Atheism On Negation In Tuscany

[Note: Since I attempted to be clever in this essay by using double-negatives, I ended up confusing myself and making a mistake. The mistake -- failing to create a double negative where needed -- has been corrected. If some of you read this and said, "What the-?", well, now you just have to say, "Huh?"]

I turned to the atheist next to me and asked if he ever thought in anything other than negation. He said he did not.

I've decided that an essay on atheism is all wrong. There are starting points that offend my pretensions, everyone being smarter than I. Irrespective of my ever-maturing idiocy, I've convinced myself that the starting point for a theist is always a positive - God. I've even noticed that the starting point for a theist is a positive predicate - God is. In contrast, the atheist is forever chained to negation; the atheist can only say that God is not, or that there is no God. The atheist cannot, however, tell you what is; there is no affirmation offered that is not mere subjective whim, mere preference or pet-interest.

But if the atheist is right, my theism is really the denial, the negation. Yet I protest that I do not know what it is I am negating: I assert there is something rather than nothing. I am not saying -- am I? -- that God is not non-existent, nor am I negating some principle common to atheism. Perhaps I must content myself with being a non-atheist, with atheism, of course, being some form of positive position. I can't deny then that my non-atheism is an abuse of the positive positions of atheism, those jolly positions I often hear described as bursting with "alacrity" and optimism and liberty. (Indeed, I really can't deny that I am thoroughly abusive of these notions.)

All this the wind tells me is so much nonsense. I hear squirrels chattering more sanity, even when cats wait nearby. The atheist cannot tell me what is but only what isn't. An atheist's negation of my affirmation of theism is a bit like zero telling 1 that multiplication is a fantasy. And it is fantasy, if you embrace nothing. But the atheist recoils at this, shouting, I don't embrace nothing! If one listens for but a moment one hears what the atheist so passionately and earnestly embraces -- beauty, truth, love, progress, posterity, science. In fact the atheist, being incredibly zealous for his ideals, won't take long to dispel the annoying rumors of nihilism preventing him from enjoying his favorite peace. But point out to him that his creed is filled with ideals that hold no objective compulsion -- that his ideals are unique to him and his subjectivity -- and you will hear more bluster than a creationist sacked by a gang of Darwinists. Then add to the punch the obvious -- that if all truth is subjective and theism is one of those subjectively held truths (in a godless world) -- it thus follows that one man's atheism is no advantage over another's theism. If there is nothing but negation and subjectivism; if there is nothing absolute, then what can an atheist say to that man who knows there is no God and yet to spite the very universe believes in God anyway, comforted and compelled in his theism by the atheist's primary convictions, e.g. all truth is subjective and headed for oblivion? Why should an atheist enamored of subjectivism care at all that there are Christians, or other subjective theists, in a world rushing toward the void? We all share the same fate -- annihilation. Then what could possibly induce an atheist to expend one moment decrying theism when nothing he can offer and nothing he believes can save anything?

How odd that the zeros should care so much.

But, as I said, I am the dope in this room. Outside the door? The waiting, crushing abyss.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

On Maundy Thursday: A Reply To A Brother

Today is Maundy Thursday, that holy day when Christ mandates that we love each other a new way: we are to love each other as He loved us. It is the day for celebrating this new commandment; it is also the day we meet with Him for the first feast day, when the cup of salvation and the bread of heaven were first consecrated and given to the Church. It is also the day of betrayal, when dark forces entered into the heart of Judas Iscariot, tempting him to turn Christ over to the political powers, perhaps, sadly, to force the Savior's hand to deliver Israel from the Roman occupiers. But as we know, Jesus would have none of that scheme, nor would He bow down and worship the idols of power, authority or even earthly acts of righteousness.

_____________
Who Are The Saints?

Earlier this morning I read an essay, "The Canonisation [sic] of John Paul II: The Denial of the Gospel," critical of the seemingly imminent canonization of the late-Pope John Paul II. It was written by David Ould and posted at the Anglican website, Stand Firm. It is a challenging essay in many ways. And I left a rather lengthy comment with Mr. Ould that I would like to share with you. It follows below. Of course, I will add some further thoughts at the end of this post. I think, in many ways, it is all a fitting Maundy Thursday meditation.

The context of my comment has less to do with the actual canonization of the Pope and more to do with God's love for His people and the mysteries of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. There is virtually no technical language in my reply; there need not be to make the sort of points I wanted to make. But it must be stated first that while Mr. Ould is offended by much of Roman Catholic teaching about canonization, the bulk of his umbrage is directed at the Church's teachings about what it means to be saved and sanctified. I do not think it necessary that you read his post first, but it will surely not hurt if you do.

_______________
Dear Mr. Ould,

May you have a safe and blessed trip to Singapore. And may this truly be a blessed and holy Easter for all.

At the risk of being facetious, I must make this observation: If all (true) Christians are saints, and if Pope John Paul II is a true Christian, then he is a saint. Hence, I see no reason NOT to canonize him this side of glory. OK. So not all of us other saints get that honor. So? Besides, there are many who believe that the Pope is their spiritual elder, their lesser, even adoptive father. Are we not told by the Lord to honor our elders, and to honor our parents?

Alright. Enough facetiousness, though I don't think my points are useless. Now, I would like to turn to a few things you've written thus far. First you wrote this after your citation of the Catholic Encyclopedia on Beatification/Canonization:

Most worrying is the statement that saints are those "whose holy lives have made them worthy of His special love".

So, to put it clearly, there's more than one type of Christian. There's the ordinary run of the mill sort like you and me, and then there's those who by virtue of what their lives look like are worthy of God's special love.

Please permit me to ask, Is there no distinction in God's love? Prima facie it seems that there isn't. But what of Jesus? Did He, the Incarnate God, show preferences? What of the disciple whom Jesus "loved most"? What of him [tradition calls him the "Beloved Disciple], and what of Jesus' seeming partiality here? Is this not proof that God does not love everyone equally, or in the same way?

Your statement strikes me as akin to the grumbling vineyard workers in Jesus' parable who worked all day and yet were paid the same as those who worked but an hour. "What is that to you?" I hear our Lord ask. I am also reminded of the petulant brother who refused to celebrate the return of the Prodigal Son; he did not seem to understand that the father's love was complete and total, and yet, well, differently distributed: the happy father made distinctions.

Of course, as you said, we are all saints. Sort of like all cities are earthly; and yet we find that God prefers Jerusalem to Salt Lake City. Yes, all of the earth is full of God's glory, and yet God is not dismayed that Abraham builds altars indicating that some places are more glorious than others. Could this not be the way with saints, that all saints are equal, and yet some are more equal than others? Are we not all going to be judged -- and rewarded -- differently? Or does everyone get the same reward after the great purgative fires? Is that true, even scriptural?

You mention purgatory in your essay:

For most of us we will not be pure upon our death - there will still be dung remaining which will need to be burned off in purgatory before we may enter God's presence.

It seems that you hold to some idea of a refiner's fire; this is good, for it is inherently biblical [ref. 1 Cor 3:12ff]: those who pass through the fire, though they shall be saved, shall nonetheless suffer loss.

But later in the comments thread you write:

I trust readers can see clearly what the Roman church thus says about those that are not saints; they are not definitely in Heaven. Apparently, then, Christ’s work on the Cross is not sufficient to get them there directly.

I ask you: if Christ's atoning death on the cross is sufficient, then why should ANY Christian be delayed in the refiner's fire? Do you not contradict yourself here? For if, as you say, Christ's death is totally sufficient for all Christians to enter paradise, then why must they first pass through purgatory?

Had you more fully reported what the Catholic Encyclopedia said about the canonization and beatification of saints, you would have noted that the Church posits that there are people who live such sacrificial and "heroically virtuous lives" that they could be described as "prolonged martyrdoms." Martyrs, as you know, are those who in death immediately pass to heaven; they are not the dead in Christ who "rise first", as Paul proclaims (which suggests that there are saints in the ground and saints that are in heaven: the saints in heaven are those who fought well in the tribulation, no?). I wonder, then, if it is at all possible that there are those Christian brothers and sisters who live such obedient lives that they pass through purgatory -- in this life? Is that not possible, and is this not exactly what Catholics say of some saints?

