Yesterday I had 3 different people come into my office to talk about difficulties they are facing. As Christians, it isn't surprising that their problems boil down to certain frustrations about God that are played out in their interactions with others. What is surprising to me is the way Walter Brueggemann and Hegel speak into the conversation.
One of Brueggemann's many brilliant thoughts is this one: we have certain scripts, or beliefs about life, God, etc, and how they are supposed to work. This is our orientation. And it works fine until God does something that doesn't seem to fit with our orientation. Then we move into disorientation as we try to work out what's going on and why God would apparently turn his back on us. Finally we are able to make some sort of sense of things, accept that God is who God is, and have a deeper understanding of him and our relationship with him, a.k.a. - a new orientation. Hegel, who doesn't typically speak to our generation too much these days, said something similar, only his dialectical process was thesis, antithesis, synthesis. With either thinker, we are being asked to recognize and accept a God that will continually blow our presuppositions about a life of faith out of the water. The beauty of this is that we are then less likely to put God in the box that most of our reductionistic modernist forebearers shoved him into.
So for the people who arrived yesterday with questions/concerns/frustrations with God I was able to listen intently and challenge their ideas about God. I saw them moving towards disorientation/antithesis, and for once I wasn't worried because I knew that their new orientation/synthesis, whether it comes in a day or a year, will be a much better place to be in than where they currently operate from in their faith. It's hard not to be fearful when you see somebody questioning or even fighting against YHWH, but I'm realizing more and more often how deep his reply runs; it's not our job to fight his fights. It's my job to help people realize who it is that they are wrestling with.
Peace,
Matt
Currently Reading: Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art by Julia Kristeva. I found a massive amount of interesting, intelligent books at a Goodwill last month and have been slowly making my way through the pile since then. Seriously, what are the odds of finding Edward Said, Julia Kristeva, Stanley Hauerwas, Karl Rahner and Thomas Kuhn at the same store?
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