[+/-] On Pain and Its Redemption

I got thinking recently about the idea that all the suffering we experience is ultimately for our own good. It's true that we often seem to become stronger, wiser, more compassionate, and so on, as a result of hardship. Perhaps God is justified in allowing or causing pain because ultimately the good it produces in us outweighs the inherent evil of our suffering.

For most of us (Kantians may disagree), the ethicality of inflicting pain on someone "for their own good" is a question of ratios. How much pain are we talking about? How much good may result? How likely is the desired result, how devastating the worst case scenario, etc. I think we can agree that disciplining children, in a reasonable and restrained way, is necessary and good. Few of us would wish that we had never experienced pain, and perhaps some of us who have experienced great pain believe that it ultimately worked for our benefit or betterment. It's difficult to speculate about what a completely pain-free creation might look like, but I'm willing to concede that a certain amount of pain (perhaps much more than I would think) is necessary in order to make us what we are meant to be.

Still, it's hard to imagine all the pain we experience having a positive effect. I don't have a problem with God putting us through adversity, but sometimes it feels like He's pruning with a canon. Pain seems to weaken or destroy people as often as it heals them.

It's not the existence of pain that bothers me. It's not even the amount, strictly. (It certainly looks excessive to me, but who am I to say what's necessary?) What horrifies me about pain is that it seems to be distributed completely at random. Pain falls in great mounds and bare spots, choking many of us with more than we can bear and leaving some with less than they need. Could it be that the God who wrote the laws of physics and wove our DNA allows suffering to rain down on us, but cannot regulate the flow? Or am I to believe that tsunamis and genocides are doled out with eyedropper precision? How then can I account for those who are overwhelmed and ruined by extraordinary pain?

In my attempts to account for what seems to be a profligacy of suffering, I feel that I have a choice between two extremes: either I must believe that God is in way over his head, powerless to reign in the horrific and gratuitous suffering of so many of his creatures, or else I must believe that God's power far surpasses even my wildest dreams.

Please do not confuse the latter god with that of orthodox Christianity. I'm talking about a god who possesses power and a plan that far surpasses what any religion permits me to hope for. A god who is at work on something wholly beyond my understanding - a god who will not merely bring an end to suffering, but who secretly collects every drop of senseless pain and evil and works it all for some greater good.

I don't see a place for a middle-strength god - one who commands the wind and the waves but cannot stop hurricanes and tsunamis, who saves forever His elect, but loses the rest of creation to hellfire.

I don't think the profusion of senseless and destructive suffering is a mere misperception. I see evil in this world that no theodicy can account for, and no god I've heard of could possibly set right. I do not have the ability to be optimistic about the ultimate goodness of our suffering. My only choices are dark pessimism, or wild, desperate hope.

[+/-] What I Learned About Quakers

I attended a Quaker church last Sunday. He's what I think of when I think Quakers:
1. Underground railroad
2. Old-fashioned clothes, like the the oatmeal guy.
3. Pacifism
4. Mysticism
Pretty good list. I've always thought Quakers were awesome, even though I didn't know much about them.

Well it turns out Quaker meetings are boring as hell. Seriously, this may have been the most boring church service I have ever attended in my life. But not in a bad way. I mean, I can imagine it being good if I was a different person. Basically it was 45 minutes of silence, followed by a brief open sharing time. People just talked about what they'd been thinking about; none of it was overtly "spiritual".

So I'm not likely to attend their meetings on a regular basis, but I am pretty much in love with them. Specifically their beliefs and values. Their big thing is that each of us individually is guided by God, and that this guidance, not the Bible, is our ultimate authority. They don't believe in creeds, religious hierarchies, or church rituals. Sometimes I wonder if Christians really believe we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and what we might look like if we did. Maybe we'd look like the Quakers.

So they're radically individualistic, and also really into experiencing God, in a low key, mystical kind of way, but they're also big on community. That's why they come together to sit quietly for an hour: apparently they're actually seeking some kind of communal mystical experience with God. They get awesome points for putting the words "communal" and "mystical" in the same sentence.

They're so serious about this that they make decisions by consensus. They have no church leadership of any kind. Instead they have business meetings were they each listen to what they feel is God's leading and then they talk about it until the all agree.

Also, they're extremely egalitarian, and have been since the beginning. Not only did they oppose slavery, but since their conception in the 17th century Quakers have refused to acknowledge class distinctions and have treated women as social and spiritual equals. (Who would have guessed the Quaker Oats guy was a feminist?)

Other cool things: they dress plainly, they've never been anti-intellectual, they don't distinguish between the sacred and the secular, they don't believe in telling lies or attempting to deceive in any way, they'd sooner go to jail than fight in a war, and they welcome non-Christians as full members of their communities. You can be a Muslim, a Buddhist, or an Atheist and also be a Quaker.

(Apparently there's a more conservative branch of Quakers which places more emphasis on the Bible and conducts slightly more conventional meetings. The statements above are generalities, and are probably more accurate for liberal Quakers.)

I know not all of you will be as impressed by this stuff as I am, but whatever you think about their beliefs (or however boring you find their meetings) you have to respect these people for the way they live their convictions. Besides the anti-slavery stuff, Quakers won the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize, and have been involved in the founding of organizations like Greenpeace, Oxfam, and Amnesty International.

[+/-] Ebenezer Scrooooge

I attended the St Joseph's College Chapel this week. I liked it. It still had that high church feel, but was small enough to feel cozy. They read the story of the rich man and Lazarus, which I found confusing. Here's the last bit:

"Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment."

Abraham replied, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them."

"No, father Abraham," he said, "but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent."

He said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

- Luke 16:27-31

I find that hard to believe. Does Jesus really think that people who don't listen to scripture won't be moved by miracles? Don't we all know people who repented only after experiencing a miracle? And didn't miracles accompanied the words of God throughout the scriptures, particularly in the cases of "Moses and the Prophets"?

Didn't God preform many miracles through Moses to give authority to his message?

Didn't Elijah, the greatest of the prophets, call down fire from heaven to prove to Israel that his God was the true God?

Didn't Jesus give his witnesses miraculous power, and wasn't the performance of miracles a cornerstone of evangelism in the early church? Wasn't the great missionary Paul converted as the direct result of a miracle (specifically, an encounter with a dead man)?

Didn't Jesus himself augment his teaching with miracles? Didn't he use these miracles to shock people, to make them think, and to establish his authority as a messenger from God?

And isn't Jesus' own resurrection from the dead the cornerstone of Christianity? Didn't this great miracle (the very thing that the parable says would change no one's mind) open the disciples' eyes to the truth of Jesus' message?

This parable's perspective on miracles sounds very modern to me. People are always trying to tell me that we don't get a lot of miracles these days because people wouldn't listen to them anyway, and the Bible by itself should be enough to convince anyone. I don't see that anywhere in the Bible ...except here. Can anyone explain this to me? Can this passage be harmonized with the flashy methods of prophecy and evangelism that pervade the Bible? (I've included a few biblical counterpoints below.) Does anyone believe that people who reject the Bible would not be moved even by an encounter with a dead man?

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit.

- Ro 15:18-19

But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.

- 1 Cor 4:19-20

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

- 1 Cor 15:14