In response to Dan Martins' comment suggesting that you had not accurately presented the Catholic case, you wrote:

Problem is, the Roman Catechism doesn’t address the issue. Unless, of course, I missed it in which case I would appreciate a reference.

Now, I wish I knew by "the issue" what you meant. Do you mean the issue of canonization, or that of justification/sanctification? You are correct if you mean the former; you are wrong if you mean the latter. But the very heart and purpose of your whole polemic, and the very context of Fr. Martins' remarks, are all about justification/sanctification and the modus operandi of both. Hence, you must mean the latter; and it must be pointed out that the RC catechism very much enlarges upon Christ's work on the cross (see ¶595-623 here). Christ's sacrifice is described in ¶616 as "redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction", while ¶618 refers to it all for what it truly is, "a paschal mystery." All in all, the language of the catechism here is lovely and orthodox, broad and inclusive, covering much theological ground; it is hard to find fault with it without destroying its mystery by parsing it into so many theologically correct fragments.

The whole debate about justification/sanctification seems often to be more akin to autopsy than theology: it divides terms so meticulously as to leave a corpse with no mystery. But the glories of the faith are powerful and mysterious. One wonders how the myriad faithful of the ancient church could ever have been saved without having Luther's parsing and privileged view of things, or even Aquinas' or Augustine's. The thief on the cross, no doubt, was without much theology, and yet he was ushered -- today, our Lord promised him -- into paradise.

Of course, the thief was given a special privilege. No one else that we know of had such a promise made to him or her. But this promise did not come without a price: the thief still had to die, to hang on that cross, next to a dying Savior who made what must have seemed a wild promise in the fading light of things: the thief hung faithfully on his own cross, his life bleeding into the refiner's fire, the devil calling him to doubt, to deny, to fall faithless into death's cynicism. His entry into paradise was no easy pass. And he was given such life without baptism, or without understanding "prevenient grace" or "expiation" or "forensic satisfaction."

Did God show preferential treatment to the thief, to Lazarus, to Elijah, to Moses? Were they not whisked away, or given a second life, while others were not?

"What is that to you?" I hear Him ask.

I may have a problem with honoring JPII with canonization; it does seem a bit like induction into the RCC Hall of Fame. But I have no qualms with honoring certain brothers and sisters above others; I would be saddened to learn that Billy Graham's funeral (should he have one) is equal to my own. And I have no problem whatsoever believing that all my brothers and sisters, including Pope John Paul II, deserve more notoriety and acclaim as saints in this life, than do I. Love, after all, considers everyone else more important than oneself. In short, love does make distinctions.

Peace.

BG

_______________
Further Thoughts

Much of the debate between Protestants and Catholics about the mechanics of salvation seem rooted in how time is perceived. Am I justified in an instant, or over time? Am I sanctified in a moment, or does it take time, perhaps a lifetime -- and more -- to be sanctified? I guess these are good questions, but it seems to me that if there is a God who justifies and sanctifies, then His sense of time is what ultimately matters. And what is His sense of time, He Who lives in the Eternal Now, outside of time? What is time to Him, what is process, if a thousand years are to Him like a day? Is my lifetime of struggle in the Faith but a moment to Him? Does He not see my salvation, and my sanctification, as He sees all of life, in an instant?

I do not know. But it irks me to no end that churches divide themselves over what are absolute mysteries of the faith. Some gnostic claims to understand the totality of the Incarnation; another gnostic claims to know how it is we are justified -- in toto -- before the eyes of God. Such gnostic ambition is disheartening, to say the least, and nearly always results in some utterly clear, mystery-free heresy. But just think of the countless souls that have been deemed saints in the eyes of God who did not understand complex theological terms! It is humbling, for certain. As it should be. We are called to believe in a Savior, a God-Man; we are called to follow Him, to obey His commands; to eat His flesh and drink His blood; to love each other as He has loved us.

The last thing I believe Jesus ever did, or expected His disciples to do, was to quibble over the language used to describe what even the great councils of the Faith have proclaimed is forever mysterious: how a Man can be God, and God, Man; and how each of us, sinners and enslaved to death, are to be made saints alive in holiness and truth.

The God-Man Jesus the Christ came to deliver me. Can I be delivered without knowing, or even understanding, the exact details how? If exactitude is important, then what of the man who accepts Christ as his Savior and then, suddenly and inexplicably, drops dead?

We see through a glass darkly indeed.

Have a blesséd Maundy Thursday.

BG

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Like The Earth Underfoot, Values Divide

Prologue

Episcopal priest and former US senator John Danforth (R - MO) is interviewed by Will Sullivan in this week's issue of US News & World Reports. The Q & A is tellingly titled, "The Values Divide." Indeed, they do. For Mr. Danforth strings together some of the most disheartening -- and empty -- thoughts I have seen in a long time; it is a wonder he has a book published at all (the occasion for the interview). But more importantly it is a wonder he is taken seriously as an Episcopalian, since his theology is utterly naive. And I am not suggesting a naivete reminiscent of child-like faith. I am talking naivete that is ignorant of its own heresies.

I urge readers to read the full text, which can be found at this link. It is a prerequisite for what follows.
_____________________

One could choose to address a myriad of problems -- cultural, political, philosophical and religious -- with Mr. Danforth's comments, but I shall ignore them for what I believe to be the most salient absurdity posited by Mr. Danforth. This is not a foray -- though it could be -- into the contentious and divisive 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson to shepherd the diocese of New Hampshire. That event is no doubt relevant; it is indeed the backdrop for Mr. Danforth's interview (and his book).

When asked what The Episcopal Church (TEC hereafter) should do to bring back the many (though Danforth believes it is only a few) people who have left TEC, Danforth gives us this stupifying answer:

I think to emphasize that we are traditionally a broad church and this has been our glory. I think a lot of people would say, well, the Episcopal Church is wishy-washy, that it doesn't really stand for anything. I think we stand for a lot. I think we stand for the idea that God cannot be encapsulated in our perceptions or in our views of political issues or social issues. It's saying that God is bigger than all these issues and bigger than any of our factions, and the church is big enough to include everything. [emphasis added]

Fortunately, we are spared Danforth's full list of what might be included in his generous use of the word, everything. But we know no such list is even necessary: listing everything is as futile as dividing infinity. Everything is, well, everything, and it is impossible to find any worth in adumbrating the extension of the word: The church, reflecting the glory of God's inestimable bigness, has no rooms, no partitions. It bids welcome to everyone -- and every thing -- without distinction. After all, to distinguish or define is to be small-minded, factious: If God is big enough to include everything, well, let us fall prostrate in adoration of his hospitality.

One wonders if Mr. Danforth is at all sentient of the glaring fact that he has contradicted himself. If his proposition that "God cannot be encapsulated in our perceptions" is indeed meant as something other than a mere theological jest; if it is meant as a premise to Mr. Danforth's argument, then it must be noted that Mr. Danforth has indeed encapsulated God in his perceptions. To Mr. Danforth, God is BIG, really big. So big, in fact, that we should just submit (islam?) to the overwhelming wonders of God's mighty size in blissful nonjudgmentalism.

The pantheism of Mr. Danforth's theology is utterly clear. We see without the slightest obscurity what this all means: God is everything -- at least everything wonderful (which is a vapid tautology). But we also see the inevitable inverse of all of this: If God is everything, he is nothing. It's analogous to a Christmas morning when a child looks with shock as his father announces that he has not given his child a single gift, he has instead given him everything: "My son, there is a bow and ribbon on the whole universe!" It also calls to mind the great Steven Wright quip: "I have the world's largest seashell collection -- I have it scattered all over the beaches of the world." In other words, Mr. Wright has no seashell collection; and the little boy sits Christmas morning without a single gift to open. Mr. Wright doesn't love seashells enough to collect any for his pocket; the father of the little boy does not love him enough to make a distinction between nothing and just one thing, one gift that is set apart, distinct, chosen and shaped specifically for his little child's delight on Christmas Day.

