Anyone who cares...

...in the slightest bit about women in technology, and especially men who care about the participation and contributions of women in technology, should run (not walk) over to Dorothea Salo's post at CavLec on the topic.

I can speak from personal experience when I say that the way she describes this dynamic is 100% accurate.

My brothers, make yourselves heard!

What's love got to do with it?

Providence, Evil, and Suffering: Reading Assignment 9

When we began this class, the teacher asked us to write a sentence about providence, evil, and suffering that we held to be true. I wrote: “The persistence and prevalence of evil is the single greatest obstacle to faith, and the only answer to it is a witness to God’s love through human action, made possible by grace.” Reading Douglas John Hall’s critique-cum-dialogs in God and Human Suffering, I have come to realize even more clearly how much I have longed for a convincing apologia for God.

Why is it so much easier to wound than to heal? To be abandoned or betrayed than to be loved? To commit a sin of omission than exercise a costly virtue?

As an intellectual, I find it a profound struggle to try to reconcile the concepts of a loving, good God (often so hidden) and a creation so evidently riddled with evil. I have this faith, only God knows why, but I can’t buttress it with good intellectual arguments. I can’t persuasively speak the language of reason with myself about this dilemma, never mind trying to convey to another person what I believe (mostly, and on a good day) about the good news of God. What this means — oh the irony! — is that I have no words to offer to the self that I was, not so very long ago, and thus to the many friends or yet-to-be-friends for whom I might wish entry into the community of Christ. It is some small comfort to hear that Hall too finds that there is no “facile way of overcoming this faith/reason dichotomy.” (p. 186)

Furthermore, and this is why the difficulty of this dilemma is compounded, I am cursed (or blessed) with an exceedingly empathetic nature. I am continually hurt by other people’s pain, and what I don’t know from personal experience or witness I perceive through a vivid and energetic imagination. I have not yet succeeded in finding a way to insulate myself from this, or to sufficiently anesthetize myself, and I frequently have difficulties establishing healthy boundaries. This is scary stuff for me. Suffering is not just painful, and evil is not merely frightening in some abstract way, to me. Even hearing or thinking about it feels like annihilation. I need faith in a God who saves.

I have been trying, as an exercise, to substitute the word “Love” every time I encounter the words “Jesus,” “the Lord,” or “God,” in scripture to see if it helps me to rethink what I think I know about God. Of course Hall reminds us that Bonhoefer said “the emphasis in the biblical declaration that ‘God is love’ should fall upon the first word: it is God who defines what love means, not vice versa.” (p. 188) So perhaps I should also be requiring this exercise to help me rethink what I think I know about love.

Hall’s description of Buttrick’s analysis is helpful: “The event of our suffering must be encountered, if it is to be encountered at all, by another event. ‘Answers’ to human suffering — as we learn from Job’s comforters — are always inadequate, no matter how ‘right’ they may be in their way…. it is not what God says finally to the suffering Job but that God says something that is the answer…. The Presence itself is the answer.” (p. 184) Jesus crucified and the risen Christ with us now must be our answer.

The question remains, what does that mean for our life in the present? Or, as I find myself asking over and over, what is God good for? How, really, are we saved from suffering, evil, and death? We are not, in the end, spared those experiences any more than was Jesus. What then does the promise of resurrection mean for us and where can we see signs of it here and now? I rather enjoyed Hall’s dismantling of C.S. Lewis’s “heaven-is-the-answer” response to pain. Nonetheless, in place of “pie-in-the-sky” Hall offers God’s “faithful, forgiving, cleansing, and healing Presence.” (pp. 166-167) It’s an idea I adore, but am not thoroughly persuaded of. How is one to “taste” this Presence? There are so many who, in the midst of great suffering and as victims of great evil, do not taste it. Where is their consolation?

It is true that misery loves company, but a God worthy of worship must offer us more than mere company in our misery. This then is what the community of the church, the body of Christ inspired by the Holy Spirit, is in the world for: to bind up wounds, to reconcile enemies, to befriend the lonely, to embrace the rejected, to witness to and to practice Love. This is what the incarnation was supposed to teach us.

