Your conclusion is largely within my line of thinking, although elements I may take issue with are more interesting.
Because I identify as a thinker rather than as a writer there is less incentive to ‘create a market’ or validate existing bias to build a base. The attempt will be made to answer to your writing while also writing for a larger audience. (That may never exist) I do not mind having a very few people reading my material and probably deserve it given my attitude toward existing ways of looking at things.
I remember well listening to many sermons where the sensation was there of being spoken to directly in a deep way. I figured that others felt this also and made for a kind of magic. But later when I learned of cult-ish aspects to the church I realized that indeed the Lord works in mysterious ways. My hope is that you see that while I do not process things thru a religious lens, I still respect and will reference that mode of understanding to some degree. And I do love gospel and praise music and wholehearted expressions of faith, so I got that going for me.
I limit computer time because, unlike direct conversation with quick reaction times, therefor better chance of speaking from the heart, computer productions are formulated around intellect and tends to promote and enforce bias. It tends to get clubby and encourage disrespect among many parties. Whereas to my mind, it’s more interesting to engage with people that think differently than oneself rather than the folk that think in largely the same way. The mental exercise can provide a deeper understanding of your own arguments, strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately it seems that when people disagree, oftentimes ego games flare up, lessening prospects for useful exchange.
If one does some speculative reconstructing of historical events around the time of the bible writing, while assuming a certain consistency in human nature, one may concede the possibility that powerful human elements had a hand in creating and shaping Christianity. While the bible may be divinely inspired, it may be helpful to recognize secular power objectives that were achieved through bible writing also. Short version; Trade routes were sometimes bloody affairs with different people having different gods. The plutocrats said, shit we gotta do something about this, lets call the wise guys, give them money to write a book (or gather existing books) with one god. Wise guys said; Shit yeah, we get money, have a positive impact on history and don’t even have to get our hands dirty. Of course plutocrats got editing rights and did tweak a few things. Point being, the parties involved thought the were doing good things even if the way it was presented and promoted was quite rife with dirty deeds and false representations. My feeling is we will get more cynical before we see the real wonder of God’s creation.
And this could lead to thoughts about Jesus bringing a sword and not peace, maybe another time, or you can take the lead an I will reflect. Now I finally get to personal time. I am a late in life learner of fiddle and today I’m working on Silent Night. It has all the things that I find difficult to do on fiddle. It has double stops all the way through, that is two notes at a time. One has to both shift position and maintain intonation on both notes while also pulling the bow slowly in an even way. None of which I do particularly well so that is what I will go work on.
I'm not doing too well with those replies. I am or have been involved as a volunteer with three Christmas-related events in about a two week span, one finished (Christmas choir performance), one a Christmas concert this Friday evening, and one more on Christmas Eve (at 11 PM).
For the upcoming Friday event, I designed and will be running the lighting (it's fairly simple, as is our aging lighting system). We are expecting around 600 for the concert, and providing an overflow room just in case. I am enjoying it, but my free time has disappeared and my consulting income has temporarily dropped to zero. Oh well, it's for a good cause.
[I'm going to have to break this reply into segments, and cut back on proofreading. This week is crushing me.]
You are speaking, if not preaching, to the choir here. Alto. Not terribly good at it, but well trained, and it's a church choir, not a professional one. I took up voice because I couldn't find an instrument that my hands could manage. Piano is the closest I've come, with easy pieces only. At least the thing doesn't move around. A choir director put her violin in my hands once, to see what would happen. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.
We're all about small audiences here.
Cult-ish aspects to the church? Yeah. I grew up, from about age 12 until I left at 21, in or under the influence of an actual Kingdom of the Cults Christian cult. The trouble is, my other orthodox Protestant churches have had some not dissimilar issues. My original solution (at 21 years old) was to get disgusted with the church, get mad at God, and leave the faith.
I returned at 40 but left again at 48 under similar circumstances with differing details, believing that there would not be a third time. After a 3 1/2 year hiatus I joined a non-Christian church (weird, but there are such things). At 64, I returned again, to a Christian church that didn't believe in much of anything (there are a good many of those) but they had a choir. I am on my 4th church since then, but I got over the mad-at-God thing, and I leave churches now, not the faith. I have learned the difference between the two. And this latest church has a more traditional music style, with choir, orchestra, and handbells, which is hard to resist.