Perhaps I misread Mr. Danforth's expansive theological statement. But I don't think I do. "Everything" can fit into the church, which is exactly why the church is increasingly empty. Mr. Danforth's God is as big as Allah, as undistinct as Buddhism's nirvana, as permissive as the cult of Bacchus, and nearly as much nothing as the atheist's void. Truly we can define this apparently Episcopalian theology as universalistic and tolerant; as syncretistic and postmodern. We might even call this idea of God authentic and accessible and "inclusive." But the one thing we can't call it is Christian. To do so would be factious -- and small.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Episcopalianism

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part IV

[Part I of this series begins here.]

I've never known a person not touched by evil, pain, suffering. But I have known many people who have never known joy.

The other day, while I was sitting in a park photographing cedar waxwings (not my photo), an old salt-of-the-earth New Englander asked me a question. He had recently seen a bird, a black bird with red patches on its wings. "I have never seen one before. Do you know what it was?" I cheerfully told him that it was one of my favorites, the red-winged blackbird (not my photo either). I told him all I knew of the bird, and the old man continued on his way. But it was clear that the man, who surely seemed to have his wits about him, had never seen what is utterly a common bird in New England. Since the beginning of this essay (this morning) I have had several visit my feeders just outside the window, and they are always busy flitting about wetlands everywhere. They are remarkably obvious birds, extremely chatty, very active. It is hard to imagine that there are people around who have not seen one of them.

But then again, there are all kinds of things that surprise us, not least of which is that there are people who have never even been loved. This may be too hard for us to entertain even in the most detached, academic way. We do not know how such a fact could ever be possible. But reality is often too much for us, especially when that reality so thoroughly contradicts our experience: There are people who have not been loved for one second of their lives. How could this happen?

Perhaps there is some solace, and a small answer, in the pronouncement that God loves those who are unloved, or even unlovable. But it is not a very convincing sort of solace; we are not convinced that this is enough to restore someone who has never been loved to any sense of self worth. After an encounter with a very sad man on a city street (I was working as a photojournalist at the time), and after a very brief argument with an editor at the newspaper where I worked, I wrote the following poem:

In human interest

I submit the photoshopped images to the news queue
a disfigured head, gigantesque in its distortion
twisted grin his normal straight

brow like the elephant man’s

I pull them up to show you and you
give a face that has sales written all over it

I remember meeting this news feature
before you either saw him as news or
even as a feature:

He was sitting on a bench, where else?
on Main Street near Railroad Ave.
his head twice the size of most
fairground balloons

I wondered whether he had ever been touched

What’s your name? I asked.

Johhhhhnnnyyyy! he replied, Ya gaht aaany mmmonnney?

I emptied my pockets, a few bucks and I handed it to him.
At that instant a cab pulled up to the curb, and Johnny
jumped in. I laughed, but knew I’d be back for more.

I say, I wonder if anyone ever loved him.

You say, you’re too philosophical to be a
journalist.

I say, thank you. Really.

You walk away muttering about your circulation.

***

It seems like a loveless world. Darwin tells us, when we really think about it, that it is all about competition: there is no equality in Darwin's mean streets, there is no rest or peace or promise of uninterrupted comfort anywhere on the face of the earth. We balk at this, or we kick at the portents of atheism in so much Darwin-inspired, dread-saturated, post-modern emptiness. We wonder how a people who demand so much meaning out of life, who expect justice and love and joy, could have evolved from a primordial ooze that is utterly without meaning. How does the desire for purpose evolve from purposelessness; how does the want for love evolve from lovelessness?

Life does not seem fair: the child born with no face (as shown recently on TV); the newborn boy discarded in a garbage pail, now pushed from orphanage to orphanage; those families crammed into railroad cars heading toward gas chambers. I ask how it is that, if we've evolved from nothing, we then don't blame nothing for evil, or how we even see anything as evil at all. Why, if the radical evolutionists are right, why do we even care about suffering, or why would we blame God, if, indeed, there is no God at all? How did we get here, when our starting point was the void? It's as if we fundamentally defy as creatures the very physics of the universe, where it is a law that you can't get more energy out of a thing than what's in it. How is it that humans can demand, inspire or expect more meaning and love than the meaningless, loveless universe from whence they came can ever offer?

***

Did God create death camps? Did God create cigarettes, guns, nuclear bombs, chainsaws, alcohol, crystal meth? Is God responsible for polluted rivers, polluted air? Did He make us fly jets across the Atlantic, scarring the atmosphere; did He make us fly planes into skycrapers, skyscrapers that He built on fill in Lower Manhattan?

If there is a proof for the existence of God I might think it resides here, that humans blame Him for the things they created. One might also find an argument for the existence of God in His apparent absence: if I were God I might hide from humanity too. But there really is nothing hidden about God, as He is evident in every wingbeat of the red-winged blackbird. Heidegger's haunting question might even help us see God even where Heidegger could not: How is that there is anything here at all? What keeps everything from slipping into the abyss of non-being?

For some of us, the question might get us to begging, begging for a miracle. We want intervention (and we want it NOW!) not realizing that the very squirrels and birds and grasses and winds are divine signs. God is at work. Jesus may have impressed His disciples by walking on water. But the miracle is not in the walking, it is in the water; that there is any water at all. Raising the dead is miraculous, no doubt, but not anymore miraculous than that there was any person who lived in the first place. Sadly, we are too dulled, or too fearful, to live in the miraculous. We comfort ourselves in the presence of natural laws, oblivious, mostly, that the predictability of nature is often illusory and, more importantly, that the very laws themselves are miraculous. Breathing is really more of a miracle than Christ's resurrection. In fact, I believe He rose from the dead to prove that very thing, granting us life eternal so that we might breathe forevermore. But we hardly notice the miraculous in the commonplace until the wind is knocked out of us, or when we sense our last inhale will indeed be our very last.

***

We can ask where God is in the midst of suffering, as long as we are asking where we are in the midst of it, too. As we have seen, God has taken the blame for creation, for suffering, for evil; and He has taken the blame for things He did not even create. There should be joy in this news; we should receive this news with dancing and laughter and merriment. But we have even grown used to joy, I am afraid, even when it comes so rarely; good news is old news, and even joy seems tired, boring, predictable. We are too worldly to laugh, to dance in the freedom of forgiveness, to drink deep draughts of holy, redeemed merriment. Holiness, joy, redemption, forgiveness -- these are greeted with a big yawn by the all-knowing sophisticates we think we are. We snicker at the idea of a banquet with a Holy Family, because we know families, and they are all broken and disappointing. Laugh for a while, we say, but before long you'll be at each others' throats, just like so many holidays with our own too-often unholy families. Heaven? bliss? No thanks. That's for those who need such assurances.

***

The Christian message is simple regarding suffering, and it is painful. God loves both the murderer and the murdered, and He knows what it is to be both. He cannot stop being all-knowing, all-present, and thus is always both victim and victimizer. To intervene in world affairs in terms familiar to us, action figures that we think we are, would be for God to have to choose sides. But God is, until time has run out, on all sides: He is a Yankees and Red Sox fan; He roots for Manchester United as fervently as He roots for Arsenal. In short, He cheers on people, not ideologies, except the Gospel itself. He did not root for Hitlerism, but surely He adored Hitler. He did not root for Arafat's hatred, but surely He loved Arafat. He did not love the blood on King David's hands, but surely He loved the hands that were David's. The red-winged blackbird killed by a goshawk in my yard recently, killed right before my eyes, was no less loved by God than the goshawk that carried the dead bird away. After all, had God stopped the hawk from smashing that helpless blackbird into the side of my house, right next to me, would He not have had to bring the whole cosmos to a halt?

