A Suffering God

Posted by Jonathan Brink
October 21, 2009

This is a 2005 TED Talk by Tom Honey on God and the tsunami.  Tom explores our historical perceptions of God.  It seemed appropriate after the last two posts.  He specifically address the mechanistic determined God that controls all things.  And he suggests that this version of God leaves us cold.  He suggests an alternative and finds God in the midst of suffering.

“Is God a cold unfeeling spectator, or a powerless lover watching with infinite compassion things that God is unable to control or change.  Is God intimately involved in our suffering so that he feels it in his own being.  If we believe something like this, we must let go of the puppet master completely, take our leave of the almighty controller, abandon traditional models.  We must think again about God.”

Tom throws down on our traditional belief systems and ask us to question our need to control.

“Isn’t it ironic that Christians who claim to believe in an infinite unknowable being, then tie God down in closed systems and rigid doctrines.”

I appreciate his closing statement, which said,

“In the end the only thing I could say for sure was, ‘I don’t know’, and that might just be the most profoundly religious statement of all.”

May I find God in the midst of suffering, unleashing my version to one that meets me in the midst of grace and mercy.

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God, Suffering

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  • TheGoulieKid
    What do you think about CS Lewis' musings on compatibalism, Jonathan?

    "In the play Hamlet, Ophelia climbs out on a branch overhanging a river: the branch breaks, she falls and drowns. What would you reply if someone asked, ‘Did Ophelia die because Shakespeare for poetic reasons, wanted her to die at that moment - or because the branch broke?’ I think that one would have to say ‘For both reasons.’ Every event in the play happens as a result of other events in the play, but also every event happens because the poet wants it to happen. All the events in the play are Shakespearean events; similarly, all events in the real world are providential events… ‘Providence’ and natural causation are not alternatives; both determine every event. Both are one."
  • Rich I haven't heard of compatibalism. But I think there is a great truth embedded in it, mostly because it appears to be inclusive of choice as much as divine providence.
  • Aha! I will heretofore label you an Open Theist.

    Burn, heretic, burn!!!
  • It's funny when I read a little about Open Theism.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_theism

    What stood out to me about a Closed Theism was the idea of impassibility, or that God does not have emotion. Yet when I look at Jesus, I find deep emotion. And therein lies the problem.
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