God, do we have a lot of work to do.

Reading: God & Human Suffering, Douglas John Hall, Augsburg Publishing House: Minneapolis, MN, 1986.

Frozen

I've reached an acme of anomie and procrastinatory paralysis.

I have two papers due tomorrow, one big and one small, and find myself incapable of doing either. The sheer irony is that I got a congratulatory phone message from WTS yesterday, which means that apparently they've decided to admit me as a degree student.

I'd like to blame my incapacity on Satan, but I suspect it's all on me.

Worthy of Worship

Providence, Evil, and Suffering: Reading Assignment 8

One of the great pleasures of life as a student is to be reading along, with naturally variable degrees of engagement, and suddenly stumbling across a certain rare kind of sentence. This is the kind of sentence that opens a door. It might be a wholly unanticipated and previously undiscovered door, but not necessarily. Often it's a door that one has been actively looking for, perhaps even sketching out as part of an intellectual building project, but that one's never quite managed to get installed somewhere useful. It's a door that leads to a whole new wing of the internal edifice, as yet sparsely furnished, but spacious and filled with light. There's plenty of room back there to move into and occupy — room maybe not just for oneself but for friends and even enemies alike.

These sentences have the signal characteristic of being on the one hand screamingly self-evident (you read them and immediately assent: yes, of course, that's exactly so!) and entraining tremendous depth and complication upon further reflection (oh my god! what does that really mean? what are the implication of that? *pause. sigh.* oh dear, I have a lot of work to do). Douglas John Hall writes:

"...there are situations where power is of no avail. They are most of the situations in which as human beings we find ourselves! May we not also dare to say that, from the standpoint of a faith tradition which posits love, not power, as God's primary perfection, they are most of the situations in which God finds God's Self too?" (p. 99)

I do think Hall understates the Jerusalem tradition's investment in the conventional power attributes of God. In the Hebrew Bible God frequently manifests as Israel's God in acts of might (plagues, destruction of enemies, etc.) and is much praised for it. There's quite a bit of Godly smiting of one kind or another going on throughout. In the Christian tradition, the acts of power are focused on healing, exorcism, feeding, and the subduing of nature's violence, but the language of dominion (power over ) is still in use. Written as they were in the context of the Roman empire, Christian scriptures are saturated with the metaphors of kingship even as the very Gospel message itself undermines them from within. The church has incorporated and elaborated the grammar of hierarchical power in both doctrine and institutional structure throughout its history. As a survival strategy, it's proven very successful. I might add: until now.

How incredibly liberating and indeed philosophically and pastorally useful might it be to step outside of the logic of power relations when we think and talk about God? If God is not first and foremost the all-powerful sovereign to whom we humble serfs approach cap in hand, on bended knee, with our petty and unworthy petitions for relief from suffering... if God is not the Chief Executive Officer of the Universe, the Decider-in-Chief, whose cosmic script has set us all to dancing choreography that leads to predestined positions of exaltation or damnation merely for divine amusement... if God is not the rule-setting, sin-punishing, strictly judging pater familias, who required his number one son to die a horrible death to make up for the failings of the rest of his good-for-nothing children... well, then, maybe there is a God worth worshipping. Come to think of it, even the word "worship" carries some power-hierarchy baggage along with it; worship that is "required" for the satisfaction of the worshippee is an expression of power-over. Much as we might yearn for the cosmic Magic Daddy who could wave his wand and make everything right (if only he wanted to or was willing to, if we somehow deserved it), that clamoring doesn't contribute to our spiritual well-being. It deafens us to our calling to participate in the healing and renewal of creation, and it puts an apparently fickle, wish-granting idol in the place of the living God.

