God's Will and Human Suffering: Why Theology is So Important

   

                         
                                       (Pauline Marie Peterson Erickson  1950-1982)

In my last blog I wrote about the way in which I felt “held by God’” in my times of deepest suffering.  However, it was not always that way.  In actuality, a change in theology saved me.

I grew up in a Christian home in a small town in North Dakota.  While both of my parents were active church-goers, most of my theology was learned from my mother.  She was the daughter of a Methodist pastor, who had died before I was born.  She was a person with a deep, mostly unquestioning faith.  She loved to study the bible, and we even took the Bethel Bible Series together when I was in high school.

I think she believed that everything that happened was pretty much God’s will.  Our task was not to question that will, but to submit to it.  At the same time I was studying the bible in my home congregation I was very involved in bible camping as a counselor each summer.  The theology there was pretty much the same: whatever happened was God’s will.

So, when my father died when I was 14, and my mother when I was 16, I assumed that their deaths were God’s will.  The good thing about that theology is that it gave some order to the universe.  It kept me going in the midst of my deep loss and sorrow, accepting that there must be some purpose in their deaths even though, as a human, I could not understand how that could be.

The bad thing about this “God’s will” theology is that unconsciously I was angry at God.  I had no awareness of this at the time.  But during my college years I seldom went to church or school chapel and I didn’t take time to pray.  I was majoring in religion as well as philosophy, but religion at that point was an academic, intellectual exercise.  I didn't feel close to God, nor was I strengthened by what we normally call faith.  How could I worship and feel close to the very being who had taken my parents from me?

I married Pauline right after college and headed to seminary.  I didn’t really want to be a pastor, but I loved studying theology, and didn’t know what else to do.  I continued to question many aspects of our traditional, rather conservative interpretation of Christianity, but had trouble knowing what to put in its place theologically.

One summer after I had become a pastor, I took a week-long course taught by Dr. Paul Sponheim, a Process theologian at Luther Seminary in St. Paul.  He talked about  the different forms in which evil comes, and I began to realize that most of the suffering in the world is caused by human beings, not by God.  Other forms of suffering are metaphysical—just a part of the structure of reality that often defies understanding.  Later I would read what I believe is the best book on this issue:  Douglas John Hall’s God and Human Suffering.

Pauline and I were married 10 years.  She suffered from a rare lung disease known as pulmonary hypertension of the lungs. and during our years together her health continued to deteriorate and we both knew that, without a heart and lung transplant, she would die.  As we discussed this uncertain future, we spent a lot of time discussing our faith and theology.

Like my mother, Pauline had a kind of natural, deep faith.  However, even though she was raised in a North Dakota, Christian home almost identical to mine, she saw the relationship of God’s will to suffering differently.   She did not see her illness and possible death as God’s will for her life.  She saw her illness as just one of those mysteries that are a part of life, and she saw God as suffering with her.

During the last month’s of her life she kept a journal.  One day she wrote: “Dear God, thank you!  No, not for life, nor death, or of my human condition, even though fundamentalists say I ‘should.’  I’m ill—it’s a dirty shame—but something you certainly did not cause and I feel it would be blasphemy for me to thank you for ‘it.’”

I realized that because Pauline did not see her illness as God’s will, she was able to feel close to God, held by God.  She did not blame anyone or God for her illness.  Her theology “worked” for her in a positive way.  That does not, of course, prove it is true, but it began to feel to me like the truth.

Pauline’s theology continued to give her strength to and through her death.  In her last journal entry before her death she wrote:  “My theology, please don’t desert me now.  It would be much easer to be a radical right-winger—to say this is all God’s will.  But I believe that God doesn’t cause suffering and that many times God doesn’t interfere.  Thus, if I am dying, let God’s tears be enough.  It is enough.”

Pauline not only changed my life, she changed my faith.  During my deepest moments of loss and sorrow, I, like her, felt God was crying with me.  Unlike after the deaths of my parents, I was able to pray, and I felt close to God.  It was only because my theology had changed that I was able to feel held by God.

Being Held by God

         

         
                        (My wife, Mary, and me, a few years ago, holding our son, Brian.)

I do not think of faith in terms of what one believes.  That is obviously one way to understand faith, and perhaps the most common: faith as a set of doctrines or beliefs to which one gives intellectual assent.   

To me faith is a not so much intellectual as experiential, emotional.  I prefer the verb trust.  Faith is trusting that in spite of all the pain and suffering of this world, there is still reason to hope in the world, in ourselves, in the future.  And for me faith begins with the experience of being held.

So much of life is aloneness and loneliness.  We wonder if anyone cares.  We wonder if God cares.

The one thing that gets us going in this life is the experience of being held.  First we are held in our mother’s womb, then we are held by her and the rest of our family and their friends.  When we are not held, and we want to be, we let that be known, and, in most cases, we are immediately held again.

However, that experience does not last for long.  Soon we are thrust into the rest of the world, we are forced to begin to “make it on our own,” and we experience the deep, existential loneliness that many philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and sociologists have worked so hard at describing.

