Day Four - A Time to Lament

The fourth day of class was my favorite. We walked through several of the psalms of lament, all of the book of Job, and all of Ecclesiastes. It was pure gold. As I shrink eight action-packed hours into a post that takes about 13 minutes to read I acknowledge I won’t do it justice. I do hope this morsel will be helpful. At the very least, it bridges the gap between recounting the bigger story and speaking into suffering. That bridge is lament.

Previously, on Post Modern:

• A Graduate-Level Class Called “Providence and Suffering”
• Day One: Evil and Theodicy in Modern Thought
• Day Two: Providence
• Day Three: What’s Your Story?

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Knowing the bigger narrative you’re a part of doesn’t mean you won’t be angry with God for allowing evil. In the long run, it gives context in which suffering can be interpreted. In the short-term, the pain and suffering are impossible to swallow.

The God of this narrative doesn’t say “get over it.” Yahweh invites lament, expects the shouting and crying. God welcomes the questions, because God is present—both in joy and in pain. God accepts praise and lament. The scriptures testify to that over and over.

In this post I:

1. share one lament psalm,
2. give a lens through which to read Job,
3. and summarize Ecclesiastes in tweet-length.

But First, Allow Me to Confess my Serial Optimism

Our own sacred book creates the space we need to lament, to shout at God, to question God’s goodness. The canon itself testifies that it’s not as easy as saying “God is good all the time. All the time God is good.” Life is more complicated than that. There’s a time to lament. If you don’t see it, it’s time to put down Proverbs and pick up Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Psalms.

To my dismay, as we worked through these passages I realized that I read the Bible as a serial optimist. I love highlighting and underlining, but in these psalms of lament and stories of questioning God, the only phrases I had underlined were places where the writer is expressing praise or joy. In fact, in an entire psalm of lament, with just one verse dedicated to praise at the end, I underlined only that one verse. Take Psalm 13 for example. I underlined verses 5 and 6.

See the problem? Serial optimism is dangerous, especially as part of a community. When we compel people always to “sing and be happy” even if the “skies above you are gray and you are feeling so blue,” we can cause a lot of damage. We’re hurting people. We (in the West) are really bad at grieving. Our culture doesn’t provide a space for it. Our churches need to provide that space. Without being “depressing,” our churches need to practice lament. We need to create space for holy questioning. Our holy book shows the way forward. Jesus himself bluntly questioned God’s presence in the midst of suffering (leaning on a psalm, I might add). Can’t we question pain and suffering and purpose in life? Doing so will make hope all the more real.

Psalm 77: Yearning in the Midst of Chaos

Take a deep breath, turn the music off, clear your mind, and read Psalm 77. It’ll take you less than two minutes.

Now let’s walk through it together. It’s like the director’s cut (except that I didn’t write or direct it).

1-3: Expressing Hurt

I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me…and my soul refused to be comforted. (77:1-2)

The psalm starts off in deep distress. Refusal of comfort is apt when it comes to the experience of suffering. To be comforted too quickly may be to deny that anything happened. It may be a denial of the reality of life.

I remembered you God, and I groaned. (77:3)

Do you feel guilty when you feel this way? Some people point to the place where James says to consider it joy when you face different kinds of trials (1:2). That’s appropriate when thinking in terms of world’s end, but it doesn’t rule out lament. Part of learning to lament is learning that it’s ok to remember God and groan. The psalm is here for our learning; here for hope (Romans 15:4). Telling someone in the midst of suffering that they should “be joyful” will cause lots of guilt.

4-9: The Questioning Gets Real

Remembering his past, and remembering his favorite songs, the psalmist brings scathing questions from the bottom of his heart (77:4-6):

Will the Lord reject forever? …Has his unfailing love vanished forever? …Has God forgotten to be merciful? (77:7-9)

In other words: Why, God?

The best description of God in the Old Testament is one God provides. The psalmist’s protest is an echo of God’s self-description. He is questioning the very heart of God’s character. And though he says he’s “too troubled to speak” (77:4), a couple verses later he’s rolling.

10-15: The Turn

Then I thought, ‘To this I will appeal…I will remember Yahweh’s deeds.’ (77:10-11)

In the first half of the psalm, remembering causes groaning and questioning. Now, memory seems to give way to hope or awe. What changed?

It’s helpful to think about the little paragraph break between verse 9 and verse 10 as a time gap. We are not to imagine that this happened overnight. Who knows how long this person lived in the chaos and questioning. The second half of the psalm is the end result of a months- or years-long process. It doesn’t come to us as neatly resolved, but as a decision to live and trust the story in which the psalmist finds himself.

What god is as great as our God? (77:13)

Get this. The psalmist affirms God’s greatness in the context of great hurt. #GodIsGood, right?

The problem I have with the #GodIsGood hashtag is that so often it comes right after something good happens. Something good happened to me, #GodIsGood. So, something bad happens to me…#GodIsBad? We remember that God is good because the narrative tells us God is good, not because of what happened yesterday. And in the midst of the bad, we remember God is good because of what God has done and will do.

16-20: Affirming the Story

The waters saw you, God, and writhed. The very depths were convulsed. (77:16).

The waters, so often a symbol of chaos in the ancient Hebrew worldview, writhe in God’s presence. In the context of that remembering, the psalmist affirms that the story he’s living in is one in which God rebukes the waters. God conquers chaos.

Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters. (77:19)

The promise of God that the psalmist remembers is not one of redemption from suffering. It’s redemption through suffering. The path of healing is not that trouble has vanished. The psalmist doesn’t thank God for removing the pain. The waters are not gone. Chaos is still there. But there’s hope because God’s way leads through it.

Conclusion

The lament psalms assume a strong involvement of God in the lives of people. Even as the psalmist is questioning God having abandoned him, it presupposes that God is present and (supposedly) hearing the lament. The psalmist prays with an assumption that God has allowed chaos to be present and yet is still engaged. Sometimes it’s a plea for God to reengage, to wake up. Dr. Hicks summarizes it this way:

I pray and lament because I believe God is engaged in the cosmic order. Not intervening, but always concurrently engaged.

Job: A Dramatic Lament

The book of Job is a dramatic lament through which Job is faithful. He never curses God, though he struggles mightily (cursing just about everything else).

This literary work is big and thick and full of poetry. Through the poetry we’re able to see a writer in Israel weave lament in poetic dialogue with traditional wisdom. Many misread Job by reducing it to its narrative prologue (Chapters 1-2) and epilogue (42:7-17), skipping the poetry—which is the very heart of the book—altogether. Please don’t do that. The book is beautiful in its complexity, so my attempt to simplify it will only be so helpful.

What I want to do here is to present a lens for understanding what the book is trying to accomplish. Then it’ll be up to you to read through it and see what you think. If you decide to, Dr. Hicks has blogged through the entire book, which serves as an excellent reading guide.

The Central Question

Does anyone fear God just for God’s sake?

Job is representative of all of humanity. The book’s central question is presented in 1:9 by the accuser: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Stated differently, does anyone fear God for God’s sake? Or, are all human beings driven by a profit motive? The test, of course, will be severe, if it’s to demonstrate that human beings can stick to God even with everything else stripped away.

The Answer

The answer is yes. Job fears God for God’s sake alone, and not because of any profit or blessing. Job says: My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. So I humble myself, and am comforted over dust and ashes. God showing up was enough. (42:5-6).

Through the worst of suffering due to natural and moral evil, Job stays faithful. He struggles mightily. Job curses the day of his birth, curses life itself. He laments in bitterness and anger. He presents his case indignantly. He despairs. And he refuses to let God off the hook for this.

Refusing to let God off the hook is key:

Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing. (31:35)

Yahweh vindicates Job at the end of the story, having Job pray for the wrongness of his three friends: “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (42:8)

Yahweh accepts Job’s lament: I will accept tough questions. There is evil. There is chaos. You were right to question this. But see, I am here. Will you trust me?

How We Get There: Job

Two confessions of Job early on in the book are pillars of his understanding of God. At first they seem to oppose each other, but aren’t actually mutually exclusive.

1. Praise: God gives and God takes away. May God be praised. (1:20-21; see also 12:7-10)
2. Curse: Job curses the day of his birth. (3:1-26; see also 7:7-21, the most dramatic lament in the text)

Lament is not inconsistent with the confession in 1:20-21. It is because Job believes God is responsible that Job laments.

Job never stops believing that God is in control, and so never lets God off the hook for the evil that has caused so much suffering in his life. He confesses again at the end of the book: “I know that you can do all things” and, paraphrasing, I’m mortal and so there’s no way I can understand it all.

But.

I have seen you, and so I humble myself and am comforted. I let go of my lament. I change my mind about humanity. Your presence is enough. (42:6)

I should note that this is a minority position on Job. Many believe that Job did sin in questioning God throughout the book, and here at the end of the book, Job repents. In his next-to-last post on Job, he explains why we’re probably right.

How We Get There: Job’s Friends

In the book’s poetic dialogue Job laments and curses as he’s trying to deal with all that has happened, and Job’s friends respond. In three cycles, each successive round shorter than the last, Job’s friends tell him to:

1. Repent! (Chapters 4-14)
2. Shut up! (Chapters 15-21)
3. Give up! (Chapters 22-27)

The cycles are painful to listen to while at the same time beautifully composed. Ironically, the friends are at their very best back in 2:13, when “no one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”

After these three cycles and Job’s final monologue (29-31), a young(er) buck, named Elihu, speaks up (chapters 32-37). What Elihu says about Yahweh is mostly right. But what he says about Job is dead wrong. He misquotes Job and misapplies Job’s lament and so condemns Job.

How We Get There: Yahweh

Then Yahweh spoke to Job out of the storm. (38:1)

Finally. After 37 chapters. Yahweh shows up.

In two speeches Yahweh recreates the diverse universe for Job with words. It’s a good creation with the possibility of evil and chaos. Yahweh reminds Job that he won’t be able to figure it all out, but invites him to embrace his human vocation once again.

Some have interpreted Yahweh’s tone with Job in these two speeches to be, “You idiot, Job, how dare you question me!” Job himself may hear God that way, when he responds in 40:4 with, “I am unworthy. I’ll just shut up.” Yahweh isn’t pleased with Job’s self-abasing answer so there’s a round two. Instead of giving God an indignant, shouting tone, think of Yahweh as a sage, graciously reminding Job of things Job already knows (A dramatic audio version would’ve been helpful).

In short, Yahweh says:

• I am in control
• I care
• I know what I’m doing

Yahweh asks: Will you trust me?

Or, to reword it in terms of the central question: Will you fear me for my own sake, even if this doesn’t make sense? Am I worth it?

