The Prosperity Gospel: Gaud vs. God

In His teachings given to His disciples, Jesus Christ places a great emphasis on self denial, generosity, giving, charity, and mercy.   He is a preacher of love for others, for one’s neighbors, even for one’s enemies.  The opposite of the love which God offers the world is self-love.  The difference being that true love is focused on the other, while self-love is not love in this same sense for its object is one’s self not someone else.  Love is always other oriented (see 1 Corinthians 13). 

I was asked what I think about Joel Osteen’s message and version of Christianity.  I have to admit being a person who rarely watches TV and so who isn’t awed by the most current “celebrity saint”, I had no idea who Osteen was.  Coincidentally two people sent me different electronic references about him including an article in The Atlantic about the so-called “prosperity Gospel” which is certainly appealing to every self-loving American.  “Name it and claim it” theology is so popular because it is so self-serving.

It is not that a positivist message is wrong in and of itself, but I think it is not true to God or the Gospel.  To put it in another way it is more about gaud than God or more about gaudiness than godliness.  Christ Himself warned His followers that they could expect persecution for rejecting the values of the world, Osteen though changes the message and has Christ teaching prosperity rather than persecution. 

Someone might say I as a pastor of a congregation under 200 members am jealous of Osteen’s worldwide outreach.  But I don’t have the personality to do what he is doing – I have no interest in making myself the message.  Besides it is the Church as whole – the Body of Christ’s task to reach the world.  I personally don’t have to do it by myself.  My role is a small part within the Body of Christ. Osteen is promiting himself and his ideas.   Osteen certainly strikes me as being part of America’s love for celebrity.  It is his message which he is selling, literally in the form of books.

4o Martyrs of Sebaste

I also think the prosperity Gospel is false, because history shows countless Christians who remained totally faithful to God despite persecution, enslavement, impoverishment, exile, imprisonment, torture, minority status and martyrdom.  Faithfulness to God is no guarantee of success in this world, nor is it meant to be.  The entire Old Testament is witness to the fact that despite defeat, enslavement, exile and all manners of suffering, the Jews remained faithful to God and did not embrace the religions and gods who triumphed over them.    One real contribution of Judaism to all of Western civilization is their belief that there is meaning to be found even in suffering and defeat.  Even when there is only suffering God still speaks to His people.  The search for meaning is the Jewish legacy to the world.  The glory of the people of God was their determined faithfulness to the Lord even when they languished in captivity or exile.

Though the positivist message is admittedly totally appealing to a self-loving population, it has little to offer to people in time of crisis, suffering, tragedy or cataclysm. 

The message of the Gospel is one of love – of giving of one’s self, of being merciful to others, of being charitable and generous.  The prosperity Gospel puts everyone’s faith at risk when there is no prosperity.   It makes prosperity, riches and wealth to be the greatest good which will only lead to greed – the willingness to be prosperous at the expense of any others, and the willingness to kill any who threaten one’s wealth.  Hardly the Gospel message of Jesus, the Son of God.

I see the same problem with the prosperity Gospel as I do with those believers who fear science and religion.   It sets up a false God which requires one to sacrifice truth in order to defend the idol.   Faith in God is to help us survive prosperity as well as poverty (“Fret not yourself over one who prospers in his way” – Psalm 37:7; “For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” – Psalm 73:3).   Faith in God is not threatened by the mounting evidence of evolution at work in the world.   Faith does not oppose truth, but helps us transcend an indifferent or hostile empirical universe.   God as Creator and Savior of the universe is just as true in times of plenty and at times of want.  God as Creator of the universe is just as true even if the on-going mechanism at work in creation is an evolutionary descent with modification.  Neither poverty nor science can change the truth about the Creator.  Faith sustains us through times of suffering and impoverishment and gives us peace and wisdom as science offers a materialistic view of the universe.

Faith is not magic that can manipulate the powers of the universe to carry out “my” will.  Faith is accepting that I am the servant of the Lord – He is not my servant who must accomplish my will because He cannot resist my faith anymore than a Storm Trooper can resist the Force in the hands of a Jedi.   The prosperity Gospel ignores the plight of countless people who suffer disease and trauma in this world despite their faithfulness to God.  It turns God into the Cosmic Santa Claus who must reward your every whim whether you’ve been bad or good because you have the power to force Him to do your will. 

