James McGrath has a post, Liberalism Around the Blogosphere (and in the aftermath of the Indiana State Fair tragedy). In the comments section, my friend Bryan makes a comment that overlaps with what James McGrath says in his post.
Bryan first quotes a statement that James makes:
“As a Liberal Christian I find such theological interpretations akin to those of Job’s friends, and am dismayed that more people do not see that in making God the author of the survival of some, they are also making him out to be one who could have prevented more loss of life and injury but did not.”
And Bryan responds: “James, this will always be a problem whenever you thank God for something you consider providential that others didn’t receive. You thank God for your job, meanwhile others don’t get a job or lose the one they have You thank God for your food meanwhile millions starve. You thank God for your wife meanwhile millions never find love. You thank God for your children meanwhile millions never can have kids or lose the ones they have. It’s no less a problem whether it’s a small thing you thank God for or a large thing. Basically you have to decide whether God is responsible for anything in the world or he’s not, and if he is can we thank him when it goes our way even if it didn’t go someone else’s.”
I myself struggle with this issue, and I have encountered Christians (of the more eccentric variety) who basically contend that God does not intervene in the world: that we’re stuck in the messes we make, or that God does not interrupt natural processes that have disastrous consequences, or that we should help one another, rather than expecting God to intervene and make things better. In a sense, the Christianity with which I was raised had a similar mindset, at times. Granted, we prayed for God’s provision and protection, and I heard stories about God blessing people with money or a new job after they tithed, or quit a previous job because it required them to work on the Sabbath. But both of my Grandpas expressed similar sentiments to that of James McGrath and Bryan. When there was a disaster that took people’s lives, and the survivors were thanking God on the news that they were still alive, my Grandpa on my mother’s side asked, “Well, what about those who died? Did God love them less?” And, when my Grandpa on my dad’s side saw a pastor ask how God could have allowed a disaster, he said, “The Bible answers that question! It was time and chance.” He may have had in mind Luke 13:4, in which Jesus talks about the Tower of Siloam falling on a group of people.
To be honest, I’d have a hard time chugging through life on my own, without God providing for me, and so what I tell myself is that God might help me, which is why I should feel free to ask God for things. In cases in which God does not appear to help others, I tell myself that there must be some mysterious reason for God’s inaction, or perhaps God is acting in ways that we cannot see. That may be inadequate, but that’s what I do these days.
But, as I was reading James McGrath’s post and Bryan’s response, I thought about a book that I was reading last night, Richard Webster’s Soul Mates, which I talk some about here. The back cover of the book says that “somewhere out there, everyone has a soul mate.” I was rather skeptical when I read that. Everyone? What about those who don’t find love, whom Bryan mentioned in his comment? But Webster indirectly addressed that sort of issue in what I read yesterday. Webster talked about a man whose past lives he was exploring. On pages 40-41, Webster states the following:
“He had been a wheelwright in a small village somewhere in Europe, probably in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. He was illiterate and could not tell me either the year or country he was in. He had been overpowered and intimidated by his father throughout his childhood and had grown up to be a timid, quiet man. People constantly took advantage of him, and he was owed money by many people who laughed at his attempts to get paid. He was in love with a young woman he had never spoken to. He was too shy and scared to initiate conversation. He lived a long, sad, and lonely life. I thought that he would have been interested in the fact that his lack of confidence stemmed from the brutal treatment he had received as a child in this previous lifetime. However, he was much more interested in the fact that the girl he had loved from afar was his wife in this lifetime.”
Webster then goes on to say that this man did not figure in any of the wife’s previous lifetimes (at least the ones that she could remember under hypnosis), but, according to Webster, there are cases in which people have recalled previous lifetimes that can be verified, in some manner. But I won’t focus on that here. What I do wonder is whether or not reincarnation can make sense of the world as we know it. God may not bless me in this life, but perhaps that is because I am not ready for a particular blessing, and I will be more ready in a subsequent lifetime. Maybe there are things that happen on account of karma, or simply due to time and chance, but that does not mean that everything has ended, for a person may live again in another lifetime. A possible problem with this, however, is that people suffering or dying prematurely hurts not only them, but also their friends and family. It’s not easy to put that into a neat package.