Saturday, December 23, 2006

God's Judgment

You see, it all started at Habakkuk's Watchpost. First Kyle wrote a thoughtful meditation on justice and hell after Pinochet's death. Then Bret followed that up with some thoughts of his own. Bada bing, bada boom (last time I ever type that, sorry) we've got a fell fledged theological discussion on our hands. At a blog, no less!

In the comments of Bret's post the discussion quickly shifted to the judgment of God, as Ben said:

... preaching God's kindness and grace must be paired with preaching God's judgment, because at heart they are the same thing. This is important lest we let our convictions about God's benevolence become rationalizations for human evil. God loves the widows and orphans for the same reason that God judges those who oppress them.

This inspired some fruitful discussion, and got me thinking a bit more about what we mean by "God's judgment." On that subject I wrote this:

That's [the question of what exactly we mean by God's judgment, as posed by Bret in a preceding comment] an interesting question. I suppose we have to fall somewhere between the two extremes of

1.) declaring that the judgment of God is the fire of hell, as a kind of cosmic moral enforcement mechanism, and

2.) using the word "judgment" to imply only a sort of empty and impotent moral evaluation.

That is, we cannot say, on the one hand, that God's judgment is somehow a supernatural threat designed to keep us in line, or on the other hand that God's judgment is merely God's way of saying, without any authority, "I really don't like that and wish you would stop."

My feeling on the subject is that God's judgment, to the extent that it makes sense to speak of it, is not a supernatural
anything, be it threat or empty evaluation. Rather, God's judgment is built into the system, though perhaps not quite in the way that a deist might see it as such. That is to say that ultimately, those who sow evil reap evil, and those that sow good reap good.

I recognize that life rarely looks so neat. However, this is perhaps due more to our misevaluation of our own interests than it is to do with a cosmically unjust universe. It is my conviction that most people who live their lives in such a way as to be deemed under the judgment of God are, despite external circumstances, profoundly unhappy people. With each immoral action the sew the seeds of their own misery, multiplying their suffering. Of course they may be surrounded by wealth and luxury, enjoying their creature comforts. But those comforts will always ultimately be both shallow and impermanent, and most of the time they know that. It is for this reason that the Buddhists say that even in pleasure there is pain, suffering,
dukkha.

Similarly, those whose life has been transformed by an encounter with the grace of God, and who dedicate themselves to sharing that liberating grace and alleviating suffering wherever they see it; those people to whom God might say "Well done, my good and faithful servant," are ultimately happy, and not just in some hypothetical future life.

Of course, rarely does one meet such a person. Most of us are merely stumbling towards that goal, clumsily, with decidedly mixed results, still mired in our sins. We fancy ourselves as good, and wonder why the good perish. But ultimately we are not yet good, not yet sanctified. We are merely in a process which, while it will ultimately alleviate suffering, entails a great deal of suffering on the front end.

Our reward, however, need not be in the great hereafter. Our reward, at the very least, is hope. Having seen the goal, we can aim toward it with a purpose, even if at least in this life we ultimately fall short of the prize. But that hope puts us already in a better place than those who are purely slaves to their own selfish nature, sowing suffering in themselves and others.

Still, I suppose it is, as I said before, dangerous to divide the world into "us" and "them," for as soon as we try to distinguish ourselves from the dreaded "them" we become them, praying our pious prayer:

"Lord, I thank you that I am not like that tax collector."

Prayers like that makes us once again subject to the judgment built into the universe as a part of the creative will of God - the aspect of the will of God continually shaping creation.


I first started thinking this way in a college seminar on Hobbes' Leviathan. Discussing the Hobbesian shift from humans in a state of nature to humans in covenant with a sovereign (who in many ways resembles a sort of God) almost invariably leads to a discussion on balancing the pursuit of immediate self interests with a more cooperative approach. At some point during what was generally a counter-productive argument about the foundations (if any) of ethics and politics (a room full of philosophy majors is great for arguments, if not exactly directional ones - it is for this reason that one professor of mine devoted an entire lecture to the distinction between an argument and a fight) it hit me that, understood properly, cooperation is self interest. That is, there is, if you fully understand both interests, no difference between the interests of self and more collective interests.

