"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?