Thursday, March 26, 2020

God Going Viral

“Let me not squander the hours of my pain” — Rilke

So how does an existential event like this impact me? Sure, there is the anxiety and fear. But here are the gifts: reconciling with an estranged father, reconnecting with old friends and girlfriends, checking in with neighbors and people in the community, and the feeling of solidarity with humanity and a deeper love of God.

That doesn't negate the suffering and evil. But is this by chance or intention? Is there a justified reason for such things as pandemics? Well, those our questions above my pay-grade. But for anti-viral shots and giggles, let's take a stab.

You got the people who believe God is neither transcendent and immanent (secularists). Those who think God is transcendent but not immanent (deists). And those who think think God is immanent but not transcendent (pantheists). They all got some excuse for this, but it's either too one-sided or completely incomplete.

If we take the Judeo-Christian perspective, we know God is transcendent. So He is responsible for the first cause of the building blocks for creation. But all those secondary causes: stars exploding, viruses forming, politicians bickering; those are just accidents from one view and God's infinite schema from another. We just can't explain it all as a singular event when there are so many moving parts in God's plan. So viruses just want to do what viruses do. Sadly, politicians do too.

Yet also from the Judeo-Christian perspective, God is imminent and still with us during these trials: “the earth is full of His glory.” As I recently heard Paul VanderKlay say: “Tolkien is not in the Lord of the Rings, but yet he is everywhere in the Lord of the Rings.” So while we have our own agency, it is not in competition with God's agency (strange attractor that it is) either. He's in the play, feeding us lines every so often. There's always the perpetual interplay of freedom and destiny.

Still, as Rutledge notes, evil is not nothing. We can't really just say it is an absence of Good, but more like a negation. She notes, “if we speak of evil simply as absence, we are in danger of abstracting its malign effects, or distancing ourselves from them.” And that's not how we need to engage in this moment. Evil has it's own force, although not ontological as God would be. We can't explain it away, and it has it's own explanation that we can't truly understand. Rutledge says the best response to this is often silence—a silence that may bring closer to an authentic response that words would never accomplish.

So while evil and suffering can make you struggle with God, it can't negate His existence. There's the famous quote by Rabbi Milton Steinberg that sums this point up: “The believer of God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering, the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else. So let me struggle with God.”

Maybe instead of trying to answer the big questions around God's relationship to crises like what we are currently going through, it is probably best to answer what is our relationship as individuals to all of this. As Bishop Barron recently said, let's instead consider “what is the opportunity for love that has opened up to me in this moment?”

Friday, March 13, 2020

It's Not that Modernity Was a Bad Idea, We Just Weren't Ready for It

We are enslaved by a system that despises art and has no room for love and reverence; and so we can be excused if we think sometimes that the end draws near; the soil is stale. Unless there can be a rebirth, our world is doomed, and it must be a rebirth of reverence. — Father Gerald Vann (from Contemplative Day Book)

The looming pandemic crisis is a time to take stock. I have no idea how this will play out, but I am almost certain we are in the midst of a reckoning that we haven't seen in a few generations.

The Steven Pinker's of the world have preached about the better angels of our nature becoming more commonplace through modernity. And there is much to appreciate with Pinker's work. But I think he fails to see as we got better at perceptibly organizing our systems that gave us the mirage of our halos, we also got good at outsourcing our individual wisdom. As Rutledge says, “although it is indeed possible to organize better societies, the project to create a better human being is beyond the capacity of of humankind. The veneer of civilization is very thin, now as always.” 

In the advent of all this informational advancement, we became soft in character. Moreover, we allowed all the mysteries in science and technology to undermine the depth of spirit and religion.

And now we will come to see we are not so advance after all. A hidden enemy will make its way through much of civilization, and while the fatalities will be low percentage-wise, the systemic outcome from this will play out for years within our already fragile institutions.

Am I being too pessimistic? Yes, maybe.

So I will say I do believe we will endure, too. As to whether we make better choices post-pandemic remains to be seen. This young generation, who appear to be less impacted by the virus, will have that opportunity.

