Sinners

The two fundamental affirmations of Christianity are that God is good, and that we are sinners. The two go together. It is tempting, however, to split them. Most people seem to quite like the first; even those who don't believe in God! It is the second that causes all the trouble. Some people don't know how to make it an affirmation; they only hear it as destructive and over time can't stop it demolishing their carefully constructed sense of self. Others embrace the appellation of 'sinner' because it fits their low sense of self. Just another way to flagellate themselves.

We can hide from the harshness of the designation 'sinner' by looking at 'sin' and 'sinner' as forensic terms, with the simple meaning that we fail. 'Sinner' becomes a bare fact, rather than saying something about our identity as human beings. As a purely forensic term it remains external to who we are. However, a more nuanced and deeper exploration of our failure makes us realise that everything we do is tainted: we are sinners, not just occasionally falling into sin. And this is when it start to gets harder and people are tempted to recoil from 'sinner' altogether. This rejection of 'sinner' is completely understandable if our sense of self is dependent on us creating our sense of worth, through a kind of moral standing. (I'm a good person, I'm worthwhile, etc.) The 'self-made man' remains in control, separate and ultimately alone. But must at all costs avoid anything that can tear down the self-creation. (Good people can occasionally sin, but they remain essentially good, i.e. I am good.))

The alternative is offered by the gospel. God loves us. God comes to us when we are sinners to show not only that we don't have to create ourselves, but also that we can gain our true identity in that relationship of love.  Or to put it another way, when we are at our weakest God comes to us in an act of utter grace to show that we don't need to earn God's love. In Christ God's love is given freely and lavishly. And although grasping onto our self-creation will only hinder the full realisation of that love and our true identity in it, our self-creation can't prevent the generous showering of love that God gives to us. It can make us lovers of God and others. (Luke 7:47)

And we can go further than this. God's gracious act in Christ shows us that our self-creation remains irrelevant to receiving God's love. Grace is not a stepping stone to a spot where we can take over ourselves, eventually creating a self that doesn't need God entirely and utterly. We don't at some point take over from God's grace and do it ourselves and thereby eventually earn a grudging acceptance from God. Our identity is always to be found in God's gracious action in Christ.

Moralists are suspicious of the bold statement that our moral standing is irrelevant to receiving God's love. They are worried that grace then becomes cheap. St Paul's critics thought the same. Whatever you do with the call to holiness it should never be at the expense of our utter dependence on God's love irrespective of any self-created personhood or moral standing. On the other hand, St Paul did not preach cheap grace, and for all those who accept the pure gratuity of God's love an annual reading of Bonhoeffer on costly grace is a necessity. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 35-47.) Grace is not to be universalised as a principle that is everywhere present and automatically available apart from God's free act in Christ. This is the error of liberal Christianity: moving from God's love in Christ freely given and without reserve to a necessary principle universally available, conceived almost as a right. Cheap grace in other words.

Would Jesus Go to Church?

Once a month we hold an event at Holy Innocents named QT (Question Time). The event is exactly that: speakers, questions from the audience, great live music, wine from Belair Fine Wines, and delicious snacks from Foods From the Edge. Last night the question was whether God/Jesus/you/me/anybody would/should come to church? I was the speaker for the affirmative, and not just the affirmative, but that if Jesus were going to go to church (rather than synagogue) he would go to a traditional church. I made three broad points:

First, many people find church such a disappointment. We love to point the finger or regale a good conspiracy story about the church, the Vatican, bishops, priest, monks and nuns, or the generally hypocritical group of human beings known as church-going Christians. Well, I think the church is a disappointment. We are sinners. (See here for more on this point.)  But remember, Jesus quite liked sinners. When the church forgets it is a company of sinners, Jesus would disapprove. But sinners who seem to be getting it wrong and know it? He'd hang around with us.  What is the alternative anyway? Are those who say they don't come to church because the people who go to church aren't perfect saying that they would come if we were perfect? (Like them?) If you are one of those then I am glad we aren't perfect because you'd be a bigger pain in the arse than we are already.

