David Marshall: “Miracles”

For my write-up today on David Marshall’s Jesus and the Religions of Man, I’ll blog about Chapter 10, “Miracles”.  I’ll use as my starting-point something that Marshall says on page 226:

“Christians are often asked, ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world?  Why do some starve when the rains cease to fall?’  Christianity arose not through an effort on the part of philosophers to find a solution to such problems, as did Buddhism.  The Bible never pretends to provide an all-embracing theory, class warfare, racial oppression or karma, by which to explain all suffering.  I think it suggests, on the contrary, that only those who need an answer and look for an answer, will find one, and that for their own suffering, not the suffering of others.”

This chapter is about miracles.  I appreciated Marshall’s discussion of his past skepticism regarding miracles, as well as his encounter with Christians who claim to have experienced them, and who usually are humble, low-key, and reticent when talking about them, showing that they’re not making stuff up to draw attention to themselves.  I also enjoyed Marshall’s story about how he was a struggling missionary in Taiwan, and God provided him with meals when his money was running out. I myself believe that there are miracles in the world, and that God can and sometimes does answer prayers for help.

But a discussion of the problem of suffering naturally accompanies a discussion about miracles, for people wonder: If God is intervening in the affairs of the world and is healing and providing for people, then why are there so many people who suffer and die as a result of disease, starvation, and malnutrition?

One of my favorite blogs is that of Respectful Atheist.  I like his blog because, well, he’s a respectful atheist, unlike a lot of prominent atheists I know, who are far from being respectful towards others.  Respectful Atheist just lays out his case, and, as far as I can tell, he does not put people down or demonstrate a smug sense of superiority.  But back to my topic.  Respectful Atheist had a post a while back entitled “His Eye Is On the Sparrow”.  In that post, Respectful Atheist talks about a question that deeply perplexed him: Why doesn’t God just send rain to places that are plagued by drought, drought that is taking the lives of so many people, including children?  This problem really hit him like a ton of bricks when he got an e-mail from his church that said, “Thank you for your prayers and praise God for holding off the rain, yesterday, during the church’s annual ‘outreach BBQ’!”  So God is willing to intervene and to control the weather so that a church in the prosperous United States can have its outreach barbeque, but he’s not willing to intervene and to provide rain to save people’s lives in an area that is plagued by drought?  For this, and for other reasons, the person who became Respectful Atheist doubted that there even was a God.

Marshall would address this problem in a variety of ways.  He says that we don’t really know why God allows other people to suffer.  In another place of his book, he says that we should channel our energies into helping the suffering (as Jesus did) rather than fretting over why God allows people to suffer.  I think that there’s something to that (the part about helping the suffering, that is).  Rather than fretting over why God permits drought in areas (as good of a question as that is), why not support the efforts of Christians and other humanitarians to bring clean water to those regions?  I’m saying this to myself, too, for there are seasons in which I give to charity, and seasons in which I do not. 

I’m going to shift now to Marshall’s point that the Bible does not pretend to provide an all-encompassing answer to the problem of suffering, as Buddhism does.  If Marshall’s point is that we can know that the Bible is divinely-inspired because it does not try to answer certain questions that people have (i.e., suffering), whereas obviously human-made religions do, then I would take issue with that claim.  I think that a number of biblical authors actually do seek to explain why people suffer.  The story of the Fall may be one such attempt.  The view in Deuteronomy, the Deuteronomistic History, Psalms, and Proverbs that God rewards or saves the righteous and punishes the wicked is another attempt.  And then there is the view that we find in the writings of Paul and Peter (or “Peter”, for liberal New Testament scholars) that suffering produces character in Christians.  But there are some biblical authors who are not satisfied with such solutions, for they feel that these solutions collapse against the brick wall of reality, in which the innocent suffer for no apparent good reason.  Thus, we have the Book of Job and the Book of Ecclesiastes.  It does not take divine-inspiration to realize that certain attempted solutions are inadequate, or that there are many things that we simply do not know.

Moreover, I will note that even some religions that Marshall would consider human-made express agnosticism on certain issues.  Marshall probably knows more about Buddhism than I do, from his experience and also his reading.  But, in a class on Eastern religion that I took a while back, and also in my reading, I have learned that the Buddha himself said that he did not know how the universe came to exist.  A Buddhist tale says that such a question is not even relevant to the human predicament.  It’s like speculating when one has a poison arrow in one’s chest, when one should be trying to remove the arrow!  I remember my professor in my class saying that, and a smug evangelical was snickering, as if Buddhism were inferior to Christianity for saying “I don’t know”, even though Christians are huge fans of the “We don’t know why God works this way” spiel when it suits them.  I guess my point is that all religions are attempts to answer questions (i.e., why people suffer), and yet some of their practitioners and thinkers may recognize that there are adequate and inadequate solutions, and that there are things that we do not know.

Reflections on a Departed Friend

I learned today that a friend of mine—who went to Harvard Divinity School when I was a student there—recently passed away due to Evans Syndrome, which is a disease in which antibodies attack the red blood cells and a person becomes anemic and bleeds internally.  I have not talked with this friend for about a decade.  Frankly, I had a difficult time interacting with him, partially on account of my own insecurities and jealousies.  But, as I thought back this evening, I concluded that I was really blessed to have known him.

This friend of mine was an African-American Christian conservative Republican, and it was from him that I learned that there was a race problem in the United States.  I suppose that I knew that before I met him, on some level.  I was aware that there were inner cities, and I heard Jonathan Kozol speak at my undergraduate school, DePauw University, about the inadequate school systems in the United States.  And yet, for some reason, when I got to Harvard, I asked my friend if there really was a race problem in the United States.  He was incredulous at my question, and he told me about the discrimination he faced, and how African-Americans still had to overcome obstacles.  I suppose that I had heard about this issue before, but the existence of the problem became internalized within me after I had listened to my friend.  When I asked him what I could do, he told me that I needed to go to my community and tell them about the problem.  I am not a very good missionary, and so I did not do that.  But I am at least aware of the problem on account of my friend, and I have blogged about it.  I doubt that is enough, but being aware of a problem is a significant step towards doing something about it.