 The prosperity Gospel focuses not on God but on what works for me – any god will do as long as that force/god can be bent to do my will.   This has nothing to do with truth, mercy, love, kindness, peace, generosity or charity.  It says the universe is here to serve me – it is not even a geocentric vision which was ousted by truth centuries ago, but is an egocentric vision of reality in which the universe is nothing more than the narcissistic supply which feeds my self centeredness.  God is only necessary to the extent that He serves me for in this universe “I” am the only one who really exists or matters.  The world outside of myself is mine to manipulate, mine or pillage as I see fit for “’I’ am the Lord my god” in this pseudo-theological thinking.

If all the positive thinking gurus have got you down, you would be in good company with Barbara Ehrenreich whose new book BRIGHT-SIDED is subtitled, “How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.”

The Cross and the Crucified God

 

As the Byzantine liturgy states: when Jesus is crucified, it is “One of the Holy Trinity” that is crucified.  When Jesus is crucified, God is crucified.  In this complete subjection to the cross the Name of God is revealed.  And this Name is love, “God is love,” as St. John says.  In His love for us, God joins us in our suffering, in our rebellion, in our despair and our agony: “My father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”  “My god, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Thus, henceforth, the incarnate and crucified God comes between our suffering and the void, between our rebellion, our despair, our agony and the void and, rising from the dead, opens for us strange passages of light.          (Olivier Clément, Three Prayers)

 

 The joy and sanctification and transfiguration of life, and of the universe, which stem from the Cross…from the austerity of the Cross, and from the victory of the Resurrection.  There is no contradiction here; these things form an organic whole in the Christian experience.  The Eastern Church, while she puts a great emphasis on the ‘Life-giving Cross’ of the Lord, the Cross on which we all ought to be constantly crucified with Him at the centre of our moral being, also accents the glory of the transfiguration which is already beginning here in this world (although in an incomplete way).    (Nicholas Arseniev, Russian Piety)

 

 

Suffering through the World

Frances Young in her book,  BROKENNESS & BLESSING: TOWARDS A BIBLICAL SPIRITUALITY , makes a few comments on a Christian attitude toward suffering that I think are worth us considering. 

“…we should remind ourselves of the post-Enlightenment tendency to view suffering, atrocity, and so on as grounds for atheism.   The current assumptions of our culture include the notion that all ills can be removed, death can be indefinitely postponed, and all risk can be eliminated, if we can only find the right formula. …  The media encourage us in our refusal to face our vulnerability, mortality, and creatureliness.  The presupposition is that bad things shouldn’t happen, or certainly shouldn’t happen to good people; and since they do happen and the world is imperfect, there cannot be a God.  Indeed, the world is so dreadful, as it impinges on us in our living rooms on the small screen, that trying to put it right  or make sense of it seems beyond us – as compassion fatigue  sets in and we find ourselves lost and insecure, confronted with a world so threatening that the most noticeable reaction is the creation of comfort zones.”  (p 30)

The notion that death is somehow foreign to humanity is certainly found in the Christian interpretation of the Genesis 3 fall of humanity from grace into sin and death.  The Orthodox understanding of this story is the notion of ancestral sin which introduced mortality into the human condition.  The Resurrection of Christ is God’s own defeat of death and promise of eternal life for all humanity.  However, Christianity has been very real that sickness, suffering and sorrow are part of the human condition and will continue to be so until God establishes His Kingdom on earth.   This is no doubt a test of Christian faith as we struggle with why God allows His creatures to suffer, especially when we consider innocents, children, infants or even animals who have not sinned.   Atheists tend to point to the suffering of humanity as a sign that there is no Intelligent Designer for the universe.   Christianity (like Judaism and Islam) remains realistic that in this life we will experience the ravages of disease, injury and illness while constantly seeking the mercy of God to give us the faith, hope and strength to deal with the suffering we encounter.

In Christianity it is the suffering of humanity and our mortality which  are reasons for the incarnation of the Son of God at Christmas.  

