Following up on my previous post, I wanted to put a response to my question about God and suffering from Pete (the pastor). Also, the comment from Papasan to my previous post triggered an expansion of the discussion of faith which I paraphrase below:
Understandably, Pete answered by first of all saying, that it is not something that he can really answer in the context of one sermon, but that in his view, when we suffer, God suffers along with us.
I know for some people, that answer would be totally inadequate. Even for me, at another moment in time it might have been. Actually, I am not sure that it was an answer to the question I had even asked (which was more of a why), but it may have been the one I meant to ask (which was more of a what). And at that moment, it rang so completely honest and true that I had a very emotional, almost visceral reaction. I have spent the last several days trying to analyze why I had that reaction. So far, the best I can come up with is that it is something I have always known somewhere deep inside. Also, he did not try to manufacture some sort of justification of God being somehow outside of us, separate and paternal and omnipotent, either not caring for us, not aware, or unable to intervene. The resulting feeling was of being re-introduced to my true self and of God's presense. Regardless of what caused my reaction, I know that there is truth in what he said, what I felt, and where that is leading me, so I am continuing down this path.
Defining Faith
I am quite sure that I do not believe in a God living up in the clouds with a white flowing beard. However, I am also quite sure that questioning faith itself is completely valid. As Papasan said, faith is a belief in something for which there is no proof, but that does not mean that one can not examine one’s own faith, or examine the difficulty in reaching it without collapsing the entire notion of faith. Faith for me is not static. It can expand and collapse, become more important and less important, and otherwise cycle just as any other idea can. Faith is dynamic. One minute I can have faith that my next breath will fill my lungs with oxygen and my heart will pump that newly oxygenated blood through my system, allowing my life to continue for a moment more, and another minute I can be reminded of the randomness of life and death and question my faith in life altogether. Being a mother has brought these questions to the fore for me. I have a theory of relativity when it comes to faith: That the closer one is to the heart of the soul, the stronger the power of faith. My son lives in my very heart, so my faith relative to him is enormously important and the two are inextricably linked. But relative to say, my job, my faith is relatively unimportant. If I were to lose my job, that would be a blow to my faith for sure, but since my job is relatively far away from my emotional and spiritual core, it might only bruise my faith, it certainly wouldn't obliterate it. If I were a person with no real connections to other human beings, such as a character in some existentialist novel, faith would be relatively unimportant, or nonexistent. The more abstract the connection to life and love, the less faith exists. Does this mean that faith for me is an invalid concept? I don’t think so. I feel very comfortable with asking myself, do I have faith? and answering, sometimes.
Expressing Faith
Love of self is a natural pairing with faith. Love in general is the result. In this week’s sermon, they talked about the one law of Christian doctrine being Love of God, Love of neighbor, and Love of self. According to the pastor, these three loves are actually one, and fear does not exist within this Higher Love. People use the term self respect to mean an inner goodness. If someone acts in a way that is hurtful we ask, don’t they have any self respect? This meaning is very telling. It means that inherent within self respect is the notion that we behave lovingly in the world. There is no room for judgment in this in my opinion. The one thing that gets reinforced over and over in the bible is the fact that Jesus teaches us to not judge others. In story after story, Jesus broke with Jewish tradition and went out of his way to include those least desirable in society, the outsiders whom others judged not to be worthy of God’s love.
Defining God
On the back of our weekly programs for the church services, there is always a quote that is somehow related to the teaching of that week. Last week it was a quote from Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, “Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” Perhaps there is a nuanced difference between the traditional definition of God being omnipotent and a definition of God being omnipotent and yet lacking all will to power.
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“God suffers along with us.” That’s a good answer because it puts us in the picture, side by side with God, or, even better, included within the concept of God. If that answer is not adequate for some, one can only wonder what kind of answer they were looking for. Are we looking for God to be contrite for “causing” suffering? Do we want an apology? If one believes in a God that is a being, even a supreme being, then I suppose criticism and judgment of Him would be appropriate. In that case, one could blame Him for causing suffering. If, on the other hand, one believes in God as a non-human mystery, an impersonal creative force, blame, criticism and judgment are inappropriate. How could one blame the wind for blowing a gale, or the sun for scorching the earth?
For myself, I understand God as the creative force of life, all life, universal life. I can no longer envision God as a centralized, thinking, decision making entity, as I once did in my youth. To think of God as a rule maker, a legislator, a judge and an enforcer is for me, now, absurd. The system of eternal heaven or eternal hell scared the crap out of me when I was a boy. It seemed so arbitrary to get to heaven, a trick of fate. If one died in the “state of grace” one achieved heaven, yet if one died one moment away from the confessional, it meant eternal damnation. Now, in my aging, the question of God has ripened, while becoming less and less important as a question to be pondered. God is the force of life, and life is the force of God. All is one. One is all. Yes, God suffers when we suffer because we are life and life is God. I like Christ saying that he was the son of God, and believe that he meant that we are all the sons and daughters of God; we are all of God, and God is all of us, and every other living thing – animate or inanimate. When we suffer we can take responsibility for our suffering and work to create less of it. Suffering is as much an element of love as darkness is an element of light. When we nurture suffering and anger, we create more of it. We are creators. When we nurture love and care for it with tenderness, love blossoms. We are creators. We fill our existence with our creation.
"Suffering is as much an element of love as darkness is an element of light." I love this thought. Why do we have the expectation that love is perfect? How could it be? People are not perfect, and love is a human emotion.
I was talking with someone the other day who said, she doesn't buy that just because someone is your Mother, or Father or Sister that you have to love them.
True, but no one is perfect. Some people are further away from perfect than others. But in order to have connections with others, we take that risk. If the criteria for loving someone is that they never hurt you then you will never know love. Love is risky.
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