Who Is Running the Show?

God is to the world as our unconscious is to our everyday lives--quietly, invisibly, secretly guiding our steps; feeding us our lines; moving us into position; unifying everything we do. We are chastened to realize that what we thought was an accident was, in truth, the hand of God. Most of the time we are simply unaware.

Awareness takes too much effort, and besides, it's more fun to pretend we are running the show.

Lawrence Kushner

Source: Eyes Remade for Wonder
From: inward/outward

Riding the Black Swan

Christ on the Cross, Diego Velazquez

Two previous postings (here and here) described and reflected on the idea of Black Swan Events, historical events that are unexpected, have a significant impact, and are later accepted as having been almost the natural course of things.  We've seen that Black Swan Events are complex and that the name itself names something historians and many others were already aware of.  We know they exist, but coming to terms with them is the issue.  Yesterday (here), I considered the possibility that God authors Black Swan Events, including especially the Christ Event, for divine ends and left off with the following questions: In our day and age, how do we best make sense of the Presence of God in history and our lives? Given the complexity of Black Swan Events, does it make sense to believe that God uses some of them for divine ends?

Humanity has been wrestling with the divine since the dawn of the race, and these are not questions to be answered in a single blog posting—or at all, actually.  However, it is worth considering that God who is Beyond has created the parameters within which we live.  God created an evolving universe and made us the "products" of an evolutionary process.  God has given us freedom, and it seems only reasonable to presume that we are the "authors" of Black Swan Events, which events betray all of the marks of a broken humanity trapped in chaotic conditions of our own making.  Yet, we are more than just broken.  We create good as well as evil, and thus some of our Black Swan Events are positive, creative ones.

In a manner we do not understand but sometimes perceive with deep spiritual clarity, God who is Present rides the swirling surf of our lives working quietly but persistently to change the course of history.  As Christians, we trust that God was Present in Christ in a unique way, a full way.  God, that is, resides in and rides the crest of Black Swan Events constantly seeking to transform them or, at least, bring healing that mitigates the destruction such events can cause.

God works in history the way our hearts work in our lives.  I don't mean the pumping physical heart but, rather, the emotional heart.  That heart is as real, sometimes more real than the physical one even if the idea of the heart seems to be "only" a metaphor.  Both the heart and God are beyond-physical realities that define important elements of our human experience.  Beyond proving but powerful nonetheless.  In freedom, we do the things that lead to Black Swan Events.  In love, God seeds those events with healing and even, sometimes, transformation.  Amen.

Black Swan Events & God

Christ on the Cross, Diego Velazquez

Two recent postings (here and here) described and reflected on the idea of Black Swan Events, historical events that are unexpected, have a significant impact, and are later accepted as having been almost the natural course of things.  We've seen that Black Swan Events are complex and that the name itself names something historians and many others were already aware of.  We know they exist, but coming to terms with them is the issue.

Viewed theologically, we might be inclined to embrace this concept as describing the way in which God acts in human history.  Any number of biblical events including the call of Abraham, the Exodus, and especially the "Christ event" fit the description of Black Swan Events.  They were unforeseen, significant, and later were turned into a narrative that purported to explain them so that we don't normally even think of them as being Black Swan Events.  We might conclude, then, that God uses Black Swan Events to influence and change the course of human history.

The problem is that the temptation of Adam & Eve, the death of Abel, and other biblical events can also be seen as Black Swan Events—as can a myriad of ugly, tragic historical events right down to the present.  God did not cause the death of Abel, and God was not the author of 9/11.  So, then, we should amend our inclination to say that God acts positively ("redemptively" in theological-speak) and  occasionally in history and does so through Black Swan Events.

OK, sounds good, but does God actually instigate Black Swan Events to influence the course of human history in an intentional way?  Or, are we reading God as the cause of such events back into them so that we can make sense of them?  The concept of Black Swan Events, that is, leads us back to a perennial theological issue, which is the way in which God is present in human history (and in our personal lives).

With all due humility, we must confess that we do not know how God is Present in history and our lives.  We know what the Bible says, and we put a good deal of stock in scripture; but it was written at times when humanity had a vastly different understanding of the universe.  In those times, it made perfect sense to believe that God causes Black Swan Events.  The vast majority of Christians still accept that ancient view, but one wonders how much spiritual sense it actually makes today.  In particular, are we willing to accept the biblical understanding that God repeatedly failed to make effective use of Black Swan Events, which is the tale the Old Testament tells?  God created humanity, which rebelled.  God called the Hebrews, who time and time again failed their calling.  It is an open question whether the Christian church will prove the Black Swan Event of Christ was any more of a success.

In our day and age, how do we best make sense of the Presence of God in history and our lives?  Given the complexity of Black Swan Events, does it make sense to believe that God uses some of them for divine ends?

Serendipitous Lord

Dictionary.com provides the following definitions of the word "serendipity": "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident" and  "the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident."  For the origin and history of "serendipity, it states, "1754 (but rare before 20c.), coined by Horace Walpole (1717-92) in a letter to Mann (dated Jan. 28); he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip," whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." The name is from Serendip, an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Arabic Sarandib, from Skt. Simhaladvipa "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island." Serendipitous formed c.1950."  Some online browsing indicates that some scientists acknowledge that their discoveries can be at times the result of serendipity.  The idea seems to be related to the experience of having good luck, but there is more to it than that.  Serendipity merges luck with an ability to see something in chance or random events and experiences that others don't see.  It suggests an ability to make connections between things that don't seem to be connected.

While a brief foray into the wild world of the Web, didn't turn anything up, I assume that someone in the world of theology has made a connection between the idea of serendipity and the way God works in the world.  For me, the whole idea of God's involvement in human affairs has always been problematic.  For one thing, we inhabit the tiniest speck of a grain of sand in the immensity of the universe.  Why would God even be interested?  More to the point, within the limitations of our biological programming we do have a fair degree of freedom, and most Christian theologians agree that God "respects" our freedom.  If that is true, then God's ability to act is severely limited.  Still more to the point, it makes no sense whatsoever to blame God for the ugly, evil things that happen in life as do many faithful Christians.  If God was in Christ, then God doesn't work that way.

So, how does God work in our lives and in human history?  Just suppose for a moment that God the Holy Spirit has an unusually refined (divinely refined!) ability to work serendipitously.  The Arab Spring presents an interesting possibility.  After generations of suffering under oppressive misrule, a street vendor in Tunisia sets himself on fire to protest local injustice, and then the Spirit goes to work making connections and the result is the Arab Spring.  Only the Spirit could make the connection between a vendor and a regional revolution for justice and freedom.  I'm still working on this, but it does seem to me that the God who is Present in our lives lurks in places where most of us don't see the divine lurking, tugging at our hearts and minds, making connections that we don't make without inspiration (meaning the indwelling of the Spirit).