The Gospel of Christ declares this: That God loves you more than He loves His own life, and even His own joy. Better to be with you in hell than in heaven without you. Better to crucify the Creator than to stop Creation. Better to bring God to a screeching halt than the hawk in its deadly flight. Better to bring God to the grave than Hitler to annihilation.

Strange, though, how few people point out that Hitler was indeed stopped. No one seems to thank God for that, do they? Perhaps God did intervene -- perfectly, the only way Omniscience can. He KNOWS what He is doing, right? Otherwise, He can't be God. And if He is not God, we are indeed pitiable, and lost.

"Come unto me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest." It is always a good thing to remember that the very first miracle that Jesus performed was to make more wine. Sounds exactly like the sort of message one would expect of a God who cares, who pays attention.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil, The New Yorker

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part III: To Hell With Jesus

[I post this essay with trepidation. It is a long entry in this series on good and evil. But it is a necessary one. That is not where my fear lies. I am afraid that I have gone too far. (Part I of this series begins here.)]

This series began with Pope Benedict XVI praying at Auschwitz. It won't end there, not because I am interested in following the Holy Father to another scene, but because the issue of good and evil has no earthly terminus. We will be asking questions until answers are finally given.

In the February 6, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, in an article called "Forgiveness", author Timothy W. Ryback discusses the Pope's difficult past –– of growing up in Nazi Germany and serving in the Hitler Youth and the Nazi military. But in Ryback's piece one reads the following about then-professor Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) teaching at the University of Tübingen as a young man:

In 1966, when Ratzinger arrived in Tübingen, the university was a center of theological dispute. Students disrupted lectures with cries of "Verflucht sei Jesus!" ("To hell with Jesus!"). Protestant faculty members endorsed flyers denouncing the crucifix as "an expression of sadomasochistic glorification of suffering."

We have already spoken of both human indifference and human culpability regarding suffering and evil. I have argued that humanity is remarkably silent about horrors, except when it comes to horrors and God, and then humanity is quite boisterous about God's alleged weakness, moral turpitude, indifference, or even His non-existence. If there is a God, God is to blame; He's the one who must give account, He is the one who must be judged. God is the source of horrors.

***

I cannot think of a more complex religious image: the Vicar of Christ, the Pope of the Holy Catholic Church, a former Hitler youth and soldier in the Nazi cult, standing at Auschwitz. It is a stillpoint; it is the crux of the matter. Can a sinner be a saint? Are redemption and sanctification possible? Does God love the indifferent and brutal as much as He loves the compassionate and merciful? Does God love the abuser as much as he loves the abused? Are Hitler and Elie Wiesel (a famous Holocaust survivor) loved equally by God?

There is something essentially Christian about Benedict XVI standing within the gates of death. There is something essentially Christian about the very idea of redemption: St. Paul, the outstanding Jew who was a murderer, is the quintessence of the Christian message: all are saved who would be saved. God, as St. Paul says, takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He is a God of gracious irony, proving that grace, love and mercy always trump the rules. My own earthly father taught me this: he taught me that he loved me more than he loved his rules, his reputation, his honor. I was more important than a statute, a commandment. The sheep is more important than the sheepfold; a hole in the fence did not mean that the fence was broken but that a sheep was lost, and in jeopardy. God cares for the lost, He pursues them; and He finds them in order to make them whole. This is what my father taught me, and it is essentially Christ's message to the world.

And yet there is a whole world of people who believe that rules are God; that a lost sheep deserves his or her plight; that the fence should just be fixed to keep only the good sheep in, and the bad sheep out.

Perhaps I am rambling, but I ramble over brambles and thorns to get to one important point, a point that might indeed save one sheep from a disasterous decision, and that point is this: To hell with Jesus indeed!

***

I have said it before and I will say it again: The Christian gospel has it all exactly right. Christianity is separated from all other religions by having, not the valley climb to the summit, but the summit tumble down to the valley. There is no Moses climbing to receive a Word from God in the Gospel story; there is no Muhammad receiving the very words of a radically transcendent God whose message is all about making men better men. The message of Christianity is about a God tumbling to Hell in order to make God a better God. I border on blasphemy, I know, but hear me out.

***

Years ago I was painting a school gymnasium with a college friend when a horse fly, a large nasty bloodthirsty fly with stinging jaws, landed on my friend's leg. My friend was quick to snatch it, and, in the course of looking at it, my friend asked me if the pest was "one of the nasty biting flies". I told him that it was indeed, and that it was cousin to the smaller though no less nasty deer fly. To my horror, my friend pulled the wings off the fly and tossed it to the ground. "Suffer!" he shouted. I quickly walked over and crushed the wingless fly beneath my foot.

Odd that such a moment should have become a defining moment in my life. Earlier that year I had a young man in my dorm (I was an RA for three years) whose father, an atheist, threw out a stiff challenge to the idea of original sin or original culpability. "Why should God be upset with me if I cannot help but be a sinner? I did not ask to be born. How then am I accountable?" It is a great challenge, and I was stumped for months. But when I crushed the fly beneath my foot, I knew I had an answer. And that answer begins with the character of God. Was my friend, the wing-ripping, sardonic and merciless man before me, anything like the God of the universe? Did God delight in abusing that which itself was abusive; did God aim to punish a fly that was just being itself? Would a just God punish a being that had no choice but to be unpleasant?

The clarity with which I divined my way through the problem took the following course. I imagined that I, an outsider to the fly's world yet a being full of love for all flies, descended to the mere existence of a fly. I was, to a perfect match, a horsefly. And to the other flies I spoke:

I know that you do not know exactly what it is you do. But if I were to tell you that you were an awful, nasty creature, what would you say? If I told you that the things you bite, the things from which you draw your life, are injured viciously by you, and that they loathe you, would you care? Trust me when I say this: I am not blaming you. In fact, let me state that you were even made this way. I made you this way. But now I ask you this. What if I were to tell you that you could become something new, wonderful, lovely? What if I told you I could transform you, I could liberate you from this plight? Would you follow? Would you choose to be new, different, lovely, though still in essence who you were created to be? Would you choose to be more lovely than the butterflies if I promised you such wonder? Or would you reject me?

My question to you, dear reader, is this: If I really could transform the flies, if I really could deliver them from their plight and I showed them incontrovertibly that I could, who would be responsible if they refused? If the flies could be completely transformed and yet essentially remained their fully undifferentiated selves, and they refused so great a blessing, who is to blame if they chose to remain nasty biting bugs? Surely not their creator, even if He, indeed, had created them to bite. For now He was offering them a singular gift, a chance to participate in their creation; they were to be co-creators in their new lives. But, and here is a critical point, if they refused their new lives, they would be endorsing their viciousness as wonderful and desirable. In short, if they chose to be nasty and untransformed, they would become the sole creators of who and what they were.

For those who have an understanding of the problem of predestination and free will, we come to another crux, another crossroad. For here we see something amazing. Even if the creator of the flies made them to be vicious, should they refuse his offer, they have become their own creators, setting the creator free. The flies can no longer complain that they were made to be mean by someone else: they have freely made their decision, and they have continued in their evil ways. The flies have chosen, and their NO to the creator is the one thing that is truly their own: It is a wondrous act of free will.

However, should any fly choose to be transformed, should any fly choose to be a co-creator in his (or her) re-creation, that fly would make a startling pronouncement: I had nothing to do with it at all! For the fly, now more glorious than a butterfly, would announce that his choice was not of his making, as the wondrous world in which he lived was not his doing: "You see, I am indeed new, but I had nothing to do with either the option or the choosing. I did not present the choice to myself, it came to me; I did not create the idea of a butterfly, it came from above. My assent is hardly a choice. It is more that I have been chosen, for my creator came to me at a point in time with a wonderful bit of news; I did not come to HIM with the news, but He came to me." In other words, the transformed fly would say that his YES to the creator was not really his; he was predestined to be transformed. For he did not come up with the whole idea in the first place. And, as a result, both the creator and created were set free.