“Yet the experience of being physical beings lies at the very cusp of the ambiguity of our human condition.  Vulnerability, corruptibility, and mortality are characteristic of the physical, natural world – ‘Change and decay in all around I see’!  The Fathers were highly sensitive to this reality, but they saw this mortal, natural existence, with all its passions and joys, pointing beyond itself to that full-bodied living which is God’s ultimate purpose.   The physical senses are analogous to the spiritual; physical love is stimulated by beauty, and the beauty of God evokes spiritual love: ‘My God, how wonderful Thou art!’  For the Fathers, ‘anagogy’ meant the spiritual journey upward through analogy.”  (p 114)

Unlike Ray Kurzweil’s singularity in which he sees humanity as escaping the limits of the body by ultimately converting our consciousness into electrical impulses on the Internet, Orthodox Christianity believes our physical bodies are part of God’s plan for us and salvation.  Our bodies despite the limits of physicality, illness and mortality, are made not only to bear divinity (Theotokos) but to become united with divinity (Theosis).  Suffering in this view does not overcome our humanity, but rather our spirituality – namely our union with Christ – overcomes our mortality.  See my blog  Transcending Biology:  Theosis vs. Singularity.

Theodicy

In this blog and the next I am going to comment on what I have been thinking about “evil” and how to account for the obvious displays of evil power that we see around the world – wars, ethnic cleansing, torture, terrorism, rape, child sex abuse, mass murders, dictatorships.  Trying to account for evil when one believes in a good and all powerful God is not easy.  Theodicy is the word used to describe efforts to account for evil in God’s world.  What follows is a “stream of consciousness” on the topic.  I am not going to draw any hard, steadfast conclusions.

In the world of not so many years ago, “events” surprised citizens of countries because they happened without warning – plagues, hurricanes, earthquakes, famine, floods, fire, invasion by enemies, previously unknown and thus unfeared hordes of barbarians sweeping down upon unsuspecting towns and kingdoms. In that world where there was no such thing as a “natural” or “scientific” explanation for “acts of God” (to use the language of insurance) – for “natural disasters” – there was only the thought that such events had to be God’s own activity. I am not even sure in the Roman-Byzantine Empire of the Patristic Age whether they had any other explanation except for these being acts of God. Do the Fathers ever blame Satan for causing such catastrophes? Did they believe Satan had such power to cause such catastrophic destruction against God’s will and purpose? Or is there any evidence that they believed God allowed Satan to cause such events?

In the Bible and the Baptismal prayers of the Orthodox Church Satan has no power on earth except that which God allows Satan to do. The bible clearly teaches us to fear God. There is no emphasis on fearing Satan, who is after all merely a creature and so whose powers and accomplishments are therefore not eternal.  We are clearly to fear God which is presented as a wise and positive thing not just cringing terror.   The Bible does not give Satan such power that neither God nor man can resist him (James 4:7 – “resist the devil and he will flee from you”) . The book of Revelation with its sometimes terrifying imagery may suggest Satan is powerful, but it is a book most difficult to interpret while literal interpretations of it often founder on the shoals self-determined certainty as to their meaning.  

Dachau

Any people who believe in an omnipotent and omniscient Creator-God struggle with how to account for the existence of terrible evil in the world.  Rather than struggling with the difficulties which faith in such a God bring in the world as we experience it, it is much easier to blame Satan or “Evil.”   But in every sense this goes against the idea of an omnipotent God for we then attribute more and more power to a being who seems to be God’s opposite and equal and we come to fear this evil anti-god more than we do God Himself. 

A similar but opposite solution is to come to think that all the evil in the world is from God Himself and the reason to fear God is because He is a sadistic unpredictable bully who for no reason whatsoever visits evil on people.  Again the real issue is the wish for a simple explanation of the world and an unwillingness to wrestle with the real problems and evil we see in the world.   A faith that God is good and all powerful and all knowing is at times hard to reconcile with what we experience in the world.  We do not however need to rush into an all encompassing theory of an unstable tyrannical God nor of an evil power equal and opposite to God.   Just like in quantum physics we realize the world is more complex than we care to admit, and we still cannot totally piece together or explain the universe as well as we would like.

