amoral things

Is being cold evil? Is it evil when a glass of water tips over? Is growing old evil? Is it evil when I smash my finger with a hammer? There are numerous questions like these that can be answered in the negative. No, these aren't evil, despite the frustrations that they cause. Where do we draw the line between deeming things evil, that is, morally reprehensible, and simply saying that they are facts of life? What about tsunamis and natural disasters? Things just got significantly more complicated.

When we think of suffering in the world, I believe, like most sensible Christians, that God cannot be attributed as the author, cause, etc., of moral evil. This shouldn't be controversial. God can make bad things into good things, but God cannot make bad things, things that have an intrinsically evil nature. If evil is the privation of the good then evil technically is not a nature, it is a return to non-existence. Speaking of humanity's sinful proclivity, Henri Blocher calls this bent a "quasi-nature." We know it's there, we experience sinful tugs and pulls, and yet we also know that God called humanity "very good." Living licentiously is, according to Christian theology, "παρα φυσιν, contrary to nature. Living in sin is to live in an un-human way. This gives birth to a radically different concept of freedom, which we won't discuss now but is worth mentioning.

Where is all this going? Having had my nose in the "Alexandrian tradition" lately, I've come across a different interpretation of the biblical narrative that has in many ways made a good deal more sense (at least to me) of Scripture and our own experiences. Clement of Alexandria believed firmly in the divine oikonomia. God's oikonomia is often rendered "economy" in English, but it brings far too much baggage with it, so I will leave it transliterated. By oikonomia he means that the Logos, the mind of God that takes on flesh and becomes the Son of God, has carefully ordered the world according to his providence. Clement argued that prior to Christ, God gave the Law to the Jews and philosophy to the Greeks in order to prepare the way for Christ. This is the first covenant applied at a global level. In fact, he even argues that the Greek philosphers plagiarized the OT! Eventually the first covenant gives way to Christ where the enigmas in the OT are explained and fulfilled (often by appealing to the "spiritual" sense; the allegorical sense is the divine sense) for those who can understand. The point in this is that God deals with people gradually according to their corporeality which he has designed. This point was made especially by Gregory of Nazianzus in the fourth century. He believed that man was by God's design the odd mixture of soul and body, immaterial and material. Humans cannot know God's nature but his mediated and indirect revelation of himself is to inspire yearning and longing in us for the infinite, what we can never attain. Gregory of Nyssa says it this way:

When the soul is moved towards what is naturally lovely, it seems to me that this is the sort of passionate desire with which it is moved. Beginning with the loveliness it sees, it is drawn upwards to what is transcendent. The soul is forever inflaming its desire for what is hidden, by means of what it has already grasped. For this reason, the ardent lover of beauty understands what is seen as an image of what he desires, and yearns to be filled with the actual image of what he desires, and yearns to be filled with the actual substance of the archetype.
This is what underlies the bold and excessive desire of him who desires to see no longer 'through mirrors and reflections, but instead to enjoy beauty face to face (1 Cor 13.12).' The divine voice concedes what is demanded by actually refusing it, and in a few words displays the immeasureable depths of its ideas. On the one hand, the divine generosity grants the fulfilment of his desire; on the other hand, it promises no end to desire nor satiety of it.

God's concealment of himself is for our own spiritual growth. Life is pedagogical, and Christ, through the Spirit is our divine teacher.
So when I smash my finger with a hammer instead of cursing and saying nasty things, I am supposed to rule my lower, material part by the higher, rational part. Our minds participate in and share in the Logos, the wisdom of God. This should put an entirely new element to Paul's statement in 1 Cor 2.16 that "we have the mind of Christ." Gregory used this notion of God's oikonomia, his gradual and careful ordering of the world, to argue for the consubstantiality of the Spirit. Scripture is not entirely clear about the nature of the Spirit. Is it synonymous for the power of God or is it God's inspiring principle? The Trinity took time to get worked out (most people still have no idea how to speak about the Trinity), and Gregory argued that the realization of the Spirit's co-equality with Son and Father is due to God's progressive revelation. If God would have gone from first covenant to full revelation of God's Trinitarian self, we would have even more confused. Life in God's world is pedagogical. God deals with us like parents do with children. We are weak, which is not always an evil or bad thing. It was this way from the beginning. Adam and Eve, more often than not, were not assumed to be immortal. They needed to learn how to serve God within their environment with the goal of progressing towards God and being assimilated into the life of God. The implications of this narrative are far reaching. How does Jesus fit into this system? Why did he come? What is the atonement in this system? We'll leave these questions for another time.

