Forever Loved,
Forever Loving
Forever Loving
Our lives are a
mystical journey accompanied by the
Indeed, today’s thinkers articulate for us a growing
awareness of the interconnectedness of all created things, showing the
interdependence of ecology, psychology, theology, and spirituality. Thomas
Berry, cultural historian, calls this “the New Story.” Like all things new,
however, we find his insights a rediscovery and reiteration of more ancient
awarenesses: as found in the religious sensitivity and response to nature
present in Native American and Celtic cultures. For us, Berry gives word to
something that is being sensed by the generation now moving into the
twenty-first century: the God-given role of human beings to respect and care
for the earth and all her creatures. Whether I savor Berry’s insights, or
thrill to the earthy music of Celtic pipe, or vibrate to the rhythm of the
drumbeat of a rain dance, this awareness arrives at the same point. We know
that we are a significant part of a created whole and, therefore, integral to—not
separate nor apart from—all that surrounds us, from one another, from those
Jesus calls “the least of these”—nor are we even separate from the Architect of
it all. Whether we use massive telescopes which can scan our galaxy and even
detect other galaxies or search the skies with our limited human vision, we are
bound to stand in awe in the glow of the brilliant night sky. We can’t help but
ponder, just as others have done before us, the immensity and complexity of the
created universe, and the awesomeness of our charge to be its caretakers.
The reality is that God may succeed in luring us to be
responsible as the ones to whom Creation is entrusted, and in drawing us,
through the awesomeness of nature, to God’s very self with varying success.
Some will respond sooner to the challenge; some, later. Our response will
depend upon the goodwill and affirmative choice to love which is our freely
given answer to God, who says: “Come!”—to God who waits for each person to say:
“Yes!”
While we live out our lives attempting to live up to God’s invitation, let us not be so scandalized by
the failures to love that we see in and around us, nor so immobilized by the accumulated evil that amasses into the
grossest of social sin, that we lose sight of the Love of God still beaming
out amidst the darkness of human error like a lighthouse beacon. The Spirit of God is inventive to the utmost, and
the “word that goes out [from God] shall not return to me empty.” (That is God’s promise in Isaiah
55:11—NRSV) “It shall accomplish that which I purpose,” says God, “and succeed
in the thing for which I sent it.”
Judaism’s awareness is that Yahweh is faithful and
Yahweh will triumph! Ultimately! The resurrection message of Jesus is
the same: God will triumph! But in both traditions, the meantime will
have its thorniness.
The thorniness of life keeps us ever mindful that, in this
interim, until God’s purpose is fully achieved, evil abounds because of choices
made not to love. The choice to not love infects and impinges negatively
upon our lives. To be blind to this damaging consequence would be the utmost of
naivete. The Judaeo-Christian answer to the philosophers’ quest to understand
the coexistence of good and evil in the world is not to
propose, as some philosophies and religions have, a dualism in the Creator nor
dual Creators. It is, rather, to proclaim with Saint John in his epistle,
and with the psalmist, and with the insightful rabbis who first scribed in
writing their Judaic understanding of God, this conviction: “Yahweh, both
transcendent and immanent, is All-Good, and the source only of good!”
Evil, the rabbis suggest in Genesis, cannot be explained as
the Babylonians did, as the negative side of fickle and humanesque gods.
Genesis suggests that evil can only be seen in the failure of human
beings to choose to live attuned to the Love that creates them as free agents.
Contradicting Babylonian mythology, then, the rabbis of the Old Testament
present evil as the result of humankind’s fragmented efforts to be, not the created
people of a loving God, but the creators! Evil comes when humans try to
dominate, control, and abuse, imagining that in doing so they are godlike! But
the power of God is creative, freeing, and wholesome. Saint Paul defines
the Love that is in and of God in First Corinthians 13:4–8:
Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it
does not put on airs, and it is not snobbish; it is never rude or self-seeking;
it is not prone to anger, nor does it brood over injuries. Love…rejoices in the
truth. There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its
power to endure. Love never fails.
To be independent of the caring, loving, parenting God, to
try to be totally self-contained, self-sufficient, and dominating, is then,
ironically, to be totally ungodlike! And so the Genesis writers relate the
snowballing effect of evil in the world through story: Cain murders Abel; wars
proliferate; and human beings mistakenly seek the height of heights in Babel.
Finally, in the story of Jesus, the New Testament proclaims that the human
venture involves the perfect balance of Providence with human freedom and
responsibility.
Although Christian theologians have struggled with the
mystery of evil, theologizing can only go so far in explaining what is, in
fact, a mystery! One has only to look at a crucifix to come face to face
with the grotesqueness of evil. One has only to visit Dachau or Auschwitz to be
reminded of the almost inconceivable depth of depravity in the souls of human
beings. No! One has only to read the morning paper, on most days at least, to
encounter the ultimately inexplicable reality of evil in its many
manifestations.
No mental gymnastics by theologian or philosopher has been
able to explain to our total satisfaction the presence of evil in a world fashioned
by the All-Good God. But, through and with Jesus, Christianity proclaims that
God is total Goodness and Love. Jesus proclaims in his very
living and dying, the goodness of Abba, and the abomination of evil. He
confronts evil; and is victorious over it, because He faces it, absorbs its
fury, and overcomes it—giving back only love. God’s great “Amen” to
Jesus’ testimony that “God is Love,” reaches its climax in the Resurrection
event! Jesus makes visible to us in himself, the Goodness that is Abba who transforms
the worst evil every human person fears—death as extinction—into the
graphically depicted promise of a transformed, eternal life. And, God lets us
see the Promise in the Resurrected Jesus! What we can’t verbalize, we
see with eyes of faith. More than that, we experience the Living, Risen
Jesus as present to us, now, guiding us, safeguarding us, and communicating
intimately with us! The Resurrection isn’t an event of the past that Christians
read about with curiosity; it is a Real Person—a real person whom we experience
in the depths of our being and in our loving relationships with others.
Ultimately, beyond all this explication of our
Judaeo-Christian grappling with the mystery of why bad things sometimes (often)
happen to good people, we get down to the pastoral nitty-gritty. A particular
couple turns to the presider as they stand beside the casket of their dead
two-year-old with the grief-stricken query: “Why did God let this happen?” or
“How can God be a good God, and allow this tremendous loss?” And here we are,
back to the inexplicable that can only be accepted by a faith that stubbornly
clings to the conviction: “Our God is a good God. Our God will bring
good out of every event, no matter how negative. And, our God will
overcome!” There will be “joy in the morning.” God will “turn our
sorrow into joy.” (But right now, the pastoral heart says to the grieving
couple: “In this present moment, I understand that you hurt terribly. I hurt with
you. I cry with
you. God cries with you. I don’t understand why bad things
happen; but I know and believe that God is Love and God is here,
with us, in this sadness, telling us: ‘Come; cry on my shoulder.’”
One consolation Christians have is the awareness that, in
Jesus’ present moment on Good Friday, Jesus hurt terribly—but continued
to proclaim the Goodness of the God he called by a tender name of love and
affection, Abba.
Book is available online: www.amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Affirmations-Heart-God-Bridget-Meehan/dp/0764807099
Bridget Mary Meehan, sofiabmm@aol.com
Book is available online: www.amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Affirmations-Heart-God-Bridget-Meehan/dp/0764807099
Bridget Mary Meehan, sofiabmm@aol.com
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