Serpent in Eden

Satan in general only has the power to deceive and tempt, not to force people to act, unless they willingly agree to do his will. Both James and Peter in their epistles tell us to resist the devil (a word that doesn’t occurs in the Old Testament) and James says if you resist the devil, he will flee from you. Such is the one who boasted to Jesus that all the power of the earthly kingdoms belonged to him (Luke 4:6).

But my questions come with how we see the world today as distinct from how the ancients saw the world.

We do have a “scientific” understanding of the world and can accept that natural disaster – drought, flood, famine, earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, locust plague, crop failure – can be explained purely as “natural” disasters or even “man made” disasters. The ancients had neither category in their view of the world. (or rather “man made” disaster would have meant sins which led to God’s judgment). We need blame neither God nor Satan for such disasters. We “know” whether we are good or bad, natural disasters are going to happen. We also know that just as God causes the sun and the rain to fall upon both the good and the evil, so too natural disasters equally affect the saints and the sinners.

We also have satellites constantly watching the world from every angle – both spy and weather satellites. We are much less often surprised by weather events, and certainly today the chance of a previously unknown civilization appearing or nomadic army suddenly attacking the walls of our cities is not likely. (I have read regarding WWII that one of the things the Germans vastly underestimated about Russia was its manpower and manufacturing reserves and potential. Why? Because in the mid-20th Century, they had no ability to spy above a nation.) Additionally we are much more likely to interpret the rise of armies and world powers as being the end result of historical events rather than as being the surprising and unanticipated hand of God controlling the players on the chess board.

We really do have a global view which the ancients lacked. As such it becomes increasingly difficult for us as citizens of the world to see disasters (natural or man made) as coming from outside of the world or humanity. In other words we interpret disasters as most likely coming from human enemies or from nature.

So how do these changes in perspective or paradigm shape our understanding of Satan and of God?

That is the topic in the next blog:  Theodicy II

Sexual Abuse in the Church

“…God sides with the victims of suffering…”  (T. Peters & M. Hewlett, EVOLUTION FROM CREATION TO NEW CREATION)

As I was doing further reading and research into how we might bring our theistic faith together with the conclusions of science, I read the above line in the book by Peters and Hewlett.   It lept off the page to me.  Though they were using it to explain the difficulties theistic believers have in dealing with natural selection, it struck me in terms of how the church has failed to deal with the victims of clergy sexual abuse.

God does not always side with the strongest or the fittest.  God does pay attention to the pleas of the suffering, of the weak, and the meek, of the widow, the fatherless and the minority stranger/sojourner.  The entire story of the Exodus Passover begins with the words:

“And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God.  And God heard their groaning… “  (Exodus 2:23, RSV)

Orthodoxy certainly has understood salvation in terms of God liberating the suffering humanity from the oppression of death and Satan.  And Orthodoxy has understood that death’s rule over humanity could be seen as deserved – the end result of human rebellion against God.  The only one to suffer unjustly was Christ, who committed no sin.   Christ’s resurrection from the dead becomes the liberation of all humanity from the oppression of suffering.  God sides with the victims of suffering.   In Roman Catholicism, the priest holds up the consecrated Host and says, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”   Christ is the divine victim who God justifies in the Resurrection.  God sides with the victims of corruption, becoming Himself such a victim.  In Orthodoxy, sealed on the bread of the Eucharist are the Greek letters for “Jesus Christ conquers.”  The Orthodox celebrate Jesus victorious over all who oppress and the giver of liberation to those who suffer.   God sides with the victims of suffering, becoming such a victim in order to triumph over the Last Enemy who inflicts suffering on humanity.

This is why I am often  troubled and disappointed when I feel the Church does not take allegations of clergy sexual abuse seriously, and when it fails to minister in love to the victims of such abuse.    We are too afraid to investigate  claims and too eager to set up methods which protect the institution from those alleging abuse.    I do not know how often false claims of sexual abuse are made against clergy, and certainly as a clergyman I would want the church to treat me fairly should an accusation be made about me.    However the victims of abuse should not be treated as threats to the church – the abusers are the real threat to the church.   It is not the abused who should end up being marginalized in the church, but the abusers whose place as penitents should be clear – and if they are indeed penitent they should willingly accept that place.

Some victims of  abuse continue to cry out because of their unjust suffering.

God sides with the victims of suffering, and so should the church.