This comes from an abiding (and damned persistent, as I've tried to kill it more than once) faith in a God who is in some meaningful way both:

1.) Good, and

2.) Sovereign.

It is always dangerous to begin with a concept of God and then apply that willy nilly to the universe, expecting the universe to comply. This was the primary error of Scholasticism. Intellectual honesty demands that we do it backwards, starting with our observations of the world around (that which can be seen and known, at least to some degree) and then seeing what, if anything, such observations can teach us about this mysterious God.

But those of us who have in some meaningful way experienced something we call God see everything else colored by the lens of that religious experience. We can't help but bring our God concepts to our observations of everything else. While we may not experience God in such a way as to reduce our experience to a set of certain, quasi-encyclopedic propositions, we still emerge from that experience with certain concepts, concepts which persist through and between religious traditions. These may not exactly rise to the standard of universally held truths, but neither are they the whims of a few theologically arrogant people who think that they, as opposed to everyone else, have the key to unlocking the mystery of the Almighty.

So, if it makes sense to speak of a God, and if it makes sense to speak of a God who is in some meaningful way at least both good and sovereign (and these big ifs rest on the persistence of religious traditions and the experiences they facilitate) the from this certain things follow. One of these things is the connection between self interest and the interests of others, as the good and sovereign God mediates between apparently competing interests, turning would-be competition into cooperation as we realize that we're all in the same boat, that we're all interconnected and interdependent.

This is what I have in mind when I speak in the comment above of God's judgment being somehow "built into the system." That is, God has ordered the universe in such a way that good begets good, and bad begets bad. There is if not exactly a cosmic justice or universal moral economy, at least a kind of order to things. And that order involves the moral sphere and the political sphere, two spheres so connected that it is almost impossible to see one without the other.

[Note: I make a sharp distinction between politics, which describes the interaction between persons, the mediation of interests, and government, which is a hierarchical and authoritative power structure, usually the result of a kind of politic. So please don't read me here as saying that the proper role of government is to serve as some kind of moral enforcement mechanism.]

Ahh... now I'm hopelessly lost and off topic. I've been trying to write down some ideas which I've never recorded before, brought up again by the posts linked above. I'm working through these issues, and one of my purposes with this blog is to work through issues in a kind of community. I test ideas here. I've never tested one so raw before (at least, I'm not aware of having tested such a raw one here), but the process of refinement should be the same. I spew out some nonsense, and then questions and comments force me to work through the bits that I haven't thought out. Eventually I realize that I'll never know anything, and just trust that someone God works out all things for the good, even if I'll never grasp the mechanism.

4 comments:

crystal said...

Do you think that good begets good, and bad, bad (the built-in justice system)? If so, then bad things wouldn't happen to good people?

I don't like to think about god's justice - scary :-) I have a hope that generosity trumps justice or even fairness, sort of like in the parable of the vineyard workers who all worked different hours but were all paid the same. But maybe I'm not understanding the idea of justice?

Sandalstraps said...

Crystal,

You make two interesting points that I'd like to address, though I'm going to do them backwards:

Your second point involves a reference to the parable of the workers in the vineyard, which can be found in Matthew 20: 1-16 (one of the few stories exclusive to Matthew). You have offered a brief, but pretty standard interpretation of the parable:

The workers worked different amounts of time, but each received the same pay. This is used by Jesus to show the sovereignty of God, and the ultimate demand of obedience.

However, I'm not sure that this interpretation, while the dominant one throughout Christian history, is the best available one. It is certainly true that, if you're looking at compensation for any action as an entirely contrived thing (I do this work, and I get some money for it, though the money is not naturally connected to the work) then all of the workers got paid the same. However, if you see compensation as less contrived and more natural (a tendency of those of us who work but rarely get paid) then you can start to wonder if all of the workers really did get the same reward for their actions.

While they all received the same paycheck, many of them had to wait all day for something to do, with less and less hope as the day drags on that they will ever find anything worth doing with their time. Those who began working at the first of the day, however, were spared both the agony of that anxiety (will I ever find work?) and the sense of meaninglessness and even worthlessness which so often accompanies being in the most literal sense unemployed.

If we use this as a metaphor for salvation (and we so often do), then we should bear in mind that salvation is not just found in the artificial or supernatural reward for our labor, but perhaps more importantly in the labor itself. God saved me in the here and now not by promising me eternal life - a promise that is worthless so long as life is empty and void - but by giving me something to do with my life, a reason to live, some kind of existential purpose and meaning.

