Ponder the Problems with Providence

Sabio recently posted "Everything Happens for a Reason" where he explores the idea of Providence that was brought on by a Drew Brees interview. This subject has been near and dear to my heart for awhile now, but really came to the front during CPE. I posted a little bit on Free Will in April 2009 and later that spring with my Existential Crisis and again that fall with the post "There's no Such thing as Secular" but I never tackled the issue head on.. and I think it's time to do so.

Providence is defined as divine guidance or care: God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny. The word derives from the Latin noun providentia meaning "foresight, forethought" and is related to providere, "to provide for, take precautions for or against" something. Secularly used, it is the belief that there is a benevolent ordering principle governed the universe and human history and that nothing happens solely by chance or is merely haphazardly, but rather there is some guiding principle ordering things toward an end. 


If you listen closely enough, you'll hear all sorts of people make this claim, atheists included. For some like Richard Dawkins, the ordering principle is the biological process which ends in death and existence is largely accidental and while can be understood through the ordering principle, we are largely at the mercy of our genes and the entropic process and we all will live and die in a meaningless and godless life. For other atheists, the guiding principle is Math as math as upheld as the universal language of a passive yet ordered universe. we all have our rubrics to interpret this irrationally full existence with... some Christians have a "big daddy in the sky" rubric like Drew Brees.


The Pirate had a recent post (that he stole from Marcus Borg's book:The God We Never Knew) that described the problem with this view as opposed to a panenthestic approach. Yet this still doesn't deal with the problem of Providence. This notion taken optimistically can lead to the prosperity gospel or pessimistically of determinism or fatalism. One posits that all one has to do is believe and sometimes act a certain way and things come to you if you choose it while the other is marked by a passive sense of human resignation before the whimsy of uncontrollable fates. take your  pick really.


but is there a middle way? what does the bible say of God's providence? 


Starting off in Genesis, we are shown how God's providence starts in Creation, keeps through Abraham and Joseph, extends into the Exodus, is reinforced by the Dueteronomistic tradition (Josh through Judges), and then in statements like those in Proverbs 2. yet these aren't totally solid. God does not always provide.. well, at least provide what the people where hoping for. There's the multiple invasions by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans... there are the parts where God seemingly abandons God's people or behave punitively towards them (2 Sam 12:16-23, Job, Psalm 22:1,2 Luke 13:1-5, 2 Thess 1:9) and then there's the theological watershed of the Holocaust.


This problem has been around way before the Holocaust, way before modernism and the rather new debate as to where Evolution Leaves God and the problem is found within the Bible itself. Specifically the wisdom literature books such as Job and Ecclesiastes, both of which challenge the conventional understanding of God' unwavering providence. 


Job and Ecclesiastes both acknowledge the randomness of life's vicissitudes. They claim that there is no moral order of the universe, the wicked go unpunished and the good get trampled. The conclusion of both books is that we are not to assume anything personal about the providence of God according to one's life situation (Ecc 9:11-12). by personal we mean God caring about us personally, God rewarding and punishing us personally, God forgiving our sins personally, God hearing our prayers and responding personally. 


Then there's Jesus. Jesus claims that God is not only active in the world but more intimately personal than we have imagined!

• God knows the number of hairs on our heads (Matt 10:29)
• Not a bird falls from the sky outside of God's will (Matt 10:29)
• A friend helps another friend and we have much more assurance that God will rise and help us (Luke 11:5)
• A corrupt judge gives justice to a persistent widow, how much more assurance do we have that God will grant our petitions? (Luke 18:2)
• Ask and it will be given, seek and we will find, knock and the door will be opened (Matt 7:7)

yet we also must acknowledge:

• God may have numbered our hairs but God neither prevents them from falling out or turning grey.
• Why is it God's will that a bird dies? I would have prefered "Knowledge" instead of will, what the heck does that mean?!
• If God is inclined to rise when we need help, he do so many children go to bed hungry and die before morning?
• How much time does it take for God to respond to our petitions?
• If we ask, seek, and knock and don't like the results, or can't interpret God's answering, why doesn't God prevent us from getting disappointed in God and turning from faith and community? (just check out any one of the stories from the De-Cons for evidence.)