In spite of what will come of a new direction, Father Stephen Freeman makes this astute observation: 
“A long litany of slogans enforce the notion that “changing” things, even in the slightest way, is how a life should be measured. It is the very essence of the lie that is modernity. We simply are not in charge of history. Even those who imagine themselves (or whom we imagine) to be the great influencers of current events are not in charge of history. Hitler and Mussolini were not in charge of history. Churchill and FDR were not in charge of history. No one holding political office (nor all of them together) is in charge of history.
God alone is in charge of history.”
Certainly, God could not have offered more testing kits and face masks. But we could have remembered Him more—instead of being preoccupied with silly things. It would have ordered us more to what matters.

I hear a few say prayer will not get us through this, but who said prayer is meant to do anything worldly? There may be other intentions for it that are not of our own. A friend passed along this quote: God provides minimal protection; maximal support.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Sick Souls and the Universal Malady

In a recent conversation with a friend who joined a Richard Rohr group, she was telling me about how much she appreciated the group's avoidance of using terms like ‘sin’ since God is all about love and we are made in His image. On that same note, we often hear of these vague political slogans that sentimentalize humanity: ‘Love is love’, ‘Not me, Us’, or ‘Better together’. This orientation is really not all that new. It is all part of the Gnostic move to cast out distinctions between man and God, and falsely elevate ourselves into guileless mini-gods. 

In her terrific book, Fleming Rutledge says, 
“It is the lazy person's way of receiving data about life, without struggle. It is apparently very important to us to believe in innocence. Such a belief is a stratagem for keeping unpleasant truth at bay; it is a form of denial.”
But in Truth, it is God made us free first, and in that freedom we can choose to make choices. And more often than not, these choices are motivated, as you would expect, by and for the self—leading Solzhenitsyn to recognize the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. It is not us verses them, but us against God.

Rutledge notes, “Sin is not individual transgressions, but a universal malady.” She also points out how the elderly preacher in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead muses, “There is never just one transgression. There is a wound in the flesh of human life that scars when it heals and often enough never seems to heal at all.” Yes, even Chesterton affirmed that “Original Sin…is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” Just look around you, as well as yourself.

It would seem that we don’t need just some adjustments and improvements, but we must lay down our arms (to paraphrase something CS Lewis once said). We are agents of Sin; quite good at partaking in it, while poor at breaking its grip.

I feel it in my own bones; as much as I have orientated my life to prayer, meditation, spiritual study, and the sacraments, I sometimes feel my transgressions can’t be overcome by any determination or resolve I may possess. Lately, I have been attending daily mass more often, not so much for anything it can do for me, but to give myself over to what must be done to me in my praise. It gives me a hope that does quantify itself to any particular goal.  

Are there just as many sick souls in the Church as there are outside of it? Probably more, for it is recognition of our sickness that makes the difference. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, first step: admit you are powerless and your life is unmanageable. “The measure of the Church, therefore, is not the presence of sinners. That is not surprising. It is the presence of forgiveness, the operation of grace through the sacraments, and the production (eventually) of Saints” (Paul Williams). I don’t have saintly expectations, but there is hope that the criterion of Truth that will be used to judge me is beyond me. 

From a certain lens, the beauty of our imperfections allows us to be an apprentice and a teacher, being a receiver and giver; as a reciprocal relationship is formed vertically and horizontally. Yes, we are always in relationship and there will always be a hierarchy in that relationship. We admire those who are more saintly than us in many respects, and take an active part in being compassionate to those who struggle with sin greater than us.

But even still, this does not let us off the hook: reconciliation requires struggleRutledge takes on that Sin has a twofold aspect that needs to be contended with: 
“(1) Sin is a responsible guilt for which atonement must be made. It follows that the crucifixion is understood as a sacrifice for sin. (2) Sin is an alien power that must be driven from the field. All human beings are enslaved by this power and must be liberated by a greater power.”
The sacrifice made by ourselves and by Christ is “not a weakness, but an alternative mode of power” that can overcome the universal malady. We are all complicit, always, in Sin and yet have been granted the Power to repent and sacrifice ourselves beyond it.