My friend talked big and he dreamed big.  I admire his faith in God and his intellect.  I really don’t know how, or even if, God is at work in this situation.  The person who wrote me to inform me of my friend’s passing said that the friend was in the very same hospital where he was interning, but he did not know about it, even though the friend was asking for him.  He is sad that he did not get a chance to comfort our friend during the last sixth months of his life.  I find it saddening that a coincidence could not lead to something redemptive, or at least purposeful, and I am also saddened that there is such a disease as Evans Syndrome.  I do believe, however, that there is a world beyond this one, and that this life is not all that there is.

Theodicy, Us, Them, and Us

I went to the Presbyterian Church this morning. This time, the passing of the peace part went a little more smoothly for me. Ordinarily, I dread that part, since it’s social, and I tend to feel uncomfortable and alienated in social situations. But, this morning, I knew someone from last week, plus a couple of people told me that they recognized me from last week, which was good. (This is a small church.) So I didn’t feel as alienated. I also liked how the pastor tried to shake hands with everyone before the service.

We had a guest speaker (I’ll call him “Bob”), who works for a children’s mission in Peru. He told us about kids who were loners or were violent on account of their painful experiences. One of the kids was violent, but, after talking with him, Bob learned that the kid’s mother had tried to poison him and his brother. There was also a teenage girl at the mission, and she was a loner. The other young people and even the staff did not like her. But Bob learned from her that she had lost her mother. Her Mom bled to death in a hospital in Peru, for the doctors could not operate when the hospital lost electricity. As Bob noted, hospitals in Peru are poorer than those in the United States.

Bob said that Jesus calls us to love people, regardless of their flaws, for that is what Jesus did. Bob then asked why God allows suffering, and he suggested that God may permit it so that we could have the same broken-hearted attitude towards suffering that he has. In my opinion, theodicies in general are inadequate. My problem with Bob’s theodicy is that it presents those who suffer as guinea pigs for our own personal growth—”our” meaning those who are better off economically.

But I would slightly rephrase Bob’s theodicy by saying that suffering gives all of us an opportunity to band together and help each other. This shifts the approach from one of “We prosperous Westerners need to help those in the Third World,” to one of “We all need to help each other.” People in the Third World should get help from the prosperous West, but also from others in the Third World. In my opinion, it should not be a matter of “us” (the helpers) and “them” (the helped), but rather of “us.” This should occur on an individual level, but systems that are conducive to the health and well-being of all should also be promoted and created.

I agree that suffering gives all of us an opportunity to develop an attitude and a lifestyle of compassion. Does God permit suffering to permit that to happen? Admittedly, there are casualties to this sort of set-up. I wonder why there are so many people who were born into lives that are so hard—maybe even unlivable—or who suddenly find themselves in those kinds of situations. I can understand why many atheists feel that no theodicy is adequate—that to come up with a theodicy as to why God permits suffering is to present suffering as if it’s acceptable. But I hope that we can all come together on the goal to alleviate suffering in the world. Not everyone is called to go into foreign countries. I think I’d have a hard time in the Third World! But I think it’s important for me to realize that there is a lot of suffering and death in the world. Realizing this is a step towards doing my part to address that suffering.

Ramblings on Questioning God

At Latin mass this morning, the priest said that questioning God on account of the bad things in life is “proud”, and he told us that God may send us afflictions to bring us closer to him.

That reminded me of an essay I read last night in theologian Miroslav Volf’s book, Against the Tide.  Volf refers to a lady who asked him why God allowed tsunamis, and his response was that her concern about the disasters caused by tsunamis only makes sense if there is a God.  After all, if there’s not a God, then why should we expect life to be kind or fair?

To his credit, Volf realized that this response probably wasn’t what he should have said in that situation.  But he goes on to make a profound point: that our protests against God are a sign, not of our unbelief, but of our belief.

This sort of issue came up in the debate between Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi David Wolpe that I watched yesterday.  Wolpe (if I understood him correctly) was asking Hitchens why he was ranting against a God he didn’t even believe was real.  Hitchens responded that he’s speaking in hypotheticals: “if there is a God who designed everything, then he’s a poor designer.”  (Hitchens was referring here to the scientific view that the universe is heading towards nothingness.  Hitchens was wondering why God would design things that way.)

Many atheists have expectations of what life would be like if a loving God were ruling it, and it doesn’t look like the life that is before us!  John Loftus has an interesting list of things that would be true if there were a God: see here.  For Loftus, God would make his existence more obvious to people.  God can do this.  Why doesn’t he?  The answer I get from some Christians is that those who don’t believe wouldn’t believe even if they saw a sign, so that’s why God doesn’t show them one.  Maybe, and maybe not.  But why can’t God at least give them a chance to reject him and his evidence?   

Why are atheists mad at a God they don’t believe is real?  Many of them are not.  They actually make peace with the world as it is once they stop expecting it to be fair because of a God who rules it.  Some of them stop there, content at their peace of mind.  Others go on to try to make this world a better place. 

But many atheists are mad—not so much at God, but at believers.  People whose faith has led to ills in society.  People they expect to be better morally on account of their faith in God. 

Is questioning God “proud”, or is it an indication of faith, as Volf asserts?  Not long ago, I read Andrew Park’s book, Between a Church and a Hard Place: One Faith-Free Dad’s Struggle to Understand What It Means to Be Religious (or Not).  Park talked about going to a humanist meeting, and the people there were gasping at something they read in one of Joyce Meyer’s books.  (I believe it was Battlefield of the Mind.)  Joyce said that God told her not to stress over trying to figure everything out, but to trust in God.  The humanists saw this quotation as anti-intellectualism at its worst.  (To their credit, they themselves were not overly closed-minded.  They told Andrew that parents should take their children to church, just so the kids are exposed to the various beliefs in the world around them.)

But I don’t think that Joyce’s words necessarily have to be taken that way.  There are things in this life that I don’t understand.  I can stress out, complaining at life being unfair.  Or I can trust in God and cope with life as it is, even as I try to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.  At the same time, for me at least, it’s good to ask questions, to wonder why God does things as he does, to come up with possible answers.  There’s room for intellectualism in faith.  I’d be bored if I couldn’t ask questions!

It’s when the questions get tough that just trusting the Bible is difficult.  I can let God be God, trusting that God knows what he’s doing when he allows problems in the world, affirming my faith that God at some stage will intervene into this world and set things right.  But suppose there’s a homosexual who wants a relationship with someone of the same sex, and he hits a brick wall because the Bible says “no”?  Should he have to give up happiness and live a lifetime of celibacy because of a book?