It is becoming harder and harder to find a church with even a choir where people actually believe in something approaching truth, so I have had to adjust my relationship with my church to allow it to lean one way, within bounds, while I lean another way. I neither hide nor promote my differing beliefs. Music is less negotiable, but leaving again and again is really, really terrible.
It's not entirely about the music, but it's the worship experience. Otherwise there are individual and small group study, and just simply individual practice and outreach, but those things alone leave a congregation-sized hole.
There is much more to the truth of our existence than we are likely to ever hear about in a sermon, and yet the worship experience can contribute to understanding. For that matter, observing all the problems that churches have can contribute to understanding. There is, however, a lot of individual work to be done, and one-on-one work with others, or even one-to-small-group. It's not work in the traditional sense -- it is synergistic, guided work. It's hard to explain.
That word "synergistic", its root is found in scripture (Greek NT) surprisingly often. Translators don't seem to be comfortable with that, and they bury it. You can spot it as "work together" and such instead. It's important.
I share many of your reservations, but approach the issues differently. From an early age I asked for understanding, nothing else as I feel that Creator knows best what is good for me and understanding is something that Creator wants for me anyway. My main question was; why do people suffer and also cause other people to suffer? I left religion but never dispensed with a prayerful attitude toward God. After a time I was informed that our basic understanding of reality was warped and could only produce more stress and not less over time. After another decade of earnest desire to understand the source and nature of the warp-age, I was informed that our collective brain fart is caused by our declaration and acceptance of the notion that the spiritual and physical are fundamentally different. This serves power and tends to mute our heart connection to our Creator.
Hi Sounder. This will only be a fairly short reply because I am drowning in to-do's, a consequence of spending too much time posting on Substack, among other things. I may be caught up by Sunday.
I have read your main blog posts, however, and I think you might be surprised how much we have in common. Your writing seems closer to my thinking in my middle-age years. I haven't abandoned all of that; I have learned from it. I'm in my early 70's now and the learning is much more intense. I'm really bummed over what I've seen these past several years, but I still see purpose in it.
There is a hard answer to the ever-popular question, "Why does (or would) God allow people to suffer?", and it's not anything like most people would imagine. It's hard because it is explicit, and it's hard because it just is. The reason is spelled out rather clearly in books of the Bible such as 1 Peter and James, as well as in many other scriptures, but it's not what we want to hear -- it's certainly not what I wanted to hear.
After getting hit, however, with four sermons in two weeks focusing on 1 Peter and suffering, my resistance cracked a little and think I am starting to see it. I no longer want to scream when I hear James 1:2. The short answer to the question, by the way is in verses 3 and 4. Peter goes into greater detail, and frames it in terms of suffering, of which there was much going on at the time.
That's all for this reply. I'll end by quoting the above verses from James (NASB 2020):
James 1:2 Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials,
3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
I might lean more toward "complete and whole", rather than "perfect and complete", in v. 4, as a matter of clarity. "Perfect" reads τέλειοι in the Greek, and often translates as "perfect" or "complete". The word "complete" (above) reads ὁλόκληροι in the Greek, and carries a connotation of wholeness as well as completeness. The "hol" (ὁλ) root is suggestive of "holistic", and that is no coincidence. The latter English word derives from another Greek word with the same root.
Anyway, whether called trials or suffering, it produces completeness and wholeness.
"Why does (or would) God allow people to suffer?". There is a presumption in this form of the question that rubs me wrong. I consider that an earnestly asked question is a prayer to Creator and could not think to apply inferred blame to God in the question itself.
I do love these verses, especially James 1:2. Consider it all joy, these are the lessons we need to learn. Tough nut to crack and I'm still working on it. Anyway, the way I work this gig to consider that every experience contains potentials, some that I may grasp and much more beyond my grasp. There is danger though in thinking that more information will confirm ones understanding of things. If somewhat internally consistent, any system of understanding reality can appear robust to those using it. So we want to bring more things within our grasp but must always ask; How different is the grasp I claim and the grasp that is actually there? What is the value of the claimed grasp anyway?
Both sides in our culture 'wars' think they stand on the high ground and will win, if they keep fighting hard enough. They are both sadly misinformed about a central element in how our conceptions determine the interpretation of our perceptions.
I agree with you regarding the question "Why does (or would) God allow people to suffer?" I was trying to phrase it in a form similar to what I hear from other people. A different question is "Of what value is suffering?" That one goes deep, and doesn't blame.
