Some about Suffering

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.... the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God... because the creature shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought -- but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Indeed the whole creation groans until now.....

And he that searches the hearts... knows what is the mind of the Spirit because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose." Romans 8, selections.

Thanks for your response Joyce. ( please see my most recent post and Joyce's very stimulating observation.) You are certainly correct that I know only certain fragments of Catholic theology. I suspect that my daughter-in-law Grace will now more than I do about it soon since she is reading the Summa Theologica.

What I do know about it is what I can glean from First Things. Do you ever read this? I understand that the founding father, John Neuhaus, held the belief that hell contains no human persons/souls and never will. Is this the "butterfly effect," of which you were speaking?

I quite agree that all suffering is somehow redemptive but I am unclear as to the mechanism. It is frankly way beyond me...having an eclectic approach to theology probably doesn't help; but it is my view that each organ of the Body has its own function and one of the functions of the rest of the organs is to try not to alter the particular gift/duty of any particular other organ. When this happens, disease is the result. The body fights against itself as is the case in lupus rheumatoid arthritis, and many others including cancer. But I do quite expect that the Whole Body and The Bride will be quite impressive!!! And the problems of discord and suffering will be sorted out.

Suffering and sin is a Gordian knot which no man can untangle. (or dissect) Certainly the "friends" of Job tried hard enough. My recent sufferings are more to be reckoned as trivial compared to the sufferings of other people, but I do believe they were instructive once again to help me re-sort my priorities. Otherwise there would be no point in mentioning them. "Therefore brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh -- if you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live."

How this actually works out in practice seems to be a moment by moment experiential and, as it seems only to us, experimental and perhaps existential (in the Kierkegaardian sense) process beyond our control; I can know about such matters but faintly and not intellectually. How it really looks to The Father and The Son is more the province of the Spirit as it moves and interprets the word of God/Logos. Perhaps this is why theology in itself has some very natural and supernatural limitations. Certainly God uses theology in the lives of almost all people but it has to be merely a stepping stone to the real thing, as Paul asserts when he affirms that we see through a glass darkly. I personally am quite looking forward to being "swept away" in the very near future and I'm quite sure I will be leaving most of my theology and my thought patterns behind. Even the stuff I'm reading now is mostly(all?) dust in the wind compared to the Persons of the Godhead. At my age it is getting a little bit tiresome to be arguing, and I certainly would not be dogmatic about any of the above even the particular application of the above Scriptures to anything and anyone.

"There is is, then. Too many notes...." (I trust no one is taking notes on any of this)

Bon What? Bon Pain!

It's difficult to offer a "bon mot" to cover almost two weeks of illness and hence frustration. Something that would fit into a comix format, for instance, like the Calvinistic: "Snow Goons are bad news. " Or the Hobbesian rejoinder, "Live and don't learn, that's us."

It's worthy of note that Job prayed to die, but didn't. He never knew the "whole truth and nothing but the truth"; perhaps after God's "Speech" or encounter, better said, he knew better than to ask.

Hezekiah on the other hand was wont to want his own life back even after Isaiah told him of his looming sickness unto death. So he went over the prophet's head and got another 15 years, but in so doing set the stage for the Babylonian Captivity. "Life" is not an unqualified good; yet, "What will a man give in exchange for his life?" Not only his own skin, but the punishment of all around him, as his ancestor David did when he asked God to sent a plague on the people--for his own sin- rather than go through being harassed again for a season, something he already knew how to tolerate. Not unto David's death, mind you, but unto persecution, a sickness not unto death. (The implied promise was that he would survive being chased around Israel, as happened before he became king.)

Speaking of kings, Jesus noted that, "scarce for a good man would someone die," much less for his enemies. David did not intend to die or even take punishment for his countrymen, most of whom had done him no harm, or had greatly helped him.

(I must quickly add here that I certainly hope, if there were no other choices, that I would take a fatal hit for my wife; there is that protective instinct which I have, and most men have, however atrophied; that I hope would overcome my instinct for survival at any cost; but without His Spirit, I would as likely fail as Peter failed Jesus.)

I really don't know how to pray because I don't know how to wait, much less to let the results up to Someone other than myself. Yet our faith in ourselves is "little faith," in which, according to our internal/secret evaluation of our track record, we always come up short and hence are never satisfied with anything or anyone. As I told someone today, there is not an individual who is not a hypocrite, who lives up to his own standards, much less anything higher. And there is no one that doesn't operate by a double set of rules, no matter how negative or pessimistic or pietistic etc. they may be.