The answer, of course, is yes. Not because Job is eventually prosperous again. Job will trust God because God showed up. Job saw God. He experienced Yahweh. And in the midst of despair, God’s presence was enough.

Conclusion: Job in the Biblical Canon

The place of the book of Job in the Bible is important. It counters the “traditional wisdom school” that Proverbs represents, which says, “You reap what you sow.” In other words, traditional wisdom argued that if you do right, you’ll prosper, and if you do wrong, you’ll be punished.

Job acknowledges that this isn’t the case 100% of the time. Sometimes life sucks. But in the midst of that, God is there and wants to be acknowledged, even if it’s with lament.

Ecclesiastes in a Tweet

We ended the day by walking through Ecclesiastes. There is no book more controversial in the Bible, for its acceptance of the reality of evil (some call it cynicism, others call it realism) and willingness to entertain the thought that we don’t really know anything. The book works in the 21st century. The author is so blunt, so real.

Sit down and read Ecclesiastes if you haven’t in a while. Here’s a summary in less than 140 characters:

Accept death; don’t despair. Enjoy life. Meaning is found in the pursuit of Yahweh.

Acceptance

We closed class with what’s known as the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This is what lament can do. It’s an essential part of the process to trust God (eventually) and once again to live with meaning.

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Up next: Day Five - What Shall We Say? Comforting the Hurting

‘We Find Ourselves at an Impasse’

Adam Hill, a minister at the Rochester Church of Christ in Michigan, writing at Wineskins:

We find ourselves arguing over how to most healthily read the Bible altogether. Many in our fellowship (myself among them) no longer assume that a hermeneutic built on commands, examples, and necessary inferences is consistently correct or even healthy. So we find ourselves at an impasse, because neither side is playing the game with the same set of rules. We no longer all agree that the scales are fair—and some of us believe the scales are not even the best tool for the job at all.

He argues that the question of hermeneutics must come before the question of interpretation. Not, “what does the Bible say” but “how does the Bible speak?”

One starting point to move forward: better preaching. For example, less preaching on morals and virtues and more about God’s mission:

So, the point of—let’s say—Esther is not to tell people to be more courageous (yes, I have preached that sermon before). You might as well tell them to be prettier too. The larger point of Esther is that God is still at work to redeem everything, and God uses every opportunity—even our “diaspora” moments where we feel so weak and powerless and caught up in things beyond our control—to move forward on the mission of redemption. We are not forgotten. That is gospel in light of the biblical narrative as a whole.

Over time and leading by example, the church’s way of reading the Bible can change.

When we as preachers and teachers relentlessly communicate everything in light of the grand story of the gospel (instead of stopping at the pop-psychology and expected personal piety boost that moralism offers), we begin to change the culture of Bible reading in our community. We begin to tap into the collective imagination that our church shares regarding scripture and how to use it.

This calls for great patience. It will take years to retrain our eyes to see something else, to get us to read something in a new light. And it will take much longer if we don’t learn to read together. We must cultivate space in our assemblies for us to read scripture together and imagine the world in light of that gospel truth together.

Don’t miss Greg McKinzie’s response.

‘The Mission is God’s’

Yours truly back in September, in my first article for the Team Arequipa newsletter. I walk through the story of God’s mission using the Bible as a lens. As if summarizing millennia of story weren't enough, I also tried to connect it to why my wife Katie and I just moved to Peru.

Also, check out the feature I built for Team Arequipa’s site. I compiled hundreds of thousands of words in hundreds of newsletter articles from an 8-year period and featured the highlights. It’s called “Our Story.”

I have incredible respect for Greg and Megan McKinzie and Kyle and Larissa Smith—for many reasons. But one of those is their dedicated work in writing four articles a month for eight years. These weren't just casual updates on their life and work. Month after month they wrote really good stuff, about culture, development, contextualization, mission, and more. All this to say, it was an honor to write my frist article for the newsletter and will continue to be an honor to follow their legacy.

Newsworthy with Norsworthy

Luke Norsworthy has been killing it on his podcast lately. Here’s a list of a few of his guests so far in 2015:

• N.T. Wright
• Donald Miller
• Peter Rollins
• Jamie Wright, aka The Very Worst Missionary
• Richard Beck of Experimental Theology
• Jimmy Eat World’s Zach Lind

If you’ve never listened to the show, I recommend it. I’m actually working through some of the 2014 episodes now [iTunes link].

Missio Dei - Short-Term Missions

With mission trip season gearing up, I thought it would be helpful to point to Missio Dei’s issue on short-term missions (STM), from February of 2012. It’s jam-packed with good discussion on this massive industry.

Here's Greg McKinzie, in the editorial preface to the issue:

These characteristics tend to govern implicitly the discussion of STM’s pros and cons. Thus, some might construe the debate in this way: although cultural difference is a challenge, it is not a major problem (romantic view); although a short-term project might not have a long-term effect on the receiver, it will forever change the life of the goer (self-orientation); although it is not possible to engage in truly relational ministry in the short term across cultural and linguistic barriers, it is possible to “make an impact” that results in believers, buildings or bandages (results-orientation); although a participant may be unequipped in many ways, he or she is still obliged to fulfill the Great Commission (populism). These perspectives tend to intersect and self-perpetuate in a variety of ways. For example, if cultural distance were such a major issue (romantic view), God would not have commissioned average “real people”2 to preach to the nations (populism). Or, this experience (self-orientation) is about forming long-term missionaries who can make the most of short-term results (results-orientation).