This morning I was searching my memory for other biblical examples of the value of suffering, and during a group study today this one popped out:
"Heb. 5:7 In the days of His humanity, He offered up both prayers and pleas with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His devout behavior. 8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. 9 And having been perfected, He became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey Him..."
This passage is part of a larger narrative regarding Melchizedek, and not wishing to go there I broke off the quotation in mid-sentence. Here there is a progression, from being human (literally 'flesh' -- σαρκὸς) to "devout behavior" (εὐλαβείας), to obedience learned from suffering, to perfection (τελειωθεὶςor, a passive participle that can mean "being perfected" or "being finished").
BDAG defines εὐλαβείας ("devout behavior") as "reverent awe in the presence of God, awe, fear of God", which to me reads more clearly but lacks the brevity valued by publishers.
So the passage starts with human suffering, moves to reverence, then relates obedience to suffering, from which perfection/completion attains. So we are made for suffering? Not exactly. We are made for perfection/completion, not for endless suffering, and it is ultimately a passive process -- we don't perfect ourselves. Is this dualistic?
This idea can be extremely difficult to appreciate, but the difficulty seems to lie in one's assumptions, not to mention a universal distaste for suffering. But that distaste has never prevented suffering, nor people causing others to suffer, nor our doing things that cause our own suffering. But we're not finished yet.
This existence is highly intentional, as evidenced by its design, and it is creating complete/mature spiritual beings from incomplete/immature material beings, with a yield of less than 100%. I could only speculate as to why it is so painful or the yield is limited, but it is a birth process and in this existence those are difficult.
I could go on and on and on, but I will conclude with a modified version of something I often say -- just this morning I noticed that something was missing. Our beliefs determine what we can and can't see. When we see paradox, it is a signal that our beliefs are out of touch with reality and need adjustment. A life that doesn't work is another such indication. If we respond by either doubling down on our beliefs or by genning up new ones, there's going to be trouble ahead.
What can break the cycle is to stop, reflect upon what has happened, acknowledge our limitations, admit our errors, persistently ASK what is next (Mt. 7:7 ff.), and then LISTEN for answers. This existence is interactive, and user-friendly for users that are friendly.
This process can become a new cycle that replaces the old one. Not all proffered answers are of equal value, however. The ones that reflect concern for others rather than self-concern are the ones to seek.
Your conclusion is largely within my line of thinking, although elements I may take issue with are more interesting.
Because I identify as a thinker rather than as a writer there is less incentive to ‘create a market’ or validate existing bias to build a base. The attempt will be made to answer to your writing while also writing for a larger audience. (That may never exist) I do not mind having a very few people reading my material and probably deserve it given my attitude toward existing ways of looking at things.
I remember well listening to many sermons where the sensation was there of being spoken to directly in a deep way. I figured that others felt this also and made for a kind of magic. But later when I learned of cult-ish aspects to the church I realized that indeed the Lord works in mysterious ways. My hope is that you see that while I do not process things thru a religious lens, I still respect and will reference that mode of understanding to some degree. And I do love gospel and praise music and wholehearted expressions of faith, so I got that going for me.
I limit computer time because, unlike direct conversation with quick reaction times, therefor better chance of speaking from the heart, computer productions are formulated around intellect and tends to promote and enforce bias. It tends to get clubby and encourage disrespect among many parties. Whereas to my mind, it’s more interesting to engage with people that think differently than oneself rather than the folk that think in largely the same way. The mental exercise can provide a deeper understanding of your own arguments, strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately it seems that when people disagree, oftentimes ego games flare up, lessening prospects for useful exchange.
If one does some speculative reconstructing of historical events around the time of the bible writing, while assuming a certain consistency in human nature, one may concede the possibility that powerful human elements had a hand in creating and shaping Christianity. While the bible may be divinely inspired, it may be helpful to recognize secular power objectives that were achieved through bible writing also. Short version; Trade routes were sometimes bloody affairs with different people having different gods. The plutocrats said, shit we gotta do something about this, lets call the wise guys, give them money to write a book (or gather existing books) with one god. Wise guys said; Shit yeah, we get money, have a positive impact on history and don’t even have to get our hands dirty. Of course plutocrats got editing rights and did tweak a few things. Point being, the parties involved thought the were doing good things even if the way it was presented and promoted was quite rife with dirty deeds and false representations. My feeling is we will get more cynical before we see the real wonder of God’s creation.