Job: Suffering and the Presence of God

“Pondering the book of Job, that intense debate about God’s goodness within the Bible, I began to discern that the answer to Job’s questioning was simply the fact that he found himself in God’s presence.  In God’s presence all the questions just fade away, as you realize the immensity of the infinite, divine reality with which you are confronted.”   (Frances Young, BROKENNESS & BLESSING: TOWARDS A BIBLICAL SPIRITUALITY)

New Testament scholar Frances Young offers what might be one of the best insights into the book of Job – it is about being in God’s presence, not about understanding justice or suffering.  We struggle to make sense of our troubled and fallen world – why is there evil and why does evil and suffering triumph at times even over the innocent and the good?   Can it be that the loving God allows His faithful servants to be put through torture and inconsolable loss just to prove Satan wrong?  As Young puts it, by modern thinking “God’s morality is in question.”   Indeed, modern people, including many believers often wonder if God is powerless in the face of natural disasters, war, holocaust, terrorism,  human hubris or sin.  

We see at the beginning of the book  of Job a man blessed by God with prosperity and all that one could hope for in life.  He is described as being blameless, upright, God-fearing, not seduced by evil, who worships God even when bad things happen to him.  He accepts God’s will despite the loss of everything; even his wife tells him to curse God.   He has done no wrong nor does he sin; yet and on top of his suffering, his “friends” do not console him but rather tell Job it is all his own fault that he suffers, accusing him of arrogance and sin. 

What perhaps is amazing in the story is that it is only through his suffering, and not through his prosperity and righteousness, that Job experiences the presence of God!  Only after suffering terrible loss, unbearable sorrow, and the accusatory chastisement from his friends, does Job encounter God.   Prior to his undeserved and unjust suffering – in that time when he was blessed by God for his faithfulness-Job only “had heard of God by the hearing of the ear.”   But in the hell in which he found himself where all was lost and even spouse and friends blamed him, Job saw God and conversed with the Almighty. 

The story does not follow the religious idealism and logic one would expect – when blessed and prosperous, Job is faithful to God but the Lord does not speak with him – only about him, and to Satan!  Job has no personal experience of God in his prosperity, but is faithful and upright anyway.   His faithfulness, blamelessness and righteousness do not protect him from wicked suffering and loss, as one might expect in a Bible story.  Incredibly,  only when he is reduced to poverty through unjust suffering and total loss of all that is good, does he get to see God and speak with Him.

This is hardly a story for teaching the benefits and rewards of being good, or of following God’s commandments.  Job’s steadfastness in keeping faith with God defies reason; the story may be a panegyric for such unyielding faithfulness to God despite historical reality (which certainly would be consistent with Israel’s tenacious faith in God despite their miserable Old Testament history).

The story does however set up an understanding that helps us make sense of the life of Christ, who though God’s Son and Messiah suffers humiliating torture and execution before being justified by God and returned to glory.   The rejection of Christ by the people and His seeming abandonment by God follows the pattern set by Job and gives it all full meaning.   God’s favor cannot be measured by human prosperity.

The methods and logic of God indeed are beyond human understanding, and warn us against accepting cliché ridden religious formulae and formalism.    The purpose of God may remain hidden in mystery, and at times all we may be able to discern is His presence, not His purpose.   And though this remains unsatisfactory for our minds, we can realize that the sense of His presence is sometimes enough for our hearts to carry on in this world.   His presence is more valuable to our existence than understanding His purpose.   I always pray that those I know and love may be blessed by the sense of His Presence, even if His purpose remains hidden.

The book of Job teaches that to suffer is neither an absolute sign of God’s rejection nor of God’s punishment.   Though we wish it on no one, suffering can become the entrance into the presence of God.  We have heard about God and His great deeds, and read His Word, but that all is mere informational learning.  For it is possible to experience God Himself in this world and even in our suffering, and that experience is formational and transformational making the world tolerable because we realize it is the very place where we do encounter the living God.

