How Did I Get Here?

I.

         How did you get to where you are today? Did you have anything to do with what got you here?  If not, did the fickle finger of fate force you here? Or more pointedly for our purposes today, if you had no choice in getting yourself to the point at which you find yourself in life today, was God controlling all the processes that got you here?

         There are certainly innumerable factors impinging on how I got where I am today over which I had absolutely no control. For example, I’m thinking about the family to whom I was born, the country and region of the country in which I was born and raised, the privilege of living in a land devoted to getting me the freedom of speech and the freedom to follow my religious leanings or toss the whole lot, crazy relatives I was told I had to love because they “wuz” kinfolk, and so on and so on ad infinitum.  I obviously had nothing to do with why those factors intertwined to shape my life, but someone was involved in making choices all along the way; and those combined with factors of biology and culture got me into this world and laid the foundations for how I might develop. 

         If God has been calling all the shots, I personally have to count myself fortunate, but the mother who went to bed hungry last night with a crying and also hungry baby at her side may justifiably not feel so lucky.  And in the big pictures of our times, many would conclude–if God has been calling all the shots solo, God has either botched badly or rather stopped caring altogether about the well-being of humanity and our habitat.  The love and care with  which the Creator intricately and creatively fashioned the land, the skies, the plant and animal kingdoms, and humanity itself eventually disappeared and that love and care were replaced by either disdain or oblivion. 

         Worst case scenario, which the writers of the book of Job dared to dramatize:  God is playing games with us by letting God’s pal do the worst to us to see how much we can take before we snap and curse God for allowing such horrors.  Fun huh?  If God is getting divine jollies by seeing how long it takes someone to sizzle, having caught on fire because of a dangerous, makeshift, poor-people heating device in the dead of winter, then let me join in the long line of people who want to curse that god or more, like the Holocaust survivor who having had time to reflect on what had actually happened to him in those living hells called “work camps,” found an automatic weapon, pointed it upward to where he thought God was, and fired and fired until ammunition was depleted. 

         If every evil event in this world were orchestrated by God, I’d long since have done as much as I possibly could have to separate myself, isolate myself from that god.  I sat stunned years ago, as one of my preaching students angry at the notion of such a deity quoted in a sermon the lyrics of a Depeche Mode song:

I don’t want to start a blasphemous rumor,

but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor.

And when I die,

I expect to find God laughing.

To clarify, I was not stunned at the student’s use of those words; he will probably read the online version of the written sermon, but even if he does not, I was very impressed at his choice of a sermon illustration though not as enthused with the type of sermon into which he interjected this shocking image.  [Hello, Uwe!!!]  I was stunned into attentiveness that anybody had carried the picture of a god who must enjoy making humans suffer beyond comprehension to one of its logical conclusions.

         Let’s move a step or two away from the picture of a god who is control of everything and who happens to be demented, taking pleasure in the cruel punishments meted out to practically everyone over to a picture of a god who is just plain angry.  Here, I can’t help thinking about Jonathan Edwards and his infamous Puritan sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.” 

…God threatens vengeance upon the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s people and who lived under the means of grace. But, in spite of God’s wonderful works toward them, they remained, “…without sense, having no understanding of the blessings.”  Their works brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit. The expression I have chosen for my text—“…in due time their foot will slip…”, seems to imply that they will fall soon, but haven’t yet….The only reason they have not fallen already, and do not fall now, is that God’s appointed time has not yet come. The passage says “in due time,” that is, in God’s appointed time, they WILL slip.

 

II.

        When it comes to trying to figure out how much power any human being has to influence her or his destiny, the key touchstones for thinking this through are the self, naturally; one or more deities; one or more personal forces of evil; and impersonal powers of fate.  The truth is that when people feel helpless in the face of tragedies over which they could have had no control, whether natural disaster or critical illness, the power causing the attack–if one is trying to pinpoint that–isn’t necessarily well differentiated.  Was it God?  Was it the devil?  Was it karma?  Could it have been two of three?