The Lottery of Life

I just read the new Internet Monk’s (Chaplain Mike’s) review of Rachel Held Evans’ Evolving in Monkey Town: see IM Book Review: Evolving in Monkey Town.  The following stood out to me:

The second part of the book describes the cracks and fissures that developed in Rachel Evans’ [conservative Christian] worldview. An experience of watching the execution of an Afghan woman began a prolonged process of deep questioning and reexamination of the foundations of her faith. In a key conversation with her father, she expressed the exasperation that was growing within her:

["]It’s like God runs some kind of universal sweepstakes with humanity in which all of our names get thrown into a big hat at the beginning of time….Some of us are randomly selected for famine, war, disease, and paganism, while others end up with fifteen-thousand-square-foot houses, expensive Christian educations, and Double Stuf Oreos. It’s a cosmic lottery, luck of the draw” (p. 99).

The rest of the review gives a rough outline of how Rachel’s faith developed in response to this question.

The reason that this stood out to me was that, a few weeks ago at church, the priest giving the homily made a similar statement.  His point was that we Americans have been fortunate in the lottery of life, and so we should give to those in the world who are less fortunate.  Fine.  I agree with that.  But why is there a lottery of life in the first place, if God is in control?   

BTW, I’ll be blogging through Rachel’s book at some point.  I’m waiting on two things: (1.) To finish Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True, which I’m currently blogging through, and which may take a while, since I only read it on Saturdays, and (2.) for the price of Rachel’s book to fall on Amazon.  I’m all for Rachel making lots of money off of her book, and I’m sure it will be successful.  But I’m on a budget!

Pre-Crisis Theodicy; Snakes; Pre-Exilic Universalism?; Only 10%; Through Edom?; Literary and Exilic; Reconstruction

1. William P. Young, The Shack, page 31:

Missy: Is the Great Spirit another name for God—you know, Jesus’ papa?

Mack: I would suppose so.  It’s a good name for God because he is a Spirit and he is Great.

Missy: Then how come he’s so mean?

Mack: What do you mean, Missy?

Missy: Well, the Great Spirit makes the princess jump off the cliff and makes Jesus die on a cross.  That seems pretty mean to me.

Mack: Sweetheart, Jesus didn’t think his daddy was mean.  He thought his daddy was full of love and loved him very much.  His daddy didn’t make him die.  Jesus chose to die because he and his daddy love you and me and everyone in the world.  He saved us from our sickness, just like the princess.

Mack is the father of Missy, a little girl.  Something tragic happens to Missy in this book, which sparks Mack’s crisis of faith.  But this conversation occurs before that.  It’s easy for Mack to give the glib defenses of God that many have used, when nothing up to this point has led him to question the love of God.  This isn’t to say that he had a peachy life before Missy was missing, for his dad beat him severely when he was young.  But he was able to move on from that and to find healing in God and the Christian community.  What happens when an event causes him to doubt God’s care for him?  What will he do then?  Will he agree with his daughter, who considers God to be mean?  And how will Jesus respond to him when Mack and he have their conversation in the shack?  Will Jesus try to say that suffering can be redemptive, as Mack tells Missy?  Or will he go another route?

2. Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, page 157:

“I don’t like snakes.”

“Prejudice again, rank prejudice.  Most snakes are harmless, useful, and fun to raise.  The scarlet snake is a beauty—red, and black, and yellow—docile and makes a fine pet.  I think this little fellow was fond of me, in its dim reptilian fashion.  Of course I knew how to handle snakes, how not to alarm them and not give them a chance to bite, because the bite of even a non-poisonous snake is a nuisance.  But I was fond of this baby; he was the prize of my collection.  I used to take him out and show him to people, holding him back of his head and letting him wrap himself around my wrist…”

This reminds me of certain things: my mom petting a snake in a museum; a “fact vs. fiction” blurb at the zoo that said that snakes aren’t slimy, contrary to the stereotype; the guy in New York who was in the city with a huge snake around his neck, which would scare me, since I’d fear it choking me; what people say we should do if we encounter a cobra: no sudden moves!

3. Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I with an Introduction to Cultic Poetry, pages 237-238:

 That everybody shall know Yahweh is certainly a theological insight that arose only in exilic and postexilic times…Second Isaiah is the most impressive witness to this development.

This coincides with what Gerstenberger has said elsewhere in this book: that some of the Psalms originated in the synagogue, an exilic setting.  Not all of them originated in the Temple, in short.

I remembered writing a post about a scholar who argued that universalism in the Psalms doesn’t have to mean that those Psalms are exilic and post-exilic.  The post was Black History Month at the Library, Mean Persians, ANE Universalism, Saul’s Reminder, Desolation—However Long It Takes, and the scholar was Mitchell Dahood.  I wrote as follows:

On page 357, Dahood contends that the Psalm’s universalism (“Declare among the nations his glory”; “He will govern the world with his justice”) does not necessarily mean that the Psalmist here is indebted to Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), who has a universalistic vision of the nations worshipping YHWH. As Dahood says, “it is widely recognized that universalism, namely, the rule of God over the whole world as well as over one people, was current in the ancient Near East from the third millennium onward.” Dahood cites some secondary sources, which I’m not in the mood to look at right now. But what he says makes sense: every nation believed that its god was the top one. I know that many of them saw their god as the creator, so it’s not a far leap to conclude that they believed their god was supreme. But did they expect all nations to worship their god? That’s where I’m uncertain, and maybe those secondary sources Dahood cites could shed some light thereon. 

4. Richard Sarason, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: A Study of Tractate Demai, page 261:

…but we must be certain that the tithe which we remove in fact comes from the untithed portion.  Otherwise, we violate the prohibition against separating tithes for produce which is liable for tithing from produce which already has been tithed.

Ten per cent, and no more.  This is good because, even though the rabbis favor tithing, they also want people to keep what’s theirs.  Priests are not to be power-hungry extortionists!  But can a person give more than ten per cent to a priest?  I’m not sure if one can support a priest with over ten per cent, but one can give more for the maintenance of the temple.  Example: the widow and the other donors in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 2:1-4.