Sermon Notes for 26 October 2008

Sermon Notes for 26 October 2008        

Epistle:      (2 Cor. 11:31-12:9)    

The God and Father of the Lord Jesus (blessed be he forever!) knows that I do not lie. In Damascus, the governor under King Aretas guarded the city of Damascus in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and escaped from his hands. It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven-…  Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

St. Paul, God’s chosen vessel and apostle is given a vision of the third heaven, paradise itself, and yet on earth has to flee for his life and escape arrest by escaping in a basket lowered from a window like some kind of contraband.  (actually I am wondering what they  would normally be lowering from a window in the wall of a city that would have escaped the notice of the authorities – smuggled goods or trash?   The city dump no doubt was outside the walls of the city, perhaps the public latrine as well.  Normal cargo would not doubt pass through city gates where it could be taxed).

St. Paul is chosen by Christ to carry the Gospel to the world, and yet the Lord will not free Paul from suffering.   Whatever the ecstatic experiences of Paul, whatever visions he had, or ascension he was given, he was never freed from the dangers and suffering of this world.  The Kingdom of God does not ensure for us the pursuit let alone the attaining of happiness in this world.  God deems the suffering of his chosen ones in this world to have value for them and the world or otherwise He would take his servants to paradise and keep them there.  As it is He seems satisfied with allowing us to work in this world even if we are weak or disabled.

  Gospel:     (Luke 16:19-31)

[19] ”There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. [20] And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, [21] who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. [22] The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. [23] In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. [24] He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ [25] But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

Details I note in the Gospel lesson – this is a parable of Jesus, a story to teach, not a dogmatic or doctrinal statement about heaven or Hades.   And it is yet another parable that involves economics – Jesus frequently dealt with issues of wealth, prosperity and justice. 

Note both the rich man and Lazarus are alone in the story.  No other people surround them.  Lazarus is alone in his suffering.  The rich man feasts sumptuously, but alone – there is no mention of a banquet full of guests. 

The rich man dresses in purple – in the Roman Empire, normally only those born into the imperial family are allowed to wear the purple.   The rich man has not earned his wealth, he inherited it – he has never know poverty or want.   He stuffs his face at the table and food sloppily falls to the floor – he has so much to waste he is not worried about wasting food. 

Lazarus can only wish to eat from the food falling from the rich man’s table – but note he isn’t given it to eat.  He only desires it – his impoverishment is total; he is famished and allowed to see such sumptuous wastefulness and yet not able to reach the wasted food.  The dogs who lick his wounds no doubt had the mobility to get to the rich man’s food. 

Father Abraham basically tells the rich man – “Look in your lifetime you thought about nothing but yourself and feeding your face and always having not just enough but as much as you wanted.  You got what you always wanted.  You never gave thought to the poor or the afterlife, so now that you are tormented in Hades you have nothing to complain about.  Your only concern in life was you and your immediate wants.   Lazarus on the other hand had none of his needs met and he longed for relief from suffering, for liberation, for salvation, for mercy, and so now he is getting what he wanted all his life.  You have no complaint.” 

The message for us is clear – we can pursue all we want in this life, we can be fixated on this world and having enough or having too much.  But this life and this world belong to a bigger reality, and one day that bigger reality is going to open up to us, and then we will come to understand how selfish were our desires and how narrow minded our vision, and how little prepared we made ourselves for that greater reality – paradise, Hades, eternity and judgment. 

What are we living for?  What are our preoccupations and worries and concerns and priorities?  Are our ideas about life and God big enough?  Or have we so concentrated on ourselves and our wants and our lives that we have forgotten the bigger reality around us?  Have we reduced God the Creator of the Universe to some kind of personal Genie who is to provide for our personal needs? 

The turmoil in the stock market and the economy is certainly unsettling, but let us not lose sight of the bigger reality in which the world exists – God’s plan and God’s Kingdom.  There are things to fear in this world and to worry about, yet riches in themselves cannot commend us to God but they certainly can make us self absorbed.

If in this life time, all we worry about is having an abundance of things – of being prosperous, or of being satisfied – what complaint will we have in life beyond the grave if we are found to have made no provision for life in the world to come?

