Archive for the ‘Suffering’ Category
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Question: If we are saved by God’s grace and yet we continue to turn our back on God, i.e., we don’t practice our faith, we don’t pray, we don’t read God’s word, we continue to repeat the same sins over and over, etc. if we die are we saved or did we fall short of God’s grace? Ref: Hebrews 10:26-31
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This is why theologians get paid the big money [insert ironic chuckle here].
We are supposed to know what is going to happen when we die and why.
Let me be straight up and, on behalf of a whole bunch of us, say: We don’t. For sure. We have hunches, we have hopes, we have hints, but we don’t really, really know.
It’s tricky, right? There are texts that can really scare the dickens out of a person. Take a look at the one you mention: Hebrews 10:26-31.
And why stop there?
Matthew 7:13, Luke 16:26, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 20:13-15 all can be cause for deep fear and even despair….and there are a lot more where these came from.
Of course, other texts aren’t so frightening, and actually suggest a wider door.
1 Tim. 2:6, 1 Cor. 15:22, Romans 5:17, Col. 1:20, 1 John 2:2.
Of course, each of these texts are bound to the verses before and after it, and bound by the author’s historical context, and many can be interpreted a number of ways.
My point here is that the Bible (in the cases listed above, the New Testament) isn’t as monolithic as one might believe.
Not that it is a huge surprise for those who read my blogs carefully, but I am of the mind that the question of what happens after we die is largely a theological question, and that in the end, we have to humbly say that we don’t know…and that we will not be paralyzed by that notion.
The way in which you phrase your thoughts, however, raises some interesting questions. You begin by saying that “If we are saved by God’s grace….” and close by wondering if we can “fall short of God’s grace.”
My immediate thought is, saved from what?
My second thought is, what is grace?
And my first answer to the first thought is, sin.
And my first answer to the second thought is, the gift of something undeserved.
And so two theological questions:
If we really believe that God offers grace (an undeserved gift) to we who sin (namely we who reject God in favor of something else) then:
1. isn’t the demand to repent, to stop the sin, to pray, etc…..aren’t these all acts to make us deserving of grace? And along side of that (this doesn’t cut into my two questions, btw!  ), then what is grace, really? Can we fall short of something we don’t deserve in the first place?
2. Who doesn’t sin, and (again, still part of the same question!) who is aware of all the ways in which one sins? Is it ever possible to confess and repent of all our sins?
These are just beginning questions. Then begins a whole run of ‘em.
Like,
Are all sins choices, or could there be sinful behaviors which are bound up in mental illness, in fatigue, in family systems?
Do we really want to say that only Christians are going to heaven…and does even Scripture make that case?
Is this a slippery slope to universalism?
And if “all people get into heaven,” then what’s the point of believing?
Ah, but then there are counter-questions:
Like, if a person believes to get into heaven, isn’t the integrity and authenticity of the belief self-serving, since it appears to be motivated by a protecting one’s own eternal hiney?
When does one believe “enough” to be in God’s good graces?
Is there anyone who is purely good? And even if not entirely good, are there parts of people which are fundamentally good, and then are those parts not in need of salvation….and what would that mean?
But don’t good deeds matter somehow?
And yet if we say that they do, then don’t we say that we in part can save ourselves?
And what happens if we’ve lived a pretty good life, and in the moment that we allow ourselves to wonder these sorts of things, get hit by a car? What is going to be God’s final answer?
Regardless of how one comes down on the question of heaven/hell, salvation/damnation, this much is safe to assert is true:
If one says that they believe in God, then there are implications for how they live their lives, for the choices that they make.
We all mess up, sometime quite gloriously, even those who say that they–and in fact really do–believe.
There’s a reason why we have the word “grace,” in other words. We need it.
But generally, if one says that something is core to who they are, then they live life consistent to that notion: not to get something, but because they can’t help but to live in such a fashion.
I tell my husband that I love him not to get him to love me, but because I love him. I play with my kidlets not to get them to respect me, but because I adore them.
Actions are an expression, in other words.
And let it not be missed that some of the most life-giving people are those who are not connected to any one particular religious tradition.
So the point is not to “diss” confessing and repenting and praying and discerning what is faithful and striving to live accordingly.
The point is to rather raise the question about whether these are pre-reqs for salvation…and if we answer that they are, well….who doesn’t fall short of that?
It’s all clear…as mud.
Peace,
Anna
Posted in Christianity, God's Relevancy, Heaven & Hell, Mercy & Grace, Reader Questions, Scripture, Suffering, Truth | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
So. I recognize that I have been lax in writing.
I have not been lax in thinking, however.
This summer has been as crazy-busy as it is hot.
OMG open house in April.
Wedding in May.
New husband in China and Thailand for two weeks.