Overall, we could learn more from Job than we can from the late Hezekiah, at least that is what I have learned from my most recent internment. I did not, by the way, pray to die so y'all are still stuck with me. For now. (Wannabe Job's friend? Facebook!!!)

Tuesday, in Plague Time

I did just finish "The Plague" and I have numerous thoughts about it. It is supposed to be written by Dr. Rieux, who is also the protagonist. But Camus' emphasis of course is not mere science but philosophy in general and ethics in particular. Interestingly, every character in the book is seen sympathetically, even Cottard the criminal who takes advantage of the plague to make lots of money off his desperate fellow-prisoners. It is a bit like Dostoevsky's survey, from the inside, of prison life in Siberia, since no one is allowed to leave the town of Oran once plague is identified as their ague.

The fashion in which these two great writers treat their characters isn't unlike the way doctors have to experience things--we literally have to find some worthwhile aspect of every human life we treat or even contemplate treating, even if our some of our patients are at war with each other, us, and with the rest of the world. Particularly when we are on call and have almost no choice as to whom we will treat--and all have to be considered with the same intensity and quality as the "alpha male" so to speak.

On the other hand, when Sartre alleged that there was no difference, to him at least, between the lowest drunk in the gutter and the most powerful king in the world--one might hope that he was being egalitarian, but his other judgments tend to cast doubt on that hypothesis, like the quote from "No Exit" which Dennis and I discussed earlier, "Hell is other people." Camus could also get quite irritated at some people, but he saw this as a limitation of his vision, not a final verdict.

My immediate thought at the end of the book, however, is I believe grounded in current medical practice, and is the same reaction as I had to the 9/11 sabotage, which is this:

"Well, that's a one-trick pony!" (And the pony died doing its act)

What happened on flight 93 could reasonably be expected to happen consistently in future attacks of the same nature. Passengers and pilots had been trained to be passive and just wait. The feeling in the plague city was the same, that one was at the mercy of factors beyond their personal or collective control. But the lies that were told to the people on those flights were exposed to the entire world instantly--no terrorist who commandeers an airplane again will ever be taken at his word, and the assumption now is that it's not money or political prisoners they want, but the death of every one on the plane and at the target site. So? "Let's Roll!" Nothing to lose, everything to gain. And so forth.

Similarly, what happened in Camus' fictional city would not happen again at least in the Western world, because shortly after his book was written, numerous groups of antibiotics were discovered to treat the plague bacillus. Streptomycin would have been the first available. But there is also instant worldwide publicity and a marshaling of international effort that regularly occurs now; but even so, much less need to panic than in the past, this novel being set in the late 1940's I would guess.

I am concerned of course about places like Myanmar/Burma, where my son Mark is going, and where the junta does not allow international help and where medical care is worse nowhere else in the world, as I understand. So if you are a praying person, that's yet another reason to pray. He'll be there two solid years, based in Thailand where medical help is very good, thanks in part to my alma mater, the U of Illinois, which has greatly helped to modernize the med school at Chengmai (sp?) and other major cities.

I wonder if I should give him plague vaccine before he goes.............

No Voz

Stricken as I am this weekend with laryngitis, I am shunned even by Dr. Dragonspeak, so I am not in pain, but reduced to typing only. Aren't you glad I can't write cursively over the net? Or, maybe not...is that a double negative, as I fear? (I can do long strings of negatives- I've got "great lumps of it 'round the back!!!"

I thought it might be mildly interesting, to me at least, if I let das blogn'reader know what I am currently reading, as I did a few months back:

"Berlin Diaries 1940-1945" by Marie Vassiltchikov and the newest bio on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both of which I have mentioned recently. Both were involved in plots to kill Hitler but only she survived; also Chuck Colson's version of Watergate written after his conversion; Francis Schaeffer's "No Little People"; "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; and I am "getting very near the end" as the Beatles once sang, of "The Plague". What a relief that will be--now if I could just get rid of my mini-plague!

Being of largely German extraction I am again fascinated by Germany's worst years, and it occurred to me again that, "Uneasy is the head that wears the crown." Time magazine recently featured an Afghan woman on the cover who had had her nose, among other parts mutilated, cut off by yonder Taliban. This was journalistic speculation as to what may happen, again, to women if we totally give up in that region. Anyone who has seen "The Kite Runner," has a good feel for what is being presented in Time--but will it be "in time?" I have been reading Nat Henthoff's series on drone warfare; which totally undercuts the whole "hearts and minds" thing....better the devil you know next door than the aliens swooping without warning out of the sky.