Shouldering the Load of a Sinful World

“The kingdom of God cannot be imposed; if it is to be brought about we must be born again, and that supposes complete freedom of spirit.  Christianity is the religion of the cross, and it sees meaning in suffering.  Christ asks us to take up our own cross and carry it, to shoulder the load of a sinful world.  In Christian consciousness, the notion of attaining happiness, justice, and the Kingdom of God on earth without the cross or suffering is a huge lie.  It is the temptation that Christ rejected in the wilderness when he was shown the kingdoms of the world…”  (Nicolas Berdiaev quoted in Michael Plekon (ed), TRADITION ALIVE)

Powerful image:  Christ on the cross takes upon Himself the sin of the world.  When we take up our cross to follow Christ, we also “shoulder the load of a sinful world.”   God so loved the world so as not to reject it, but to bear its sin.  We Christians are also to work for the salvation of the world by carrying the cross and by taking upon ourselves the sin of the world.

DNA: The Key to Human Suffering?

In 2004 I read DNA: THE SECRET OF LIFE  by  James Watson.  This is the final blog of a series of three offering some of my comments on the book.  The first blog was DNA: A Scripture and Keeper of the Truth? The second blog was DNA: Science and Ideology. 

In this book one encounters a scientific challenge to prolife thinking.    Secular humanistic compassion and love is embraced by the author.     Though Watson is comfortable with allowing anyone to make reproductive decisions based upon their religious beliefs, he does feel that religious constraint is imposed on the free choice of secularists who are forced to follow religious morality.   For Watson, science holds a key to relieve the untold suffering in this world.  Genetically modified crops can greatly increase the yield on farms and feed the world’s masses.   Genetically modified crops do and will reduce dependency on insecticides and herbicides, thus reducing pollution of land and water, again benefitting everyone on earth.  Such modifications by reducing our use of chemicals will improve our health, so he argues.     He believes this is being prolife.  For him, suffering is the great evil which love must overcome.  Suffering, so he believes, can be relieved by human ingenuity including the genetic modification of food and the through genetic therapies for humans.   He points out several terribly painful and wasting diseases which we now know are genetically determined and can be avoided by the genetic screening of women.  Why he asks, wouldn’t we want to spare fellow humans from short lives which are full of pain?     He is OK with using abortion to attain these ends, but he also believes genetic testing of couples can help them decide whether or not to conceive children in the first place based upon their being genetic carriers of wasting diseases.   Through genetic testing of couples, they can decide not to pass along their genetic defects to their offspring.    Watson appears to take a very utilitarian view of human life.  The death of infants and children from wasting genetic diseases is not acceptable to him morally when we have the knowledge to prevent their conception or coming to term.  His argument is that we take utmost care to help the sick and dying be comfortable and painless and we put our effort and energy into conquering diseases, so why not use the obvious science of genetics to accomplish these same goals?   The book offers insight into the mind of a man who doesn’t think religious arguments ought to be forced on the rest of humanity.    Whereas Christians would argue that human life, even if shortened and diseased, is still valuable and sacred, Watson sees life as being meaningful when it is productive.  An infant or child’s brief life in constant pain is of questionable value to him.  Why would we wish such an existence on anyone if we have the technology to stop it?     Would it not, he asks, be more humane and comforting to avoid bringing such life into existence in the first place?     If we as religious people in love and compassion see our duty to help prevent others from suffering or understand our role to relieve the suffering of others (even by anaesthetizing them through their entire existence), why, he asks,  do we argue for bringing into existence lives which we know absolutely will be nothing but sorrow and pain for their shortened existence?     How, he asks, is that more moral or compassionate or loving than using our genetic knowledge to avoid bringing them into being?   These I think are the arguments that pro-lifers will face during the next decade.

Watson stays true to his description of being a secularist and a scientist even as he considers the dark side of humanity.   He describes this negative side of humans as being “selfish” which he defines as “that aspect of our nature that evolution has hardwired to promote our own survival.”   An interesting definition of what we would call sin.  In evolutionary terms, selfishness and sinfulness are for the survival of the species!   But Watson is not convinced that humanity’s hubris really is the most powerful force in our lives.  He does state that he sees humans as being first social beings with compassion for others as a natural choice and force in our lives.  He believes it is this compassion which makes us uniquely human.   It is our ability to love and our need for love which will save us from our darker side of evolved selfishness.    And he sees this compassion as manifesting itself best when humans decide to prevent the suffering of others through knowledge such as DNA has revealed to us.  