5. Baruch Levine, Numbers 21-36, page 56:

How the Israelites Got to the Plains of Moab and Their Encounters on the Way.  Numbers 33 records a forty-year route of march, beginning in northeastern Egypt and reaching to the plains of Moab.  What is singular about this route is its course from Kadesh to the Plains of Moab, because it charts the Israelite march northward through Edom, traversing Punon, a known site, and onward through Dibon-Gad, anachronistic in context, but realistic in expressing later Gadite rule in North Moab.  This route comes in place of one that had the Israelites circumvent these lands, as is projected in both the JE and other priestly historiographies, notwithstanding their disagreements with each other.  Numbers 33:40 also mentions the Israelite incursion into the Negeb reported in Numbers 21:1-3.  We are unable to determine whether this alternative route has an historical basis, just as problems remain with the more widely attested route east of Edom and Moab…These two different routes are hardly reconcilable, and are probably to be attributed to different priestly traditions.  Specifically, it is possible that the projected route through Edom and Moab is also envisioned in Deuteronomy 2, which is the work of the Deuteronomist.

Deuteronomy 2:29 says that the Israelites ask Sihon, king of the Amorites, for permission to go through his land, as the Israelites buy food and water along the way.  They say the Amorites should do this, just as the Edomites did.

The problem is this: In Numbers 20, the Edomites do not allow the Israelites to pass through their country.  Rather, the Edomites come against Israel with soldiers.  And so the Israelites don’t pass through Edom.

How do conservatives harmonize this?  I’m not sure what all of the solutions are, but Rashi and John Gill state that Deuteronomy 2:29 is talking about the Edomites selling Israel food and water, not the Edomites allowing Israel to pass through their land.  But Gill goes on to say that the Edomites changed their mind and allowed the Israelites to pass through.

I’d have to look up the sites to see where the Israelites went in the proposed biblical scenarios.  Did they go through Edom, or did they bypass it?  I find it interesting that Numbers 33:37 says that the Israelites camped at the edge of Edom, which seems to imply that, in this scenario, they don’t go through the land of the Edomites.  And John MacArthur says that Deuteronomy 2:8 indicates that the Israelites bypassed Edom, which is consistent with Numbers 30.  But MacArthur doesn’t address v 29. 

Could one solution to Deuteronomy 2:29′s contradiction of other passages be that the Israelites were lying to Sihon?

6.  Terence Collins, The Mantel of Elijah, page 23:

The subjection of the material to an artificial arrangement according to predetermined categories is sufficient indication that, in this kind of narrative, historical considerations are subordinate to literary ones.  This is not to say that because something is well written it cannot be historical, but there are good grounds for concluding in this case the primary intention of the writer was not the production of a historical record of what happened.  The work is an artistic composition inspired by serious theological and ideological intentions.  It has a historical theme, but it cannot be reduced to mere history, any more than Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra can be.  Whatever they may once have been, the kings and prophets as presented to us in the Deuteronomist story are no longer straightforward historical figures.  They have been subjected to an image-making process which has transformed them into symbols that transcend the limits of any specific historical times and events.  The Deuteronomistic writers were interested in the past only in so far as this had something to say to their own generation.  They used material from the past in a creative, literary way.  Their work contains many examples of real or alleged historical figures who have been elevated to the level of symbolic images.  The historical setting is important as a backdrop to the drama, but the presentation of the characters is controlled by the ideas, and appropriate words are put into their mouths in the form of speeches and prayers.  We shall find that much is true about the portrayal of the prophets in the prophetical books.  There are, for example, many connections between the picture of Elijah and the portrayal of prophets such as Ezekiel and Jeremiah.

I’m taking a break today from book reviews, but I’ll probably write about them tomorrow and Thursday, while returning to Collins’ book on Friday.  I’m only assigned two chapters from Collins’ book.

Collins argues that the prophetic writings may have a kernal that relates to a historical situation, but stuff was added to them in the exilic and post-exilic periods, to speak to Israel in that time.  And Collins views parts of the prophets as literary—an example of creative writing—not necessarily as historical.  Jeremiah’s laments resemble those of Elijah in the story of II Kings, so the character of Jeremiah in that book may be based on a character type.

How would that speak to Israel’s exilic and post-exilic periods?  Would it speak to Israelites who, like Jeremiah, were in despair and doubted God’s love for them in exile, and so they’d benefit from God’s assurance of Jeremiah?

7.  I watched a PBS documentary on Reconstruction, in the aftermath of reading Samuel Hyde, Jr.’s book, Pistols and Politics.  Hyde presented post-Civil War Reconstruction in pretty dismal terms.  In his telling, Southerners in the Florida parishes of Louisiana resented Northern interference, especially after the Union army had brought them a lot of destruction during the Civil War.  The carpetbaggers and the Republicans were corrupt, motivating even some African-Americans to vote for the Democratic Party, which was conservative, yet helped African-Americans in some ways.  And so whites revolted against Reconstruction, and racists brutally targeted African-Americans.

I’m not trying to make Hyde’s book sound like Birth of a Nation, because it wasn’t like that.  There were no good guys and bad guys in his book.  But his portrayal of Reconstruction was pretty dim.

The PBS documentary was much more glowing about Reconstruction, highlighting the African-Americans who received government positions under it, as well as the Civil Rights legislation that the Radical Republicans passed over President Andrew Johnson’s veto.  Its picture was this: there were the Republicans, who were trying to help African-Americans, and there were the bigoted white Southerners, who fiercely resisted that.  As for the carpetbaggers, the South initially welcomed these Northerners and their investments, before turning around and resenting them!

There were interesting details in this documentary.  First of all, I learned more about Andrew Johnson.  He was a Senator from Tennessee, who fiercely opposed Southern secession.  He was the only Southern senator to remain in the U.S. Senate, for the others went with the Confederacy.  Because he wasn’t a friend of the planters, siding instead with the poor, there were Southerners who were afraid of what he might do to them as President.  But Johnson turned out to be their friend, as he fiercely and stubbornly resisted the Radical Republicans.

Second, the documentary narrated how Reconstruction came to an end.  I wondered why a Republican President, Rutherford P. Hayes, would be the one to end Reconstruction, a Republican project.  The answer was that he was in a heavily contested Presidential election, and he ended Reconstruction as part of a deal with the South.

