To Speak of Many Things

Ok. There were a couple posts up here about a good many important things. Like God, evil, history, Hell, creation, and grace. They're hiding, now, until I can wrap my brain around them better, and articulate them better.

In the meantime, I'm cutting and pasting a couple quotes that might still be worth something.

//EDIT: Sep. '07 I've taken the whole "Evil and Eschatology" post back out of hiding for now (unedited and untouched from whatever I wrote in March '06)//

I'm reading my medieval history textbook, and about Europe from 200 BC to 1000 AD. Some of the amazingly cool and amazingly depressing stuff happened then. And I'm convinced that people often are far, far too eager to say, "I know God's plan for history, and that's why this good thing happened here, and this bad thing happened there."

I do NOT read history and see "God's glorious providential script." God's glorious script, as far as I can tell, would have been a Perelandra, a world growing up under him without a Fall.

I read history, and I see evil and suffering and pain. And I see God's grace coming in from time to time, through people, and mitigating it and redeeming it. I read history and say, "Wow. I am floored by how many times God uses the evilly-intended actions of men to work great good."

As far as I can make out right now, Calvinism is amazingly unlivable. It doesn't hold up soon as I run into a non-Christian, or see and feel the suffering and pain and bentness of the world. If the renewal and union with God of a tiny 1% of people is the whole bloody hope that Christianity potentially promises -- to hell with everything else -- it's a rather tiny and limited hope.

I don't think God's grand plan of history is, "Yes, man rebelled and fell. I've got every right to let them all go to hell, but I'll stoop down and save a tiny 1% of them, and make those my new chosen people, and show my mercy and power and glory through their salvation and redemption. And the other 99%? They can just keep right on going to hell (literally). And I'll be just as glorified through that."

I look at the world right now, and about all I can say is, "There is evil. It hurts. God never desired injustice and evil and man's inhumanity to man, and man's abuse of creation, and man's perversion and abuse and misuse of all of the good things God gave to man. And yet God allows it to keep happening."

Let me be troubled by why God doesn't interfere more. Let me be troubled as to why he chose something as inefficient as his church to be the focal point of his interference -- to be the foothold of the spread of his renewal and hope. I can hold this in tension. I cannot hold in tension a God who looks at the world and says, "Renewal? Suffering? What are you talking about? It's going to hell in a handbasket -- just worry about growing in your personal relationship to me, along with this handful of other people I'm saving!"

Calvinism doesn't seem to mesh with reality. But non-Calvinism doesn't seem to mesh with the Bible. Yes, there's something of a syllogism in there, and it scares me.

People always say that Christianity is the only religion that takes seriously questions of evil and suffering. And then they turn right and around and say, "Why are you so torn up about evil and suffering? God had scripted all history beforehand for his glory, and that unsaved starving child in India is a part of it -- who are you to question the plans and purposes of God? God is God. You are not."

If Christianity requires me to inure myself to the suffering and pain of the world, and not be torn up by it, and say "and it's not really an important and integral part of the hope of Christianity to be fixing it -- just worry about your personal relationship with God and with the church" -- I can't live like that. And I AM rather frightened, right now, that this more limited hope is actually what the Bible teaches. And that a huge percentage of the things I looked at in Christianity and said, "Wow. Yes. True. Beautiful. Hard. Right. Livable. Of course." are not actually what the Bible teaches, and are not actually Christianity.

Basically...I'm finally having to confront, head-on, a good many of the loose ends that have built up since this and this. And it's a rather ugly tangle, with very very little light at the end of the tunnel.

Evil and Eschatology

Ok. Calvinism, I think, is a distraction from the actual issue at hand. Which I believe is something to the effect of this:

How bothered should Christians be by the evil and pain and bentness and darkness of the world? What is the proper response to such things?

Is it to say something along the lines of, "Yes, there's evil. Purge it out of your own life, make sure you're living rightly, encourage your fellow handful of believers to live rightly. And don't worry about all that stuff happening out in the world, to people who aren't part of God's family. God has it all under his hand and providential plan of history -- he's directing all that mess to some end."

Or is it to say something along the lines of, "These things ought not be. God did NOT create the world to be unjust and bent and evil and wrong -- we should reach out and FIX IT as much as we are able, with his help -- and this renewal is an integral part of the hope of Christianity"?

Are the world, and non-Christians, just out there for the sake of Christians? So that our run-ins with them strengthen us and make us better followers of Christ? Or is the world out there for us to actually DO something about? And is its renewal an integral part of what Christianity is about?

And I know people will be yelling, "Both/and! Both/and!" And they'll have a point. I must beware false dichotomies. But it's something awfully hard to walk the fine line on, and I DO see people tending to fall on one side or the other.

Um...it should be rather obvious to anyone who's been reading this thing for any length of time where I fall. Because, dammit, I CAN'T think otherwise. If Christianity requires me to inure myself to the suffering and pain of the world, and not be torn up by it, and say "and it's not really an important and integral part of the hope of Christianity to be fixing it -- just worry about your personal relationship with God and with the church" -- I can't live like that. And I am quite frightened, right now, that this more limited hope is actually what the Bible teaches. That a huge percentage of the things I looked at in Christianity and said, "Wow. Yes. True. Beautiful. Hard. Right. Livable. Of course." are not actually what the Bible teaches, and are not actually Christianity.

People always say that Christianity is the only religion that takes seriously questions of evil and suffering. And then they turn right and around and say, "Why are you so torn up about evil and suffering? God had scripted all history beforehand for his glory, and that unsaved starving child in India is a part of it -- who are you to question the plans and purposes of God? God is God. You are not."

And I know I'm being ungracious about some things here, and mashing together too many issues, here, and not representing everything 100% clearly. And drawing lines and oppositions where there may not really be any.

Still. I do NOT read history and see "God's glorious providential script." How can I? God's glorious script, as far as I can tell, would have been a Perelandra, a world growing up under him without a Fall. (The Fall was not a "happy fault" or bonum-something-or-other or whatever the term is. God used it to bring about a wonderful and great GOOD, and to show his love and mercy and glory in a way that would never have been possible without it. Very cool. But not the same thing). I read history, and I see evil and suffering and pain. And I see God's grace coming in from time to time, through people, and mitigating it and redeeming it. I read history and say, "Wow. I am floored by how many times God uses the evilly-intended actions of men to work great good."

I look at the world right now, and about all I can say is, "There is evil. It hurts. God never desired injustice and evil and man's inhumanity to man, and man's abuse of creation, and man's perversion and abuse and misuse of all of the good things God gave to man. And yet God allows it to keep happening."

Let me be troubled by why God doesn't interfere more. Let me be troubled as to why he chose something as inefficient as his church to be the focal point of his interference -- to be the foothold of the spread of his renewal and hope. I can hold this in tension. I cannot hold in tension a God who looks at the world and says, "Renewal? Suffering? What are you talking about? It's going to hell in a handbasket -- just worry about growing in your personal relationship to me, along with this handful of other people I'm saving!"

And it really doesn't bother me if the whole earth is going to get destroyed in the end. Though of course I would sort of like it better if the postmillenialists are right in part. Or if Dr. Jackson's right, and the New Heaven and New Earth are really this heaven and this earth, after God's coming and presence has cleansed imperfection out of them. I'd just really appreciate, in some form or another, a Christianity that weeps at the suffering of the world, and reaches out, and fixes it as much as is possible. Whether it's seen as being in imitation of the 2nd coming kingdom, or being an actual step in/towards the 2nd coming kingdom.