Family from Alaska in June, their visit culminating in a first-ever, 100% attended family reunion on my mother’s side here in Sioux Falls.
And now we sit in Düsseldorf, Germany.
We find ourselves here, in the land where I did my doctoral work, and in the land where the accident occurred, that event which killed my first husband and caused my son to suffer a traumatic brain injury.
Frankly, I never considered coming back here. The memories, both good and painful, are so vibrant that even imagining the place causes a visceral reaction in me, a palpable sense of presence even from the distance of time and place.
Yet here we are.
Germany offers stem cell therapy, you see, an approach to healing not yet available to us in the United States. We learned about this opportunity through our acupuncturist, also a “novel” approach to healing in the States. But the novel stopped my son’s seizures after only three weeks, and has kept them thus at bay for over a year and a half.
So I told our acupuncturist that she had convinced me that there was a lot to be said for “fringe” approaches, and if she knew of any other any other fringy possibilities out there, I was all ears.
She told me of stem cell therapy, and put me in touch with a colleague of hers, who then put me in touch with the XCell Center in Düsseldorf.
And several months later, Karl is now resting tonight after having 11 million of his own stem cells injected into his traumatized brain.
Whew.
Needless to say, I have a nice glass of red beside me.
Hope and I? We have a dicey relationship.
On the one hand, whether we realize it or not, just swinging our legs out of bed is a hope-filled move. Hope, even subconsciously, allows us to function. We hope that we will have a good day, that we’ll get to work on time, that our loved ones will get home safely, we marry, we have children. All are trajectories of hope.
But sometimes hopes are dashed.
Quite literally, actually. Mine were dashed across a street 6 years ago, almost to the day.
And ever since then, hope and I haven’t made nice with each other, precisely.
So I hope for Karl’s complete healing from his brain injury, and everything I do is geared toward making that hope tangibly true.
The reality of that occurring is slim. And so then, what good is hope?
So I have come to wonder about the toxicity of hope; that is, can hope itself be detrimental? thwart one’s acceptance of reality? allow one to live a quixotic life built on vanities and illusions?
Yep.
But the danger of succumbing to hope’s opposite, despair, is equally numbing.
And I don’t particularly like the blandness of mere optimism either. I am optimistic that Karl’s present fever will go down.
But I’m not here to get a fever and reduce it.
I’m here to get Karl walking and talking.
So I have made peace with hope in the same manner as I engaged my first pregnancy, a pregnancy which ended in miscarriage. I had been told that many first pregnancies end in miscarriages, almost as if my body needed to learn what to do. And when I did miscarry, I grieved, but I did not despair….and we did not give up, and were blessed with Karl, and later Else.
I refuse to give up on the possibility that Karl can heal. And I insist upon going to great lengths to make the impossible possible. My vocation as mother calls me to that pursuit. Karl himself teaches me about the art of joyful defiance.
And, vis-à-vis God, it gives me an opportunity to remind God of God’s promises, and as I explained to a dear friend lately, I do so in a hold-God-accountable-to-God’s-promises sort of way. It is manifestly evident in Scripture that God has as God’s agenda healing. Perhaps it’s the Jew in me who feels quite comfortable pointing that out to God.
So the doctors and nurses and drivers and care-givers here, consciously or not, are ambassadors of healing. Their professionalism and clear recognition of the stakes demonstrate empathy and determination to patients and families who tend toward the isolated and exhausted. That the staff here engage in this sort of novel procedure is itself a tangible act of hope. Many of those who travel here, myself included, were told to suppress even optimism.
One last note. Germans have “doch,” a fantastic word which can be translated as an innocent, “I think you are mistaken,” to a sharp and sometimes rude rebuttal, the likes of which ought not be written down in this blog. Karl and I have a “gig.” I ask him, “Karlchen, when the doctors said that you would never talk again, or walk again, or laugh again, or make mischief again, what did I say to them?” And he says with a smile, “Doch!”
I said it in the latter sort of way.
Doch=spoken hope, and suddenly I understand hope against hope.
Peace,
Anna
Posted in God's Relevancy, Suffering | 2 Comments »
Friday, June 18th, 2010
That’s a provocative observation from theologian Sallie McFague.
I stumbled on it while preparing for last night’s forum sponsored by 1Sky and Repower America about Christianity and the care of Creation.
Below, as my next post, I’ve pasted the text of my presentation. As always, I look forward to your responses!
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Christians aren’t so much called to be successful, but rather faithful.
Depending on your perspective, this is either freeing or a real bummer.
Generally, it is safe to say that “success” tends to be associated with a decent and stable job, family, comfortable house, good reputation, etc.
But the trouble comes when we Christians reflect upon the one who is the foundation for our beliefs: Jesus.