My high school history teacher once talked about revisionist history, and how historians now are more sympathetic towards Reconstruction than they were in the past.  The pre-revisionist view (which many would argue was itself revisionist, only in a different direction) was what I got in elementary school: although our history book sided with the North in the Civil War, it said that Johnson was impeached because he was resisting the Radical Republicans, who wanted to punish the South.  There was no hint that the Radicals were trying to help the freed slaves.

Things were probably more complex than either side may portray them, as Hyde’s book depicts.

Theodicy, Prayer, Haiti

Here are three items from the blogosphere that piqued my interest:

1.  James McGrath has a post, There Is No Slippery Slope, which critiques the fundamentalist argument that rejecting biblical inerrancy puts one on the path to liberalism and unbelief.  According to McGrath, there’s no “slippery slope” because there’s no secure place from which we can slide.  The Bible is diverse on such questions as reward and punishment and whether people get what they deserve: the Deuteronomist, Proverbs, and some Psalms say “yes,” whereas the Book of Job and Ecclesiastes say “no.” 

I asked James: James, I have a question about this statement you make:

“The rest of us can go skiing and hiking and explore the mountain, and find places all over its slopes that one can remain if one chooses.”

I’m assuming that mountain means the Bible, with all its diversity. Are you saying that we can choose which viewpoint in the Bible we go with? For example—right now, reward and punishment in this life may make sense to me, but, once tragedy strikes, I’d be drawn to the nihilism in Job. But which corresponds to real life? Which represents how God does things?

McGrath response was as follows:

James, presumably if answering such questions with certainty were possible, we might not have the diversity of views in Scripture that we do!

But if nothing else, presumably the diversity of Scripture on topics like suffering and divine wrath suggest that people who have had different experiences may view the same topic in different ways. And perhaps that’s OK…

That’s kind of a no-brainer, and it turns my question on its head.  I asked which view accords with real life.  McGrath responds that both views come from people’s experiences.

And he’s right on this, Scripturally-speaking.  The author of Psalm 37 says in his old age that he never saw a righteous person’s seed beg for bread (v 25).  In Job 21, however, Job apparently knows of wicked people who die in prosperity, undermining the view that God consistently rewards and punishes people in this life.  Both are basing their theological view on what they’ve seen and heard.

Both are commenting from their life experiences.  Whom should I believe?  Maybe both, in a sense.  Joel Osteen tells stories of people who apply principles of faith and giving and find healing and prosperity in their lives.  Perhaps those are true stories.  But there are plenty of people who are disappointed with God because they believe God failed them in some way.

Even in the New Testament, there’s some tension.  Jesus says we shouldn’t worry because God will provide for us (Matthew 6:25-34).  Yet, he tells a story of a righteous man who dies poor and destitute, Lazarus (Luke 16:19ff.), so he apparently acknowledges that this can happen in real life.

Which should I bank on?  It’s hard to trust either viewpoint, if both aren’t absolute.  And, being an all-or-nothing type of guy, I tend to lean towards Jobean nihilism because there are chinks in the “reward and punishment” scenario. 

I guess all I can do is hope and pray: carry my concerns to God, and see what happens.  I feel I have to trust in God’s love, whatever takes place.  

2.  Under John W. Loftus’ post, Praise God for the Disaster in Haiti! Isn’t God Good? Thank You Jesus!, Stephanie (not the Steph of the biblio-blogosphere) states:

I got in an argument with a woman on Huffington Post who posted that everyone needed to pray for the people of Haiti. I told her that was a useless endeavor because prayers don’t work. She said they did and Jesus would answer the Haitian’s prayers by helping and comforting them through this hard time. I said, ok, let’s put this to the test. If every person who is in Haiti to help them left right now and all the food and water that has been shipped in was flown back to the states. And instead, everyone just prayed for them, what do you think would happen? Would food and water magically appear? Would the trapped people be magically freed? Would all the dead come back to life? Of course, she didn’t respond back. She knows damned well that those people would die from starvation and every person trapped alive would eventually die from their injuries. Praying is equal to masturbating. Christians do it to make themselves feel better. It’s a very selfish thing to do when so many are dying.

I have mixed reactions to this quote.  I don’t think prayer is a “selfish thing to do when so many are dying.”  People are praying because they care about the suffering in Haiti, and they feel powerless to change it, so they appeal to a being who’s more powerful than they are.  I asked Stephanie what she’s doing while so many are dying.  Criticizing Christians doesn’t help the people in Haiti, either.

I pray for people each day on my Christian dating site: people with cancer, or economic problems, or in abusive relationships.  If I were not a Christian (or at least a theist), I would not do that.  I’d think that bad things happen, and there’s not much that I can do about it, so why worry?  But prayer is a way for me to care for somebody else, and to act in a way that the person suffering deems effective.  There’s nothing selfish about it.

Stephanie’s comment reminded me of an interaction under Polycarp’s post, Engaging Atheism: Blaming God for Humanity’s Ignorance.  Polycarp was defending God, and an atheist named Devin replied that, of course, Polycarp believes in a good God!  He lives in the prosperous West.  But where is God in the areas in which God doesn’t appear to provide?  Devin then said that he used to be angry at God because God didn’t intervene to relieve people’s suffering; now, however, his mind is at ease because he doesn’t think God exists.  My response was: But those problems are still there, Devin, whether there’s a God or not. How, then, can you be at ease? And do you have any hope that they’ll be solved?  And that’s my issue with atheism: Even if I can’t mount an effective theodicy, my belief in God at least gives me hope that the problem of evil will be solved.  I’m not just going to say “bad things happen—that’s life!” and move on!  (Not that I should judge Stephanie or Devin, for they may contribute to charities that attempt to relieve suffering.)

Where Stephanie’s quote resonates with me is that I, too, don’t know how to pray for the people of Haiti.  As I said in my post, Haiti, I can pray for individuals more easily than I can for nations.  When a woman on my Christian dating site asks for prayer because she wants to be healed of cancer, I can do that, because I can picture a person being healed of cancer: it’s happened before!  But I’m not sure what God would do to correct the problems in Haiti.