Like many of the other authors we've read this semester, Hall has plenty of skeptical words to say about the developed First World's post-enlightenment, individualistic, triumphalist view of human progress. He points to the shortcomings of the materialist world-view and to myriad attendant evils brought about by rampant consumerism and ideological imperialism. In my view, he doesn't quite give enough equal time to the notion that in our (perhaps sometimes excessive and therefore sinful) struggle to gain mastery over suffering and death, we have as a species actually managed meaningfully to reduce some kinds of suffering — physical, material, and political. We can eschew kowtowing to a narrow totalitarian idol of progress and yet acknowledge that such progress is both desirable and achievable. The challenge becomes how to retain the benefits deriving from our all-to-human drive to overcome the sufferings that flesh is heir to while still cultivating a spiritual posture that acknowledges and accepts our creaturely limitations and strives to heal both our personal and collective cultural death-dealing malignancies.

Hall makes a compelling argument for a less "Greek," less metaphysically burdened understanding of the incarnation: "...God meets, takes on, takes into God's own being, the burden of our suffering, not by a show of force which could only destroy the sinner with the sin, but by assuming a solidary [sic] responsibility for the contradictory and confused admixture which is our life." (p. 113) If we are to recognize God in the life, death, and resurrection of the human person of Jesus, we must set aside our reflexive definitions of power, omniscience, and transcendence. Jesus shows us power in the loving integrity of his life, omniscience in knowing what is worth knowing (how to live and die according to the will of God), and transcendence in living a finite life in the light of God's infinite abundance. These are human ways of leading a holy life, because this is what God-with-us looks like. And since they are human ways, we can attain to them as well.

Reading: God & Human Suffering, Douglas John Hall, Augsburg Publishing House: Minneapolis, MN, 1986.

Hallelujah and Praise the Lord!

I may be speaking too soon... but it looks as if Blogger has finally let me transition to the new version. Perhaps I'll be able to resume posting regularly.

If anyone is still out there.

Man, talk about a way to lose your audience.

The mourners’ bench and the cultivation of joy

Providence, Evil, and Suffering: Reading Assignment 6

Stanley Hauerwas wants us to stop telling ourselves one kind of story and start telling another. He wants us to stop telling the story of the inexorable march of human will, written in the language of the Enlightenment and modern science, and expressed (as he sees it) primarily in the individual’s putative control of his or her own destiny. He wants us start telling a story about a communally-derived meaning of life, grounded ultimately in God’s gospel narrative. He says we have no shared narrative for our lives, or, if we do, that they are narratives that are doomed to disappoint and betray us: the American dream, the advancement of science, the autonomy of the individual will — all ultimately lead us to despair and defeat.

Maybe. What’s missing from his account is the reason for the massive ascendancy of these world-views, namely that they have worked for large numbers of people for quite awhile. They have provided meaningful improvements in the quality and duration of peoples’ lives, in many cases replacing deeply flawed, repressive, and reactionary systems (whether of medicine, religion, or politics). It may well be time for a correction — for the clapper to swing back in the other direction — but there is no way to unring the bell of modernity.

Hauerwas describes the very sad tacit conspiracy of mutual pretense between fatally ill children and the adults around them. Researcher Myra Bluebond-Langner says of the children, “The children know both what their parents know [i.e., that they are dying] and what they want to hear. They are more concerned with having parents around than with telling them the prognosis.” Hauerwas claims that the reason the adults cannot bear to speak the truth with these children is that they cannot come up with a story that makes sense of their suffering and death (it’s “pointless”).

What narrative would be satisfactory? In the end, it seems that Hauerwas throws his hands up and admits that there isn’t one. He quotes Nicholas Wolsterstorff: “Why isn’t Love-without-suffering the meaning of things? Why is suffering-Love the meaning? Why does God endure his suffering? Why does he not at once relieve his agony by relieving ours?” Death and suffering, Hauerwas concludes, remain mysteries to be coped with, not overcome.

In the end, I think the emphasis on narrative, shared or otherwise, is misplaced and not particularly helpful. It’s not so much about the stories we tell each other or ourselves, but about the conversations we have. Rather than try to shape another’s life by fitting it into a premolded storyline (no matter how modern or Biblical!), how much more useful might it be to listen, to ask and respond in an ongoing dialog, to share possibilities, pains, fears and hopes rather than fitting another’s experience onto a procrustean bed of narrative demanded by a “shapely” life. This, it seems, is the conclusion that Bluebond-Langner also came to: that the dying children yearned for someone with whom they could speak the truth without risking abandonment. Perhaps what’s need in a kaleidoscope of interpretive lenses, not a canonical tale.

