Human Suffering & God

RELIGION often puts the cart before the horse, GRACE puts the horse back in front. – Richard Rohr, on Radical Grace     

It was unfortunate that Origen was declared anathema in 553 CE since it was he who was among the first to recognize our Divine Indwelling when he said “Who among those who have read the Gospels does not know that Christ makes human suffering his own?” Had Origen’s understanding of God’s divine indwelling been accepted from the beginning others might have viewed this world in a completely different context or light. No doubt this would have allowed all of us, to quote Richard Rohr, “to connect the dots better when considering human suffering.”

    

God’s Divine Indwelling clearly implies that “this life is not about us but about God experiencing Himself or Herself through all of us individually and indeed within and throughout all of Creation”.  That profoundly illustrates that any pain, suffering, or joy we experience – God also experiences that with us.  The knowledge that God is within the soul of each human being should provide us with the comfort of knowing that we are not alone; and journeys with us every part of the way from the Alpha to the Omega.  Accepting that God is present within and throughout all of Creation may be the first step necessary for understanding the significance of our True and False (ego) self.  Only God’s unconditional love incorporates and accepts both positive and negative aspects of our human nature.  To try and understand this radical definition of God’s unconditional love is almost maddening.  But Julian of Norwich expressed this best as follows: 

  

“Humans see some deeds as good and others as evil, but our Lord doesn’t see things like this; for everything is given its nature by God and so all that is done is done by God.  It is easy to understand that the best of deeds is well done, but the least of deeds is as well done as the best, for all things happen in the way and order that our Lord has ordained for them from beginningless time; for there is no doer but Him.”

This same radical understanding of God’s unconditional Love was recently wonderfully expressed by Mirabai Starr[1] in these words:

 “When we make mistakes and create suffering, we humble ourselves and God loves us all the more.  For those of us non-Christian and post-modern types, try substituting the word sin for shame, or blame, or even karma.  In other words, we screw up, but that only opens the tender heart of the cosmos where we can find refuge and come back into wholeness.”    

Now our suffering, such as from addictions, can be approached in terms of God’s desire to bring us to wholeness through his healing love.  This unconditional love not only brings us forgiveness and the awareness of the ability to forgive, but also allows us to transform the addiction into a blessing to freely love God, others and myself.  Rohr reminds me such a transformation can only be truly achieved by turning verbal orthodoxy into orthopraxy.

It has taken me at least ten years or more to understand the full significance behind the True Self/False Self as it was first explained by Fr. Rohr at a two day conference in Cleveland, OH. sometime around 2004?  What a blessing his insights that help us Breathe Under Water- Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (2011) have proven to be for all those burdened with addictions and other trials. 

In the face of so much continuing pain and suffering in the world and because we still ask “why does God not do something about it?”  We only need to accept that God does do something about it every day – he created you and me.  We only need to activate the God within -  the True self, or higher self if you prefer.  Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) understood this perfectly well; almost 500 years ago when she said:      

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours. 

Finally below you will find Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, coincidentally for today, which may help to explain why the False self with a dualistic mind is unable to process such things as human suffering, etc.,  

Dualistic Thinking – The Egoic Operating System

Dualistic thinking, or the egoic operating system, as Cynthia Bourgeault calls it, is our way of reading reality from the position of my private ego. “What’s in it for me?” “How will I look if I do this?” This is our preferred way of seeing reality. It has become the “hardware” of almost all Western people, even those who think of themselves as Christians, because the language of institutional religion is largely dualistic itself. It is a way of teaching that has totally taken over in the last five hundred years. It has confused information with enlightenment, mind with soul, and thinking with experiencing. But they are two very different paths.

The dualistic mind is essentially binary. It is either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, by opposition, by differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, intelligent/stupid, not realizing there may be 55 or 155 degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. It works well for the sake of simplification and conversation, but not for the sake of truth or even honest experience.

Actually, you need your dualistic mind to function in everyday life: to do your job as a teacher, a doctor, or an engineer. It is great stuff as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. The dualistic mind cannot process things like infinity, mystery, God, grace, suffering, death, or love. When it comes to unconditional love, the dualistic mind can’t even begin to understand it. It pulls everything down into some kind of tit-for-tat system of worthiness and achievement, which is largely what “fast food religion” teaches, usually without even knowing it.

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[1] Mirabai Starr, All Will be Well:  The Radical Optimism of Julian Norwich, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mirabai-starr/julian-of-norwich_b_4115736.html

WILL EVERYONE GO TO HEAVEN?

"Religion is for people afraid of going to hell, Spirituality is for those who have been there."

 A recent article in the online religion section of the National Post about self professed atheist and author Christopher Hitchens leads to the age old question, so popular among many fundamentalist believers today, which asks' exactly who will go to heaven?'

In an attempt to respond to that question lets begin with a modern parable as told by master story teller Anthony de Mello, S.J.

COMFORT FOR THE DEVIL

An ancient Christian legend:

When the Son of God was nailed to the cross and died, he went straight down to hell from the cross and set free all the sinners who were there in torment.

And the devil wept and mourned, for he thought he would get no more sinners for hell.