So in short, free will means saying NO; but it has nothing to do with saying YES.

Where does this fit in with the problem of evil? It fits right here: that Christ became a fly, was confronted by the vicious who could not be, on their own, otherwise; they submitted Him to capital punishment for making the cosmos in the first place; He died and descended to Hell, and returned as a transcendent butterfly with POWER. And then He said, "You've killed me. I've suffered. I've taken the blame for starting it all; I have taken your sins upon me and called them my own. And now the whole of sin is buried, hidden away, tossed into the abyss. I am the murderer, and the murdered; I am the rapist and the raped; I am the Nazi and the Jew. I have been all things in all ways in all times; you have punished me and I have succumbed. And now that you are no longer to blame, now what? Will you come to me now? For there is no one left to blame."

***

"Verflucht sei Jesus! To Hell with Jesus!" To Hell indeed. For it is the God that was believed to be vindictive and petty, mean and cold, that we discover in Christ is a different God: He is the God who SUFFERS, who succumbs to the death inherent in even the smallest sin. He would rather be in hell with us than in heaven without us. He has come, He has shown us that He is a different God. "Come unto me, and I will give you rest," He offers to Jew, Gentile, and Nazi alike. And yet, and yet …

There are those who refuse, who resist transformation, healing. And in so doing their NO to God becomes a YES to sorrow, sin, death, and suffering. They freely choose to be sole creators in their sorrow; and they resist the gentle Hand that reaches forward. God does not pull off wings; He does not say "Suffer!" We say it in every moment of resistance to transformation; and in keeping our pitiable sorrows we refuse to have our sins transformed to gems. We, those who protest against such grace, true protestants as we are, are the sadomasochists: it's not the God on the Cross who is sadist, masochist. It's the obdurate who view Him that way who are mired in sadomasochism.

Pope Benedict XVI, formerly a little boy in Nazi Germany who helped the Hitler cult perform even one heinous deed, is that perfect emblem of Christianity: The wise are confounded by the grace of a God who saves -- and transforms -- not only that which is lost, but that which is revolting. Grace abounds in Christianity, from sea to sea, star to sun, earth to hearth, Heart to heart. There is no peace without forgiveness, the forgiveness of God toward man, and man toward God; and, most importantly, man to man, woman to woman, brother to sister and Palestinian to Jew. There will be no end to woe without forgiveness. Mark my words.

Forgiveness always requires that something dies, is buried. And then comes the freedom. It is the gospel, the glad tidings. Glad indeed!

Peace to you.

(Concluding thoughts tomorrow, which begin here.)

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved. (Dedicated to James Saunders.)

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil,
The New Yorker

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part II

In Part I of this series, I spoke of suffering, of evil and death; of the Holocaust. I discussed the problem of evil, that the existence of evil proves that God is weak, mean, or both; and that for many people the best conclusion drawn from the harsh realities of suffering is that there is no God at all.

I added my own thoughts on the problem of evil as classically defined, arguing that the problem ignores the obvious assumption in our definition of God, that God is omniscient. As an omniscient Being, God might know that the only way to eradicate evil and suffering from the cosmos is exactly the way we see events unfolding in our lives: omniscience IS at work in every tragedy and in every joy. In other words, God IS doing something, the very thing an all-wise God can only do; and it looks like Life. And it might very well be the case that God was not silent at all during the Holocaust. His voice may indeed have been quite strong. In fact, I have even heard it suggested that had Hitler not been distracted by the Jews in Germany, Poland, France; had Hitler instead ignored them and turned the German machinery of death, destruction and warfare on his enemies, he would have won World War II and far more than 6,000,000 Jews would have been killed. The suggestion posits a heroic idea, that the Jews were something of a glorious sacrifice that saved us all from Nazi tyranny: the Jews were freedom fighters even in their alleged weakness. It was the Jews who destroyed Hitler. Churchill and Roosevelt had nothing to do with it.

This is not an attempt on my part to palliate the evils of the Holocaust, nor am I trying to cheer up the surviving victims of Germany's death camps. I am making a point that God may have indeed been very much at work in profoundly effective and yet strange ways, which is what one would expect of an omniscient God. Omniscience, in fact, may behave in utterly bizarre and contradictory ways; and it may act in obscurity.

A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a spat with a local shop owner about suffering, God, justice. He followed me out to the sidewalk and, in the heat of debate said, "I've done more for the suffering of starving Africans than God ever has." I must say that I understand the sentiment behind this conceit, but I do not understand the conceit. God appears not to be doing anything most of the time; He does not seem to even care. But one of the real problems associated with evil is not that God doesn't care, it's that there is sweepingly broad empirical evidence that most humans don't care either.

About 15 years ago I received a phone call from an old friend grieving about the sad death of a young mother we both knew. My friend was angry at God, for God had let not only Penny (the dead woman) down, He let lots of others down, too. My friend wondered how God could choose not to heed the prayers of Penny and her son, or the prayers of countless people surrounding that tragedy. Even Penny believed that she would be healed! How could God not honor that? How could He be content with yet another motherless child?

After awhile I shared with my friend something that hit my conscience hard. I said that in all of the time that Penny was living, all 26 years of her life, not once had anyone called me to proclaim how glad they were that Penny existed. No one called to praise Penny's smile, her laughter, her sweet goodness. No one called me to praise God for His wonderful creation which was Penny in all her simple glory. No one called to complain that there was not MORE of Penny everywhere; and no one ever said that God was too kind to us all to have created such a wonderful woman in the first place. And yet, in spite of all this silence, people were now mad that God had taken Penny away. Before, there was no gladness around Penny, but after her death there was nothing but madness. No one praised God yesterday, and yet now people were poised to curse Him today.

My friend agreed, and I believe we were both changed during that phone call.

***

I am reminded of something G. K. Chesterton once said. He imagined a rather randy man complaining to God about women and matrimony. "Explain to me God why I can't be with all women?" the man might have asked. To which God replied, "If it comes to that, explain to me why you can be with even one woman?" Chesterton went further, suggesting that Adam and Eve, given the entire cosmos and yet prevented from having just one thing -- an apple -- might have asked God something similar: "Explain to us why we can keep everything we have if we don't have just one thing? Explain why we can't have the apple, too?" God's reply? "Well, if it comes to that, explain the apple."

I am reminded of all this because we often expect an explanation for something taken from us without ever asking ourselves how we were given the thing to begin with. A man may be mad at God when his son is killed in a car wreck; but was he ever grateful to God that he even had a son who would, eventually, die?

What has come to surprise me about many reactions to death and suffering is that people respond with such surprise. When a child dies of a brain tumor or a woman is raped and murdered, one would think that such a thing had never before happened, judging by many survivors' reactions, particularly their reactions toward God. God is to blame, it seems, even though few people take the responsibility for suffering themselves. Like the shopkeeper who thinks he does more to alleviate sorrow than even God, many forget that they are perhaps the reason there is suffering at all. For surely each of us who has had a child knew about rape, murder, disease, fire, pestilence, earthquake, pedophilia, and car crashes BEFORE we had children; surely there is NO ONE on this planet choosing to have children who did not know about these things. And yet, AND YET, knowing this, knowing that death occurs every day; knowing that there are murderers and rapists and wars and droughts and suicides and divorce and cannibals and cancers, and that we nonetheless still choose to have children; all of this should lead us to one question, and one question only: When it comes to suffering and evil, who among us is NOT to blame?

Please note: I am responsible for every bit of suffering my child experiences in life, every bit. Why? Because I knew beforehand that dreadful things MAY happen; I might even have known that they WILL happen, and yet I (not anyone else) CHOSE to bring a child into this world. I am the source of suffering. If there was at least ONE thing I knew before reproducing a child, it was the simple fact that that child will someday DIE.