I've been reading a lot of Paul Tillich lately. In his sermon "The Meaning of Providence" Tillich states what providence is not. Providence is not a vague promise that everything will turn out for the best (it didn't for Jesus, Peter, or Paul). Providence is not being hopeful in every situation as some situations are hopeless. Providence is not the anticipation of happiness and goodness will come to humanity. Tillich concludes that all things work together for good, for the ULTIMATE good, the eternal love and the kingdom of God. Tillich states that the one constant in the world is suffering and that Faith is an active defiance of this. Through trusting that everything will turn out well, that God is in control despite the fact that we may meet an awful death is what counts. the obedience to a God we cannot understand nor even count on personally is the key.

i wonder if Jesus would agree with Tillich on Good Friday?

this leads me to believe what i thought before hand... that my thoughts, the various testimonies like Drew Brees and other believers and former believers, that even the testimony of scripture are not harmonious and even contradictory. all i have is a belief. all i have is how i interpret the world.

and isn't that what we all have? interpretations of our subjective experience? in this instance, i don't believe that we have any measurable way or objective data to find an answer to this question. for some to believe that things work out for the good, or at the very least that submission to the will of God (as found in Islam, Judaism and Christianity) or even just to the "natural way of things" (like Taoism or Buddhism) result in an interpretive framework for our experiences. this can lead to some questionable notions like spiritual elitism, spiritual warfare against other believers and nonbelievers, and an institutionalization more caught up in temporal power than spiritual insights. Sabio is right in his questioning of the results of this style of thinking (see his first chart in his post).

yet, i have witnessed the power of this time and time again in the ER and in the families of dying patients. the hope that this life isn't it.. that we shall meet again and be returned to the Spirit from which all things come. so once again, i am caught! I am living within the tension of a caring God who has brought me thus far yet doesn't  protect me from bad things happening. Maybe the problem lies not within the idea of providence but within my own interpretive framework. Death isn't the enemy but the natural conclusion to life. it sucks when it is cut short, but we must face our own mortality. 

not being afraid to die, isn't that a person we would want to keep alive? Someone who strives for justice in the face of oppression, unafraid of the consequences. Someone willing to question the conventional wisdom despite the consequences of their thoughts... people like Sabio and Ian who are atheists in a culture of theists. people like CoffeePastor and RJ and Jason and John who are various shades of Theists who seek and probe and challenge. people like Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and my more conservative brethren who risk stating that we aren't in control of our lives, that a bigger force is operating and left in human hands, we'd just screw it up. 

Yet i find myself having little patience with those who think they already have the answer and are at the extreme ends of this scale. Pat Robertson who can say God is punishing poor people from his rich mansion and TV studio. People like Richard Dawkins on the other side saying that believers are stupid, self-deluded  people. they can't enter the conversation because they can't see the limits of their own interpretive frameworks. both are assured of their correctness and will damn anyone who disagrees.

that isn't grace. that isn't loving thy neighbor. 

i know i stand leaning toward providence yet recognizing that God is God and I am not... thank God for that! if i had my druthers, Green Bay and Cleveland would win every Super Bowl, we'd have avatars telling us what to do like in Battlestar Galactica (where everything did work out for the better) and the world would be so simple it'd be boring. i much prefer this ambiguous life filled with such wonderful people... and even the not so wonderful. they help me learn what not to do.


Why do I side with providence? Because it is part of my life, i've experienced it and feel that there is no way i could have gotten to where i'm at today without some higher power guiding me through, putting people into my life, and speaking to me in a "Still Small Voice." this voice doesn't say i'm great, in fact, it often says "serve." or something else that i don't want to do. could be my super-ego talking, could be something else. maybe another way to look at it is that we hold onto our past and when similar situations arise we are able to draw from the past experience and make it work out better "this time around." it's all about how you picture time, some picture it linear, for me it's more of a spiral... things cycle in and out... all of this has happened before and will happen again. my job is to pay attention in the present moment and not have historical amnesia. look for the connections. could be called Providence, could be called being a student of history... either way works in my mind (because i'm simple and tend to combine things that maybe shouldn't be ;-))

okay.. ramble over... thanks for reading if you got this far.