I cannot really delve into the Afghan much less the Muslim mind; but I can say I know what it is like to be religious and hyper-religious, pretty much from both sides of the Sanhedrin or our current halls of Congress.
But my observations from history is that once one moves from being excluded to the point of being in significant power and especially in possession of lands and landmines, organizations and great halls -see Beowulf- one becomes totally a target for hit and run raiders and terrorists who see our possessiveness of our privileges as the weakest element of our humanity. Once the Taliban was "out", it was "in"!!! And we are no sooner "in control" than we are out of control. It's easy to see the Eastern doctrine of maya-illusion and the parallel Western existential/absurdist response as valid, except that the very complexity of life mitigates against such over-simplifications. But..will yonder Taliban outlast yonder Babylon???!!!

Against such a background it might be easy to be pessimistic-- but if one holds everything with a loose hand, then there is a kind of freedom that certainly evades most of us, who would rather imagine ourselves sitting at the right or lift hand of Master Damocles....but then there's that pesky stewardship issue and our very real impact on those whom we care about, and whose care is entrusted into our hands; withdrawl is not only illusion but the privilege of the rich and idle who delight only in providing guru-guidance for the rest of us--been there, done that, ain't gone back.

Mendota may be a backwater, but I rarely question any more as to "where I belong" or "who I am"; the more relevant question is, Whose I am.

Right, dear? Yes, dear!

ANOTHER PLEASANT VALLEY TEWSDAY

The above title, now that I think about it, should be dedicated to Pastor Jerry Tews, the man who was my boss when I first came to Mendota and I started practice in St. John's Lutheran Church where there used to be a school. Yes, yes, it's a long story but I honor him in absentia.

Speaking of pastors, my pastor used the famous Pogo quote, "We have met the enemy and he is us!" , on Sunday, but had no idea of the source of the original quote or that this was a parody of the quote, "We have met the enemy and they are ours!" It seems some of the commonalities of historical statements are no longer so common. The original quote comes from Adm. Oliver Hazard Perry after a set-to in the war of 1812 in which Adm. Perry captured numerous British vessels in the Battle of Lake Erie and wrote those words to the then future president William Henry Harrison and also included a more sundry account of the spoil, all of which is easily captured online, FYI.

My pastor, Steve Adamson, is also loaning me the book, "Stanley M. Horton, Shaper of Pentecostal Theology." At least two of my pastors have had Dr. Horton and at one time early in my Christian life I wrote to this gentleman with some personal/scientific questions and he was gracious enough to send me a reply on at least two occasions, replies which were not only helpful and timely but extremely practical. By this time he is known around the globe at least in Pentecostal circles. His original training was in science but he found he had a gift for teaching and a passion for higher education and so has he had a tremendous worldwide influence on literally millions of people.

I would imagine by now I have lost two thirds or three quarters of my audience. Maybe 100%!

Most other non-Pentecostal denominations and pastors do not believe there is such a thing as Pentecostal theology, systematic or otherwise, and frankly wish that Pentecostals would simply go away. I don't want to get in an argument on this basis but I am recounting that I owe a lot to this man personally as well as theologically. He is now in its mid 90s and still fit and active, still doing some writing and teaching and so forth. He does have his credentials from Harvard and also went to Gordon Divinity School; but the real point is that Dr. Horton, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, cut his theological teeth on liberal theology. Sadly, it was largely the liberal theologians of Germany who went along with Hitler along with the vast majority of German Christians. To say that these theologians, to whom the whole world looked at the time, did a tremendous and organized job of undercutting people's confidence in Scripture, would be to contradict the clear record of history. "Higher criticism", which originated in Germany for the most part not only survived Adolf Hitler and his Reichs-church which encouraged this kind of theology, but their systematic (but doubtful) doubt went on to unabashedly grow in worldwide influence even up until the 70s and 80s, basically until mainline denominational members in the Third World began to question and challenge the basic assumptions of these writers and scholars.

So Dr. Horton came from one world, immersed himself in another, and came to the conclusion that I have frequently come to myself, which is that the dividing line between contemporary liberals and conservatives in the seminary at least, is the willingness to countenance the supernatural existence of God as opposed to the cultural construct view of "God." Of course this is the same division as I have shown to have existed between Pharisees and Sadducees.

Dr. Horton is certainly not of the opinion, any more than Jesus was, that one is necessarily better than the other. I believe he would affirm the view that the only way to transcend this duality is by the genuine reception of the Holy Spirit and by a gradual "putting away of childish things," which not only includes the new toys of the progressives but the old toys of the conservatives. As Jesus said, the blind cannot lead the blind and expect to find anything other than the gutter. "Blind guides" is an equal opportunity designation for anyone at all who would purport to lead and that probably encompasses our political leadership as well.

"We have met the enemy and he is both of us!"