The point of these examples is to demonstrate the way in which the cultural shape of STM can affect the logic of the discussion surrounding it. Critical assessment happens within a context that assumes what STM is or should be and a set of values by which to judge its outcomes. Churches that recognize their cultural biases can engage in a healthier evaluation of their STM.

Even if you only get as far as Greg's preface, you will have been challenged to think critically about short-term missions. And if you’re thinking critically about short-term missions, you’re at least halfway there.

Procrastination, a Thief

Shawn Blanc, on procrastination and creative work (I can’t help but point out that I put off reading this article for well over a week):

Procrastination robs us of this. It keeps us from showing up every day. It tells us that instead of showing up every day, we can just cram at the last minute. It tells us that there is always tomorrow. It lies to us, saying that just because we’re ignoring this task again and again doesn’t mean we’ve quit.

The only difference between a quitter and an habitual procrastinator is that the latter is lying to herself.

If what I’m saying is true, then procrastination is perhaps the greatest enemy to producing meaningful work. Because not only does procrastination keep us from doing the work, but in so doing, it also robs us from the process of sitting down every day to be creative. It’s in the day-to-day mundane and difficult work of showing up that our ideas take shape and take flight. It’s in that place that our skills are forged bit by bit.

And a bit later in his post:

The answer for beating procrastination won’t ultimately be found by changing your external circumstances. Now, there are things you can change to help you stay focused (such as quitting the Twitter app when you’re trying to write). And there are certain distractions you can remove altogether (such as giving up television). However, these changes in and of themselves are not the ultimate answer. They can be powerful and helpful, but at the end of the day, overcoming procrastination is about building up a strong work ethic towards the tasks and projects you’re prone to put off.

He nails it. Procrastination isn’t a reaction to one’s circumstances. It’s a lifestyle. And accordingly, the cure will have to be a lifestyle change.

The Influence of Jony Ive

Ian Parker, in a profile piece for the New Yorker on Apple’s Senior VP of Design, Jony Ive:

Ive’s dominance wasn’t immediate. Michael Ive recalled a conversation he had with his son in 2001: “ ‘It’ll have a thousand songs, Dad.’ I said, ‘Who wants a thousand songs?’ He said, ‘You’ll see.’ ” Tony Fadell, a former Apple engineer who can take much of the credit for the iPod’s functionality, was recently quoted by Fast Company as saying, “We gave it to Jony to skin it.” That is, Ive’s contribution was to combine, as elegantly as possible, elements decided largely by engineers and others: a battery, a disk drive, an L.C.D. screen, a track wheel. Fadell went on to found Nest, which was later bought by Google; he recently took charge of Google Glass. His phrase may have been strategically irreverent—“We’ve never skinned anything,” Tim Cook told me in response—but it contained at least a partial truth. Ive gave the music player an irresistible white-and-silver form, causing a generation of designers to endure clients asking for the “iPod version” of this or that. (Richard Seymour, in London, recalled a meeting about the iPod of moisturizers.) But the industrial-design studio was not yet the company’s central workshop.

What strikes me is that the decisions of one man impact hundreds of millions of people every day. But he’s just one man. That is incredible influence.

This is an incredibly well-written piece. It’s long, but it’s worth reading the entire thing.

‘The Globalization of Indifference’

From the Vatican, Pope Francis with thoughts on Lent 2015:

Usually, when we are healthy and comfortable, we forget about others (something God the Father never does): we are unconcerned with their problems, their sufferings and the injustices they endure… Our heart grows cold. As long as I am relatively healthy and comfortable, I don’t think about those less well off. Today, this selfish attitude of indifference has taken on global proportions, to the extent that we can speak of a globalization of indifference. It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.

I love the byline. Simply signed: Francis.

(Via @StevenHovater)

Day Three - What's Your Story?

This post in a tweet:

To live within the story is to live both with faith and with frustration. But the story gives us a world in which we can keep living.

Previously, on Post Modern:

• A Graduate-Level Class Called “Providence and Suffering”
• Day One: Evil and Theodicy in Modern Thought
• Day Two: Providence

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Humans have been doing theodicy for a long time. That is, in the face of evil, humans have been trying to find meaning to help them face despair. On day three Dr. Hicks suggested that identifying the bigger story of which you are a part is one way to find hope in the context of suffering and despair. Here’s my attempt to recount the story.

Claiming the Biblical Narrative

God created a good world. Good, but not perfect—at least not in the sense that there is no evil, death, or chaos. But still very good. There is darkness as well as light. There is chaotic “sea” and there is ordered land. Chaos is restrained, managed, “separated,” but still present. This is the creation God provides. Human vocation is to live and work in the context of this creation in such a way that we do good and bring order out of chaos. The point of being made in the image of God is to be like the Creator and do things like the Creator does. For example, computer programmers, civil engineers, medical doctors, scientists, garbage collectors—all are participating in the mission of God to bring order out of chaos.

Then, God rests.

Rest isn’t about God withdrawing from creation. Rest is about enjoying it, dwelling in it, and deciding to participate with God’s creatures in the ongoing task of creation. In one sense, God resting provides the opportunity for humans to become more fully human. That is, if part of what it means to be human is to have dominion over creation, to work order out of chaos, God must provide the opportunity for that to happen. The opportunity is, of course, a double-edged sword. While it allows for humans to reflect the image of God, it also allows humanity to reject the image of God, doing non-God things, and so diminishing their humanity. It’s clear that God’s creation project is a risky project. So it’s fair to question whether the project is worth it.

