Diary of a Theologian

It is Hard for the Rich

It Is Hard for the Rich --or so Jesus says, to enter the kingdom of God. But why is it hard? Methinks it is because wealth—and here “wealth” means basically what we call middle-class life—protects us from many unexpected disasters. If I get ill, I have access to doctors and insurance to cover much of the cost. If I lose my job, I have savings to live on, at least for awhile. No authority, or thug, can come to my front door and order me to move out into the street. If I get arrested, I can get a lawyer, and so on. We have the rule of law, we have assets, we have social supports. That’s what it means to be rich.

Many people today don’t have it this way, and most people through most of history didn’t. They weren’t rich. Why is entering the kingdom of God easier if you aren’t able to cushion life’s random blows, hard knocks, and catastrophes?

It’s because you know: at any time, I could lose everything.

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Of course it’s an illusion, this sense that we rich middle-class folk have the means to fend off the random blows of life. In one of the recent heavy rains, I was driving home from talking with a church group in Lewisville about (ironically?) Losing Susan, my reflections on brain disease and “the God who gives and takes away.” I was not far from home on the interstate, going about 40 (most everyone was going about 40) when, at a curve and gentle dip in the road, a pickup passed me on the left at a much higher speed. As he did so, he covered my car with so much water that I could not see anything. I didn’t dare brake or try anything else, and in a couple of seconds, I guess, it cleared enough for me to see. But for a brief bit I was literally running blind, a ton or two of steel moving at 40 miles per hour (60 feet per second).

What I felt then is the truth that the poor feel regularly. We’re running through life exposed to such dangers as could abruptly change everything. And we have no defenses against them.

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To enter the kingdom of God is, in part, to let go of everything that is not God, which is to say, to recognize that God is the one who holds us in being. We have to give up everything else to follow him. To a few select people, that means selling everything now. For everyone, it means letting go at the moment of death. For most of us, it’s something we think about from time to time.

I’m grateful for that reminder in the rain on the interstate. I’m also grateful to be here to tell you about it.

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Out & About. Sunday, October 28, I will deliver my fall theology lecture. The topic is moral rules, particularly how do we know when, if ever, to make personal exceptions to rules. I will be looking particularly at assisted suicide (or aid-in-dying) as a case that’s not only interesting but something, I believe, we need to be thinking about Christianly. Free, open to the public, with a reception following: Church of the Incarnation, 3966 McKinney, Dallas, at 6:15 p.m. (You can come early at 5 p.m. for Evensong.)

Sunday, November 4, as we all are celebrating the return of Standard Time (the best kind of time is Standard Time!), I will be preaching at All Souls’ Church, Penna. Ave. and 63^rd St., Oklahoma City, at 8 and 10 a.m. The week following I’ll be teaching two classes there. On Mon., Tues., and Wed. (Nov. 5-7) from noon to 1 p.m., a class on the book of Esther. And on the same days from 6 to 7 p.m., on Christian bioethics. No registration; all open to the public.

The Evil Question

It’s a perennial wonderment: why is there evil? A friend had a “stump the clergy” Sunday class, and maybe half the questions came back to evil, one way or another. It’s on the mind. And it’s no surprise that it is.
    Any serious person has to acknowledge that evil is really part of our life. And any thoughtful person wonders why. There are two sorts of answers. One is that what is experienced as harmful to one thing is the consequence of another thing flourishing. The lion eating the lamb is a classic illustration: the lion is just being good at being a lion when it eats the lamb.
    Yet why? Do things have to be that way?
    In addition, there is evil in the world that’s the work of human beings failing to flourish as they should. This is sin. Sin is our falling short of being truly human. Our sins bring evil into the world; we suffer as the sinner, others suffer as our victims.
    Yet why? Must things be that way?
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    Every answer to the problem of evil falls short of being fully satisfactory. Good may come out of evil, but that does not make evil necessary. Or rather, if we say evil is necessary, we are saying that God, who is complete good, is not the complete cause of all that exists. So if God is the creator, then evil cannot be in any way necessary.
    At least, when the lion eats the lamb, the lion is doing the good of flourishing as a lion. But sin does no good. There’s no point to it at all.
    We may admit that good can come from evil—the greatest example is the resurrection of Jesus! But that doesn’t make sin necessary. Jesus’ crucifixion was not necessary. Its necessity follows only from the prior existence of sin. If there were no sin, he would not need to have died.
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    Oddly, however, when we ask the question of evil we draw ourselves closer to God. For God is strange, good beyond our ability to understand good. We don’t understand the world; we don’t know why one thing’s (a lion’s) flourishing must be at the expense of another thing (a lamb). Much less do we understand sin. But we can see that God is the hidden yet intimate cause of everything that exists. He holds me in being every second. He is, as I like to say, closer to me than my next heartbeat.
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    I was writing these words in an airport last week when I reached for something and my laptop tumbled onto the floor. The screen cracked, and it would no longer let me do anything with it: no typing, no opening or closing of programs; I could only close it up, with these words inaccessibly locked inside it. It’s fixed now, but that little bit of evil suffered on the road slowed me down. Why are things like this?
    Not near as bad as what the lion did to the lamb, but still one of those things, a tiny mystery that points to the greater mystery.
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    Out & About. This Sunday, October 21, I’m speaking with the young adults of the Church of the Transfiguration on the topic of friendship. We meet at 5 p.m. at the Flying Saucer in Addison, Texas. (The Flying Saucer is a “Draught Emporium,” proving, I suppose, that UFOs favor British spelling?)
    The next Sunday, October 28, I will give my fall theology lecture at Incarnation in Dallas. “Rules and Personal Exceptions, with Particular Attention to Assisted Suicide” will look at the question of whether and how to make personal exceptions to moral rules, and I will consider questions of physician-assisted suicide as a way of probing this issue. The lecture is free and will be given in the church at 6 p.m., with a wine and cheese reception following.
    Looking a bit further ahead: On Sunday, November 11, I will lead a seminar discussion of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a brilliant novel with a disturbing premise. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to the conversation (at Incarnation, 6 to 7:30 p.m.).