If life on this bouncing ball is pedagogical then how do we speak of evil and God? We must maneuver between non-negotiables. God created a good world, he didn't create evil, humanity was created good with free-will, God is sovereign, the world has problems, etc. Part of our life-long-learning project is wrestling with these realities.

a man named Henny

About two months ago I met a man named Henning, Henny for short. On Mondays and Wednesdays, when I take the train from Chicago to Milwaukee, I would often see Henny while studying at Starbucks. Around 11:00am or so he would often get wheeled in by someone and would tediously pull two bucks out of his shirt pocket to pay for his tall coffee and then struggle to a table. He spilled his coffee frequently. Henny was shot in 1974, and the left side of his body functions like one who had a stroke. His head is tilted to the left, his left foot is severely swollen, and his left hand appears to be crippled. He spent the five years after the incident inside his home, and eventually he got a wheelchair. His eyesight is too poor for him to use an electric wheelchair, so he relies on some sort of care giver to drop him off and pick him up. Usually around noon, I'd wheel him over to the sandwich joint next door. After his sandwich, he'd somehow manage to get outside again where he would sit in his chair on the sidewalk until he was ready for his second cup of coffee: 1/2 regular, 1/2 decaf.

I first talked to Henny because he had a Washington Huskies hat on, so I told him I was from Washington. From then on we developed a friendship, and whenever he came in on Mondays and Wednesdays, we had somewhat of a routine. He'd get coffee, I'd study, we'd chat a bit, I'd run him next door, he'd chill outside after his sandwich, and eventually he'd make it back inside and we'd chat again. We'd usually shake hands before I left for my class, and we'd both exchange "see you laters." This routine changed somewhere around the 14th of October. I don't remember the exact date, but one day he came in and things were never the same. That morning he told me that his mom died. His mom, in her 90s, still lived at home and received hospice care. Now she was gone, and Henny's already difficult life became that much more lonely, quiet and painful.

That day, as Henny sat outside after lunch, I could hardly function. What now? How do I help my friend Henny? When he first told me she died, we sat silent for at least 6 or 7 minutes. I had no idea what to do. The mere thought of this man's physical condition was enough to overwhelm me with sadness and grief. But now, the vacancy left by his mother's death could be the end all. Heartbreak is usually worse than physical pain. Indirect suffering is as damnable as direct suffering. If I was the one suffering, there can be comfort in that it is not someone else. It is still miserable and evil, nonetheless. But to sit there with this man and to be lost for words, was too much for me. As I walked to the train that night, I wept. I imagine that Henny wept too. If only tears were redemptive; if only my tears on behalf of Henny somehow made things better. On any given day this dry and barren sphere we call earth is watered with the tears of millions. Just think about all that happens on any given day. People die from hunger, murder and mere accidents. From brutal rapes to losing a job, no place is immune to chaos. No amount of money can pad one from emotional pain that comes from depression, marriage failure, bad decisions and abuse. Suffering is our lot. Someday, we'll all get the phone call.

Before Henny's mom died, we talked about the challenges he faces with being in a wheelchair and being partially crippled. I told him never to give up and to keep going. Inside, I knew that the thought of being in his position would make me want to be done with life. Neither life nor death are our prerogatives, regardless of the fact that we can produce it as well as take it. If Henny gives up, I'm not sure what I'll do. Perhaps he gave me more hope than I gave him. Ever since that day, I have not seen Henny. I pray he is okay.