This connects very well to my point about God's justice being a natural thing. Those who labor are rewarded, and not just supernaturally. The reward for our labor is not just some form of contrived compensation when it is over (a supernatural paycheck) but is also built into the labor itself.

Your first point is more troubling. Yes, to say that good begets good and bad begets bad is to say that bad things don't happen to good people, yet we so often experience just the opposite of that. In the post I tried to address that very criticism, saying, among other things:

Of course, rarely does one meet such a [good] person. Most of us are merely stumbling towards that goal, clumsily, with decidedly mixed results, still mired in our sins. We fancy ourselves as good, and wonder why the good perish. But ultimately we are not yet good, not yet sanctified. We are merely in a process which, while it will ultimately alleviate suffering, entails a great deal of suffering on the front end.

If St. Paul is right, in fact, none of us are so good. But, while the suffering of apparently good people can be explained by an appeal to universal human sinfulness, and as such get a concept of some kind of divine moral economy off the hook on a technicality, there are still a couple of huge problems:

1. There is a kind of psychological problem. That is, when we believe that good begets good and bad begets bad, and as such every bad action in some way produces a bad result (and as such every bad result, every instance of suffering, must have come from some bad action) then we tend to think that somehow someone who is suffering deserves to suffer. This can lead to a troubling lack of compassion, if it is not checked by an absolute committment to work to alleviate suffering wherever it arises along with the conviction that iff all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, I am in the same boat as everyone else and cannot stand apart from the suffering of another and somehow judge it.

2. There is a problem of proportionality. That is, while we can affirm that since all sin all suffer, we still see a discrepancy in the quality of suffering. While no one may be absolutely good or absolutely bad, we can make relative distinctions. And it is simply not the case that relatively good people suffer less than relatively bad people. In fact, so often it seems like those who are willing to do anything to acheive their ends will, of course, achieve those ends, manufacturing a great deal of pleasure for themselves while creating a great deal of suffering for others.

This is also something my post tried to anticipate, when I said:

I recognize that life rarely looks so neat. However, this is perhaps due more to our misevaluation of our own interests than it is to do with a cosmically unjust universe. It is my conviction that most people who live their lives in such a way as to be deemed under the judgment of God are, despite external circumstances, profoundly unhappy people. With each immoral action the sew the seeds of their own misery, multiplying their suffering. Of course they may be surrounded by wealth and luxury, enjoying their creature comforts. But those comforts will always ultimately be both shallow and impermanent, and most of the time they know that. It is for this reason that the Buddhists say that even in pleasure there is pain, suffering, dukkha.

Thank you for your excellent comment. I especially appreciated when you said:

I have a hope that generosity trumps justice or even fairness,

as we can all say, with James, "mercy triumphs over judgment." We must always seek to balance the two, knowing full well that in the divine economy grace is the highest currency.

PamBG said...

Sandalstraps, I totally agree with this post and I read it after I commented on your "gifts" post, but I think that my comment number 2 is aposite here as well.

Absolutely, there is justice but I agree that it is in some way built into the system - the precise details of exactly how it is "built in" is something of a mystery to me.

What I am totally opposed to is the idea that God's justice is - as you put it - "a supernatural threat that keeps us in line". And this is what I think is what most people mean when they talk about "justice" - punishment or the threat of punishment. This desire for God to threaten and punish other people (I've only ever met one person who advocated this system and claimed to be going to hell himself) is just an outworking of our own sinfulness. We want free grace and the salvation of the Christ Event for ourselves, but we don't trust it for other people; they need to be threatened and punished.

At the risk of sounding arrogant (and I know this will), anyone who has really been touched by God's Holy Spirit will know that the desire to follow the will of God grows and grows. Threats of God destroying one are absolutely not necessary.

I really hope you read Rene Girard and James Alison (and other Girardian theologians). I really think it will resonate with you and bring all these thoughts together.

PamBG said...

I don't like to think about god's justice - scary :-)

I suspect that you do understand God's justice. It's people who want God to be zapping others who don't understand it properly. The only hope that any of us has is that God's mercy trumps his justice - and I think it says that several places in the Old Testament!