God Now

Christianity and Heresy

C. Fred Alford

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532697180
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

In these short, accessible essays, Alford writes about the personal "Why I Pray," as well as the political "Simone Weil and Donald Trump." He makes some difficult theologians, such as Karl Barth and Soren Kierkegaard, accessible, while not hesitating to criticize them. Alford argues the genius of Christianity is in God making himself vulnerable so as to know what it is to be human; otherwise, God stands at a terrible distance from humanity. From this perspective, Christianity is about the teachings of Christ, and God's willingness to suffer. The resurrection, so central to most Christians, becomes less important.Myriad religious thinkers are considered, including Albert Camus, Thomas Merton, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rudolf Bultmann, and Paul Tillich, among others, including Simone Weil. Also addressed is the relationship between religion and psychology, as well as the status of natural law. Notable is the author's attitude, which combines respect for great thinkers and a willingness to call them out as wrong, confused, or misguided. Unafraid of atheism, Alford thinks many of the so-called new atheists judge religion as though it were a science, a confusion of categories. Once a philosopher of science, he knows the scope and limits of scientific explanation better than most.

Part I

1

Why I Pray

Because I do not believe in a God who intervenes in everyday life, I am not sure why I say my prayers every night. Yet I continue to pray, and there is still so much I do not understand.

Why do we ask God’s blessings, on those near and dear to us, as well as refugees and displaced persons far away whom I will never meet?

About asking God’s blessings. If there were an interventionist God, why would He be more likely to intervene if I asked Him to? He does not take recommendations from me.

One answer is that what I am really asking is for God to feel present in another person’s life, as well as my own. Not that he change their journey, or mine, but that he accompany us along the way. But the problem remains. Why would God be more likely to accompany someone on their perilous journey just because I ask Him to? Or if a thousand people ask Him to?

What I Believe

I believe that the universe is a miracle, and that my life, as well as everybody else’s life, is a gift. The universe did not have to be. I did not have to be. That I am—even for a moment in time, before I become ashes and dust again—is an incredible miracle, and an incredible gift. And so I believe in the One who gives life, a distant God.

How distant? That puzzles me. On the one hand, when I look around the world and see so much suffering and misery, I can only believe in the God of Job. The God who created the universe out of matter (not ex nihilo; that is Genesis, not Job), not for our satisfaction, but for His. Or as the liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez puts it about the God of Job,

the speeches of God have brought home the fact that human beings are not the center of the universe and that not everything has been made for their service.1

Along with many theologians, I hold that Job 42:10–17 was an addition by later redactors to encourage the faithful. The Book ends with Job despising himself for his arrogance in questioning God, not with God rewarding his faithfulness.

Another way of saying much the same thing is that I believe in a God who has stepped back from his creation. It is up to us what we make of it. The best thing we can do is help and comfort each other in a world that was not made for the human being.

Jesus

I also believe in the story of Jesus, not merely that He was a good man, but that He represents that part of God who let Himself feel the suffering of humanity, and so can accompany us on our journey, for He understands it.

The idea of a God who comes not in glory, but in all humbleness and vulnerability, “his strength made perfect in weakness,” is a great God story. Nevertheless, I do not find myself praying to Jesus very often, but to that much more abstract and distant being, God.

I belong to the Episcopal Church, but attend services rarely. My favorite is on Ash Wednesday, for it reminds me of my mortality, against which my modest achievements in this world, other than loving and caring for family and friends, mean little. Caring for the stranger would make me a better person, and I should do that more.

So Why Do I Pray?

Strangely enough, for someone whose faith is so fragile, I never feel that I am talking to myself when I pray. I feel (I think) that I am helping create a relationship that would not exist if I didn’t pray. Aggressive atheism makes no sense to me. How could we know?

The question is not whether God exists. The question is whether it is worthwhile to act as if He does, and so create a richer world, a numinous world, a world of wonder. I rarely succeed, and my most religious experiences are often in nature. When I could still kayak, and the wind rippled the surface of the lake, I could see His face upon the waters.

What Do I Pray?

I pray for my wife, a couple of friends who are ill, a mentally ill relative, and then depending on what has happened during the day, I pray for the hungry, the homeless, and refugees and displaced persons all over the world. I pray for people in pain. These seem to me about the worst things, and there are so many who suffer.

I do not pray that I give more to charity—though I should—because I would feel hypocritical. That is something in my hands, one of the few things I can control.

I thank God for my existence, and generally try not to pray for myself. Somehow it seems selfish or impolite. If I do it right, then I must always pray, “if it be Thy will, then . . . “ But if it is God’s will, then what will my pleading change?

I try to remember the reason Jesus introduced what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” To keep it simple. Do not babble on, for God knows what you need better than you do (Matthew 6:7–8).

So Why Pray?

I pray to create, establish, and maintain a relationship with a God who seems to have stepped back from this world. And the relationship I seek is one of felt presence. So that when I ask God to bless this or that person, or thank God for my existence, as well as that of those I love, I am asking God to accompany us on our journeys, to let his presence be felt.

I do not ask God for grace, which I understand as the unmerited favor of God, though that would be nice (Romans 3:22–24). I ask that if I am ever able to open myself to God’s presence (usually I am too preoccupied and anxious) that He be there waiting for me.

And then I stop.

1. Gutiérrez, On Job, 74.

2

He Only Promises We Do Not Suffer Alone

“Twenty centuries of Christianity,” I said. “You’d think we’d learn . . . In this world, He only promises we don’t suffer alone.”2

A Marine chaplain says this in a short story by Phil Klay about the Iraq War. The story is fiction but the point is real. Most people pray for God to protect them, their families, and their friends. Many pray only in moments of death and desperation. But it is the wrong thing to pray for. Pray to feel the presence of God. Period.

Of course, it is not this simple. Lots of people, including me, pray for more. Some pray for salvation. It is perfectly human, but it’s the wrong way to think about God.

Religion is about meaning, and religion is about suffering. Buddhism has one answer: don’t cling. Do not cling to life, don’t cling to attachments, and do not cling to yourself. Christianity has another answer: God will suffer with you. Your suffering will not be lessened, but you will not be alone. You will be less subject to your suffering.

Nietzsche argued that God is dead because there is no longer a convincing answer to the question, “Why do I suffer?”3

But if man is given a meaning for his suffering, then it has a purpose, and suddenly it is worthwhile to suffer. The meaning of suffering is everything. Nietzsche said this too, and he was right. The question is whether the answer “God accompanies you in your suffering” is really an answer. I think it is.

One could elaborate, along the lines of “God has a plan, one that you will never know, but from a God’s eye view, there is a meaning to your suffering.” That is the answer of the Book of Job. But I do not think it is very convincing.

There is something about being human that makes “God accompanies you in your suffering” a perfectly complete and adequate answer to the question, “Why do I suffer?” If this does not seem like an answer, think about it.

A suffering ch...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II: Theologians
• Part III: On Some Books of the Bible
• Part IV: Psychology and God
• Part V: Natural Law
• Part VI: Topics and Heresies
• Part VII
• Bibliography