And don't ask too many questions!

I was pretty brave today, and I decided to attend church this morning. It was, in the main, a pretty positive experience. I was able to greet someone who is probably the only reader of this blog other than myself. The music (if not all the paired texts) was pretty good for a summer morning without choir. I was also able to "rekindle" a few friendships that had fallen by the way. These are all pretty good in themselves, and I have been trying to promise myself to not be too critical. If there is anything that might come in a positive way from the Windsor report, then a committment to listening certainly might be the big one. I went determined to listen to any alternative viewpoints that might come my way. Even if I ultimately disagree, a viewpoint that makes me think is not all a bad thing, I suppose.

Today's lessons were for the Third Sunday after Pentecost. The first reading was one of, I believe, the rare appearances of a passage from the book of Job in the church's Sunday readings cycle. It was the "divine answer" of God speaking from the whirlwind to miserable and abused Job. It includes some dramatic imagery on the creation of the ocean and, when you read it literally, some very primitive understandings about the origins of the earth and the oceans. To sum up the substance, it is rather a "Hey, where were you when I set all this stuff up? Did you make the world? No? I didn't think so. When you make your own world, hey, then maybe we'll talk. In the mean time, shut the F--- up." As others have commented many times before, this, "answer" to Job's existential questions is far from satisfying.

On to the Psalm. This was sections of Psalm 107 that, I suspect, were mostly chosen because of some sea/ocean imagery that could tie it to the Job lesson and also the Gospel (see below). The key passage being that it describes some people who "went down to the sea in ships" "He spoke, and a stormy wind arose which tossed high the waves of the sea..." "Then they cried to the Lord..." "He stilled the storm to a whisper."

The reading from the second Epistle to the Corinthians is not precisely on topic, of course. It is the "if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation" passage.

Finally, there was the Gospel reading from Mark in which Jesus performs a nature miracle and calms the windstorm when he and his disciples are caught out on a boat in bad weather. It ends with the disciples saying, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" This is, of course, a pretty good story to tell if you want to make some claims about a superhuman Jesus.

Since the writer of the sermon is not online here to defend himself, and I did not take notes or have his text to refer to, I think it best that the place and person remain nameless. If, somehow, my reflections are a misrepresentation of today's message, then I can at least say that what I believed I heard was something that I have "heard before," and it will not hurt anyone to reflect a bit more on what I perceived as the central points. As I understood it, the essential message was what I think I might call the "superbig" theism argument. While still sticking with a theistic conception of God, the caveat added on is the, "but God is really incomprehensible, so you really can never understand him." This is followed by the immediate corollary of "so you shouldn't even try." Another authority was quoted with a comment from Anselm of Canterbury that I probably paraphrase, "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand."

I think that I can honestly say that I find the "superbig" theism argument rather unconvincing. In spite of claiming that "God" is much more than any theistic concept can make "him," the persons who espouse this conception continue, however, to speak and relate otherwise to a very much smaller and inadequate theistic entity. The God in heaven of the everlasting arms is still right there to step back in after a brief appearance of the incomprehensible immensity of the supertheistic God who bows out quickly before the discussion gets to be too difficult. In the end, it is, I think, just a way to squash any meaningful discussion. It is a fallacial argument.

If, however, we go back to Anselm, I have a little less trouble inasmuch as saying that "belief" or "faith" might be an important tool in a nontheistic approach to "God." (Again, I must use quotes so that we do not assume that by "God" I mean some superbeing in the eternal above and hearafter.) To return to Tillich for a moment from yesterday, and to continue the quote for a bit longer:

God is the answer to the question implied in man's finitude; he is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. This does not mean that first there is a being called God and then the demand that man should be ultimately concerned about him.

He goes on to say:

Faith (insert here, perhaps Anselm's "belief" in place of "faith"), is the state of being ultimately concerned.

Although this view of God is not a "comforting" one like theism can offer, it is a more interesting and more compelling one. In this setting, "faith" and "God" are inseparable as one inevitably calls the other into existence. Here, there is not a God outside me asking me to accept his existence based on some pretty lousy evidence, but "God" becomes that which is created, as it were, by the act of faith or ultimate concern.

Here the BIG question then is "What is this ultimate concern?" or "What is there about which I am ultimately concerned?" For Tillich, we have to go back to the first proposition of "the question implied in man's finitude" or as he himself also calls it the "shock of non-being" or again, Freud's "trauma of self-consciousness." In this paradigm, "God" becomes a conditional that, probably, has to be "lived out" rather than answered and defined empirically. "God" becomes our "answer" to a life that we live in full knowledge and awareness of our own mortality. It is, for us, the "point" of what we do from the time between our births and our deaths. This is not a God that one can ask for help in difficult times. This "God" is the answer that we give by our thoughts and actions to the circumstances with which we are presented and the reality in which we live. If our responses, for example, are loving and selfless, then "God" is the essence of love and selflessness. If our responses are mean/cruel/hurtful, then "God" is the essence of meaness, cruelty and harm. To take this further, "God" in a post-theistic Christian sense, might be that unifying principle by which the faith community lives out its ideals of love, mercy, benevolence, selflessness, etc. Here "God" is not a being that calls people together and creates a community of believers, but a community of "believers" who creates a "God" that is their meaningful and considered response to the world in which they live.

Hmm, a bit circular, perhaps, but not bad. I'll have to let this "sink in" for a bit. As a conditional answer, it is a heck of a lot better, however, than the "just shut the heck up" from the big fellow in the sky.

Jeffrey Shy
"Sorry, I can't check my brain at the door, it's attached."
Mesa, Arizona