Furthermore, a number of years ago I suddenly realised that my disappointment in the church's failure was really just a projection of my own disappointment in my own failure. The realisation came through a hard lesson, but the lesson is simply that I'm not the messiah, the church is not the messiah, and Jesus is the messiah. Get over it people.

My second point was that many people protest against the institutionalization of Jesus and his gospel in the church. When we separate out my first point above from this protest there isn't much left except a bit of contemporary institution-bashing. The truth is that without the institution there would be no memory of Jesus left after all this time. No means for the eyewitness accounts to be carried faithfully through the generations. It would have all been lost. A dangerous memory needs an institution. The problem is not the institution as such. The problem is when the institution prevents people from seeing the gospel. The mismatch between institution and gospel is the problem. (Although remember the point about failure I made above.)

My third and final point picked up what I think is perhaps the most common complaint about church: church is boring. Indeed the local baptist church advertises with the catchy, "Do you find church boring?" The idea is that they aren't I think. Well, there are greater sins for a church than being boring. Superficiality is the greater danger, I think. Indeed, following James Alison, I think the liturgy has hit the mark when it feels a little anti-climactic. Alison contrasts what he styles 'Nuremberg' worship (Nuremberg was a preferred site of the Nazis for their mass rallies/liturgies) with 'un-Nuremberg' worship. Nuremberg worship, through building up a sense of victimization, righteous anger and the formal identification of the 'sinners' leads to the great climax of the appearance of the messiah who will save the people. Alison contrasts this with the climax of Christian worship (particularly traditional Eucharist) with the appearance of the true messiah who is 'just there', having already achieved all there is to achieve. No mass hysteria, no invitation to the congregation to feel victimised, rather the congregation knows itself to be forgiven by the victim. No need to whip the crowd into a frenzy. An anti-climax really. This fits nicely with the thesis of James K. A. Smith in his Desiring the Kingdom, where he points out that worship is all about reorienting our desire to God. The reorientation is for our benefit, redirecting our love away from the idols of our times. And worship that shifts our gaze from the shopping plaza, the AFL/Olympics/World Cup theatrics, internet games, etc., will necessarily appear boring. Otherwise it becomes the religious version of bread and circuses. Boring is good. Jesus would approve, and come to church because it is boring. It's meant to be. (At times at least.)

Sex 'Industry'

This is good from Stephen (that's him in the picture) on the so-called sex 'industry'.

Life is a Gift (Quote)

"...we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose ... is a lie. To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures ... Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret.” (Stanley Hauerwas)

Bless Me Father (Joke)

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. 
I have been with a loose girl'.

The priest asks, 'Is that you, little Joey Pagano ?'

'Yes, Father, it is.' 

'And who was the girl you were with?'

'I can't tell you, Father. I don't want to ruin her reputation'.

"Well, Joey, I'm sure to find out her name sooner or later 
so you may as well tell me now. Was it Tina Minetti?'

'I cannot say..'

'Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?'

'I'll never tell.'

'Was it Nina Capelli?'

'I'm sorry, but I cannot name her.'

'Was it Cathy Piriano?'

'My lips are sealed.'

'Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?'

'Please, Father, I cannot tell you.' 

The priest sighs in frustration.
'You're very tight lipped, and I admire that.
But you've sinned and have to atone. 
You cannot be an altar boy now for 4 months. 
Now you go and behave yourself.' 

Joey walks back to his pew, 
and his friend Franco slides over and whispers, 
'What'd you get?'

'Four months vacation and five good leads.'

Evil and Suffering

There is no neat explanation for the apparent contradiction of a God of love and a world of suffering and evil.  And it wouldn't make much difference anyway.The Bible tries a couple of times to present a cause, but it is not the comprehensive answer some look for that magically solves the contradiction. Instead the Bible is more interested in the future metamorphosis of the present rather than explaining the past cause of our present suffering. Christianity affirms that God is creator of all that is and will bring it to its final conclusion. All shall be well. Eventually. It is the gap between our present experience and that future that makes us cry out in lament and fury now. The lament expresses not just our grief,disappointment, rage and confusion, but also expresses our desire for the kingdom to come now. "If the kingdom were here now, this wouldn't have happened. Marana tha, Come Lord Jesus!" It is this desire for the kingdom which is important to remember in intercessory prayer. We ask legitimate questions about the point of intercessory prayer, but intercessory prayer is an expression of our desire for the kingdom to come now in some place or in someone's life.