From Holocaust survivors, like Elie Weisel in his book, Night, to one of my seminary professors, Daniel J. Simundson, we ask, as he does in the title of one of his books, Where is God in My Suffering?

When my first wife, Pauline, died in 1982, I was totally lost in grief, loneliness, and depression.  I used to walk to her grave and long to pull the earth away next to her, and to crawl in.  I missed being held by her, and I wondered if I would ever be held again.  Not by another woman, but by life itself.  As I journaled at the time, when you have wondered if you would ever know the deepest happiness, then that dream comes true, but then is shattered: how do you ever dream again?

In my loneliness and struggle I began to read some of the classics in spirituality, and the one book that stood out for me was Thomas Merton’s Thoughts in Solitude.  I read the following reflection over and over, and even typed it up and posted it on the wall of my home where I would constantly see it.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

I still don’t know exactly why these words were so powerful for me in my grief.  Even though they speak about trying to please God, in no way did I feel some kind of obligation or need to do something (what we Lutherans term the “law).  I felt that God was holding me and would “never leave me to face my perils alone, “ and this was the beginning of my healing.`

Anne Lamott tells the story of Pedro Arrupe, a Jesuit missionary in Japan, who was there when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  In his latter years, having suffered several strokes, he wrote in his journal:  “More than ever I find myself in the hands of God.  This is what I have wanted all my life, from my youth.  But now there is a difference.  The initiative is entirely with God.  It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself to be totally in God’s hands.” [Quoted in Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 98.]

We, of course, continue to need to be held by other human beings throughout our lives.  And I have been held by so many people throughout the years. But that is a theme for another blog.

As children we sing, “He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands."  I suppose that starts out as a belief.  Perhaps a hope.  But it was in my deepest grief that I felt most deeply held by God.  I have felt that holding many times since, and the faith that uplifts me now is trusting that no matter what the future holds, God will keep holding me.

All Are Welcome Here

I don’t remember exactly when it began.  When you’ve been married over 30 years, and a parish pastor for nearly 40, sometimes it is hard to trace a habit or custom or ritual back to its origin.

What I know is that nearly every time I celebrate Holy Communion, after the consecration and before the distribution, I say “All are Welcome Here.”

At first I didn’t think much about what that might mean to folks in the pews.  But over time, many people have expressed  to me how deeply meaningful and welcoming these words have been to them, and now I try never to forget to announce communion in those exact words.

I think they may go back to when I was a pastor in Fargo.  I once attended a Catholic funeral service, and I was scrambling to see if the bulletin stated anything about whether I was welcome at the Eucharist, or not.  I couldn’t find anything, and the priest didn’t say anything, so I just remained in my pew.

It could also be because often we ELCA Lutherans will have visitors from Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregations.  I knew that in some of those congregations you could not participate in communion unless you were approved by the local pastor.

I wanted to make it clear that I was not the one deciding who could come to communion.  It was up to each worshiper to decide, and I simply wanted them to know that for me no one need feel excluded.

Now, of course, the church throughout the centuries has excluded all kinds of people from worship and communion.  Even though, as Marcus Borg and others have clearly demonstrated, Jesus was trying to overcome the purity laws of Judaism that excluded all kinds of people from aspects of worship and fellowship, the church has continued to do so.  Most of the time this is not done through written rules or regulations, or statements in the bulletin.  It is done through a lack of welcome, a lack of genuine warmth, a lack of friendliness.

I have never been involved in a church that did not think it was friendly.  But all you have to do is talk to visitors and you will find that most of them in most churches do not feel welcomed.

Sometimes that lack of welcome has been because of race, social status, sexual orientation, a criminal record, or a host of other external or internal factors.  Sometimes it is because of the desire to not let anyone new into our clique.

Or it may because we do not do a good job of proclaiming Jesus’ message of radical inclusion and welcome.  Many years ago I took a group of clergy to Cuernavaca, Mexico.  We were visiting in the home of Adela, a Christian Base Community leader.  She asked us if we thought the Gospel was “good news to the poor.” Oh, yes, we quickly exclaimed,  “Well, then,” she said, “I imagine your churches are just overflowing with poor people!”

For years our churches have had available study booklets on hospitality and welcome.  But all the studies in the world cannot make a difference unless two other things are present.  The first is a spiritual heart that constantly asks God to make it possible for us to really reach out to and love all people.  The second is a willingness to receive the gifts of new people into our self-understandings and our congregational life.

I think Ram Dass’ famous phrase gives us good guidance into how to soften our hardened hearts,  “We’re all just walking each other home.”  That is one of those simple but profound lines you can’t help but like, and, like poetry, may lead to our own individual images and interpretations of exactly what it may mean.

In a recent interview Dass has explained what he means by the phrase.  “Home“ is God, the One at the center of all, being in one’s “spiritual heart.”  The second part is experiencing the unconditional love of other people, and the inner realization that we are all One in God.   He then explains: “If we can find a way to walk each other home, we could reach a point where there is no more conflict between egos and nations.”  [In "Read the Spirit," blog, the Ram Dass interview, July 2013.]  