To What End, God?

God creates intending a shared creation in which God dwells with humanity. The entire story serves the end of including humanity in the orbit of God’s love. God is, by nature, a loving community in Godself (think, the Trinity) and wants to include humans in that community. A good picture of this is Jesus’s prayer that his followers would be one with God, just as Jesus is (see John 17:20-26). The final chapters of the Bible paint the picture of a renewed creation, in which God dwells with humanity. In the new heaven and new earth there is no longer any suffering, mourning, or death. There is no night. There is no chaos. God makes all things new. The project was worth it.

The Story Continues with a Human Cast

Instead of bringing order out of chaos as God intends, human activity intensifies chaos. Both human chaos and natural chaos swell. Yet even from the beginning of the story, it’s clear that God stays present in the midst of the chaos. God is active in such a way as to give the moment meaning, whether that helps humans to mature, to love, to redeem, or to become more fully human.

Chaos escalates to such an extent that God alters God’s strategy. While God will still work with humans to bring about completion to creation, God chooses one family in particular to be the vehicle for God’s blessing. God blesses Abraham and Sarah (and Keturah and Hagar?) with God’s presence, in order to share that presence with all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3). Israel is to do the same thing as a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6). That is, the whole nation should carry God’s presence to the rest of the world. The presence of God comes to dwell in Israel’s tent (Exodus 40) and temple (2 Chronicles 7). When Israel is exiled, God’s presence abandons the temple (Ezekiel 10).

Jesus’s coming about six centuries later is interpreted as God’s presence among the people in human form (i.e. Incarnation). It’s God filling the temple (that is, Earth) in a new way. Jesus is a walking holy of holies. The “full image of God” (Colossians 1:15). He’s a new temple.

God always worked to be present in the world in redemptive ways. God always spent time transforming people into royal priests to communicate God to the world. In the Incarnation, God empathizes with humanity like never before. God comes in the flesh to share the human experience. God knows what it’s like to be hungry, thirsty, tempted, betrayed, mocked, and tortured. God knows what it’s like to weep. God knows what it’s like to die. Not just as an outsider watching someone else, but as an insider, experiencing it in God’s own life.

In the midst of brokenness, corruption, suffering, and death God works something new. Experiencing all of it, God brings about the first signs of New Creation in the resurrected Jesus. Followers of Jesus suffer, but now they do so in community. The suffering in community isn’t meaningless because of a shared hope for justice. And resurrection is the sign that in Jesus God has begun to put things right. Just as it has been from the beginning, so now God invites humanity to participate with the Divine in the process of putting things right. So the suffering community suffers with hope, working justice with God.

So What? Hope.

The narrative gives hope. The suffering community prays to the God of hope to fill it with joy and peace even as they try to trust that this has really happened. Paul gauged how hope affected the Christian community in the empire’s biggest city:

I pray that the God who gives hope will fill you with much joy and peace as you trust in him. Then you will have more and more hope, and it will flow out of you by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13).

The presence of hope is grounded in the fact that God has poured love into human hearts by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The presence of hope is also rooted in the formation of character. The presence of love in our hearts yields endurance, perseverance, character, and hope. It’s the experiential dimension of presence of the Spirit that energizes and propels our endurance, movement, character formation, so that we have authentic hope. Authentic hope gives way to life. (Romans 5:1-5 connects the dots).

We won’t always feel the hope. It’s something that is forged over time, which is why the story is so important to rehearse. Hope sprouts from a cognitive expectation and grows into a heart-felt experience.

It’s the story of God in which we find ourselves. To live within the narrative is to live with faith, and still to live with frustration, anger, and bitterness because enduring life is not easy. But the story gives us a framework in which one can work through suffering. It’s a story that gives us a world in which to keep living: Living with hope in the midst of despair.

I Bet You Disagree with Parts of my Take on the Story

I’d love to read and re-read the biblical narrative with you. I know we’ll disagree on pieces of it. Genesis, especially, was written with this sort of constant rereading in mind. Genesis 1-11 is a theological masterpiece. Depth of insight. Beautiful poetry. Literal commentary on the most profound mysteries. Theological truth.

The point is not just to get the story right. Having the “right theology” is not only an improbable goal, getting it right doesn’t in and of itself comfort a sufferer. What is able to comfort is to claim the story and then to lament in the context of that story. This is why it is of utmost importance that faith communities practice identifying the narrative they’re a part of and create space for lament in the context of the narrative (more on this on Day Four).

An Example: Psalm 104

Psalm 104 is a poetic rendition of the creation story and what it means to be alive in a good creation filled also with chaos. Read Psalm 104, and pay special attention to verses 27-35. I suggest reading it in a version you might not usually read from, like the ERV.

God creates. God provides food and shelter, both for utility and for joy. Life has a natural rhythm. Life depends on the death of something else. Inhale leads to exhale. Life gives way to death. And out of death God breathes renewed life. God, whose name is Yahweh, is responsible for this.

The psalmist recognizes his own mortality at 104:33 with “as long as I live” and “all my life.” Those words are an acknowledgement of death. But in the creation in which he finds himself, he decides to rejoice in Yahweh. Just as he prays that Yahweh will accept his meditation, so also he prays that human chaos will be consumed. In a sense, by praying this prayer the psalmist is acting with God to rein chaos in and live with purpose. That is the function of the narrative.