The same goes with praying for our troops.  I’m not sure what people want me to pray.  That our troops won’t die?  But some of them will die, because that’s what happens in war.  In Deuteronomy 20, God promises to protect the Israelites and to give them victory, yet there’s an acknowledgment that some Israelites will die in battle (vv 5-7).  And this was a battle in which God was actually on somebody’s side.

Stephanie’s comment also resonated with me because it reminded me of the movie One-Hour Photo, which I discuss in my post, Invite Sy to Church.  On it, a yuppie mom and her son send “happy thoughts” to a lonely man named Sy.  A Christian reviewer remarked,  Imagine this: What if, upon sensing his pain, instead of sending Sy “good thoughts” (which does nothing for Sy and serves only to make the Yorkins’ feel better about themselves) the Yorkins did something that could ultimately save his life…What if they invited him to church?  Prayer has a place, but the Bible also says a lot about concrete action.    As James 2:15-16 says, if we tell a person in need, “Go in peace, be warm, and be filled,” and we do nothing concretely to help him out, what good is that?

3.   Felix has a thought-provoking post, Can’t those who speak for God be a little humble?  He links to a book, Lawrence Harrison’s Central Liberal Truth, which has a chapter about why Haiti is poor and the Dominican Republic is not.  Harrison says that, for a time in the nineteenth century, Haiti wasn’t that bad off and was actually more prosperous than the Dominican Republic, but certain factors led Haiti to its current poverty.  Corrupt leadership is a big one.  So is increasing population.  France exacting a heavy toll from Haiti in the nineteenth century also could have contributed to its poverty.  Haiti also distributed its land rather than continuing to use it to produce sugar, which could’ve been a lucrative export.  And there are times when Harrison’s analysis would make Brit Hume proud: he says that Voodoo is holding the Haitian people back because it teaches them to avoid responsibility for their actions, whereas Christianity is big on personal responsibility.

I’m not sure if I like Harrison’s cultural imperialism, but he makes a point that’s been in my mind for a long time.  People wonder why God allows certain regions to be poor.  Actually, God made them quite rich, which is why Europeans and Americans have tried to take advantage of them!  It’s injustice that makes the people in those areas poor.  God will one day intervene to set that right.  In the meantime, we should find some way to promote justice.  I’m not sure what my part in this is, but the issue is on my mind.

Evolution with Purpose?, Lamentations Contradicts Jeremiah?, Ann Coulter Praises a Democrat, Bruce Cohen on Theodicy

1.  Last night, I started Steven Weitzman’s Song and Story in Biblical Narrative.  I haven’t quite gotten into the flow of his argument yet, but an incidental point stood out to me.

It concerns evolution.  On page 7, Weitzman states: Biology provides a textbook example: the wing of a bat seems similar to the wing of a bird not because bats and birds inherited this trait from a common ancestor but because each has evolved along parallel lines in response to similar environmental conditions.

As I said long ago in my post, Questions on Natural Selection, there’s something I don’t understand about evolution.  The way it’s often been presented to me, there are random mutations, and the animals whose mutations gave them the ability to survive live on to pass down their genes.

But there are also times when it’s presented to me as creatures evolving characteristics they need in response to their environment.  It’s like, “I need an eye to cope with my environment here, so I’ll evolve an eye.”

But the two concepts strike me as different.  In the first one, I don’t necessarily evolve what I need.  I’m at the mercy of mutations that I can’t control, and, if they’re favorable to me, then I survive.  But there’s no guarantee that anyone will have a favorable mutation.  If there are animals with features that enable them to survive in their environment, that’s because they’re the lucky ones: they got good mutations.

In the second, a creature mutates to adapt, as if there’s a purpose in the mutation.

I feel like I’m stumbling in the dark on evolution and no one can help me.  Atheists dismiss people as stupid.  Regarding creationists, I can’t always be certain if they’re defining evolution to me in a correct manner.

2.  I read the Anchor Bible Dictionary article on the Book of Lamentations.  It has the following on the authorship of the Book:

Nothing in the Bible expressly attributes our canonical book of Lamentations to Jeremiah the prophet, but the seeds for such an ascription are present in the general tendency to ascribe originally anonymous works to prominent figures, such as Moses, David, Solomon, and in the statement that Jeremiah, a “weeping” prophet (Jer 8:23—Eng 9:1), who lived through the fall of Jerusalem, wrote a “lament” or “laments” (2 Chr 35:25) over Josiah. Perhaps it is from such origins that there grows the ascription found already in the LXX, at the head of the book: “. . . Jeremiah sat weeping and composed this lament over Jerusalem and said. . . .” The LXX order of books associates it with Jeremiah. In various ways the Targum, the Syriac (Peshitta), and Vulgate make the same ascription to Jeremiah, as do the Babylonian Talmud (B. Bat. 15a) and other rabbinic works, which quote the book in the form: “Jeremiah says. . . .”

As noted above, the Hebrew Bible itself does not place Lamentations with the book of Jeremiah, a tradition continued in some uncommon but ancient listings of the books of Scripture. This impressive evidence of the book’s original anonymity is bolstered by critical examination of the content of the book, for while it is not impossible that Jeremiah could have written it, some of its ideas seem implausible or incongruous as coming from him. In the question of reliance on help from foreign powers, contrast Lam 4:17, which refers to the poignant longing of the people (“we”) for aid from Egypt, with Jer 2:18 or 37:5–10, where the prophet denounces alliances and predicts their failure; on the destruction of the temple, compare Lam 1:10, with its reference to God’s forbidding nations to enter the sanctuary, with Jer 7:14, where the prophet in God’s name predicted this dire event; in Lam 4:20 King Zedekiah is “the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh,” on whom the common hopes of the people depended, while in Jer 37:17 the prophet clearly predicted his capture by the Babylonians. Could Jeremiah, active as a prophet through this whole tragic time, have lamented, “Her prophets find no vision from Yahweh”? (2:9).

I find most of the arguments against Jeremiah’s authorship to be weak.  Lamentations 4:17 presents reliance on foreign nations as a let-down, which is what Jeremiah 2:18 and 37:5-10 essentially argue.  Yes, God forbade foreigners to enter the sanctuary (Numbers 18:2-6), as Lamentations 1:10 affirms; and, yes, Jeremiah predicted that foreigners would enter it as part of God’s punishment of Judah.  But the two concepts aren’t really contradictory, for Jeremiah can mourn over something that he predicted, as if it’s strange and unusual (i.e., God doesn’t like foreigners entering his sanctuary but allows them to do so, anyway).  Moreover, maybe Jeremiah didn’t understand the full impact of what he was predicting until it came true; then, it was a shock to him—something he’d never seen before.  

