Diary of a Theologian

"C" is for Caring

 It is a sort of triumph of a Christian way of thinking that just about everyone believes that God, if he exists, cares about us. People disagree about whether there is a god, but on this point, it seems, most people agree with the biblical (Jewish and Christian) view that God is caring.
    This is a remarkable thing, because there is no reason to suppose that God cares about anything at all. If no one had ever had the Bible, no one would know.
    Aristotle, for remarkable instance, believed in God. Aristotle was a great Greek thinker in the 300s B.C. He called God the Prime Mover and proved that he must exist. But the Prime Mover is so-called because he is the reason for all motion, all life, in the universe. He doesn’t move anything, and he is not moved by anything. Rather, he is supremely attractive. Planets and stars are attracted to God, and that’s what causes their heavenly motions. Trees grow, animals walk, birds fly, and you and I do everything we do, for the ultimate reason that we are attracted to this Prime Mover.
    But the Prime Mover doesn’t know beans about us. He thinks only on himself. His mind is filled with nothing but his own glorious perfection. He does not sully his perfect being by thinking about lesser things like thee and me.
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    Once during my college years a few of us gathered for supper. There was friendly ribbing about whether Victor would make us all pray. I asked if they would mind. A friend said I could pray if I wanted to. Whether we pray or don’t pray, he said, the Prime Mover never knows.
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    The Bible shows us that, on this point, Aristotle is quite wrong. God cares for us in more ways that we can count.
    He creates us, gives us being.
    He sustains us, holding us in being from moment to moment, and providing for us the things we need to live.
    He gives us a sense of the beauty and awesomeness of creation.
    He guides our minds to think about and care for one another.
    He communicates with us, through the words of the Bible, and supremely through his Son, the Word made flesh.
    He is not gentle with us, but he is steadfast. He is not fazed by our death: he cares for us by sharing death, indeed by going through it to new life.
    In sum: God is accessible, he is beauty, and he cares.
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    Out & About. An appreciative review I wrote of David Bennett’s A War of Loves (his memoir of coming to Jesus and working through celibacy as a way of loving) has been published. See “Intimate Satisfaction."
    The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will discuss Sophocles’ play, Antigone, which poses the question of justice, fate, and freedom. Read it in any translation, and come to discuss it  Sunday, February 16, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Incarnation, 3966 McKinney Ave., Dallas.
    As we continue through the alphabet, readers are invited to think of attributes of God that begin with “D.” Delightful? Desirous? Defiant? Damning? Damming? Dogged? Different? Dunce-making?

Pilgrimage

We have come to know it as, simply, “the Camino”; in the past couple of decades its popularity has skyrocketed. It is a pilgrimage of walking to Santiago de Compostela, the place in northwestern Spain where are kept the earthly remains of Saint James, apostle of our Lord. Today, the most popular route starts just over the border in France then runs roughly 500 miles west. But it is artificial to think of the Camino as one particular route. A pilgrimage starts, in fact, from wherever you are.
    Why? A pilgrimage is a kind of picture of the whole stretch of our life. Our starting place is simply given; it’s wherever we are when we come to consciousness of God and perhaps duty or purpose or a longing for meaning. And the end of our life is God himself. In a pilgrimage, we take a chunk of our life out of our life and make that stretch of time into a picture of our whole life.
    A pilgrimage means something that’s uniquely personal to every pilgrim. One gets a sense of the possibilities of personal meaning in the 2010 film The Way, starring Martin Sheen. This is because of the simple truth: each of us is a distinct person loved by God. On the other hand, a pilgrimage means the same thing for every pilgrim. This is because each of us is a creature made by God, who has placed in every human heart a longing for him that nothing else will fulfill.
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    Dallas has a vast network of trails—old train lines, a number of them, and also parks, and paths that connect parks. We must have at least hundreds of miles of trails. I’m becoming acquainted with some of them, as I prepare for what I hope will be a pilgrimage to Santiago.
    It seems important that I un-learn multitasking. I don’t walk with music or lectures in my ears, and for the most part I don’t walk while talking on the phone. (But sometimes a phone conversation is good: it’s a way of sharing a walk with a friend who is far away.) It seems important, that is to say, for the pilgrim to be attentive to what is at hand.
    One can go through the senses. What do I see? What am I hearing? What do I feel? Are there particular smells here? What’s the taste in my mouth? On the trails, I have seen trees of great variety. Right now some are bare but others have leaves. There are wild grasses with incredibly fine colors; they look like an impressionist painting, even up close I can’t quite focus on particular blades. There are also marks of industry, high lines, tracks, broken concrete. There are fences that block off yards; new construction; trash.
    It’s good and bad, beautiful and ugly. But the pilgrim thinks—maybe I’m not supposed to be judging this. It’s just here—it just is.
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    What Theologians Eat. At the end of a recent walk I was at Pecan Lodge. Brisket commends itself to the theologian: the union of the two natures (cow and barbeque) is perfect, the result being one thing, as we have in Christ who is one person with two natures. (The orthodox will not add sauce. Adding BBQ sauce is like saying the divinity was merely poured on top of Jesus.)

    Out & About. The Good Books & Good Talk seminar will discuss A Canticle for Liebowitz this Sunday, January 26, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Incarnation, 3966 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to the conversation.