We recognize we are mortal, thus acknowledging death. But within the narrative, creation is still a good, purpose-filled place to live.

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Up next: Day Four - A Time to Lament

Noah →

The trailer is impressive. With Russell Crowe as Noah, Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah, and even Kevin Durand as a Nephilim, I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of story Darren Aronofsky is going to tell.

Day Two - Providence

Should we even try to defend God? In one sense, no, because we can’t; we’re too limited. But as people of faith we are called to think deeply about God and speak into situations of evil and suffering. And so we try to understand.

Providence is a lens through which we think about how God is at work in the world. Instead of thinking of providence as God “providing,” it‘s more helpful to think in terms of the Italian cognate “prevedere” or Spanish “prever.” Literally, God sees before. So we’re not thinking about God providing a ram for the sacrifice (Genesis 22) but, more generally, how God interacts with the world as one who sees ahead.

One way to look at what you might believe about providence is to think about prayer. If you pray, what do you pray for, and why? Do you pray for a miraculous healing or for God to work through the development of modern medicine? This might say something about your own theology of providence.

Theology of Providence

There are three traditional modes for God’s work in the world:

• God sustains the world. God is always active in giving it being. Without God’s work to sustain the world, the world would collapse into nothingness.
• God concurs, in that God is a co-Actor alongside actions in the world.
• God governs toward an ultimate end. God has a goal or purpose to which God is moving the world.

Of these categories, the second is the most controversial. How is God acting alongside our actions? Is God forcing us to do things or do humans have free will? Is God a co-Actor even in bad things that happen? When you get into the specifics of how God is involved in the world—and how that relates to evil—you start moving toward issues of theodicy.

I’ll use a sports metaphor to explain some of the contemporary positions on divine providence. It’s too simplistic, but it gives the basic idea of the levels of God’s involvement in the world, from a God who is uninvolved altogether to a God who (pre)determines everything.

For deism, God is a spectator sitting up in the owner's box watching us play. In process theology, God is an encouraging coach who loves the game but stays on the sidelines; God isn’t able to enter the game. Open theism also believes God is a coach on the sidelines, but God sometimes enters the game as an emergency substitute.

Classic Arminianism affirms that God is always on the field, active in every play, and directing the game toward a perfect end, but without determining every action. The Reformed (Calvinist) God is the owner who dictates how each play will unfold, what the score will be, and who will score; the players play but their role is secondary because the owner has determined everything.

Which One?

So, which one is it? Good question. Like I said, there are, in 2013, good people who affirm each of these views. Without discussing every possible angle (which would, in fact, be impossible to do), I’ll go into a little more detail with two of the options. Ultimately, what we believe about how God is at work in the world will have a huge impact on our faith narrative, the story of God that we see ourselves in. Remember, we’re trying to work toward a story that might give us hope or meaning in the face of despair.

Looking at it from the standpoint of evil in the world, Open theism is one of the most attractive views. God is off the hook for evil in the world because God doesn’t have a hand in it. God created the world as part of a divine project where God gave humans free will with the hope that humans would freely love God. God knows everything about the past and present but does not know the future, because God can’t know the future actions of free beings. Most of evil happens as a result of humans misusing their free will. When evil happens it’s not God’s will, but God couldn’t do anything about it because God has chosen not to intervene directly. But God has been the “emergency substitute” on occasion, so the question remains “Why did God not intervene in this case?”

The Arminian position also affirms human free will. God knows the past, present, and future because God is God. Somehow God is able to let us have free will and know what we’ll do in the future. When something evil happens, there may be some significance to it that we aren’t aware of. Evil isn’t God’s will, but God is somehow able to work alongside it toward that ultimate purpose. This is where faith comes in. Bad stuff happens. There’s a hiddenness to God that makes it impossible for us to say that there is no significance in any given event. And so, with the lament psalms, we ask “why” and “how long?”

Diving In

From here we dive into the story of God. Many people won’t be ready to make that move, perhaps out of anger toward God or toward seeming meaninglessness. What helps me make the move is that God invites me to ask hard questions, to lament, to be angry. God isn’t scared of our questions—God expects them.

Sources:

Obviously I'm relying on John Mark Hicks for this entire series (since I'm documenting his class), but in particular I wanted to acknowledge his helpful sports metaphor for providence. If you want more substance for all of the contemporary options, professor Hicks has written about it here.

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Up next: Day Three - What’s Your Story?

Day One - Evil and Theodicy in Modern Thought

Take a deep breath, because we covered a lot of ground on the first day of class. What follows is philosophical because it’s the philosophers who asked the toughest questions. We’ll try to understand what it meant to look at the problem of evil from a modern perspective that valued science and reason and so put faith in a corner (or got rid of it altogether).

What’s fascinating about this section is that our own understanding of how the world works guides how we talk about good and evil. My own worldview mixes Christian, modern, and postmodern perspectives. Let me go ahead and give you the conclusion: postmodernity actually serves a Christian worldview by arguing that everything has a dimension of faith. Modernism is fundamentally flawed because there is no such thing as pure objectivity or pure rationality. But we start with modernism because that is still where a lot of scientists, philosophers, scholars—and just regular people—still are. Their faith is in the human capacity to reason.