The part about the prophets finding no vision from Yahweh (Lamentations 2:9) is a decent point, though, because Jeremiah offered his people hope and guidance during and after the destruction of Jerusalem.  But maybe God stopped speaking to Judah after she rejected Jeremiah—by going to Egypt in spite of his warnings.  At that time, she had no guidance. 

3.  I enjoyed Ann Coulter’s column this week: Harry Reid’s Negro Problem.  I can’t say that I found all of it in good taste, but I somewhat liked her following statement:

After the 2000 election, Democrats had a chance to make one of the rare smart Democrats, Donna Brazile, head of the Democratic National Committee. Brazile had just run a perfectly respectable campaign on behalf of that bumbling buffoon Al Gore.

She also happens to be black. Again, blacks give 90 percent of their votes to the Democrats.

But the Democrats skipped over Brazile and handed the DNC chairmanship to the goofy white guy in lime green pants, Howard Dean.

What I like is that a conservative pundit like Ann Coulter can find something to like in a Democrat.  I like Donna Brazile myself.  She sounds reasonable.  She doesn’t talk down to people (unlike some liberals).  She can disagree while remaining friendly.

4.   I thought this post was good, even before the recent earthquake in Haiti: Believers and Black Swan Scotoma.  It’s by Messianic Rabbi Bruce Cohen, and it concerns theodocy: Why do bad things happen to good people?

Christian authors write books and preach sermons about how we can live prosperous, happy lives, without being touched by tragedy.  But no one is insulated from tragedy.  Rabbi Cohen refers to Christian musician Stephen Curtis Chapman, whose seven-year old daughter was killed in an accident.  Rabbi Cohen states that we don’t understand why tragedy occurs and that we should serve God because it’s the right thing to do, not to get rewards.

This brought to mind other posts, such as atheist John Loftus’ The Darwinian Problem of Evil, in which Loftus quotes Charles Darwin’s dismissal of the theistic argument that suffering brings moral improvement.  According to Darwin, it doesn’t always, plus that argument doesn’t account for why animals suffer. 

Or there’s Rachel Held Evans’ post, Is God in control? , which takes on the Calvinist claim that God controls everything.  She doesn’t believe God would ordain the rape of a child.  By contrast, some Calvinists may argue that even that can fit within God’s righteous purposes.

I’m not sure what to say about theodicy.  In a sense, I hope that my relationship with God will ensure that things will turn out well for me, and that my loved ones and I would escape tragedy.  That’s one reason I pray: so that things will turn out well in my and other people’s lives.  That’s a basis for hope.  And, if there is tragedy, there’s a part of me that would like to see that as part of a righteous purpose.  As an elderly church lady once asked a skeptical waitress, “What’s the alternative?”  To believe that things are pointless?

But it’s not easy when the pain of real life comes crashing through.

Haiti

I’m having another fit of insomnia, and my slight headache is still annoying me.  One of my tasks tomorrow: get some Tylenol!

I’ve been thinking about Rachel Held Evans’ post, We already failed Haiti , which deals with theodicy and the Christian obligation to help the poor.  Polycarp also discusses the recent earthquake in Hundreds of thousands dead in Haiti quake and Organizations where you can help the people of Haiti.  Here are some thoughts about Haiti:

1.  I don’t know how to pray for large-scale events.  I can pray for an individual who needs healing or money for food, but I don’t know what I should pray when it comes to an entire nation.  Should I pray that God will keep people from dying?  What makes me think he’ll answer that prayer?  He hasn’t kept people from dying so far. 

One thing I hope about Haiti is that it will become more just, that people will become convicted to love their neighbors as themselves.  At a meeting yesterday, a friend was talking about how the wedding of Baby Doc (a former leader in Haiti) cost millions of dollars.  This is tragic, when there are so many who are dirt poor in that country.  So I pray for conviction.

2.  Polycarp posted Don Miller Pities Pat Robertson; Rush Limbaugh weighs in.  To be honest, I have a hard time hating Pat Robertson for his comments.  They are problematic theologically, but his voice was shaking when he made them.  It was like he was discussing a solemn, serious, saddening issue rather than just shooting from the hip, which is what he did when he said we should take out Chavez.  Rush Limbaugh’s comments, however, disgust me.  Why’s he have to take a tragic situation and use it to bash President Obama as having a sinister motivation?

Rush would probably say that the liberals did that with 9/11.  Personally, contrary to the views of some on the right, I don’t think that 9/11 should have insulated the Bush Administration from criticism.  And, if Obama does something wrong when he helps Haiti, or if there are better ways to assist the nation than he proposes, then that should be pointed out.  But, please, don’t bash the President as having a sinister political motivation, when we can’t even read the man’s mind!  Maybe he sincerely wants to help.

3.  There are people in my family who are skeptical about charities, and appropriately so.  Money was misappropriated after 9/11 and the tsunamis, and that’s tragic.  People would respond, however, that we shouldn’t allow cynicism to keep us from donating to charities, since what’t important is that we’re giving, regardless of what the charities do with our money.

I wonder if there’s a middle ground or a third way to look at the situation.  Sure, I don’t think cynicism should paralyze me from giving, but I also think it’s mistaken to say I shouldn’t care how charities spend my money.  Money is scarce for me, so, when I give it to charity, I hope it’s accomplishing something positive.

4.  I’m not sure if I’ll donate money to help Haiti.  I already give some to my local Food Bank, which helps the hungry in Cincinnati.  There are all sorts of causes out there, and I can’t help all of them. 

5.  One point Rachel made is that many in America live in luxury, and she’s convicted that she does so when there are so many people who lack the basic necessities.  I said on her blog that I don’t have much money, but that’s not a good excuse, for I spend some of what I do have on such luxuries as cable, Internet, going out to eat every now and then, etc.  And I’m extremely hesitant to part with that.

I don’t plan to part with my luxuries, since life would be pretty miserable if I had to live a Spartan existence.  Does part of me feel guilty about that?  Yes.  But my mind’s made up.

