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.