Isaiah 45:7 [760 to 700 BCE]
Elie Wiesel, Night, 1960 CE
"Does the nature of suffering, including its apparent causes [or lack thereof], breadth, duration, and intensity, argue against the existence of a personal God?"
Reconciling the ideas of divinity and humanity ... with the coexistence of good and evil ... and with the mingling of innocence and suffering ... has challenged every generation both before and after Job ... so why should we be any different in 2017? It seems there is a time for everything in today's world ... and that anything goes ...
- a time for the classes, religions and nations of earth to be ripped apart by gaps in wealth, theology and might that are beyond our imagination [much less our understanding] ...
- a time for powerful climate changes to unleash ruin ... while powerful nation states unleash war [both military and financial] ... making virtual slaves and/or actual refugees of multitudes [especially the poor] ...
- a time for the foundations of current civilization to convulse and collapse one-by-one as human, animal and environmental problems proliferate ... demanding a new world order to rise from the rubble of cities, habitats and nature to fill the resulting void.
When and Where
Tuesday, November 28th, 7:00 to 8:45 pmFriends University,
Sebits Auditorium in the Riney Fine Arts Center
Panelists
With hope and gratitude, please welcome our 6 panelists [in order of acceptance]. Remember, our panelists have busy lives so we do NOT ask them to provide a point of view [POV] statement or suggested readings in advance ... but if they do, we will provide links to those materials following their name/bio below ... and we encourage you to review them in advance as well.Fr. Paul O'Callaghan (Dean of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral)
Fr. Sherman A. Orr (Pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church)
Rabbi Judah Kogen (Hebrew Congregation)
Rev. Tom Penning (Pastor of Jubilee Presbyterian Church)
Dr. David Cullen (l'Universite des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg)
Jamar Martin (local atheist/agnostic/skeptic community leader)
The Evening's Format
The first half of the evening will consist of each panelist giving an opening position statement. The second half of the evening will be dedicated to questions ... from panelists to their fellow panelists ... and from the audience to panelists ... so bring your questions as well as your answers [if you have any 😕].And for those of you who are inclined to get some questions out in the open for consideration BEFORE the evening's meeting ... feel free ... join the liberales ... and blog your COMMENTS and REPLIES below as needed/wished to build some trains of thought for us.
Epilogue
"It is worth starting with visions, though, because they establish hopes and fears. History then determines which prevail."For those who missed this most edifying evening at Friends University, take time to view the excellent AV recording on "Divinity Matters from Paul Soutar at Graphic Lens ... or just go to YouTube and search for us under "New Symposium Society Divinity Matters".
John Lewis Gaddis
We hope you each have holidays that are uncommonly good. And we hope you will stay in touch with New Symposium Society in 2018. If you have some ideas to share about ways to improve our work ... just let us hear from you ... contact us at newsymposium@gmail.com. Goodbye until our next meeting and stay tuned to our blogsite for further info.
NSS Suggested Readings
VideosChristian and Atheist Ethics : How Much Common Ground? 2013
Articles
God Wounds Us Because He Loves Us, Marshall Segal, 2017
Suffering, Jewish Virtual Library
The Problem of Evil, Wikipedia
Books
The Problem of Pain ... CS Lewis, 1940
When Bad Things Happen to Good People ... Rabbi Harold Kushner, 1981
The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? ... David Bentley Hart, 2005
The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically ... Peter Singer, 2015
Let's Consider Some Keywords
ReplyDeleteFellow Symposiasts.
The upcoming evening discussing "Divinity Matters" will be challenging enough without adding ambiguity on the definitions of some vital keywords. In that spirit, give some thought to the following.
Pleasure v. Pain
This distinction seems pretty clear to most of us.
Happiness v. Suffering
This contrast is likewise not foreign to our understanding.
Pleasure v. Happiness
The difference here is more challenging. I strongly recommend listening to the first few minutes of a YouTube video titled "The Hacking of the American Mind with Dr. Robert Lustig" [www.youtube.com/results?search_query=robert+lustig] in which this noted UCSF neuroendocrinologist explores just how humans are wired and draws some surprising conclusions !!!
Pain v. Suffering
In the world of jurisprudence, no distinction is made between these two terms ... but is that misleading? What might Dr. Lustig have to say about them?
Finally ... SPREAD THE WORD about the coming evening. It will be a rare opportunity to confront an issue that manifests itself in many ways in our midst everyday with very real and serious consequences. We may not resolve it, but, perhaps, we can at least strengthen one another if we can face it together ... candidly and logically.
Threshold Theology ?
ReplyDeleteWe tend to argue that either you believe in an omnipotent and sympathetic personal God or you don't ... as if belief is evidenced by a "checkbox" on a school application form or medical benefits claim ... or a once-and-for-all and unqualified public "decision" made at a specially tender moment of life.
But, perhaps, many "checkbox believers" are able to check the box simply because the events of THEIR life [and all our lives are different] have not yet reached a "threshold of suffering" which is beyond THEIR ability to bear [and we all have different thresholds].
Consider the following paraphrased passage on human capabilities from the Declaration of Independence ... a document which is sacred to Americans as the appropriate justification for the initiation of a revolt against oppressive power.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that gods long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the religions to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such gods, and to provide new visions for their future security. ... The history of the MY god is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over MY heart, mind and life. To prove this, let ME submit the Facts to a candid world."
In other words, even the bravest and most faithful humans have suffering thresholds beyond which they have not only a right but a duty [as a human being] to throw off the ideological source of their suffering and to look for alternatives ... a personal declaration of independence if you will ... even at great personal risk.
The fact that some people face less suffering or have a higher threshold for the suffering they do face which permits them to delay their declaration [even until death] does not change the existence of another's right and duty as a human being to alter their personal belief about a personal god when this humane threshold is reached.
Humanity IS Holiness ??
ReplyDeleteIn her essays on “Reality” and “Experience” Marilynne Robinson in honest nakedness and patient boldness declares … “everything depends on reverence for who we are and what we are, on the sacredness implicit in the human circumstance … this is the soul as experience.”
She argues that what we have in this life is an unsolvable mystery, a perpetual paradox, a troubling contradiction, a humiliating confidence that we as humans are able to imagine with good reason [growing even stronger with the advances in modern science] that there are things [and, perhaps, even beings] that are proven over and over by our experiences to be beyond our ability to confront and comprehend.
But unlike CS Lewis, Robinson does not see this imagination as a “discrete portal” from England into Aslan but rather as a “continuous spectrum” along which we live out our lives ... simultaneously suspended in both earth and heaven [body and soul] although we usually neglect one or the other to the detriment of both … driving us alternatively to vulgarity [be it human or divine] or to the cynicism that vulgarity instinctively provokes within us when we are faced with a singular explanation we intuit as false.
Robinson cites John Calvin as evidence for her position of whom she says … “Calvin has little to say about eternity. For him it is continuous with mortal time because the glory of God is shown to us here, and because God confronts us in our thoughts and circumstances and in every image of God we encounter, fallen as we are, and they are.”
Then she leaves us with an abiding admonition of things within our control that she hopes will help us along our way: “We know how deeply we can injure one another by denying fairness. We know how profoundly we can impoverish ourselves by failing to find value in one another. We know that respect is a profound alleviation, which we can offer and to often withhold.”
Perhaps, that is all that can be asked or answered. Looking forward to our dialogue together.
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