And this could lead to thoughts about Jesus bringing a sword and not peace, maybe another time, or you can take the lead an I will reflect. Now I finally get to personal time. I am a late in life learner of fiddle and today I’m working on Silent Night. It has all the things that I find difficult to do on fiddle. It has double stops all the way through, that is two notes at a time. One has to both shift position and maintain intonation on both notes while also pulling the bow slowly in an even way. None of which I do particularly well so that is what I will go work on.
I'm not doing too well with those replies. I am or have been involved as a volunteer with three Christmas-related events in about a two week span, one finished (Christmas choir performance), one a Christmas concert this Friday evening, and one more on Christmas Eve (at 11 PM).
For the upcoming Friday event, I designed and will be running the lighting (it's fairly simple, as is our aging lighting system). We are expecting around 600 for the concert, and providing an overflow room just in case. I am enjoying it, but my free time has disappeared and my consulting income has temporarily dropped to zero. Oh well, it's for a good cause.
[I'm going to have to break this reply into segments, and cut back on proofreading. This week is crushing me.]
You are speaking, if not preaching, to the choir here. Alto. Not terribly good at it, but well trained, and it's a church choir, not a professional one. I took up voice because I couldn't find an instrument that my hands could manage. Piano is the closest I've come, with easy pieces only. At least the thing doesn't move around. A choir director put her violin in my hands once, to see what would happen. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.
We're all about small audiences here.
Cult-ish aspects to the church? Yeah. I grew up, from about age 12 until I left at 21, in or under the influence of an actual Kingdom of the Cults Christian cult. The trouble is, my other orthodox Protestant churches have had some not dissimilar issues. My original solution (at 21 years old) was to get disgusted with the church, get mad at God, and leave the faith.
I returned at 40 but left again at 48 under similar circumstances with differing details, believing that there would not be a third time. After a 3 1/2 year hiatus I joined a non-Christian church (weird, but there are such things). At 64, I returned again, to a Christian church that didn't believe in much of anything (there are a good many of those) but they had a choir. I am on my 4th church since then, but I got over the mad-at-God thing, and I leave churches now, not the faith. I have learned the difference between the two. And this latest church has a more traditional music style, with choir, orchestra, and handbells, which is hard to resist.
It is becoming harder and harder to find a church with even a choir where people actually believe in something approaching truth, so I have had to adjust my relationship with my church to allow it to lean one way, within bounds, while I lean another way. I neither hide nor promote my differing beliefs. Music is less negotiable, but leaving again and again is really, really terrible.
It's not entirely about the music, but it's the worship experience. Otherwise there are individual and small group study, and just simply individual practice and outreach, but those things alone leave a congregation-sized hole.
There is much more to the truth of our existence than we are likely to ever hear about in a sermon, and yet the worship experience can contribute to understanding. For that matter, observing all the problems that churches have can contribute to understanding. There is, however, a lot of individual work to be done, and one-on-one work with others, or even one-to-small-group. It's not work in the traditional sense -- it is synergistic, guided work. It's hard to explain.
That word "synergistic", its root is found in scripture (Greek NT) surprisingly often. Translators don't seem to be comfortable with that, and they bury it. You can spot it as "work together" and such instead. It's important.
Hi ClearMiddle,
I share many of your reservations, but approach the issues differently. From an early age I asked for understanding, nothing else as I feel that Creator knows best what is good for me and understanding is something that Creator wants for me anyway. My main question was; why do people suffer and also cause other people to suffer? I left religion but never dispensed with a prayerful attitude toward God. After a time I was informed that our basic understanding of reality was warped and could only produce more stress and not less over time. After another decade of earnest desire to understand the source and nature of the warp-age, I was informed that our collective brain fart is caused by our declaration and acceptance of the notion that the spiritual and physical are fundamentally different. This serves power and tends to mute our heart connection to our Creator.
Hi Sounder. This will only be a fairly short reply because I am drowning in to-do's, a consequence of spending too much time posting on Substack, among other things. I may be caught up by Sunday.
I have read your main blog posts, however, and I think you might be surprised how much we have in common. Your writing seems closer to my thinking in my middle-age years. I haven't abandoned all of that; I have learned from it. I'm in my early 70's now and the learning is much more intense. I'm really bummed over what I've seen these past several years, but I still see purpose in it.
There is a hard answer to the ever-popular question, "Why does (or would) God allow people to suffer?", and it's not anything like most people would imagine. It's hard because it is explicit, and it's hard because it just is. The reason is spelled out rather clearly in books of the Bible such as 1 Peter and James, as well as in many other scriptures, but it's not what we want to hear -- it's certainly not what I wanted to hear.