 Watson offers to us a worldview which is radically different from one based in the assumptions of Christianity.  His book is important for Christians because it does offer us a basis to try to understand the ideas and ideals with which we are competing for the hearts, minds and souls of the people of the world.  Watson’s universe is one in which people do not need salvation or some intervention from God to save them.   Humans in his way of thinking are wired for compassion and need only tap into their humanism to overcome the world’s problems.  In this Watson shows himself to be a true son of the Enlightenment.  He sees a world in which ignorance not sin or evil is the true problem plaguing humanity.  For me there is a harsh limit to his idealism; namely, that both Nazis and Stalinists believed re-education was the tool to correct what they thought was wrong with humanity.   

Christians need to find the way to convey the truth of the Gospel to the secular scientist in order to fulfill the great commission which Christ has set forth for us.  We cannot convert people to the Gospel if we cannot find a way to compellingly convey the Gospel to them.   This also entails dealing with the issues of what ails humanity, and what role evil plays in the problems of the world.  The witness of the Scriptures is that God loves humanity despite its faults and weaknesses.  Watson offers a vision in which the weakest humans would be denied life in order to deny them suffering.  He somehow imagines genetic improvements in food production will alleviate the problems plaguing humankind, but this will not change the heart in each human nor the heart’s tendency toward evil.  But perhaps Watson feels genetics can change the human heart as well and shape humanity in the image and imagination of the scientist.

Defeat as Opportunity

The world of God’s people at the time that Isaiah wrote his chapters 40-55 was a very threatening and uncertain world.  The hostility of the world around them, made a very depressing present and future for the Jewish exiles.   They were claiming to believe in a God who was creator and master of the universe, and yet they found themselves virtual slaves and prisoners of a people who did not recognize nor respect this “god.”   These Jewish exiles lamented their own condition and questioned whether in fact God was the Lord.  The Jews in captivity in Babylon looked around at the imposing idols of Babylon – those imposing images of the gods of force – and asked ,  “Could it be that our God is no god at all?   Could it be that our God is less mighty then the idols we see or that He is unable to deliver those who worship him?”    They no doubt felt themselves a doomed people, with a god who does not seem to care or perhaps is incapable of doing anything about life.    

As exiles in Babylon, the Jews found it impossible to practice their worship as commanded by God in their scriptures. The sacrificial cult was not practiced because their temple had been destroyed, and besides their worship was only permissible in Jerusalem which was now hundreds of miles away from the place of their captivity in exile.  But with the absence of institutions associated with the holy temple other practices – such as emphasizing the study of Torah – received all the greater emphasis.  For example, the importance of the sabbath as a holy day was accentuated as a law they could keep.

In this period Israel’s memory of the past received a fresh impulse, and the recollection of the fathers, of the Mosaic covenant, and of the prophets helped them to maintain continuity with their inherited faith….   Prayer acquired a new depth and meaning.   

When these exiles were finally released from captivity in Babylon and permitted to return to Jerusalem after some 70 years, they were almost unbearably crushed by the realities that confronted them.  They had high hopes when they left Babylon about coming home and continuing the practice of their religion.  But they found Jerusalem still in ruins, the temple gone, the remnants of the city were now occupied by various pagan people and they were forced to arm and defend themselves from these new enemies.  Again their faith in God was put to a severe test.  

Did God in fact exist?  If so, why did He allow their captivity and exile?   Was He powerless?   What does it mean to be God’s chosen people?  Where are the successes, the fulfillment of the promises, the blessings of being God’s chosen?

These are the questions and issues which faced the people when Isaiah pronounced his prophecy. 

There are lessons here for us today, whatever the challenges or limits imposed upon us by our culture or times, or world events, or limited resources, there are those aspects of the faith upon which we can concentrate, improve, perfect just like the Jews did in Babylon.  Events in the world may be terribly confusing, uncertain or even threatening, but we can learn from Isaiah what God’s plan is, what our future is, how have God’s people dealt with such trials in the past.   We don’t need to lament the loss of some glorious past time – the good old days.  We can take advantage of the present to live our faith and to be faithful witnesses to and servants of God.   This is the hopeful message of Isaiah to a troubled and distraught world to God’s people today.