Developments in theodicy require us to think about history. For a long time, evil and suffering were thought of from a “pre-critical” faith perspective that generally accepted the goodness of God despite the reality of evil. In the 17th century, the Enlightenment happened, and with it science and reason became the highest values of the Modern Age. In 1755, an earthquake devastated Lisbon and the immensity of the death and destruction brought the discussion to the forefront of academic conversation.

Four Basic Perspectives on Theodicy in Modern Thought

Susan Neiman’s Evil in Modern Thought is our guide for this section. The titles of these views are fairly self-evident, but I offer a simple explanation of how the argument plays out. I also mention some names of philosophers who held these positions, because many of them will be familiar.

1. Optimistic: this understanding argues that the universe is ultimately rational and can be figured out. Optimism, then, takes one of two tracks—explanation or transformation. Leibniz explained that this world is the “best of all possible worlds” that God could create. Marx, on the other hand, said that the problem is economics, but we can be optimistic about humans transforming the world by defeating suffering.
2. Pessimistic: The universe is chaotic and irrational. It exists to drive us crazy (Voltaire). We can't hope for a better world; this is all we have. If there were a designer, couldn't he have designed a world without tornadoes and earthquakes (Hume)?
3. Illusory: There’s no need to figure this out, just live your life. Theodicy is a useless task, an illusion. You want to believe there is meaning to life because you’re afraid of a meaningless world (Freud).
4. Agnostic: There are limits to what we can see, and reality exists beyond physical phenomena. If you want to be completely rational, then you’ll realize humans are necessarily ignorant (Kant). We can’t know, because there’s no way to know everything from what we see.

After Neiman presents these four modern perspectives, she argues that none of them are good enough in light of World War II:

If Lisbon marked the moment of recognition that traditional theodicy was hopeless, Auschwitz signaled that every replacement fared no better.

Neiman concludes that you can’t do theodicy by human reason alone. Every attempt either a) denies the reality of evil, or b) ends up in despair. Somehow, we have to learn to live with the reality of evil without the despair.

The search for meaning in the face of despair is part of what makes us human.

Conclusion

Bottom line: we all bring a certain set of beliefs to the table. Whether we have faith in God or faith in science, there is an element of faith present. Modernism pushed rationality to its limits. Postmodernism moves us beyond pure reason into the realm of uncertainty, where the human search for meaning may find hope.

We spent the afternoon watching the 2008 PBS movie God On Trial (script). Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz put God on trial for allowing the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Some prisoners defend God with different strategies. Others prosecute God with counterarguments. The movie does two things:

1. It reminds us of how evil evil can really be.
2. It introduces the complexity of theodicy, even from a Jewish faith perspective.

So, even though postmodernism allows us to build a theodicy within the a framework of faith, it is still complicated. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how God is at work in the world (i.e. providence). Then we’ll start building a theodicy as part of the Christian faith narrative.

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Up next: Day Two - Providence

A Graduate-Level Class Called “Providence and Suffering”

I’m sitting in on a class this week called “Providence and Suffering.” The class exists to consider the problem of evil. That is, how can we believe in a “good God” in the face of evil and suffering in the world?

Since I’m not doing any of the required coursework, I’m assigning myself the task of summarizing what we talk about each day. Some say that the best writing comes when you’re writing with a specific audience in mind. So this week I’m writing for an audience of two. I’m writing this for my wife, Katie, who is working all week so that I can be in this class, and my brother, Seth, with whom I have the opportunity to have deep conversations on a regular basis.

I know they’ll read it. You're welcome to as well.

Claiming Humanity

First of all, this is way over my head. This sort of question heads straight off into philosophical directions that my friend Drew, Masters of Philosophy candidate at Boston College, would be way better equipped to answer. But if I don’t even try to explain it, what’s the point of taking the class?

Second, I want to be careful about what I say about suffering. As someone who has suffered very little in my lifetime, I can do a lot of damage with generalizations and simplistic answers. In fact, in most cases it would probably be better for me just to keep my mouth shut and simply be present with someone who is experiencing suffering.

We spent the first hour of class getting to know each other—especially in the context of what suffering we have experienced. The conversation has to start there, with relationship, because that’s what it means to be human.

What is Theodicy?

There comes a time when questions will be asked in the face of evil. Why would God allow this natural disaster to happen? How can humans do such horrible things to other humans?

Any attempt to answer such questions is called “theodicy.” Susan Neiman, in Evil in Modern Thought defines theodicy this way:

Theodicy in the broad sense is any way of giving meaning to evil that helps us face despair.

The search for meaning in the face of evil, then, doesn’t mean that you are a Christian or believe in God. Since the 18th century, there have been a number of different answers given for the problem of evil from both theists and atheists. Neiman presents four of the main arguments, all of which come from a modern worldview. In my next post, I’ll try to summarize these perspectives and show how postmodernity has actually reframed the question—for the better.

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Up next: Day One - Evil and Theodicy in Modern Thought

The Traveler’s Double Standard

Daniela Papi, writing for the BBC:

At first, our tours looked a lot like that first bike ride, with foreigners coming in to "serve" people in places they knew very little about. I slowly stopped believing in our "voluntourism" offerings and began to see that young people didn't need more fabricated opportunities to "serve" but rather opportunities to learn how to better contribute their time and money in the future.