Hard To Spread Gospel?

Traditional congregations complain that it is difficult to spread the good news. Well, yes, of course. The good news is countercultural and requires both dying and living simultaneously. Traditional congregations might also complain that it is difficult to know what to say and when. And that is very different from the first complaint. The first complaint is true and necessarily so. And I find that if I keep the gospel countercultural it is easier to know what to say and when because of the gap between gospel and the world. The less the gospel, or my living of it, is countercultural the more difficult it is to talk about it in a way that is engaging and more than platitudinous. If my life is no different to the world around, what is there to say? Some affirmation, but that soon becomes a little tired on its own. This might also give us a clue as to why the religious right focus on personal issues like sex. It is an easy target and saves having to ask harder questions about our acceptance of the world's ways over the gospel.

Pius XII and the Nazis

Here is something interesting from Walter Kasper. This extract (below) provides information I was unaware of and casts a different light on the usual readings of the Pius XII's relationship to the Nazis.

"Pius XII was Pope (1938–58) during one of the most difficult times of the papacy during the Second World War while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany. The contemporary assessment of his Pontificate during the Second World War was rather positive. In his Christmas radio message of 1942 the Pope was very clear and the Nazis understood very well what he wanted to say. The New York Times, which is not known as a church–oriented newspaper, had already in 1941 published an editorial where it spoke of the Pope as the only voice in the silence and in the dark with the courage to raise his voice. After the deportation of more than 1000 Jews from Rome (only 15 survived) in October 1943 he ordered a general Church asylum in all convents and ecclesiastical houses, including the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo. According to authoritative estimates, about 4500 Jews were hidden.

After the death of the Pope the then minister for foreign affairs and then Prime Minister of the State of Israel Golda Meir thanked the Pope with warm words for what he had done in dark times for the Jewish people. In a similar way, the then Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Herzog also praised the Pope for what he did. These are only some witnesses of high–ranking and well–informed persons who were well aware of what had happened, and who can be called witnesses of the time.

With Hochhut’s fictional play The Deputy (1963) the perception changed radically. Since then the reproach of silence about the extermination of the Jews has become widely spread. Hochhut was not an historian and today there is evidence that he was dependent on communist sources.2 One of the first to defend Pius XII was Joseph Lichten, a Polish Jewish diplomat who later, as director of the International Affairs Department of the Anti–Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, played a distinguished role in interfaith–dialogue. The serious recent historical research is differentiated. There are still today Jews who defend Pius XII, and on the other side there are Catholic authors who are critical about his attitude. So there is no clear frontline between Jews and Catholics,5 though the majority of Jews, especially in Israel, are still critical. Whether this is partly due to a lack of information about more recent historical research work, I would like to leave open."

Worship Without Expectations

 Following on from a previous post, worship without expectations is a good thing. It hollows out space in our hearts free from our own self-centredness ready for the living God. it is easy to see expectations regarding God and spirituality at work in contemporary Australia. Although church-hopping until the hopper finds the church they like has made churches more honest as they cannot assume people's allegience, overall it is unhelpful in the spiritual journey. Supermarket spirituality encourages people to think they know how God wishes to be gracious to them and so they search until they find it. This assumption might be hidden behind the search for uplifting music or a gospel minister, but it still assumes the person concerned knows what God wants for them.

Contrary to this, I don't think we really know what God wants for us, and how much goodness God wishes to shower upon us, and the sheer weight of goodness we miss because we have tunnel vision: we only receive the goodness that our expectations allow. Breaking our addiction to ourselves by not coming to worship with expectations of what God should do and how God should achieve it can be painful. People confuse this spiritual correction going on within us as boredom, or poor preaching, or bad liturgy, etc.