Interestingly, as I may be responsible for my child's sorrow, I cannot say that I am responsible for my child's joys. And this for the simple reason that before having a child I had no certainty that joy would come his or her way; but I was indeed certain that death MUST come. Life does not guarantee joy, and there is no proof that it ever did, or ever could, or ever will. But every graveyard is proof that even if there is joy, joy, eventually, falls into the ground. With family planning the only guarantee one has is death.

But since sorrow is one of life's guarantees, we can be glad that joy, should it come, is one of life's infinitely wonderful privileges. After all, there is no joy if one is entitled to it; there is no bliss if bliss is one's guaranteed right. Joy can only come in the form of a surprise or it is not joy. Hence, we take a gamble with every breath and in every birth. We hope, we pray; we throw our chance into the hand of omniscience. Surely we cannot blame God when things go wrong, particularly when we don't "blame" Him when things go remarkably right. But when things do go right, surely we are out there thanking God for the privilege of simple existence.

Well, one can only hope.

More tomorrow. [Part III begins here.]

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil

The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part I

Perhaps this will not help at all.

Pope Benedict XVI stood at Auschwitz this past weekend. He entered death chambers. He knelt before the gates of death, and he prayed. And then there was a rainbow.

It is not that the several elements, the prayers and presence of a Pope and a rainbow, are causally connected. It is that we hope they are.

Auschwitz is that geographic point that exists like an oracular black hole. Oracles, as you know, were where pilgrims traveled to hear news from the divine, hopefully good news, though usually not. Auschwitz is like an oracle in reverse: there is nothing proclaimed there, only asked. But no answer comes in that crushing dark, the oppressive silence. Auschwitz is the place of questions, the abyss with no answers. We plead for God, and God hides behind veils of smoke, the smoke of burning bodies. Atop gas chambers, birds sing. God says nothing.

The problem of evil, at least in theology, is framed something like this: If God is all-powerful and all-good, He could or would stop evil. Since there is evil, God is either not all-powerful or all-good. Many philosophers have chosen to dismiss God as not all-powerful, needing God to be at least all-benevolent. Many have rejected the idea of God altogether in light of the facts of evil and suffering. And a few malcontents have chosen to see God as so much badness, a real sadist in the sky.

Those theologians and philosophers who believe that God must be both omnipotent and benevolent often defend Him by noting God's free choice to give humanity free will; as such, He permitted us to make a mess of things. And so we have. Of course, really shrewd thinkers note that if God did in fact design humanity and the cosmos this way He is still responsible for starting the whole thing in the first place. Free will arguments don't really absolve God of apparent culpability.

Pope Benedict XVI, like countless other people before him, stood at Auschwitz and asked, “Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?" Of course, I recognize that the Holy Father is asking the question rhetorically; that he is revealing his humanity, his compassion, and his ability to identify with doubt, sorrow, pain. He is like the Psalmist, or like the prophets before him: How long, O, Lord, will you let our enemies prevail? Even the Christian Savior asked in His darkest hours, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Women huddled in a gas chamber asked the question with perfect lucidity.

If readers will permit, I would like to confront the problem of evil (theodicy) in a few posts here at Contratimes. And the first place I would like to start is with the problem itself. For it strikes me as self-evident that the classic problem, that God can't be either omnipotent or benevolent before the facts of evil, is thoroughly wrong-headed.

Not long ago I called a radio talk program to join in on a conversation about this very problem. The guest was a former professor of mine, Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, and I asked if anyone had considered whether perhaps an omniscient God, one knowing everything in a state of all-wisdom, would KNOW that the only way to overcome evil in the world is to overcome evil exactly the way we see things working out every day. For all any one of us knows, an all-wise God would say to us, "You know, I am destroying evil, I am alleviating suffering; and this is the ONLY way for me to do so. This is omniscience intervening." In other words, omniscience would know exactly how to destroy the evil and suffering that besets all creatures, and that destruction might be what we are witnessing in every breath and in every sunset. There can be no other way. Should God just step in and stop, for instance, Hitler from killing Jews, then a far greater evil may follow. Oddly, the talk show host would have none of this: She wanted to blame God for being weak or malevolent. She could not buy the idea of omniscience. And I believe that she could not buy it because she had never thought of it before.

Peter Kreeft, as would be expected of a philosopher, ran with the question. He added that some have speculated that if Hitler had not committed suicide, for example, and that he was instead arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, we might find ourselves living under the dreaded Nazi flag today. For a person cannot tell how one thing ultimately influences another; one cannot tell what is materially the less evil path in the long run. One can only hope; one can only stand on principles when confronting injustice and evil. But one cannot know, unless one is God, whether one's actions will have an ill or healthy effect on the world. Kreeft's words were engaging, and correct.

Hopefully Dr. Kreeft won't mind if I put his words differently. If it were up to us, our battle with evil might be a bit like administering antibiotics: they appear to work as a victorious solution to infections, but in the long run, antibiotics may in fact have weakened humanity's innate abilities to self-immunize. The infections we beat short-term may have been overcome long-term by themselves had we just waited long enough for the human immune system to evolve. One simply does not know. Nor does doltish humanity know what God's sudden "dramatic" intervention might look like, or what effect it might have.

But the assumption in all theological discussions is that God does indeed know. God is either omniscient or He is not. If He is not, it is awfully hard to call Him God. And if He is omniscient, then one can only conclude that the very reality we are in is the best reality for overcoming sin, evil and suffering. To return to the antibiotic image for a second, it would be wrong for a sceptic to conclude that because there is a battle between cells in a person's body the antibiotics are not working, for the battle is proof that they are. If anyone concludes that an antibiotic that does not work "fast enough" (for whom?) or "well enough" is neither potent nor good, that person should be reminded that there are plenty of measures one can take to instantly and completely eradicate an infection. Killing the patient is one such measure. But good doctors are a bit like God. They are wise to the idea that killing the bad often takes time so as not to kill the good. God could perhaps instantly wipe the earth clean of all evil, but what would be left, and where is the wisdom in that?

And yet there is one more thing that complicates matters, and it is a hard pill to swallow: God is that antibody that loves everyone. In other words, God, who is love as well as justice, and who exists as the only all-wise being, loves the very persons many of us consider evil. This is alarming for many of us, but it is Christianity's truest, boldest and most controversial assertion: God loved the Jews in the gas chambers as much as he loved Hitler outside them; God loves the victimizer as much as any victim. It is almost too difficult to even write, let alone admit into one's reflections on these matters. But it must be true. God cannot HATE what we might hate; His wisdom must not be void of love or justice, nor can His love and justice be void of wisdom. God loved Hitler, and all other disgusting tyrants, as much as He loves any of us. And we know Christ the Shepherd leaves the beloved flock to find the one beloved stray, even if that stray is a rebel. That is the most difficult problem in the eradication of evil: How does God eradicate it without destroying everybody, and everything? How does God purge humanity of evil without destroying the entire body?

Only an omniscient Being has the knowledge, and power, to do that. Or there is no such Being at all.

More tomorrow, I hope. (Part II begins here.)

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
[Related post at WI Catholic can be read here.]

Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil

The Most Important Question: Epilogue

In parts I and II of this series, I mentioned a belief in inevitability that runs through Islam; a theological concept of predestination. This article of belief is known as al-Qadar. Marxist- Communist doctrine is similar, claiming that the proletariat struggle against the bourgeoisie (with the proletariat's eventual overthrow of that bourgeoisie and the socializing of the means of production) is an inevitable process of history. Of course, this Marxist idea is a religious idea, as there are no logical or scientific proofs to Marxist idealism.

I was a bit heavy-handed, I think, in attributing by innuendo to all Muslims that all Muslims are quiet about terrorism, or are supportive of or comfortable with al-Qadar. There are problems in Islamic theological discourse between Muslim clerics, with sundry divisions, in ways familiar to those of us attuned to divisions in Christian theology. No one group is ever completely homogeneous.