He had none of these.
And yet he was faithful.
Christians believe that Jesus came to deliver soteria, a word often translated as “salvation,” but which in the Greek implies health, healing, and wholeness…the sort you don’t have to wait to die for.
And so he was in the business, so to speak, of restoring, forgiving, feeding, serving. Now.
It can’t be overlooked, of course, that he did also end up on a cross.
Sometimes being faithful is risky business.
Now, typically, Christians have looked to the cross as being primarily about the forgiveness of sins: “Jesus died for you.”
And while I’m all for that, the last 70 some years of theology has begun to wonder if perhaps there might more to his death than the forgiveness of sins.
Nobody is objecting to the forgiveness of sins, to being justified by Jesus’ blood, mind you. But after Auschwitz, it is difficult not to wonder whether justification has to have something to do with justice.
In other words, did Jesus die for more than just sin? Did Jesus die not only for the sinners, but also for those, or for that, which are sinned upon?
And it’s out of that idea that Christians recognize that God is in solidarity with those who suffer, that Jesus isn’t the only one to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”, that God feels our pain more deeply than do we, and, again, that Jesus came to bring soteria–health, healing, and wholeness–to those who suffer, because from a Christian standpoint, if God’s primary agenda were death and decay, then Jesus would still be dead in the tomb.
Instead, Christians believe in Easter, an empty grave, an announcement that life, not death, has the last word.
Now, what does this have to do with the topic at hand?
Perhaps surprisingly, lots.
Many Christians look at Jesus’ life ministering to the oppressed and outcasts, and his death on the cross, and see that God is interested in attending to the crushed.
And so a movement has begun that asserts that while God is concerned with the well-being of all people, God has preferential concern for the poor, for the voiceless, for the subjugated.
Feminist theologian Sallie McFague states that “nature is the new poor,” and that we would do well to “integrate needy nature and needy people.” (Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature, 170.) I think she’s absolutely right. And in fact, they already are related; areas of environmental degradation directly correspond with areas of communal poverty–one need only look to the effects of BP on the local economies of the coast to see this to be so.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has put out a fine Social Statement about ecological concern entitled “Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice.” (http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements/Environment.aspx) It states, “When we act interdependently and in solidarity with creation, we do justice. We serve and keep the earth, trusting its bounty can be sufficient for all, and sustainable.”
That’s fantastic.
It goes on to say that through participation, sufficiency (that is, having what we need, and not what we want), and a sustainable lifestyle, we can honor God’s creation by acting out just living for all creatures.
Now, to some, this seems like an extraordinary leap. A theologian named Gordon Kaufman points out that the main vocabulary of Christianity–like sin, salvation, forgiveness, repentance, hope, faith, love, righteousness–all concern human relationships. (“The Concept of Nature: A Problem for Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 65 [1972]: 350, as discovered in Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology [Fortress Press: Philadelphia, 1985], 6.)
In fact, the New Testament is hard pressed to demonstrate a real pattern of concern or interest in an ethic toward the land. One can argue that’s because they were anticipating Jesus to return at any moment, and their attention was focussed instead on evangelism.
And while Walter Brueggemann, the Old Testament scholar, points out that the Old Testament has no “environmental agenda” that we would recognize as such, “land is a central, if not the central theme of biblical faith.”
He writes these stunning words to make the point.
“Place is space that has historical meanings, where some things have happened that are now remembered and that provide continuity and identity across generations. Place is space in which important words have been spoken that have established identity, defined vocation, and envisioned destiny. Place is space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made, and demands have been issued. Place is indeed a protest against the compromising pursuit of space.”
He goes on to worry about how having land, i.e., power and wealth, “can…be…the enemy of memory,” namely forgetting what it is like to have no place, and therefore no identity, no power, no promise. (The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, 2nd edition [Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2002], 4)
But Wendell Berry, author, philosopher, and advocate of the earth, speaks about the Jewish-Christian tradition of scripture reading and worship as showing a “pattern of reminding.” (Wendell Berry, “The Responsibility of the Poet,” What Are People For? [San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990], 91.)
So, although the New Testament leaves a bit to be desired in terms of specific references about respecting and stewarding creation, it does have a fine pattern of reminding for those in pain, threatened by death, devoid of hope–like speechless nature.
And it has this key event, this resurrection story, which tells us that now that we who can speak know that death isn’t final, there is more to do with our lives than preserve them.
We can instead be faithful, even, and perhaps these days most precisely, on behalf of all creation.
Posted in Christianity, God's Relevancy, Suffering | 2 Comments »
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Clearly I have been AWOL and MIA in terms of my blog, and I apologize!
But that is because not only am I “with children,” but I am now also “married,” as of May 21.