Another example of this is when people stay at a church because they are receiving what they want. If you think about it, it is just the other side of the coin of people leaving because they don't get what they want. Coming to church without expectations of how and what God should do broadens our experience of God, and our hopefulness. Sitting in church when you don't particularly feel God's presence is good practice for those times when God seems particularly absent. Feeling like God is absent at church will also give us a new sense of how shocking the crucifixion of Jesus must have been for the first disciples, not to mention a new sympathy for Jesus hanging on the cross is desolation. We are in good company! And if you are sitting in church and you wonder where God is in all of this, well focus on the Eucharist: it proclaims the death and resurrection of the Lord until he comes. Talk about presence in absence. And the next time we find ourselves nailed to the cross, there will be some formed practice to fall back on.

The Gospel of Thomas and the Historical Reliability of the Gospels IV

Follow this link for some recent discussion about the Gospel of Thomas. Just reading the post without following the other links gives you the basic idea. The Gospel of Thomas is viewed by many as later and less reliable than the canonical Gospels for researching the historical Jesus because

• of its anti-Jewish flavour
• with sayings that appear to be disconnected from a legitimate context
• and reflects a more pagan individualism than a Jewish-Christian sense of bodily community

Jesus was a Jew, most of the first disciples were Jews, and they weren't idiots so it is difficult to understand how such an anti-Jewish, ahistorical (contextless) set of sayings should be considered early in composition. While different contexts in the canonical Gospels for the same saying of Jesus requires an explanation, the first one that comes to mind is not that the disciples blatantly decided to cut Jesus, his life, sayings and actions free from the Jewish context of which he was part and make him an opponent of the Jews. Seems a bit far-fetched. Moreover, why would the disciples think that they should blatantly cut the words and actions of Jesus away from the actual situation in which his words and actions arose? Better to assume they didn't, especially given the evidence in the canonical Gospels that context seemed to be important in the telling of the story of Jesus.

And then add this to the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas appearing like some pagan sage with his monistic teaching for individual souls, and it is hard to believe that Thomas is early. This doesn't mean it is of no use, just that it is more useful in telling us something about the second century situation out of which it arose rather than a more direct route to Jesus.Reminds me of the Jesus Seminar's love for the sage Jesus who, according to them, only makes epigrammatic, pithy statements that are countercultural and surprising. Handy assumption if you want to cut away most of the canonical Gospels and make Jesus an ahistorical freak floating around the first century but never engaging in the language forms and disputes of the day. (For example, Jesus seminar types seem to hate the idea that Jesus taught and prophesied in apocalyptic, so, given apocalyptic was the usual thought form of the day, they then assume Jesus wouldn't have used it! See here for an extended criticism of the Jesus Seminar's methods from NT Wright.)

At the Heart of Worship, Truth

 A Pentecost sermon from the Revd Ron Keynes

Stop me if you have never been in a situation where           - in hindsight at least—you have not felt that you missed an opportunity to say something helpful and supportive to someone who needed support. If you could turn back the clock, you would have spoken gently and carefully, and maybe provided someone some room to move ahead, But you did not …..  Or maybe you stopped someone else from offering support ……. 

This is going to be a bit of a convoluted journey this morning, but I hope that you will find the value as we travel. On this Pentecost Sunday it has to do with being rather more open, and aware—and game. And find that it is important to be so.

Quite some years ago, I was Diocesan Youth Co-ordinator at the delicate age of late ‘50s. And one of the things that kids complained about, then, long before and long after, was ‘Pops, Church is so boring.’ My youngest daughter—married to a priest—still says the same thing. So what has gone wrong?

I suspect that part of the answer lies in that we are not at all sure quite what we are doing here. What is worship anyhow? What the hell is supposed to happen? Is this feel good stuff? Is this heart-warming? Or is it dead routine—as it seems to be for many? And all that is why this morning I follow up a pattern I engage in occasionally, and take us through the reasons for why we do what we do in Church. And to start, I take you out of Church to do it.

