While some people crave the experience of being out of control, I think most people like the idea of being in control. Most people like to believe that their life is following some kind of predictable path, and that they have some degree of control over that path (most people, I think, assume that degree of control is much higher than it really is).
When this desire for control and predictability crosses paths with religion — or, at least, with Christianity — the result is, in my opinion, rather tragic.
Over the years, I have been fascinated — and saddened — by the degree to which people need to believe that someone they would call God is in control of their lives. So many people believe that their life is unfolding according to some divine plan, and that nothing can happen in their lives that is not a part of that plan. The tragic element in this is when bad, even horrible, things happen — and these terrible events are made a part of that plan. The stunning truth is that so many people would prefer to believe in a God who would inflict terrible pain on their lives as part of some mysterious divine plan that we are simply unable to fathom than to embrace the idea that bad things can happen and God is powerless to stop them.
The monotheistic religious traditions in general have focused very much on building and preserving an image of God that is rooted in power. How often the word “almighty” appears in the vocabulary of prayer. More ancient practitioners, accustomed to a power structure which had a king or emperor at the top of it, transferred this monarchical imagery to God, and built an image of God as the king par excellence, ruling over the universe — and their lives — in much the same way as a king would rule over his kingdom. When power — and, in particular, the power to exercise control — becomes God’s defining characteristic, then we end up in this place where unbelievably horrible events either happen because they are part of that God’s plan or because this all-powerful God has decided not to act. Either way, we end up with a God who is something of a monster.
Yet, people who are invested in this image of God cannot allow themselves to see what a monstrosity it is. And so they go along with it, and set aside, or simply don’t see, the difficult questions it raises, or the tortuous logic it requires.
One could easily argue, when it comes to Christianity, that the Christ event undermines and overthrows this image of God. After all, in the end, Jesus undergoes the ultimate human experience of powerlessness and lack of control — the experience of death — despite the Christian claim that he is both divine and human. Stories are told of Jesus deliberately refusing to engineer any kind of great divine intervention to avoid that experience of powerlessness. And yet, we cannot understand the message. And our need to believe that God somehow controls and plans everything impacted our interpretation of the Christ event such that we ended up with the idea that God somehow required Jesus to undergo a horrible death in order to accomplish some mysterious act of salvation (the same God, by the way, who we say is all-powerful, and yet needed this to happen?).
My own reflection and my own experience lead me to reject all of this. I have come to the conclusion that God is not at all what we have made God to be. When we speak of God, we do not speak of an all-powerful being who is the stage director of reality. Rather, for me, God is the mystery of Being itself, the mystery that gives rise to life, to consciousness.
Perhaps one way to understand what I mean is to consider a healthy parent-child paradigm. Parents come together and produce a new life, and healthy parents love their child as best they can, with the goal of bringing that child into adulthood. While love means that parents do not wish their child to endure pain and difficulty, they know that they are for the most part powerless to prevent that from happening. Healthy parents know that they cannot control their children. That, ultimately, the act of bringing forth a life culminates in setting that life free. The relationship remains and endures in a healthy family, and that relationship can be important in the child’s ultimate flourishing (and, indeed, for the flourishing of the parent, as well). Yet, the parent-child relationship is not about control. And parents who try to make it about control will ultimately lose the relationship with their child — or, alternatively, the child will develop into a badly damaged human being.
It’s interesting that we can mostly perceive this on the human level — that perhaps the most difficult task of parenthood is releasing the child into freedom. Yet, we have trouble perceiving this when it comes to God. Somehow, so many people continue to insist that a healthy relationship with God is one in which God is in control.
In the end, this is rooted in fear. It is terrifying to embrace the truth that our lives are not unfolding according to a divinely directed plan, and that God is, in fact, not controlling our reality. For me, I would rather embrace that truth than the idea that there is a God who deliberately designs pain and tragedy into people’s lives in order to teach them some lesson. I will not bow down before such a monster.
For me, it is far more comforting — and makes much more sense — that there is One who is in life with me, accompanying me in what can be a journey of both incredible joy and tragic suffering. That One is the birth-giver of reality. And, having birthed that reality, has set it free, while continuing to be in relationship.
Now, perhaps we might regret that reality was ever birthed in the first place. But I think that is a minority opinion. The most miraculous thing we will ever encounter is the fact that we exist, and all of the possibilities that flow from that fact. Some of those possibilities will be realized, others will not be. Yet to have possibility is an amazing thing.
If we can give up this image of God as the all-powerful controller of reality, we will be free to move to a deeper spiritual place and to encounter a far more sophisticated understanding of the divine mystery. Most of the monsters in our theology will disappear. And people whose theologies are not haunted by monsters tend to be less monstrous themselves.
Comments