Retirement as a Calling

      

     (My daughter at the Grand  Canyon.  The way I want to feel heading into retirement!)

After a three-year hiatus, it is time again to contemplate the meandering of my spirituality, and I hope you will share your spiritual meanderings with me.  

The word “calling” has several meanings within our Christian faith tradition, discussed in earlier blogs.  In summary, I think of the Call with a capital C as the general, overall sense and desire to listen to and attempt to follow the will of God in our lives.  Within that larger sense of Call, there are many different “callings,” which might include my vocation (pastor, teacher, custodian), my station within family (son, father, grandparent, sister), and my relationship to society (protestor, organizer, volunteer).  Furthermore, those callings may change from time to time, and how I go about them may change, because each calling is contextual.  First I was a son, then a husband, then a father.  I might be an organizer, but then decide it is time to be a protestor (or the other way around).  I might be a worshiper or Sunday School teacher, and then decide it is time to become a Council member, as Deacon of Education, or Social Ministry

As I wrote in earlier blogs, I don’t believe Martin Luther King, Jr. laid in bed as a youth and dreamed of being a civil rights leader. I am not so sure he even dreamed of being a pastor.  If he did, and he was like a lot of PK’s (Pastor’s Kid), that dream might have been a nightmare.  However, as I related in the blogs of 8/6/12, 8/9/12, and 9/6/12, his sense of call kept changing.

I hope you will share your own struggles and joys in trying to discern where the call of God is taking you right now, whether or not you have much clarity about that.  After all, like my good friend and spiritual director, Scott, likes to put it, “You can’t know the will of God ahead of time.”

As I head to official retirement from full-time parish ministry in a few months, I have been doing a lot of reflecting on what I might be called to in retirement.  I read a while back that it is easier to describe who a person is not rather than who a person is.  Well, I have a lot more clarity about what I don’t want my retirement to be than about what it might be.  

I don’t want it to be doing part-time what I have been doing full-time for 38 years, as many (maybe most) pastors do (not, as in the famous words of Jerry Seinfeld, there is anything wrong with it).  Nor (and this will surprise my pastor friend Tom ) do I plan to spent every waking hour watching sports, and going to Nats, Caps, and Wizards games (been there, done that).  Nor do I want to play golf 4 or 5 times a week, like by buddy in Phoenix, Steve.  (twice a week sounds about right). He, by the way, maintains 3 separate blogs, one that has a deadline every Saturday.  That is also not for me.  It feels a little too much like  . . . . . .

All my friends who have retired tell me they truly enjoy being released from the deadlines, conflicts, and stress that tend to be a part of our working lives.  In fact, one of my mentor pastors, when I asked him what he liked best about retirement, replied: “staying home.”

I have been blessed to have three sabbaticals over the years, all of which I spent at my cabin, with most of my focus on reading theology and spirituality, and writing about the insights I was receiving and the direction of my calling at that particular point in my life and ministry.

So now, once again, I am reflecting on where God might be leading me at this point in my spiritual journey.  And I see retirement as a truly marvelous gift—one that I don’t take for granted in any sense.  My Father died when he was 54, my Mother when she was 49, my first wife, Pauline, when she was 32, and my brother, Neil, (who, like me, retired when he was 65), at the age of 66.  

Now, moving from the question of what I won’t be doing to what I will be doing, a few pieces of the mosaic are in place.  My wife, Mary, a Montessori teacher, wants to teach three more years until she, too, hits Medicare age.  So I am going to pamper her, doing most of the cleaning, shopping, and cooking.  Most evenings she will arrive home to a fine meal served with fine wine.

I have three or four younger, pastor friends, who ask me to mentor them from time to time, and I feel blessed to be able to share some of what I have learned throughout the years.

Now, finally, I should have time to be a more active member of two of our synod teams, one which is working on immigration issues and the other on issues of racism.  I have also offered to continue to take groups, as I have been doing every year, to El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, to learn about border and immigration issues.  I will also keep working with our scholarship program for youth in Juarez.

And, of course, there will be some golf, lots of walking and working out, a few sporting events, some travel, and visiting family and friends around the country as I go on the road trips I love so much, including the ones by myself.

But there is still the one big, unknown piece.  It is the contextual one of where else God might be leading me right now.  That is usually the hardest piece to answer, and the easiest one to set aside.  I know from experience that I can only journey toward insights about that part of my journey if I keep reading, journaling, praying, reflecting, and sharing and discussing the elements of the journey with others who are also seeking.  I hope my new Facebook page and this blog can be a way of doing that, and I hope you will join me in this journey together. 

Like Anne Lamott, whom I read often, I love these words of Wendell Berry: “it may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.  The mind that is not baffled is not employed.  The impeded stream is the one that sings.”  [quoted on p. 6 of Anne Lamott, Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace.]