         In the world of theology, some thinkers believe God is directly or indirectly responsible for everything that happens–from a lottery win to a tsunami.  Some preachers influenced by such thinkers enjoy nothing more than associating God with destructive events intended to punish someone or some community or nation for moral laxity interpreted as intentional rebellion against God.  Other thinkers believe God by God’s very nature can only be involved in what is loving, what promotes well-being.  Therefore, if God is involved in causing an event to occur, you can bet your bottom dollar that the effects of that event will be good for you.  In which of those two camps would you place me?  Don’t answer out loud!

         After the 2004 tsunami, Tina from Holy Love Ministries in Ohio posted this explanation on the internet to explain why the tsunami had occurred:

The world has suffered a great tragedy in loss of life and property in the recent earthquake and tsunami. But while everyone can agree on this event as tragic, most fail to see the greater tragedy–the greater loss of life through the sin of abortion. In the natural disaster the world sees the visible loss of life. In the sin of abortion the truth of the far greater loss of life lays hidden and concealed behind the curtain of lies and compromise. In truth the world should not be surprised by God’s Justice, but should expect it in any form as retribution for the grievous loss of life by abortion. Understand how fragile and vulnerable all life is and learn from the recent tragedy the world now focuses upon.

Well, that was one explanation.  I hope someone called the Weather Channel for their explanation too.

         Here’s another discovered by the folks at religioustolerance.org:

Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan said that the tsunami was sent by God to punish South Asian countries because they allowed tourists to engage in immoral sexual activity. Al-Fawzan is a member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, and a professor at the Al-Imam University. He is reported as saying: “These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities and even entire countries, are Allah’s punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims. We know that at these resorts, which unfortunately exist in Islamic and other countries in South Asia, and especially at Christmas, fornication and sexual perversion of all kinds are rampant. The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion. That’s when this tragedy took place, striking them all and destroyed everything.

So, there you go, a new way to celebrate the Christmas holiday.

As a kid growing up in Halls Crossroads, on the few occasions when country music wasn’t playing on a radio in earshot, I heard Doris Day singing “Que Sera, Sera.”  What will be, will be.  It was such a sweet way of suggesting that we have absolutely no influence on what ultimately happens to us.  Predestinarians surely were elated that her song was so popular for so long.

         My New Testament Theology professor at Southern Seminary, Dr. Wayne Ward, was not a predestinarian; therefore, when he boarded a plane once and noticed, after the plane was taxiing out for takeoff, that ice was building up on the wings–this was before jets–he raced up the aisle and began pounding on the door to the cockpit.  He demanded that the plane stop and he be allowed to exit.  Having been a military pilot, if I remember correctly, Dr. Ward believed that icy wings meant higher probability of a plane crash, so he was going to do everything he could not to have that happen.  Though he was in trouble with law enforcement later, he managed to have the flight crew let him deplane.  If a bone fide theologian believed that much in his ability to influence his destiny, I knew as he told that story in class that I was with him!

 

III.

         With reference to the compact little theological treatise from the Apostle Paul read by Dot a few minutes ago, I should say that while I admire Paul’s sincerity and his way with words much of the time, I do not agree with him if I understand where he is going with this collection of statements.  Quick refresh.

Those whom God foreknew God also predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s unique Child, in order that he–that is Jesus–might be the firstborn within a large family.  And those whom God predestined God also called; and those whom God called God also justified; and those whom God justified God also glorified.

         If God as Paul understood God was an all-knowing God, then wouldn’t God have to have known all people from the foundation of the earth—that is, from the moment of creation on?  If so, it was God’s will that all people become a part of the great big family in which Jesus is considered the firstborn.  All the fancy theological words used by Paul in this passage simply mean that in his view God gave every human in her or his birth basket shall we say credentials of full family affiliation. 

         Paul himself may not always have been sure about who was in and who was out of the family of God; certainly others after him, however, read his work, put 2 and 2 together and got 6.  They see in Paul an unquestionable limitation of God’s inclusive practices.  For these readers, “predestination” means predestination of a few to the joys of being fully embraced by God in the here and the hereafter. 