You will know what I am talking about when you are trying to rebuild an old relationship that has been broken by mistrust or misbehaviour. It does not matter if it was you at fault or the other person. The strain is there is it not. And you hover between total honesty and some sort of fluffing around the edges. Polite or honest. If you are trying to avoid hurt, then forget any real progress. Be polite? If you want real resolution, you will be stuck with honesty. At whatever cost. It is hard work, and sometimes quite delicate, but almost invariably, well worth the effort.  And the process in worship is remarkably similar.   Remember that.

Relationships are worth keeping and building on. That is what worship is all about. And that is where our form of worship almost always begins. Recognizing that there are issues that need attention

Back to Church and APBA ……… what is happening?

Almighty God  to Whom all hearts are open…………. No room for bumf –read the words again. This is no witch-hunt; no standing in judgement. It is a facing of ordinary human reality, with the powerful matter of resolution totally possible. Honesty only.

Shema Israel To compare me with you is to miss the point. I need a higher canon, a loftier standard. No room to move about here with the Shema—the ultimate standard, canon, high jump. This is not to make you feel lousy or pathetic. It is there to help us face the realities. It may sound hard, but refer back to the prayer of preparation. Honesty. And steep hills to climb.

Just like in a real-life conciliation, eh? 

The atmospherics of all this is wonderful: and then the facing of the truth. ‘I am responsible; I am not perfect. And that means that I need to accept that fact that others aren’t perfect either.’

Confession is not there to make your little soul sparkly again. It is to face the fact that God knows and you know and you do not have to hide from anyone. Christians cannot be blackmailed. If I have done something I ought not, I have only to say ‘Yes, that was me.’ Only when I can face the truth about myself am I able to move forward with any reality or permanence about it. It is freeing, redemptive. Yes, that is me—and now I can move on from there.

And then there is forgiveness. This is no easy step, and you will know that if you have had to forgive someone else. ‘Forgive and forget’ is pious twaddle. Never forget that.

Two things to note: forgiveness is not repeat NOT  a feeling. It is a decision. It is the turning of one’s back on revenge.

If I offer repentance, I am offering my word not to repeat the failure—so don’t forget; just be careful.

Resolution. Restoration. But having taken all issues seriously and the people seriously. And now life can begin again. We can talk again to each other, and listen—and work together and learn.

No wonder the Gloria—shout of delight.

No wonder the readings—for now I can listen to the Father and relish the restored relationship.

Once all that much has been dealt with, we have the Scripture readings. We can listen to God, be open to the Spirit, and perhaps even find the sermon has some help along our way.

And dare I say it, you may find no need of a sermon sometimes, for the dialogue between you and the Father is exhilarating enough.

One final word. Only last week I had a conversation with someone who was telling me what the Lord was saying to them.

If there is one thing we need to learn, it is, as Scripture says, ‘to test the spirits.’ This week’s news about Agape Ministries (what a misnomer!!!) shows how easy it is to lead some folk up enormous garden paths to a very destructive outcome.

Test your sense of God speaking with the clear picture of Jesus in the NT. Truth does not operate outside its own parameters. Never

Worship is About God and We Are the Beneficiaries!

In the last post I said that we should come to worship minus our own demands of how God should be present in worship. Worship is about God not us. But we shouldn't misunderstand this as though God needs us to worship God. I can't remember which new atheist rabbits on about this, perhaps all of them. "What kind of megalomaniac needs millions of people to worship him?" is the usual way of putting the loaded question. A very Hitleresque kind of megalomaniac is the answer. But let's not confuse this with God. Worship that is about God is worship for our benefit, not God's. We don't come to worship with our benefit in mind, and we don't come with our demands, but when we do come empty we are the beneficiaries. To come to let God be God reorients us in our relationship with God: we let God be God, rather than seek to take the burden of  the messiahship to ourselves. (See Genesis 3) God is a completeness of love beyond platitudes and flattery. Flattery and platitudes are offered to false messiahs.

Worship is About God

I have had reason to revisit an earlier post on worship because of some continuing comment. The point of that previous post is that worship is not about us and receiving what we think God should give. Of course, different styles suit different people, and bad liturgy and worship is still bad. Yes, but the point still remains that worship is about God, not us, and coming to worship with minimal expectations is best. If we could do this then our perceived absence of God in worship might become a gift that leads somewhere deeper. Instead the temptation is to be complacent with the boredom or to seek variety (and move churches). Spiritually it is tougher, but potentially more important, to remain worshiping where you think God is absent without being complacent. 

