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August 24 - December 5, 2021
Whatever sense we make of this world, whatever value we place upon our lives and relationships, whatever meaning we ultimately give to our joys and agonies, must necessarily be a gesture of faith. Whether we consider the whole a product of impersonal cosmic forces, a malevolent deity, or a benevolent god, depends not on the evidence, but on what we choose, deliberately and consciously, to conclude from that evidence.
A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars.
The call to faith is a summons to engage the heart, to attune it to resonate in sympathy with principles and values and ideals that we devoutly hope are true and which we have reasonable but not certain grounds for believing to be true.
There must be grounds for doubt as well as belief, in order to render the choice more truly a choice, and therefore the more deliberate, and laden with personal vulnerability and investment.
In the case of us mortals, we are confronted with a world in which there are appealing arguments for a Divinity that is a childish projection, for prophets as scheming or deluded imposters, and for scriptures as so much fabulous fiction. But there is also compelling evidence that a glorious Divinity presides over the cosmos, that His angels are strangers we have entertained unaware, and that His word and will are made manifest through a scriptural canon that is never definitively closed.
The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is, and knowing that a thing is not.
both militant atheism and fervent theism are the same in this regard: they are both just as likely to serve as a dogmatic point of departure, as they are to
be a thoughtful and considered end point in one’s journey toward understanding.
Those who place their affections upon God, who find in Him an explanation of our deepest nature, with its self-awareness, its yearnings and strivings, do not find respite from all pain or from all questions. But they do find the only object that seems an adequate match to their infinite desire.
We do not concede that a god who creates us, or the entire universe for that matter, is beyond reproach or question by virtue of his power alone.
The astonishing revelation here is that God does set His heart upon us. And in so doing, God chooses to love us. And if love means responsibility, sacrifice, vulnerability, then God’s decision to love us is the most stupendously sublime moment in the history of time. He chooses to love even at, necessarily at, the price of vulnerability.
I SHALL know why, when time is over, And I have ceased to wonder why; Christ will explain each separate anguish In the fair schoolroom of the sky. He will tell me what Peter promised, And I, for wonder at his woe, I shall forget the drop of anguish That scalds me now, that scalds me now.
God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. “God’s power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.”
In that “while,” in that “and,” in that “but it also,” we find the giftedness of life.
if we are co-eternal with God, then it is not God’s creation of the human out of nothing that defines our essential relationship to Him. It is His freely made choice to inaugurate and sustain loving relationships, and our choice to reciprocate, that are at the core of our relationship to the Divine.
In “falling,” in other words, Adam and Eve and their posterity, agreed to temporarily abandon a noble heritage and dwelling with God himself. They deserve in consequence a compensation as rich or richer than the goodly state and condition they risked in going forth.
Humility, because if we chose our lot in life, there is every reason to suspect merit, and not disfavor, is behind disadvantaged birth. A blighted life may have been the more courageous choice—at least it was for Plato.
And Plato’s reflections should give us hope, because his myth reminds us that suffering can be sanctifying, that pain is not punishment, and that the path to virtue is fraught with opposition.
Even the religious recognize that the body is of the earth and subject to the conditions of the material world. That condition, however, is not our punishment, it is our challenge.
“There is no enjoyment, no comfort, no pleasure, nothing that the human heart can imagine . . . that tends to beautify, happify, make comfortable and peaceful, and exalt the feelings of mortals, but what the Lord has in store for His people.”
The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has.”
His concern with human sin is with the pain and suffering it produces. Sympathy and sorrow, not anger and vengeance, are the emotions we must look to in order to plumb the nature of the divine response to sin.
The pain associated with sin is the natural consequence of our choices; it is not God’s retribution upon the wicked.
What is always at stake in any decision we make is what that choice turns us into. We may suffer the unfortunate consequences of other peoples’ choices. People may honor or
abuse us, harm or nourish us. But for the most part, it is our own choices that shape our identity.
Those consequences may look like punishment or reward from our perspective, but they were chosen. That is how freedom operates, ideally at least.
“We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character.
Humans can remit a penalty out of compassion or mercy—even when wrong is not acknowledged and forgiveness not asked; why cannot God do the same? Because only a simpleminded conception of heaven, as an exclusive celestial club with literal gates and wary porters, admits of such a question.
Heaven is not a club we enter. Heaven is a state we attain, in accordance with our “capacity to receive” a blessed and sanctified nature.
The Greek term, metanoia, means a change or reversal of mind, purpose, or disposition. Repentance, in other words, means to re-decide, to choose afresh.
Hardly ever, then, is a choice made with perfect, uncompromised freedom of the will. That, we saw, is why repentance is possible in the first place. We repent when upon reflection, with a stronger will, clearer insight, or deeper desire, we wish to choose differently.
He seems determined to demonstrate that when we make regrettable choices we are not really choosing what the “better angels of our nature” want to choose. Come, try again, He seems to be saying, like a patient tutor who knows his student’s mind is too frozen with fear to add the sums correctly.
In essence, we are invited to participate in the heavenly family of God Himself. Not through metaphorical melding, but through the studied, arduous practice of a holy life that prepares us to love as He does.
The most terrifying specter that haunts the modern psyche is not death or disease or nuclear annihilation. It is loneliness.
We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing the reasons behind human suffering, than working to alleviate human suffering, and in imagining a heaven above, than creating a heaven in our homes and communities.
Holiness is found in how we treat others, not in how we contemplate the cosmos.
“The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful . . . whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”
Nothing learned is wasted, since God is the Master, not the Magician, of the universe, and we strive to become like Him.
“The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it,” wrote Kierkegaard.