         It is possible that no theologian in history thought more about God as in control of everything including the predetermination, from the point of creation on, of the tiny group that would make it to heaven and of the masses that would spend eternity in a burning hell.  I don’t know how long the word “tulip”—totally the wrong visual image–has been used as the basis of an acrostic to summarize Calvin’s so called double-edged predestination, but it’s been a long it.  A cactus, no offense to that family of plants, may be more appropriate visually to helping us remember the basics of Calvanistic predestination and such.

         For now, we still have tulip.

T:  Total Depravity.  Human beings are overpoweringly sin-tainted and sin-controlled.

U:  Unconditional Election.  God decided at the point of creation, looking out into the future who would be in and who would be out.  Since all would be sin-dominated and thus underserving of anything better than hellfire, God’s decision was based unconditionally on God’s mercy.  What about God’s mercy to those not chosen?  Don’t ask!

L:  Limited Atonement. Whatever benefits there may have been to Jesus’ self-sacrifice, they only apply to those elected to heaven by God.  It doesn’t help the rest of us out at all.  By the way, I’ve never read, and I’m not saying it’s never been done, but I’ve never read anyone writing about who God “elected” who believed she or he had been left off the final draft.

I:  Irresistible Grace.  Those elected by God are incapable of saying, “I prefer to be a part of the Un-elect; thank you very much.  No offense, God, but so many of my friends are going to be in hell I’d just feel more content there despite the temperature issues.”  See if they had a choice, which Calvin insisted they did not, a lot of people would agree with Oscar Wilde:  “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”

P:  Perseverance of the Saints. No one who is in, can for any reason or by any means fall away.

Awwww.  Now, every time you see a beautiful tulip, you can think of Brother Calvin.

         Thank goodness another theologian countered Calvinism, Arminius.  Here are his counterpoints to Calvinism. There’s no acrostic that I know about.

1.   Whatever sin is, if there is such a thing, human beings are not trapped in it.  If they find themselves caught in patterns of hurting themselves and others, there’s a way out.

2.   Those whom God elected at the foundation of the world were those whom God could see would give their lives to the good and not to the evil.

3.   Anyone and everyone has the chance to open up to reality of God’s love in the here and the hereafter.

4.   No one, however, is obligated to sign on.  Free will remains operative at all times.

5.   Once someone signs on, she or he is not obligated to stay in the family.  Someone once in may leave at will, and evidently many have.

If these two extremes can be applied to life in general and not just to matters of spirituality and faith, we can see what our options are.

    I’m going to come down on the side of free will.  I believe that I have great opportunity to shape my destiny.  The challenge of making that choice is that I must be responsible for much of what ensues in my life.  I am grateful for opportunities to learn.  I am grateful for the possibilities of change.  I’d hate being a puppet, even if the puppeteer were taking me to heaven.

    Amen.

Why Good Things Happen to Bad People (third in summer sermon series: Name That Sermon!)

 

 

 

 

