“At times like these God is useless…”
Minister at a Service in NYC held the evening of Sept. 11, 2001.
That statement may seem harsh, caustic, even a proclamation that God is dead. But that is far from the truth. It speaks to a rawness of truth that people who have been through tragedy can relate to, and often need to hear. One of the biggest problems of living a life of faith is the images of God we create for ourselves. You see I have discovered that most people believe in a God who has an “ego” – because only a God with an ego would get “mad” or seek revenge or have his feelings hurt of I spoke some personal truth in anger towards him. I have actually had people judge me and tell me I have lost faith all because I tell them that when I pray I sometimes cuss, that I rage at God when I pray because that is who I am; I am being true to the man God made, and yet somehow I am supposed to NOT be human towards God?
Let me state this to people as simple as I can, this thing that transformed my relationship with God making it more real and authentic then at any time in my life is this change within me: I came to believe and know that God does not have an Ego.
Ego is defined as a “person’s sense of self-importance or self-esteem.” In psychoanalysis, ego has to do with the role the “mind” plays in mediating between the conscious and unconscious mind.
See where I am going with this?
God does not need to have a “sense of self importance” for God is self-contained (so to speak). God does not need me to placate his feelings with trite remarks of praise. God does not need anything from me, at all. Nada. God does not have a Mind that needs a mediating element. God does not need a mind. God just is. God is the all that is and that is all.
And because I now live my life from the particular space/place that God has no ego, I can freely state such things like God is useless sometimes and it is not heresy. In fact, it is particularly freeing and relevant.
Freeing because there is nothing more dangerous and powerful than a person who has been released to love and be with a God Who is so freeing and relevant because in the last few days I have had conversations with 2 different people – one whose sister died in a car accident a year ago and the other a young father whose infant daughter had died three months ago – where not only did I feel inadequate, but God seemed so useless as a source or presence of comfort. And know that all I wanted to be was some symbol of God’s presence and comfort in the midst of the unexplainable rawness of our joint humanity.
Much has been written about God, suffering, life, etc., and because I am feeling so spiritually bankrupt (more like overdrawn on the spiritual bank account), I’m throwing my truncated two cents.
If there is anything I have learned in my struggles – which include the death of my both my parents (Dad when I was a teenager, Mom as I entered my forties), the death of my son in childbirth, the death of grandparents, an aunt, a brother, and the numerous deaths of friends to addiction and mental illness, and even in my own personal darkness – is that God can’t be made a scapegoat.
Frederick Buechner said “God cannot make [tragedies] unhappen any more than we can use a floodlight to put out a fire.”
If I blame God for all tragedy, then in my scapegoating of God I remove free will and the grand mystery of it all and I end up hating God. Some Christians talk about the permissive will of God as a way of explaining away tragedy and evil (i.e., God ‘allowed’ this to happen for some lesson to learn (which is a bullshit excuse, by the way).
Here are some squirmingly uncomfortable realities: EVERYTHING that happens falls under the will of God (if it does not then God is no longer omnipotent or omniscient); not everything has an explanation or a “purpose”; and some things in life will forever remain a Mystery and our job is not to solve the Mystery, but to live it.
God is always being blamed for all sorts of human tragedies and errors, while simultaneously we remove all elements of human error and the laws of nature as well as the reality that we humans create much of the variables that lead to tragedy and I refer back to the aforementioned reality of Mystery.
So when I echo the sentiments of the pastor from the post 9/11 service – that in times of suffering and death and pain, God can indeed be useless – I am not saying God is not a present reality. What I am saying is that it is a futile exercise to expect God to give us pat answers or solutions when tragedy occurs; that is putting ego into the equation.
I can hope for God’s presence, but in the brutal rawness of misery and tragedy, my senses tend to be numb and blind to any divine presence. I become lost in my own emotions, swirling and swimming, drowning me. What I can say is that in all the tragedy I have experienced, God is present more so in the pain than in any so-called answer given to me by well meaning people.
So I try and remind myself when pain comes, and come it will, when suffering overwhelms my world, and I grasp and grope for God, for answers, hell, when I am grasping for anything to make sense of the pain, I will remind myself that although God is useless, God is still present.
soulpatch.net 