Wedding preparation on the heels of the OMG open house, and then moving belongings, and having a “familymoon” with the kidlets for several days (just returning last night) gained almost the entirety of my attention!
The festivities were just that; festive. There was a contagious tenor of glee and of gratefulness for new beginnings. And that dear friend of mine and preacher of ours, the good Rev. Lori Hope, hit it out of the park.
Much has been written about love, and much has been written about marriage. Allow me, in the spirit of this new event in my world, to add a couple of not particularly novel thoughts.
I always have thought that it is important to note that at the Last Supper, Jesus does not say, “Like one another, as I have liked you.” Instead, Jesus said, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
Sometimes it is possible to love someone and not, in the moment, like them so particularly well. Joseph Sittler once stated that when one is married, at least there is someone at home you don’t want to talk to.
Love, as far as we Christians see it displayed in Jesus’ death on the cross, is demonstrated by deep and profound vulnerability and forgiveness…and again, the promise of new beginnings and joy for life.
That’s not a bad way to ground a marriage.
Love, that is, is not just being twitterpated, is not just romance, is not just sexy…though it can be that–and hopefully is that!–for years to come.
It is work, it is partnering, it is sacrifice, it is vulnerability, it is humility, it is gentleness of spirit, it is compassion.
I am grateful that my husband and I share some key understandings: we are broken; we can be wrong; neither our actions nor we are beyond forgiveness; humor is a blessing; we are worthy; we are cherished; our lives are gladdened by the other in it.
We are looking forward to building a family which is grounded in these same notions, and stewarded in service together.
So, with that, let the new beginnings begin, along with the new bloggings!
Peace,
Anna
Posted in Christianity, God's Relevancy, Mercy & Grace, Suffering | No Comments »
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
After the accident, somebody told me that that best metaphor that they could think for me was that of Holy Saturday.
They were right.
Holy Saturday is the in-between time, that time when we ponder and experience the reality of death–and our complicity in it–and simultaneously for Christians, we live in the expectant hope that its reality is not final.
It’s a helpful metaphor for all of us who grieve, fear, are overwhelmed. We live in this in-between time, this time where one facet of life seems much more real than the other, and yet for some reason, we keep on going; something says ‘yes’ to us so that we do not choose instead to die.
A question that surfaces, this time of year, is why it was that Jesus had to die in order to live in the first place.
Father Robert Farrar Capon gets to considering this matter with his trademark linguistic flair:
“The true paradigm of the ordinary American view of Jesus is Superman: ‘Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s Superman! Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earath with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never ending battle from truth, justice, and the American Way.’ If that isn’t popular Christoloty, I’ll eat my hat. Jesus–gentle, meek and mild, but with a secret, souped-up, more-than-human insides–bumbles around for thirty-three years, nearly gets himself done in for good by the Kryptonite Kross, but at the last minute, struggles into the phone booth of the Empty Tomb, changes into his EAster suit and with a single bound, leaps back up to the planet Heaven. It’s got it all–including, just so you shouldn’t miss the lesson, kiddies: He never once touches Lois Lane.
You think that’s funny? Don’t laugh. The human race is, was and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah. We don’t want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it. We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.”
A smart thing like never dying.
There is a long tradition of teaching that God put Jesus on the cross. This take on the crucifixion has bugged some feminists for some time.
Some fear that it tells of a God who murdered, or allowed the murder, of his own son, and implicitly condones child abuse at a cosmic level.
Others worry that God needed a blood sacrifice in order to be appeased, an image which encourages violence on the way to peace that is maintained only by threat and fear.
And still others are concerned that traditional ways of thinking though Jesus’ death on the cross focus on the relationship of God to the oppressors, and not Jesus’ solidarity with those who suffer.
And perhaps most often, many feminists voice legitimate critique against traditional interpretations of the cross as being the event which sets the stage for women bearing suffering and oppression, just as Jesus did.
But other camps of feminists thinks through matters differently.
Many believe that God did not demand Jesus’ death. We did (a la Capon). Thus the cross is a judgment not against God, but against those who resist justice.
Still others believe that Jesus’ death was not submission to a cruel God, but rather faithful living in the pursuit of reconciliation and renewed relationship with all creation.
And others see the cross as the quintessential expression of relationship between God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, a relationship bound by love, by mutuality, by solidarity, by respect, and by breath.
On this Holy Saturday, the day begs consideration about what me make of the death of Jesus, both then and now; about how the death of Jesus has been misused, and how it could be used differently; about which deaths in our own lives appear to be profoundly real to us, more real than the possibility of life; and where we might see the stirrings of life even in the dark soils of our own griefs.
Peace to you on this Holy in-between day.
Anna
Posted in Christianity, God's Relevancy, Suffering, Uncategorized | No Comments »
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