I.
I once attended an interfaith prayer breakfast at which the opening prayer was delivered by a very highly-regarded chaplain from a local denominationally affiliated hospital. In his effort to be inclusive since this was after all an interfaith event he closed his prayer with a simple, “Amen.”  He did not precede the word, “Amen,” by saying, “In Jesus’ name we pray,” which is a very typical way for conservative Christians and others to conclude a prayer.  Most don’t even know why they are saying, “In Jesus name,” but I can tell you the reason behind the tradition is negative.
It rests on the belief that an individual cannot come into the presence of God on the basis of her or his own volition but must instead only come into the presence of God with Jesus interceding for her, for him, for us. The reason for this theological notion is that a very anthropomorphized God is so disgusted with human sin that if Jesus–now in heaven calling the shots on earth with God–did not mediate, there is no telling what horrible things God would do to us just for daring to show up in God’s presence.
Similarly, with prayer, the idea is if one does not say at the conclusion of her or his prayer, “In Jesus’ name we pray,” it’s an entire waste of time because, as folks of that theological persuasion believe, only coming though Jesus could get God’s appropriate or loving attention.  This is the same mentality that motivated a one-time president of the Southern Baptist Convention several years ago to declare that God could not hear the prayers of Jews since Jews more than likely would not pray in Jesus’ name.
So Chaplain Royce Ballard prayed a stirring prayer and closed with a simple, “Amen,” not preceded by an, “In Jesus’ name  we pray,” and the pastor of the local large fundamentalist church pitched a fit. He immediately called the hospital administrator and and demanded that the chaplain be terminated because, though he was employed as a Christian chaplain, when away from the hospital at least, said the complaining pastor, he was ashamed to profess the name of Jesus around whom Christianity was supposedly structured.  Chaplain Ballard wasn’t exactly called on the carpet by his administrator, but there was this trace in the voice of the administrator wishing that Royce, knowing which people would be attending such a breakfast, would just go ahead and say as a conclusion of his prayer–paying no attention and exhibiting no respect for Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims or Jews–”In Jesus’ name we pray,” pretty much to appease the conservatives.  Royce wasn’t big on appeasement.
The reason I bring that issue up today is because it is a testament to superstition to insist that God will only hear the prayers of people who remember to conclude by saying, “In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”  What about those who simply forget to say it. What about those who feel that life itself is an ongoing prayer from beginning to end?  Thus there is never a need to say, “Amen,” at all much less with any preface.  “Amen” isn’t a magic word; it simply means something like, “So be it.”  It’s kind of like a verbal period.  The “In Jesus’ name” part reflects some theological underpinnings as I’ve attempted to describe, but there’s also some superstition involved.  I believe when we approach today’s subject–namely, why good things happen to bad people–superstition prevails.
The assumption that God causes good things to happen to bad people is as superstitious as the more frequently stated notion that God causes bad things to happen to good people or, as more of us would wish things were, God causes bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people.  The truth is that no one knows how much involvement God has, if any, in the events in anyone’s life or in the events that occur to a nation. What Jesus inherited from the ancient Hebrews was the notion that everything that happened was willed and planned for by God. And one could see whether she or he were doing well in the sight of God by taking an honest look at what was going on in her or his life.
If good things are happening the assumption was made that God brought those good things about. Conversely, if bad things are happening, just as surely, God was causing those as well.
What if destiny is determined by individual choices, by the choices of others that impact that same individual, and by random factors such as winning the 600 million dollar lottery or being an unfortunate passenger trying to ride your train through Connecticut?