Let me direct you to this interesting condemnation of Islam's old infatuation with suicide bombings. It is delivered by a Muslim cleric. Please take the time to read this speech reprinted at MEMRI. It is revealing (though there are problems with it). [Thanks to Frontpagemag.com for citing it.]

I will end my comments with this curious syllogism found at Answering Islam.org:

• (1) If A, then B. If Allah endorses Islam, then it should expand endlessly.
• (2) Not-B. But it is not expanding endlessly (see this analysis).
• (3) Therefore, not-A. Therefore, Allah does not endorse Islam.

In a technical sense, this is a valid syllogism, a modus tollens, though I find such syllogisms faulty. For this could be an equally valid modus tollens:

1. If my dog is home, the front door will be locked.
2. The front door is not locked.
3. Therefore my dog is not home.

But the syllogism about Islam raises an interesting point. If there is a God, and that God has established a religion, one would think that that religion would expand and not contract. Of course, Christianity's earliest writings predict a great apostasy in "the last days" from its own folds, but I do not believe Islam makes similar claims of itself. Islam is much more concerned about earthly terrority and holy sites than is Christendom: Visitation to such sites is one of the Five Pillars of Islam (Hajj). Much of Islam is fixed on earthly dominance and expansion, and thus is much more vulnerable to the problem raised in the syllogism printed above.

IRAQ CONSTITUTION

As you know by now, the deadline has passed in Iraq, and the Iraqis have not agreed upon a constitution. This news is only disappointing in the most superficial analysis. To me, the news is heartening and exciting. That one Iraqi lawmaker said that the constitution thus far drafted has been drafted "by the powerful people, and not by the people," is beautiful, for it reveals the depth of understanding some if not all Iraqis possess about the drafting of a constitution. Even some lawmakers have recommended that parts of the constitution be sent to the Iraqi people in a referendum. In that way, perhaps, the seminal elements of democracy will be fertilized even more. But what is heartening is that the process is taking time; even lots of time. Which proves, at the very least, that people are taking this process seriously, and are not rushing off pell-mell to take control of an ancient and vulnerable culture.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

The Most Important Question: On Inevitability And The War On Terror, Part II

In Part I of this series (which is a prerequisite for understanding what follows), I argued that the Islamic article of belief – al-Qadar – the sixth of six such articles, must lead us who reside in the West to this important question: Has Allah willed the destruction – or the submission – of the West?

As I have shown, al-Qadar is the will of Allah; that all that comes to pass has been willed by him. Thus, as the towers imploded at Ground Zero, Muslims submitted to Allah's will – the towers were willed down by Allah's fiat. There is therefore no real condemnation of the act of terror: Since it happened, it was meant to happen. There is no denying Allah's hand.

Of course, this teaching is fraught with difficulty, as many Muslim scholars admit. Where is human free will in Allah's sovereignty? Does Allah will evil and sinfulness? How does a Muslim understand devastating personal or military defeat? (For some analysis of the problems such questions raise, follow the links in Part 1.)

Irrespective of the difficulty of al-Qadar, the fact remains that most if not all practicing Muslims are reluctant to either condemn or reject this article of belief. Why? Because it is fundamental to that faith, and to the very essence of Islam, a word which means "to submit" or "surrender". Allah must be sovereign. He can not be surprised; he cannot have other wills competing against his own; he cannot NOT know everything. Otherwise, he would not be all-powerful or all-knowing. In short, he would not be Allah.

THE WAR ON TERROR AND AL-QADAR

In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, an Israeli army major reservist wrote about his role in removing his fellow citizens from Gaza, a painful and harrowing ordeal. Michael B. Oren writes about how he felt prior to that dreadful eviction:

"My feelings were, at best, ambivalent. I wanted to end Israel's occupation of Gaza's 1.4 million Palestinians and preserve Israel's Jewish majority, but feared abetting the terrorists' claim that Israel had fled under fire." [emphasis added]

(see Page A10, August 23, 2005)

What is important to see in Oren's comments is what I've highlighted in bold: He feared that Israel's withdrawal would fuel the terrorists' belief that Israel was routed by superior force. Why is that important? Because it supports the Islamic belief that, if a thing happens, Allah wanted it to happen. Israel's withdrawal from Gaza proves the supremacy of Allah's will, and the supremacy of his Lordship over even other gods. After all, there is no other God but Allah. The Jewish God is no match at all.

Remember Osama bin Laden's celebration over the surprising (to him) collapse of the World Trade Center towers? The collapses proved his faith in Allah; Allah was on his side. Similarly, when the mujahideen pushed back the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, this success was proof that Allah was against the greatest Western super-power in Europe and Asia. And the retreat of American troops in Somalia proved more of the same.

So Israel's "retreat" is seen as a defeat, and a sign that Allah is on the move.

WHAT ARE OUR OPTIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

For a moment, let us countenance the foreign policy of someone like Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother of a fallen soldier camped out at "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX. Let us agree that America should begin an immediate and systematic withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq and even Afghanistan. What would those actions do to Islamic religious beliefs about its holy war against Western infidels?

Answer: It would fuel confidence that Allah was in fact supreme, and supremely interested in defeating the infidel West. It would vindicate the insurgents' attacks along countless roadsides. It would be cause for celebration. What will be was MEANT to be. Meant by Allah.

Thus, retreat and withdrawal from the Middle East is an act of concession on a religious scale, and not a military one.

In Part 1, I asserted that the West, particularly the United States, might want to rethink its military strategy in Iraq or withdraw. Clearly, withdrawal is not an option. But its current military strategy may in fact be as ineffective and dangerous as withdrawal. Why?

If in fact al-Qadar infuses all of Islam, or most of it, then perhaps the only military strategy effective in dealing with Islamic militants is profound military superiority. And I mean profound. (Please note: I am not advocating this, only analyzing what is before us.) If, for instance, the West were to destroy all Islamic holy sites, making them in fact uninhabitable and unrecognizable; if the West obliterated every alleged Allah-backed stronghold, the Islamic faith in Allah would be sorely shaken, and may perhaps never recover. In fact, Islam might even be destroyed, or reformed into something hardly recognizable to its current form.

Again, I am not advocating this, nor am I wishing this. I am merely suggesting what may be the only viable military option to confront those Muslims committed to Allah's victory over alleged Western infidelity.

There is, of course, another way. We could do what I said yesterday: We could let the theologians fight the battle.

"CONVERT THEM TO CHRISTIANITY"

Recall what Ann Coulter said shortly after 9/11: The West should, among other things, invade Islamic countries and "convert them to Christianity". In a way, her remarks were brilliantly on point. For what we need to do is win the propaganda war with radical Islam: We need to show the most aggressive corners of Islam that the religious idea of Allah's sovereignty is not intellectually viable. In other words, we should not be launching sorties of bombs on Muslim strongholds, but sorties of brochures pointing out the weakness of a deity that wills everything. (Of course, this would violate Church/State or Mosque/State separation requirements. But what must America do if indeed the war on terror consists of a religion battling a secular state. Should that secular state ignore religion altogether? Should it be mute about it? Or should it engage its opponents in a battle of wits?)

What? Have I lost my mind? No. What I am saying is this: Any deity deemed to be all-powerful is not a deity if he (or she) WILLS everything. Willing EVERYTHING is a sign of weakness, not strength. Really, who is stronger, that Being which MAKES everything turn out his way, or that Being which permits things to happen randomly and yet nonetheless conform to his will?

Think of it this way (I'll try not to be too theological here). Imagine two men in an adventurer's race from New York City to Katamandu. One racer maps out every step; makes plans to the final minute; mapping out every runway and highway and airport escalator. The other racer plans nothing other than a willful first step. And with that first step he is carried in a whirlwind of events: he is hit by a car, taken to hospital, blown out a window by a tornado, lands in a ship, shipwrecks at sea, swims to shore, is offered a bicycle ride by a one-legged man. The racer with the plan and the map is making great headway, and yet, at the finish line, is amazed to find that his opponent is buying fabric in a Katamandu market. Which of these racers is really the more adventurous, and even the more powerful? Is the man who plans and controls every step powerful, or the one who finds his way through chaos?

