Perfect God, stupid humans

In an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times, philosopher Yoram Hazony asks an important theological question.

Is God perfect? You often hear philosophers describe “theism” as the belief in a perfect being — a being whose attributes are said to include being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent (among others). And today, something like this view is common among lay people as well.

Hazony goes on to point out two stumbling blocks for belief in God as a perfect being. First, if God is perfect, then why is there so much imperfection in the world, particularly in the human element? Everything else around us has its place and purpose, but we are willful, selfish, greedy, and often malevolent creatures. Second, the God of scripture is depicted as surprised by our sinful nature, prone to collective punishment, easy to anger, jealous, and the spitting image of an abusive parent incapable of unconditional love. The scriptural literalists have no answer to why the God found in Genesis looks so different than the loving and merciful God described by Jesus and New Testament writers. He goes on to suggest that perhaps the best way to reconcile all of the head popping contradictions is to argue that God is not perfect and does not have to be. It is the more "realistic" view.

The ancient Israelites, in other words, discovered a more realistic God than that descended from the tradition of Greek thought. But philosophers have tended to steer clear of such a view, no doubt out of fear that an imperfect God would not attract mankind’s allegiance. Instead, they have preferred to speak to us of a God consisting of a series of sweeping idealizations — idealizations whose relation to the world in which we actually live is scarcely imaginable. Today, with theism rapidly losing ground across Europe and among Americans as well, we could stand to reconsider this point. Surely a more plausible conception of God couldn’t hurt.

There is another possibility. The flaws are not in God but in us.

First of all, no one, absolutely no one, can claim to understand what God is. God defies our senses and far exceeds the bounds of our puny intellect. We cannot begin to imagine God as a being that existed before matter sprang forth in a glorious explosion of energy. God spans time and space. We can get our head around some Titan-like human entity residing in the stratosphere above our little planet, meddling in human affairs. While that conception readily fits within our constructions of reality, it creates God in our image. A being that transcends all the boundaries of our existence defies comprehension.

Equally problematic is the concept of perfection. The attributes that define a perfect God are human-centered. We call God all knowing and all powerful, but then struggle with why there is suffering and injustice in the world. If an all powerful God stands by as we struggle with death, disease, and injustices at the hands of our fellow humans, then you begin to think of this deity as callous and unloving. It renders us no more valuable than the animals we slaughter for food or as potential threats to the quality of our lives. We want a God that grants our every wish, dries every tear, and rights every wrong. That is what we expect from a perfect God. Such a God looks like a rich and powerful parent that allows us to live like royalty as long as we obey a few rules, worship, and make a few ritual sacrifices in our daily lives. What an embarrassingly immature theology!

Let's face reality. We are woefully imperfect creatures in our ability to comprehend the universe around us and our place in it. The same goes for our understanding of God. While we may be instinctively drawn to believe in a being that exceeds the limits of our senses and intellect, only in arrogance can we claim to have clear and true picture of God. A life well-lived brings the hope and promise that one day we will come into a more complete understanding of God. As Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13: 8-12, faith, hope, and love hold the keys.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

As for perfection, everything that happens, even the terrible things we do to one another, may be part of a plan in motion. Creation is not static; it is dynamic. We cannot see or understand the end-game and how all the pieces fit. The process may fall short of our hopes, desires, and expectations, but that does not mean it is flawed from a big-picture perspective.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Everything in the universe may be unfolding as God intended. Ultimately, that is the only perfection that counts. As for our understanding of God and our wish-fulfillment model of perfection, it falls far short of perfection.

Small voices

I spoke to my father on the phone yesterday. His memory and word-finding difficulties were out in force. It was painful to hear him struggle. Perhaps it is a blessing that he does not appear to be aware of how much his brain is failing him. Perhaps he wonders why there are more family members and strangers around the house. I wish I knew.

Hanging up, I had one of those strange coincidences. I am was struggling to find the right words to pray. Do I pray for a miraculous recovery or a rapid end to his suffering? I have no idea what would be best for him and for those that love him.

As I struggled with what I should offer in prayer, a strange thing happened. The Grateful Dead's "Box of Rain" came up in the playlist on the stereo. One verse stood out:

Walk into splintered sunlight, 

Inch your way through dead dreams to another land. 

Maybe you're tired and broken,

Your tongue is twisted with words half spoken and thoughts unclear

What do you want me to do, to do for you to see you through?

A box of rain will ease the pain, and love will see you through.