II.
I refer to people who believe that every single thing that happens is determined by God on a moment by moment and play by play basis as providentialists.  If someone gets a great parking place at Walmart, God must have because involved.  By the same token, f someone gets a disturbing medical diagnosis God is behind that too, according to this way thinking.
Then there are people like me who have tried to say that only good things come from God, and the bad things come from who knows where but definitely not from God.  When I say such a thing I’m clearly in violation of the teachings of the ancient Hebrews, but not necessarily terribly far from the position Jesus took on this issue.
I don’t know if it’s my own process of seeking truth or my nearly13 years of having served as pastor this free spirit congregation that has rubbed off on me–(scary thought!), but my more recent perspective on this issue is that God is clearly not calling all the shots, as if human beings have no power to influence their own future. God is not in the business of relating to humanity by having a specific detailed plan for every moment of everyone’s life–to include for most people a little good, a little bad; and for a few, complete good or complete bad.
The brilliantly pastoral preacher of last century, who happens to have been British, Leslie Weatherhead, attempted to deal with these questions of fate or destiny by talking about God’s “intentional will” over against what he called God’s “permissive will.” To oversimplify Dr. Weatherhead’s view, and he was a liberal preacher in his day, every event has been caused by God in some kind of way–whether God was its direct cause or not.  Perhaps that sounds pretty good if you absolutely must make room in your theological framework for God who in some kind of way is in on everything that occurs.
The interesting question comes up in the case of what he would have called the permissive will of God:  If God doesn’t will something directly but permits it, is God not still complicit in the outcome?  God puts something else in motion so that some sort of horrific event could come someone’s way with God making no effort to stop it.  I have tremendous admiration for Leslie Weatherhead as a pulpiteer as well as a theologian–though we are not even close to each other on a number of theological issues.  It’s all the same when it comes to his explanation of why things happen–whether God wills something directly or passively “permits” it seems to me to end up at the same place. God is behind it even if God merely “allows” it.
Eventually this subject gets us into the theological realm of prayer, at least as many people have traditionally practiced prayer.  If I pray each day or several times each day asking God to enter into my life to be a power source for me, keeping me from giving in to what is self-centered and hurtful to others, I may come to believe on the basis of consistent experience that God actually answers my prayers so anything good that comes along I eventually trace back to God. And if I don’t get what I’m asking for in my prayers the assumption is that God is holding out on me.  I don’t deserve what I’m asking for.
There are lots of people, lots and lots of people, who have religious backgrounds, thankfully not gained in this congregation, who have had to spend a significant portion of their lives getting rid of the damning intellectual effects of providentialism.  They are told if they pray correctly and in the right place and for the correct amount of time that there will probably get results that look very similar to precisely what they prayed for and about.
There is a pivotal story in what has been reported as having come from the life of Jesus about a time when Jesus is said to have healed a man who’d been blind from birth.  There were additional healing stories about Jesus and other healers restoring sight to people who had gone blind somewhere along life’s journey, but according to the story before us no one knew any accounts of someone who had been blind from birth suddenly getting the gift of sight well into her or his life.
Before Jesus gets underway with the healing process, his disciples ask him a question that reveals their understanding of the tradition their forebears passed along to them–namely, everything that happens is God’s will, and if what happens is painful or troubling God is still causing that to happen.  A human being chooses evil, and someone suffers but not always the person who acts in an evil manner.  The person who chooses evil may see the consequences fall on her or his parents or her or his children. It was clearly potentially generational.
So the disciples ask Jesus as he’s preparing to carry out this healing process, “Who sinned–this man or his parents?”
Jesus comes back by saying, “You disciples need to learn how to ask the right questions if you’re going to ask questions. Nobody sinned in this case.  And this an inappropriate issue to raise at any point but especially as I’m standing here with this person trying to help him become whole. If there’s a reason this happened, let’s just say it’s so God can be glorified because of the healing that will occur.”
In this case at least, something bad plagued the man, and there was no reasonable reason for it.  Healing would bring glory to God, but that didn’t help give the man back what his blindness from birth had robbed from him.

III.
May I say with all due respect, and I mean that sincerely, karma as it is popularly understood and spoken of is nothing more than another helping of superstition. The popular notions about karma are that if you do good things then good things will come to you; on the other side, if you do bad things bad things will happen to you.  So pro-karma people who have been wronged a little or a lot frequently say, “Fine. I don’t have to worry about this person who has done me wrong because it will all catch up to him or her sooner or later.”  They are referring to karma, and people say this frequently despite the fact that all of us know good people who can’t seem to get a break in life.  Bad things happen to them frequently.
Then, there are people who do very little for the betterment of humanity; in fact, just the opposite is the case.  They are bringing negativity into the world, evil even; and, yes, good things happen to them.  So karma maybe is the way we wish things would be, but it’s not the way things are.
Good things happen to bad people in this world. That is frustrating. That is complicated to explain. And that is just downright distasteful.  It appears that God is falling down on the job. Some of the psalmists ask aloud in their worship prayers questions like this, “Dear God, how long can evil flourish?”  In Psalm 37 for example, we read this testimony, “I have seen a wicked and ruthless person
flourishing like a luxuriant native tree.”  I trust you get the frustration and disgust in tone.
Jesus, in a sermon intended to reverse the typical patterns of living in which we hate our enemies and love our neighbors, says that we should be living beyond the standards of that so-called folk wisdom.  One of the reasons, he preached, is that God doesn’t attempt to withhold anything intended to benefit the whole of humanity from the evil folk.  As Jesus explained his point, “God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good just as God sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”  If God can be so magnanimous, then, Jesus insists, so can we.
The minority of people in our world who are acting according to the standards of terrorism have the rest of us tense and occasionally fearful.  Some special ops military personnel may take out Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, and pro-karma people along with providentialists can say, “See!  See! He’s finally getting what he deserves.” But for a long, long time before the ending of life stops his acts of the evil, all sorts of wonderful things were pouring into his life.  How can that be?  Not fair! Not fair!  It’s not a question of fair or unfair, though; it’s simply what occurs.