Then God said to him, "Do not weep, for I shall send you all those who are self-righteous in their condemnation of sinners And hell shall be filled up once more until I return

It seems that there are many who would like to take over the role of judge and jury to decide who gets into heaven and who should be banished to an eternal hell. Any suggestion that perhaps everyone goes to heaven is quickly met with a great deal of opposition. "No, no, absolutely not, that would mean that we would have to share heaven with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein and a host of other evil individuals." Still others (sadly) presented several recent serial killers and emphatically stated that these individuals should not be allowed to even dirty heaven's doorstep.
Catholics should first take a great deal of solace from their Creed which states: 'On the third day [Jesus] descended to the dead' as a reminder that Jesus comes to be with us in hell! This would include those who rejected God because they were denied or never introduced to the real presence of God's unconditional love. (for more on this topic readers are invited to 'Good Goats - Healing Our Image of God' by the Linn family available at every online bookstore)
When we ignore God's love and become too focussed on the sinful behaviours of people it can be easy to make judgment. And if we're not carefull will fall into the trap of demanding justice based on revenge and punishment. When some arrogantly announce on behalf of God, who is going to heaven and who is not; they seem oblivious to their own self-righteousness. Surely such an attitude cannot be from an unconditionally loving God. Instead we have made an Ego based judgment withour realizing that God's Last Judgment has nothing to do with punishment! On the contrary it has everything to do with restoration. It has to do with restoring the love of God that you and I never received. And, it has everything to do with healing and compassion. Perhaps the real purpose of purgatory is to purge us from the many false images which we have projected onto the world, ourselves and others.

Without transformation we will continue to see the parable of the prodigal son with jaded eyes. Is it not easier to identify with the older son? Should the father not respond to the prodigal son with "well O.K. you can come back, but I think you should first apologize to me and your older brother, who has worked so hard, while you just wasted your inheritance, and . . . . . now go and clean out the pig-pen! Instead we know deep down that God the father like any good parent is always ready to love by forgiving and forgetting.

Fr. Anthony de Mello on Loves Forgetfulness

"Why do you keep talking about my past mistakes?" said the husband.

"I thought you had forgiven and forgotten."

"I have, indeed, forgiven and forgotten," said the wife. "But I want to make sure you don't forget that I have forgiven and forgotten."

Sinner: "Remember not my sins, O Lord!"

Lord: "What sins? You'll have to

prod my memory. I forgot them long ago."

Love keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor. 13).

When we become too focussed on sin and punishment, we often fail to understand what it means to love and be loved by our Creator. There are many among us who have never experienced God's love through their parent, sibling, teacher, neighbour and especially from members of our own religious institution. In the absence of such love we learn to hate, and condemn, become twisted, broken, sick etc.. Many people today have not experienced God's healing love. So how do we accept God's calling to become real lovers in this troubled world? Teresa of Avila said it this way:

"Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world."

Are there any among you who are prepared to cast the first stone at those that do not belong in heaven? Then first read Isaiah 43:25, Heb. 8:12, 10:17.

Finally, Origen Adamantius (185 – 254), a scholar and one of the greatest  theologians of early Christian interest in Alexandria, wrote that "In the end all will be saved, and the official Church condemned him.

NEW February 2012:  see also "Will Everyone Go To Heaven - part 2.

NEW May 30,2014

OUR DESTINATION

Resurrection is incarnation come to its logical and lull conclusion. It fully demonstrates that this world, this flesh, this physicality is part of the eternal truth and forever matters to God. Again, the early church seemed to get this much more than we do. Read, for example, St. Irenaeus and St. Athanasius in their classic texts from the second and fourth centuries.9 Resurrection is saying that matter and spirit have been working together from the first moment of the big bang. Resurrection is not a miracle to be proven; it is a manifestation of the wholeness that we are all meant to experience, even in this world-not time as "chronological moments of endless duration" but time as momentous and revealing the whole.` When "time comes to a fullness" (Mark 1:15) as in a moment of love, childbirth, union, peaceful death, or beauty, you have then experienced a moment of eternal life. Resurrection is when one moment reveals the meaning of all moments. Without such moments, it will either be very hard for you to imagine resurrection or, conversely, you will long for it like no one else, which is the concise meaning of the virtue of hope.

The Risen Christ is the standing icon of humanity in its final and full destiny. He is the pledge and guarantee of what God will do with all of our crucifixions. At last, we can meaningfully live with hope. It is no longer an absurd or tragic universe. Our hurts now become the home for our greatest hopes. Without such implanted hope, it is very hard not to be cynical, bitter, and tired by the second half of our lives.

It is no accident that Luke's Resurrection account in the Gospel has Jesus saying, "I am not a ghost! I have flesh and bones, as you can see" (24:39-41). To Thomas he says, "Put your finger in the wounds!" (John 20:27). In other words, "I am human!"—which means to be wounded and resurrected at the same time. He returns to his physical body, and yet he is now unlimited by space or time and is without any regret or recrimination -while still, ironically, carrying his wounds. (That they do not disappear is telling.) It was quite a feat to communicate this whole message in such a subtle and refined way, which is precisely the power of symbol. "Our wounds are our glory," as Lady Julian of Norwich puts it, is the utterly counterintuitive message of the risen Jesus.

The major point is that Jesus has not left the human sphere; he is revealing the goal, the fullness, and the purpose of humanity itself, which is "that we are able to share in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), even in this wounded and wounding world. Yes, resurrection is saying something about Jesus, but it is also saying a lot about us, which is even harder to believe. It is saying that we also are larger than life, Being Itself, and therefore made for something good, united, and beautiful. Our code word for that is heaven.

Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond – the Search for Our True Self, (2013). P 83-85