After getting hit, however, with four sermons in two weeks focusing on 1 Peter and suffering, my resistance cracked a little and think I am starting to see it. I no longer want to scream when I hear James 1:2. The short answer to the question, by the way is in verses 3 and 4. Peter goes into greater detail, and frames it in terms of suffering, of which there was much going on at the time.
That's all for this reply. I'll end by quoting the above verses from James (NASB 2020):
James 1:2 Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials,
3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
I might lean more toward "complete and whole", rather than "perfect and complete", in v. 4, as a matter of clarity. "Perfect" reads τέλειοι in the Greek, and often translates as "perfect" or "complete". The word "complete" (above) reads ὁλόκληροι in the Greek, and carries a connotation of wholeness as well as completeness. The "hol" (ὁλ) root is suggestive of "holistic", and that is no coincidence. The latter English word derives from another Greek word with the same root.
Anyway, whether called trials or suffering, it produces completeness and wholeness.
"Why does (or would) God allow people to suffer?". There is a presumption in this form of the question that rubs me wrong. I consider that an earnestly asked question is a prayer to Creator and could not think to apply inferred blame to God in the question itself.
I do love these verses, especially James 1:2. Consider it all joy, these are the lessons we need to learn. Tough nut to crack and I'm still working on it. Anyway, the way I work this gig to consider that every experience contains potentials, some that I may grasp and much more beyond my grasp. There is danger though in thinking that more information will confirm ones understanding of things. If somewhat internally consistent, any system of understanding reality can appear robust to those using it. So we want to bring more things within our grasp but must always ask; How different is the grasp I claim and the grasp that is actually there? What is the value of the claimed grasp anyway?
Both sides in our culture 'wars' think they stand on the high ground and will win, if they keep fighting hard enough. They are both sadly misinformed about a central element in how our conceptions determine the interpretation of our perceptions.
I agree with you regarding the question "Why does (or would) God allow people to suffer?" I was trying to phrase it in a form similar to what I hear from other people. A different question is "Of what value is suffering?" That one goes deep, and doesn't blame.
This morning I was searching my memory for other biblical examples of the value of suffering, and during a group study today this one popped out:
"Heb. 5:7 In the days of His humanity, He offered up both prayers and pleas with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His devout behavior. 8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. 9 And having been perfected, He became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey Him..."
This passage is part of a larger narrative regarding Melchizedek, and not wishing to go there I broke off the quotation in mid-sentence. Here there is a progression, from being human (literally 'flesh' -- σαρκὸς) to "devout behavior" (εὐλαβείας), to obedience learned from suffering, to perfection (τελειωθεὶςor, a passive participle that can mean "being perfected" or "being finished").
BDAG defines εὐλαβείας ("devout behavior") as "reverent awe in the presence of God, awe, fear of God", which to me reads more clearly but lacks the brevity valued by publishers.
So the passage starts with human suffering, moves to reverence, then relates obedience to suffering, from which perfection/completion attains. So we are made for suffering? Not exactly. We are made for perfection/completion, not for endless suffering, and it is ultimately a passive process -- we don't perfect ourselves. Is this dualistic?
This idea can be extremely difficult to appreciate, but the difficulty seems to lie in one's assumptions, not to mention a universal distaste for suffering. But that distaste has never prevented suffering, nor people causing others to suffer, nor our doing things that cause our own suffering. But we're not finished yet.
This existence is highly intentional, as evidenced by its design, and it is creating complete/mature spiritual beings from incomplete/immature material beings, with a yield of less than 100%. I could only speculate as to why it is so painful or the yield is limited, but it is a birth process and in this existence those are difficult.
I could go on and on and on, but I will conclude with a modified version of something I often say -- just this morning I noticed that something was missing. Our beliefs determine what we can and can't see. When we see paradox, it is a signal that our beliefs are out of touch with reality and need adjustment. A life that doesn't work is another such indication. If we respond by either doubling down on our beliefs or by genning up new ones, there's going to be trouble ahead.
What can break the cycle is to stop, reflect upon what has happened, acknowledge our limitations, admit our errors, persistently ASK what is next (Mt. 7:7 ff.), and then LISTEN for answers. This existence is interactive, and user-friendly for users that are friendly.
This process can become a new cycle that replaces the old one. Not all proffered answers are of equal value, however. The ones that reflect concern for others rather than self-concern are the ones to seek.