal the power office of the church. The servant is the priest serving the invited guests at the Eucharist, but the Church has called the priest the 'Revered One,' for that is what 'Reverend' means, and has made the ability to celebrate the Eucharist the heart of clergy authority.

The Church dresses its bishops in the symbols of Royal Power, crown/miter on their heads. Their official seat is called a throne, their home is called a palace - a royal ring, a royal staff (called a crosier) and a medallion of power around his neck (called a pectoral cross). Then we wonder why no one takes our claim seriously to be in the ministry of servanthood.

Yes, we do need a reformation. Without it, the future is bleak.

-- John Shelby Spong


-- 
Dick Kroeger