Moreover, such a practice (of remaining where we perceive God to be absent) is a spiritual practice that will serve us well when we face those intense times and places of God's absence, like sickness and death. Working with our need to tell God where and how God should be present is a spiritual practice that can lead to spiritual maturity. This 'working with our need to tell God' will include questioning God ("Where are you?" "Why have you deserted me?"), but that is part of the faith experience. But if we rant at God from a position of waiting for God, then such questioning is productive and does not need to lead to atheism.

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels III

The old canard that drives a wedge between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, and that places the Gospels firmly in the latter category, still seems to me a methodological error. Faith in Christ does not mean that Christians can't write history without fabricating it. The Gospels have a great deal more credibility than the sceptics (both believing and non-believing) allow. Richard Bauckham in his Eyewitnesses, and NT Wright's trilogy on the historical Jesus and the resurrection are persuasive in advocating a less sceptical view of the Gospels, and demonstrate the Gospels' historical value.

Indeed, it is because of the history of Jesus (not despite it) that there is any faith at all; history has always been central in Christianity. However, the Gospels weren't written merely as history, for the history they narrate invites us to do more than look into the past. Jesus, his history and history-like resurrection appearances, beckons for more. A faith response is that more. But this faith, which is more than corroborated historical claims, always includes in some way historical or history-like claims. This doesn't mean that we can't be critical of historical claims made in the Gospels. Of course we can, but to drive a wedge between history and faith is methodological prejudice. There is no need to assume the Gospel writers were indulging their appetite for fantasy when they wrote the Gospels. One has to show this to be the case, as can be shown with the spurious non-canonical Gospels.

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels II

Following on from the last post, this from George Hunsinger is also worth a read on the historical reliability of the Gospels. He says that rather than having to prove the historical reliability of the Gospels as such, it is only necessary to show that the claims made in the Gospels have not been disproved.

Hunsinger agrees that more can be shown than this, but it is not necessary to do so. Historical probability (which is what we are always dealing with in historical research) is a certain kind of knowledge, but the New Testament accounts of Jesus invite a knowing that is not limited to historical probability. So, for example, he makes the observation that the key claim of the resurrection of Jesus is beyond historical proof, and that Christianity is asking for a response beyond what can be "proven" by historical probability.

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels I

This summary of an article by CFD Moule in the late 50s is interesting on the early use of the Gospels. According to Moule the gospels were not for liturgical use (and therefore not merely reinforcement for worship) or high theology, but the basic story that grounded the liturgy and theology of the church in history. If this is true then it gets harder to dismiss the Gospels as fabrications merely reflecting the church's faith in Christ rather than documents written as historical record.

Peace (Quote)

"Peace is not stasis; it is not the absence of violence: where there is isolation, separation and indifference between peoples, conflict can break out at any time. Nor is it simply civility and respect for the law, in which the walls of separation remain firm.

Peace, rather, is the counter-dynamic to competition, rivalry and the clash of strengths. Peace can only come when the chain of violence is broken and the weaker members of society are fully welcomed, loved and respected."
Jean Vanier

Pastoral Care and Unbaptised Secular Psychology

There was a trend (that is still being played out) in the 70s and 80s toward the clergy re/training in the human sciences like psychology and social work, etc. For some it was a natural move given their liberal theological position that struggled to give faith, theology and even God any firm foundations other than as a cipher for justice and care for others. For some it also provided a little insurance against ecclesiastical caprice! This confusion between the human sciences and Christian theology and practice was evident in the training I received in pastoral care back in the mid-80s. A large part of our practice and reflection consisted of learning secular techniques of counselling and then constructing a theological justification for the use of these techniques. However, it was all a little too uncritical. (One of the ironies in this is that those who advocated the mostly uncritical use of the human sciences were often those most critical of the church's alleged uncritical baptism of political power in the time of Constantine and since.)

