Accommodating God

I'm not such a wise person (despite wisdom purportedly coming with age), but about certain things I do believe I have figured them out. Usually, though, I suck putting into words my knowing what's what.

Which is frustrating, because when I do have that stray deep thought, I think I should share it with people. Not that I feel called to enlighten the less-illuminated or the stupid, but mostly because I'm just proud I had one at all, a deep thought.

Like the forever question of why God allowed this or that, whenever some really horrible-bad freaky shit happens. Or any other variation thereof, if there is a God, where was God, whatever. The substance of the question is the same however it is asked, and for which I may have the answer, I just can't precisely say it.

I was listening to Morning Edition a few afternoons ago and heard some rabbi guy, Harold Kushner, speaking about this, and the guy totally nailed it. Rabbi Kushner has written a dozen books offering Biblical guidance, his best-known title is When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Why, God, could I not have said the same thing, put so succinctly? Okay, that one's a question I can't answer other than by saying I'm probably just too incompetent; but to the other God question, for your consideration, bits gleaned from the NPR interview:

"There's always a fresh supply of grieving people asking, 'Where was God when I needed him most?'"

That's a question Kushner himself confronted as a young father when his first-born child died, leading him to rethink his view of an omnipotent God.

"It just seemed so terribly unfair and it forced me to reconsider everything I'd been taught in seminary about God's role in the world," Kushner says. "It was shattering."

He says people from a more traditional perspective have asked him whether he thought his son's death was part of God's plan. But Kushner rejects that idea.

"If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain," Kushner says. "I don't want to have to deal with a God like that."

He says that if he had to face the fact that God was either all-powerful but not kind, or thoroughly kind and loving, but not totally powerful, he would rather compromise God's power and affirm his love.

"The theological conclusion I came to is that God could have been all-powerful at the beginning, but he chose to designate two areas of life off-limits to his power," Kushner says. "He would not arbitrarily interfere with laws of nature. And secondly, God would not take away our freedom to choose between good and evil.

"I am embarrassed to remember how I counseled some families that had a tragedy in my early years as a rabbi." He says when he tried those words on himself, he discovered they didn't comfort him. Kushner recalls offering solace to a family in his congregation whose 17-year-old son had died.

"I said something to the parents like, 'We can't understand why this happened, but we have to believe that somewhere down the road, we'll see that it made sense,' " Kushner says. "And, God, I wish I could take those words back today, 60 years later."

"My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of," Kushner says. "And we care very much about each other."

That's the ticket, perfectly put to the point of the reasons why. God does not arbitrarily interfere with laws of nature, and God would not take away our freedom to choose between good and evil, and all smooshed up together in the space-time continuum to any single moment or incident, is what it is as things go.

Either blaming God for the bad stuff, or spinning it stupidly that it will assuredly turn out to be for some awesome divine by and by purpose, both are equally silly. If that were God's plan, like the rabbi says, it's a bad bargain and I also don't want to have to deal with a God like that.

Excepting that my sense didn't come a couple of decades ago, ditto Kushner here, God and I came to an accommodation with each other, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of. And yes, we do care very much about each other.