It works as a prayer for what I was feeling at that moment. All I want to know is what I can do to see him through. Somehow praying for what I want or he might want seems presumptuous and a tad arrogant. I have no clue what is truly best for him. Doing what I can to ease this time for him is all I really need. No remorse over things not said or not done.

Be it ever so irrational, that just seems to be the way the Holy Spirit speaks to us. The words we need to hear suddenly appear and there is a moment of near perfect clarity.

All too often, it was not the answer I had hoped for. It is not the easy path. On the contrary, more often than not, it is the path filled with hairpin curves, rocks, and thorns. It is also the path that makes you feel most alive.

It boils down to the difference between superstition and faith. Superstition is thinking you have control over the actions of God. Faith is about learning to listen to God. Less about controlling the universe and more about it understanding it. 

Does Heaven matter?

Take a moment and imagine life after death. How do you see the place and those around you?  I doubt you had to work very hard to conjure up a few images. Most of us have indulged in a fantasy or two about Heaven.

Hold on to those heavenly thoughts for a moment or two.

Virtually all the people that claim to believe in God also claim to believe in life in after life. At the heart of many religious traditions is that Heaven is the prize for believing in God. That makes Heaven the linchpin in making sense of these various religious traditions - a very big freaking deal.

There is a growing movement among biblical scholars to question popularly held views about Heaven and the afterlife. The latest book by theologian N. T. Wright (“How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels") debunks many pie-in-the-sky misconceptions about life after death. During in interview published in the Washington Post, Wright makes clear that many Christians have the wrong idea.

“An awful lot of ordinary church-going Christians are simply millions of miles away from understanding any of this.

Wright and fellow theologian Christopher Morse have independently written recent books about what the Jews of the first century and the first followers of Christ thought about Heaven.

“It’s the recovery of the Jewish basis of the Gospels that enables us to say this,” Wright said. “We are so fortunate in this generation that we understand more about first-century Judaism than Christian scholarship has for a very long time. And when you do that, you realize just how much was forgotten quite soon in the early church, certainly in the first three or four centuries.”

Heaven matters as the promise made in John 3:16. In Wright's words, Jesus was given to us “so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God’s new age.” Heaven is that new age.

I have no reason to doubt the scholarship of Wright and Morse. If their previous work is any gauge, then they paint a much clearer picture of Heaven though the eyes of the early followers of Jesus. I only wish they had taken the discussion one step further.

All conceptions about Heaven have one thing in common - they are all wrong. Even the most fertile imagination cannot picture life after our earthly existence. It is beyond anything we can comprehend. There is simply no basis in our experience to picture any of it. Every attempt to flesh out Heaven falls short, even that of the early followers of Jesus.

Jesus understood Heaven but never spent much time talking about it. My guess is that he knew that no matter how he tried to explain the afterlife, it was never going to get through our thick skulls.

Instead, Jesus focused on how we should live this life. Rather than dwell on heaven, you are just going to have trust God enough to believe that it will be worth your while to live as Jesus described. In a word, you are to love. Without exception. Love family, friends, strangers, even enemies. And love means more than just not hurting others, the traditional definition of sin in the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament). It means that it is also a sin to neglect the suffering of others even when that suffering was not your fault. It means mercy and forgiveness rather than rushing to judgment. It means revenge is left to the Lord. It means sincerity in worship matters more than stale rituals. Believe in Jesus enough to do these things and you will be welcomed into the paradise to come.

The real trouble with dwelling on heaven is that is nothing but navel gazing. It is counting the angels on the head of a pin. Jesus said you have work to do. You have to be an effective witness for God's love. Consult the Sermon on the Mount for pointers on how to do that.

And if you want hear God laugh, then fantasize about Heaven as a gated community with you in one of the biggest McMansions. Fantasize about God loving you more than others so you are even spared death and suffering. The whole Rapture Ready nonsense has God laughing out loud. If you want to be first in the Kingdom of Heaven, you better put yourself last in your earthly coil (Matthew 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30). My God, some people are clueless.

Thoughts of the afterlife are a source of comfort when you imagine your loved ones in paradise. It is perfectly understandable. Thoughts of the afterlife with you in paradise and your enemies roasting in the flames of Hell are a sure sign you still have spiritual work to do. You just flunked Forgiveness 101.

It is not what you understand about heaven that matters. The real spiritual gold is in what you understand about how to love others. That is the only real test.