But we are not talking about men here, we are talking of gods. And if there is a God, it would seem to me that He must be so all-powerful that His will would still cosmically prevail without His needing to decree every single instant. (As theologian Karl Barth said of the Christian Incarnation, God is so omnipotent He can be impotent and still be God. God has the power to be powerless.) Moreover, His Will is not some sort of preconceived outcome, like decreeing that Jerusalem is the seat of Utopia. His Will is not a quantity but a quality: It is not that the end of all things is defined by the walls of a perfected state. The end is defined by whether the end of all things is LOVING. Hence, God's will is more about His heart than His head. He does not have a PLAN. The creation is enfused with His nature, and thus, no matter how creation unfolds, through myriad accidents and trials and seemingly random events, it will end up according to God's nature. The paths to the end may be infinite; but the end will always be the same: God's will crosses the finish line first, and the prize is love and gentleness and prodigal generosity. The prize is not a better government or a better nation-state or caliphate.

It is this sort of argument that needs to be dropped on the "fatalists" at war with us. What is needed is the sowing of healthy doubt. What is needed is to make people, no matter who they are, doubt themselves enough to wonder if they in fact "might be wrong." What we need ultimately is the destruction of certainty; religious certainty.

Who are the most gentle, easy people with whom to debate religion? Is it that person who KNOWS they are right about God? Is it that person who is certain you are wrong for believing in Christ? Is it that arrogant agnostic certain of his doubt? Or is it that person who is health-fully doubtful, recognizing the role of faith in all knowledge; recognizing that our certainties are often the worse thing about us? In short, are not the best dialogues on religion between those who are genuinely (not feignedly) humble about their beliefs, admitting their vulnerabilities and doubts?

There are only a few ways to fight the War on Terror: As an all out flexing of muscularity and blustering of machismo; a turning heel and running scared; a half-hearted display of strength; a reasoned, calculated blend of force and diplomacy. America may in fact be involved in the shrewdest type of warfare ever seen: superior firepower blended with conviviality and fraternity and patient restraint. But unless the War on Terror includes a better bomb for the mind and heart – the religious mind and heart – the war will continue on its perennial, 4000-year-old course.

This is a religious battle over the nature of God. I am, I think, certain of it. But I could be wrong.

Peace to you.

(Here is Part III, the epilogue.)

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved

The god of love

Permit me to announce my rejection of Christ. For if Christianity is as the United Church of Christ (UCC) suggests in its recent TV commercial, then I have no interest in being a Christian. Such religiosity is anathema to me; and I'm anathema to it.

The commercial in question - Bouncer - depicts people queueing up outside a church. Each person is subjected to a security screening by two black-garbed musclemen determining each person's legitimacy. A homosexual couple is tossed aside, as is a young, jewelry-pierced man, apparently hispanic. Also rejected is an African-American child; and even a young man in a wheelchair. Finally the screen fades to black and the words 'Jesus didn't turn people away ... Neither do we,' appear in white. Then a male voice-over: 'The United Church of Christ. No matter who you are, or where you are in life's journey, you are welcome here.' (To see the ad for yourself, go here and follow the links.)

When I first saw the UCC ad (stumbled upon while sifting through sundry TV channels), I genuinely thought it was a parody, perhaps created by The Daily Show; for the piece is that laughable and absurd. But my first impression was quickly replaced by shock when I saw the official UCC logo emblazoned on the screen, topped with these words: God is still speaking.

Yeah, sure he is.

The important point presented in the commercial is of Christ's acceptance. It is the claim that Christ accepts all people 'no matter who they are.' But one wonders what this means. If we know anything about Christ, he rebuked the self-righteous, condemned not only adultery but even lust (a very biological drive), castigated 'money changers' in the holy temple, and exorcized demons from disturbed people.

(I wonder if the UCC's Jesus demonstrated expansive tolerance with his disciple Peter. One need only recall Christ's gentle, approving words issued to that first Bishop of Rome: 'Get thee behind me, Satan.')

Yeah, Jesus just accepted everybody.

What's disgusting is that if the UCC is about openness, its doors are rather closed; closed to people who are Christian fundamentalists, or alleged homophobes, or members of the Boy Scouts. Each of these is not permitted to cross the UCC's tolerant threshold. But maybe that's unfair. A homophobe, for example, is no doubt welcome on the condition that he or she doesn't seek a position of leadership in the UCC, unless such a person changes.

(Apparently some people can and must change.)

Remember, according to the UCC, where ever you are in life's journey, you are accepted by the UCC, unless, of course, you are an unacceptable person. With compassion like that, it seems the UCC might actually keep the real Jesus out of its churches, the man who was rejected and despised for the sins of the world.

Contrary to the UCC, there has never been a church that has tossed out people before they even enter. Until now. After all, the Christian Church has always been about saving people from their sins. It's only a gross misunderstanding that the Church is the household of the whole. Rather, it's the household of the broken. So to suggest that people were banned for being sinners is absurd.

But that's not the suggestion, is it? The suggestion is that homosexuality, for example, is normal, and that homophobia is sin. But with the UCC's ban on homophobic Boy Scouts now well known, it's clear that the only church to ban sinners, for the first time in history, is the United Church of Christ.

Let's assume the UCC is right: churches are un-Christlike. But if Christ taught anything, it is the love of one's enemies. How then does the UCC's commercial demonstrate its love for those people with whom it categorically disagrees? It invokes Christ in a slick TV ad, using him to mock and rebuke the UCC's neighbors. Shame!

Give me a Christ that wants to smash the world to bits. That's a Christ worth following. For love is ferocious, if it's anything. I've no interest in a deity that is neither loving nor divine. A Christ that accepts everyone as they are is worthless.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: United Church of Christ, Bouncer Advertisement

God bless you please, Mr. Robinson

Rindge, NH (3/28/05) - In a speech at Franklin Pierce College entitled 'What in God's name is going on in America?', Gene Robinson, the feted bishop of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire, takes umbrage with that bogeyman of American politics, the 'religious right.' (www.mledger.com/2005/archives/1-news-033105.shtml)

Perhaps Mr. Robinson is referring to the audacious declaration found at this well-known religion's website:

'BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the UUA urges its member congregations and individual Unitarian Universalists to proclaim and promote our principles by becoming active participants in public institutions such as schools, libraries, political parties, and governmental bodies.' [General Assembly, 1996]

Of course, Mr. Robinson could not be referring to that kind of activism.

That the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) baldly calls its members to express their religiosity by directly and unabashedly promoting UUA principles in all aspects of American political life hardly raises Robinson's eyebrows. Why is he so indifferent? Because the UUA is a supporter of Mr. Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in Christendom; and he shares with the religious left the hope of creating a liberal, tolerant theocracy, where an 'all-loving God (read 'permissive') is going to be victorious.'

The UUA as a self-described beacon of the religious left is gratuitously political in its agenda, and is, in all ways, a promoter of ideals unsurprisingly similar to the Democratic Party (particularly the left wing of that party). Find a Unitarian-Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you’ve found a miracle.

Is it not a grotesque picture, or a macabre irony, that a religious official would use his religion in politics to censure religion in politics? Mr. Robinson himself is clearly fixated on reproaching the Bush Administration’s policies on everything, and this in the name of his church and his God. Is everyone OK with that?

Moreover, Mr. Robinson claims that God is 'horrified' by the things being done in God's name, ostensibly by the Republicans, and that he, Robinson, not only knows what God is thinking, he knows what God would not be horrified by: namely the political ideas of Mr. Robinson, which, again unsurprisingly, are identical with the Democratic Party platform. What a prophetic voice! (Just think that Mr. Robinson believes conservatives are arrogant.)

Sadly, lost on Mr. Robinson, is that he is guilty of promoting a theocracy that pleases the religious left.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

-'It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.' Charles Peguy