6.  Rachel linked to World Vision, and it only costs $38 a month to help a child.  That’s not too much.  Granted, if I gave to World Vision, I’d stop donating to my local Food Pantry.  But it’s still not that much.

7.  When I attended Harvard, a prominent liberal evangelical was promoting a sponsor-a-child-in-a-foreign-country charity.  I vaguely remember him saying that, if I don’t donate, then I’m not a true Christian.  I’m going with my memory here, and it’s flawed.  But I resent manipulation.  Evangelicals do well to point out that we should think of others besides ourselves.  But some evangelicals’ method of doing this makes me recoil from evangelicalism.  Part of it is that I don’t like being told what to do.  My gut response when I hear something like that is “I’ll do what I want with my own money, thank you very much, and I won’t let you guilt-trip me with your intimidation and your power-trip, prominent evangelical whom people would recognize if I named him, so I’ll keep him anonymous so I’m not sued for libel!”  I like how Paul handled charity in I-II Corinthians (which Rachel quotes): he focused on the positive.  He encouraged.  He presented God as someone who wants to bless.  He talked about how donations could accomplish good.  He tried to bring out the best in people.

8.  On the theodicy issue, I don’t know what to say.  Rachel dislikes the notion that the earthquake was God’s punishment because innocent people (e.g., children) have suffered, but there are plenty of times in the Bible when children die as a result of God’s wrath.  Another problem Rachel has identified with blaming natural disasters on human sin is that we really don’t know what sin God would be punishing if that were the case.  John Piper blamed a natural disaster on homosexuality, but who’s to say that God wasn’t punishing Christians who hate homosexuals?  If God is chastening us with natural disasters, it’s basically our guess what his lesson is.  What kind of pedagogy is that?

I don’t worry about theodicy because I don’t have any answers as to why bad things happen.  I am commanded to love people, however—to at least be concerned with their pain, and, if I can, to help them out.  In addition, at least the doctrine of Christ’s second coming gives me the hope that things will be made right some day.  That’s why I don’t understand atheists who refuse to believe in God on account of the problems in the world.  If there’s no God, what hope is there that things will be made right?

An Ogre God?

H.L. Strack and Gunter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash: Second Edition, trans. and ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 176.

In Shab 2.6 we read that women die in childbirth…because of three transgressions.

The three transgressions that the Mishnah lists are (in Danbury’s translation) “heedlessness of the laws of the menstruant, the Dough-offering, and the lighting of the [Sabbath] lamp.”

Babylonian Talmud 31b-34a contains an extensive discussion of this passage, or, more accurately, this passage is a launch-pad for other discussions about divine punishment of sin. In some cases, disobedience can hurt not only the sinner, but also the people he loves. For example, Rabbi Nathan said that a man’s wife could die if he failed to pay his vows, and Rabbi stated that his kids could die young.

Modern Christianity is rather mixed about this sort of religion. In the book, Every Man’s Battle, one of the authors said that he feared his sexual immorality was depriving his family of spiritual protection. When I lived in New York, and Tim Keller was on vacation from Redeemer, I visited Times Square Church, pastored by David Wilkerson of The Cross and the Switchblade fame. He emphatically denied that our sins can motivate God to punish the people we love. He referred to the Golden Calf story, in which the Levites kill their own kin, and he seemed to disagree with this portrayal of God (if I understood him correctly; I’m sure he has a high view of biblical inspiration!). I know someone who didn’t participate in communion because she wasn’t sure if she believed in it, and she was afraid that something awful would happen to her family. “I actually believed in that kind of God,” she said, after the communion came and went and nothing had happened to the people she loves.

When I watch Little House on the Prairie, Touched by an Angel, and Highway to Heaven, the message that comes out is that God is not responsible for the horrible things that happen. That may be the “official stance” of modern-day religion. Yet, the fact that it’s repeated so often may indicate that a lot of people feel deep down that misfortune is God’s punishment of people for their sins.

The Scriptures are mixed on this issue. Deuteronomy and Proverbs think that God punishes people’s sins. There are some Psalms like that, except when the Psalmist is baffled about why he has to suffer, being the righteous person that he is. Job presents suffering as a mystery known only to God, yet the story-part narrates that Job suffered because God was testing his faithfulness.

When we get to the New Testament, Jesus denies that a blind man, Galileans killed by Pilate, and the victims of the Tower of Siloam experienced their misfortunes on account of their sins. Yet, he tells a man he heals to sin no more, lest something worse befall him. The Epistle of James connects healing with the forgiveness of sins, implying perhaps his belief that sin causes disease. But other parts of the New Testament present suffering as something that builds Christian character.

Even rabbinic literature can be quite nuanced. Some voices recognized that there are righteous people who suffer and wicked people who prosper. But they are clear that everything will be equalized in the afterlife. According to one tradition, the righteous are receiving punishment for their few sins in this life, so that they can have an eternity of bliss in the afterlife. And the wicked are getting it easy in this life, so that they’ll get loads of punishment in the afterlife. So things are ultimately fair, the rabbis believed.

Much of religion is an attempt to control life. Many of us believe that the existence of an omnipotent God should make life a little more predictable, or hopeful. That’s why we pray for healing of ourselves or our loved ones, or a promotion at work, or a wife or husband.

And is this wrong? Skeptics like to point out that religionists try to have it both ways: when good things happen, we’re supposed to attribute that to God. Maybe he’s blessing us out of his free grace, or he’s rewarding us. But when bad things happen, we say that God is not at fault. But isn’t God powerful enough to stop bad things from happening? Can there be meaningless suffering in a universe where God exists?

Something else about the Mishnah passage: What I like about it is that it says people should honor God. It’s not really talking about someone who has issues with faith and chooses to sit out of communion, but rather a person who rejects God’s order. Someone who doesn’t say “thank you” to God by giving a dough offering is being ungrateful, period. Of course, in that culture, probably everyone believed in God, meaning there weren’t people who said, “Well, why should I give my dough? How do we even know this God exists?” So people were most likely withholding their dough from a God they believed in, and that was selfish.

But should we honor God with the mindset that he is some kind of ogre, eager to strike us down when we do something wrong? I can understand that there should be consequences for sin. Can one believe in this, without viewing God as an ogre?