I find it curious that both DeVries’ novel and Wolsterstorff’s book cited by Hauerwas refer to “the mourners’ bench.” Although he doesn’t explicitly link one to another, the similarity in their usage, in responding to the same situation (death of a child), is compelling. (One does wonder whether Wolsterstorff might have read Blood of the Lamb.) In addition to conversation, there is something to be said for the simple ministry of presence. The mourners’ bench at the front of the church is a continual reminder that we will all sit there one day, that in fact we are all sitting there together witnessing and sharing one another’s pain. Those who suffer must be seen and sustained; the community owes them at the very least the honor of visibility and the acknowledgment that none of us passes through life unbroken.

Having said that, I must add that I found Philip Paul Hallie’s essay on Cruelty: The Empirical Evil a useful counterbalance. On the one hand, he is absolutely ruthless in his description of our state: “we are in the condition of cruelty.” On the other, he has a clear view of an alternative, and it is not simply good, ethical behavior: “If you do not have joy, then your ethics is a blinding, puritanical, dried up, self-destructive and life-destructive force. If you do have that joy, your life is as wide as you can make it.”

How do you get that joy? You find the people who have it, “fall in love with them,” and mimic their behavior. This is a marvelously practical prescription. The moment I read it I thought: yes, that’s exactly right. Falling in love with Jesus, for example, and imitating him would be a good start. Or perhaps we can become smitten with those people whom, when you meet them, you just marvel at how their love for others and for the world simply brims over, and you want to be with them and be just like them.

Cruelty is everywhere and pain is ubiquitous. It just is. No story, no matter how happy the ending is good enough. No explanation can ultimately be satisfactory. The question becomes: what will we do about it? Will we be ground up and crushed ourselves, will we acquiesce while others are stripped of their dignity and their lives? Or will we actively seek out and claim and strive to be practitioners of joy, who bring goodness and love wherever they go because they know they are not alone, but always and everywhere in relationships not of power-over but of true sister- and brotherhood.

It is easy to get lost staring into the abyss of evil and asking “why?” I’m beginning to wonder if, in fact, this — rather than evil itself — isn’t Satan’s best trick. A scientific investigation of “why” is useful if it leads to the discovery of specific and concrete ways to combat certain natural evils; the metaphysical quest for “why” may never, by its very nature, be useful. To the extent that it leads to paralysis and despair, it goes beyond merely not being useful and becomes downright pernicious. The fascination we experience is akin to that of prey in the face of a predator; we can’t look away and we can be consumed by it. We must learn to habitually turn our gaze to a more life-giving source.

Readings:
Facing Evil, eds. Paul Woodruff and Harry A. Wilmer, Open Court: Chicago and La Salle, Illinois, 2001. pp. 119-136
God, Medicine, and Suffering, Stanley Hauerwas, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co: Grand Rapids, MI, 1990.

Finally, for reasons that are totally unclear...

...Blogger is permitting me to post. Given the way things are going, it'll probably be just this once.

If you don't hear from me, that's what's up. Technical outtages. It's been REALLY frustrating, and it's a long story I'll spare you.

I'm going to Vegas tomorrow evening for a poker adventure. Hope I'll have tales to tell!

Still here

What with Blogger making it difficult for me to post, and with work and family stuff really reaching new levels of stress-inducement, I'm afraid I haven't had much opportunity to write. Things are still fairly grim, but I'm trying to tell myself that one day this particularly unpleasant stretch of time will be well and truly in the past.

What's most discouraging for me is that my creativity seems to be on extended holiday at a time when I need it the most. I feel like I'm running on fumes. I'm very demotivated, and all the tasks that face me seem pretty nasty.

I have to laugh at the thought that I've been making a feeble effort at dating. I'm SO not in the mood for that at this moment, and the thought of trying to "put my best self forward" is simply preposterous. I certainly wouldn't want to meet me right now.