As our world becomes smaller and smaller with globalization, questioning our practices abroad becomes ever more important. This is the correct approach for anyone trying to get their feet wet, whether at a new job or doing any sort of service work:

We need to focus on learning first - not just encouraging jumping in. Like the legal intern delivering coffee and learning what it takes to be a good lawyer, their most significant impact in the role is not achieved in a short time, but rather in avoiding being too much of a distraction in the short-term and learning how to have a real impact in the long run.

Dillon's Spatial Skepticism

Dillon Daggett, age 6:

There's no way all those animals could fit on the a boat. I just don't believe it.

Fair point.

This was just Dillon's intro. Here's the whole dialogue, along with our dad's response.

Renaissance Forensics

From the Smithsonian:

Gino Fornaciari is no ordinary medical examiner; his bodies represent cold cases that are centuries, sometimes millennia, old. As head of a team of archaeologists, physical anthropologists, historians of medicine and additional specialists at the University of Pisa, he is a pioneer in the burgeoning field of paleopathology, the use of state-of-the-art medical technology and forensic techniques to investigate the lives and deaths of illustrious figures of the past.

Reads like an episode of Bones.

Psalm 19

John Fortner on the prayer that concludes Psalm 19:

The psalmist’s prayer, (vss.12-14), is that his life, thought, speech, and actions “make known the glory of God.” Ironically, the sky-canopy and the cosmos cannot help doing so. Only humans have the capacity to generate both the great obedience and the “great rebellion.” Consequently, only humans must seek the face of the one who made them in order to fullfil that for which they have been created. Only when the human heart is ordered according to the word of Yahveh, can there truly exist a κοσμος.

The ontological, epistemological, and ethical foundation for such a κοσμος is constituted in the truth that the heavens, the Torah, and the human heart are woven by the same pair of hands from a single thread. Each is created in the image and likeness of God.

When I took Dr. Fortner for a class several years ago, he presented Psalm 19 as the expression of the ancient Hebrew worldview. Three divisions in the psalm: world (cosmos), Torah (teaching), and the human heart. Each is created in God's image. Each has the ability to honor the Creator. When all three reflect God, the creation is complete.

‘Portraits’

Frank Chimero, on our contemporary notions of privacy:

The institutions that call for radical transparency very rarely exhibit it. Facebook will always know more about you than you will know about it. Google will be the only one to know how all your emails coalesce into a more meaningful picture. No one knew PRISM existed until a few weeks ago. We might know that we’re having portraits painted of us, but we will never have the canvas turned in our direction. And, if these painters did turn their easels around, I’m not sure which would be more terrifying to see: a distorted, monstrous version of myself, and say “that’s not me,” or myself mirrored back, reconstituted—the exhaust fumes of my day-to-day life somehow made solid.

By far the most beautiful piece I've read that has come about as a product of the NSA leak.

A Reparable Mount Everest

Riveting story by Mark Jenkins for National Geographic. Here’s an excerpt:

Our team was on Everest to mark the anniversary of [the first American] expedition. Yet as we witnessed, the mountain has become an icon for everything that is wrong with climbing. Unlike in 1963, when only six people reached the top, in the spring of 2012 more than 500 mobbed the summit. When I arrived at the apex on May 25, it was so crowded I couldn’t find a place to stand. Meanwhile, down below at the Hillary Step the lines were so long that some people going up waited more than two hours, shivering, growing weak—this even though the weather was excellent. If these throngs of climbers had been caught in a storm, as others were in 1996, the death toll could have been staggering.

This sort of traffic changes the stakes and has taken quite a toll on the mountain:

Everest has always been a trophy, but now that almost 4,000 people have reached its summit, some more than once, the feat means less than it did a half century ago. Today roughly 90 percent of the climbers on Everest are guided clients, many without basic climbing skills. Having paid $30,000 to $120,000 to be on the mountain, too many callowly expect to reach the summit. A significant number do, but under appalling conditions. The two standard routes, the Northeast Ridge and the Southeast Ridge, are not only dangerously crowded but also disgustingly polluted, with garbage leaking out of the glaciers and pyramids of human excrement befouling the high camps. And then there are the deaths. Besides the four climbers who perished on the Southeast Ridge, six others lost their lives in 2012, including three Sherpas.

Jenkins goes on to suggest a number of ways to “repair Everest.” Among these is the Leave No Trace philosophy, which seems obvious but in practice requires intentionality.

When my wife, father-in-law, and I climbed Mt. Rainier last summer with Rainier Mountaineering Inc., they were all about Leave No Trace and even gave us a special orientation regarding best outdoor practices. It was easy enough to practice on a two-day climb. It’s hard to imagine, though, how difficult that becomes on such a magnified scale (i.e. Everest). That's why it's so important to use a guiding service that is actually built for the long-term.

In the last half-century humanity has had a visible impact on some of Earth’s most remote territories. Here's hoping Jenkins, RMI, and others can help us keep the next half-century's impact invisible.

‘The Barbarians Win’

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

In one respect the new atheists are right. The threat to western freedom in the 21st century is not from fascism or communism but from a religious fundamentalism combining hatred of the other, the pursuit of power and contempt for human rights. But the idea that this can be defeated by individualism and relativism is naive almost beyond belief. Humanity has been here before. The precursors of today’s scientific atheists were Epicurus in third-century BCE Greece and Lucretius in first-century Rome. These were two great civilisations on the brink of decline. Having lost their faith, they were no match for what Bertrand Russell calls ‘nations less civilised than themselves but not so destitute of social cohesion’. The barbarians win. They always do.