Now, the human sciences are an extremely valuable and pragmatic grab-bag of theory and practice that serve us all well. Good therapy, when you need it, is a great gift. However, to collapse Christian pastoral care into this grab-bag of psychology and medicine is a mistake. Pastoral care is more than psychology conducted in a Christian context or by Christians supplemented with prayer and Bible reading. (Although it can be this too.) When this collapse occurs the goals of Christian pastoral care and Enlightenment medicine and psychology become almost indistinguishable. For example, the tendency of the human sciences (and medicine) is to consider pain and suffering something to be avoided and eradicated. If it cannot be eradicated then the task is to help the client/patient cope with the pain. Well and good at one level, but we wouldn't want that to determine our response in toto. A specifically Christian response might be to spend some time on the person's relationship with God in the midst of the pain and suffering, and ask, "What practices might help this person remain faithful to God in the midst of this pain, and to know the continuing care of God in their life?" How might we help people cope with their experience of a providential God, their eschatological hope in the kingdom to come, and their current experience of confusion and alienation? The experience of pain and suffering can be a laboratory where we learn our need and renew our love for God in a more real manner. But that is a tough thing for a pastor to try these days because the aims of the secular human sciences and medicine have a virtual monopoly on the practice and goals of pastoral care.

The Christian Response to Suffering

"Suffering is presumed to have little of no meaning or purpose beyond the constant quest to eradicate it."(1)

There are lots of ways to respond, as a Christian, to suffering. To seek healing comes to mind, as does the eradication of the pain that is causing the suffering, or sitting in the dust with the those who suffer, prayer, lament, anointing, confession and absolution, and that's just for starters. The problem is that all these practices and their accompanying theologies share too much space in our heads with the Enlightenment's optimism and trust in humanity's ability to control 'nature' generally and overcome pain and suffering specifically. These days we have to fight pretty hard not to succumb to the now generally accepted principle that pain and suffering are to be avoided at all costs. (See quote above) In this view a return to health is understood in terms of the absence of pain and suffering for the autonomous individual. Once healed the autonomous individual can return to their individual life having the suffering and its cause eradicated from their life. In this view, we would have no need, at least in respect of that particular pain and its cause. There is, of course, something desirable and good in the eradication of pain and suffering. But as the sole way of looking at our human condition, or even the dominant way, it is mistaken because it misunderstands the human person and presents an utterly fraudulent hope. We are not autonomous individuals with healing returning us to a needless state, thank you very much. And second, we cannot live lives devoid of pain and suffering, and even if this particular instance of it can be eradicated, just wait, one day it won't be eradicated. One only has to look around us to see that the hope of avoiding pain is a vain one. (I'll be blogging later this week about the asceticism of life, or the asceticism that we should be teaching our children is an absolutely essential and unavoidable part of life.)

Jesus commands us to embrace the cross. Let's not make a straw figure of the crucified Christ as though he is commanding us to hate ourselves. Self-hate is not the only alternative to the unrequited hope of avoiding suffering. The call to carry the cross and follow Jesus is a call to actively suffer at times (witness, justice, etc), and not to fear the suffering that might come from bearing the pain of grief rather than burying it alive, and not to fear facing the truth of our psychopathologies and the pain such self-honesty will bring. But more than this, a specifically Christian response to suffering will also include those practices that help us remain faithful in the midst of suffering, and that help us continue to believe in the God who seems often absent. This last, so often overlooked, is an entirely appropriate response to suffering from those who claim to follow the forsaken, crucified Jesus. Jesus' cry of dereliction from the cross is, after all, a prayer, and is a prayer of faith, not disbelief. The lament, prominent in the Psalms and elsewhere in Scripture, is exactly one of those practices that can keep us faithful, but more on that later.



1. John Swinton, "Patience and Lament: Living Faithfully in the Presence of Suffering", in Francesca Arran Murphy and Philip Ziegler, The Providence of God. p. 276.

Hildegard of Bingen

"... and through the sublimity of the Father, who sent the Word with sweet fruitfulness into the womb of the Virgin, from which He soaked up flesh, just as honey is surrounded by the honeycomb." (Hildegard of Bingen)