Does a Good Theology Help Alleviate Suffering or Does It Just Defend God?

HOSTING A DAY OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta's inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony: Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta's inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta’s inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony: Artists, Performers, and Host Committee members representing diverse faith and civic communities, participated in Atlanta’s inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism: Beauty in Harmony. Aga Khan Council | Naz Samji

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Belief in God is meaningless if that faith does not move us towards responsible, loving, generative attitudes and actions. As the Apostle Paul said, if a theology or belief does not love then there is no reason for God, religion, hope, or faith. A good theology is a theology which shares meaning, value, purpose in ways which lifts up those around us with hope, affirming action, true empathy, and life-giving words. A theology, faith or religion which speaks death is not the same as a theology, faith, or religion which speaks life. One is to be abandoned. The other nourished in revitalized ways of empowering healing of self, society, and nature around us.

R.E. Slater

April 16, 2020

1 Cor 13

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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This Barrel Aged podcast was originally released in 2008 as episodes 8 & 9. The quality of the conversation was so good we had to put it back out. Who doesn’t enjoy a good conversation about evil, suffering, Buddha, Bible & a little Whitehead? Clearly someone who hasn’t listened to this episode yet. Bob Mesle is a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Graceland University.

Dr. C. Robert Mesle’s 136-page introduction to process-relational philosophy is a must-read for anyone new to process or who wants to be able to clearly articulate Afred North Whitehead‘s philosophy to others without a lot of technical language or headaches. You can check out his podcast about the text HERE. You should also check out his introduction to Process Theology which again is the best for a newbie.

Go to audio podcast here

or here

Evil & Divine Power
by R.E. Slater

*The podcast sets up a separate discussion questioning
the need for a theology to defend God; my discussion
here starts in the same direction but tails off differently.

Introduction

Theology, religion, and metaphysics asks the question of "What is the fundamental nature of reality?" Especially as it relates to the Self, Others, and Nature around us.

What makes for a good theology or life view? "Any approach which might put the welfare of children, humanity, and earthcare above the fundamental need to protect one's religious beliefs or view of reality. An approach which might reduce pain and suffering and make the world a better place."

The Problem of Evil

Rather than accepting the reality of suffering and evil many Christian responses have been to deny its existence in the face of facts. The Church Father Augustine captured this idea many centuries ago and it has been a popular church response ever since. In doing so Christians are supposedly protecting their idea of God by reframing suffering and evil around its purposes. We will also find this same response in the Jewish and Muslim religions.

In this sense of denial the common Christian view of evil is that it is good if we react to its experience in a better way to its harm. As illustrated:

    The Pain of Suffering                   Whereas the Pain of Suffering

        hurts more when it feels   ------>    hurts less if goodness is achieved

         meaningless                          in the midst of our suffering

Often, suffering feels meaningless which explains why we go through such lengths to find meaning in its expereince. We search for the philosophical, religious, social or ecological good of its harm.

Is There a God?  --> Why Evil? --> Perhaps Neither God nor Evil?

If God is Good, Loving, All Powerful than why is there Evil? Maybe God doesn't Exist? Maybe God is too distant from us to care? Maybe God is weak and unable to prevent evil?

The Old Testament book of Job asks these questions over 40 long chapters of back-and-forth dialogue between Job, his "friends", and God. Job's friends say, "You have sinned and must repent." "You are proud and your pride has brought this disaster." "Your sin has justified your suffering." And on and on it goes. The Job questions God for most of the remainder of the book but gets very little in the way of answers excepting that we live our lives in the mystery of divine event.

And so, do God's faithful live lives held in the mystery of divine event? Can we question God at all as to why we suffer and whether our suffering is pointless or not? Whether it makes our lives more meaningful?

The Apostle Paul presents suffering in the context of a future goodness (Romans 8.28) - "All things work together for good." Or that we learn from our suffering because God allows it (Romans 5.3-5) - "Suffering provokes endurance which produces character and Christian hope."

Christian teaching then goes on to deny the actuality of evil while granting to God the duty of "bringing evil upon us" to improve us. And, in a round-about-way, says that God allows the evil He doesn't prevent. If it doesn't come then God didn't allow it.

If these appeals to divine mystery, character building, future event, disallowance of sin and suffering, personal blame for cusaution, or a God who damns, judges, and determines our lives is mystifying to you as it is to me, then we are both asking the right questions.

What problem are we trying to solve when it comes to good and evil? The theological concept for this is known as "The Theodicy of God." That is, how is God just and loving in the face of sin and evil? Is He all powerful (omnipotent) as He says He is? Does God determine all aspects of our lives (omniscience)? Is God there when we need Him or so distant as to be unavailable to us (omnipresence)? How we answer these questions will frame our theology of God and how that faith lives itself out in the world around us.

If we are trying to solves the whys and wherefores of suffering and evil, whether its has come into our lives so brutally as to be no meaning for us at all, then we are asking the right questions. We are seeking answers which might resolve the pain and harm we bear.

But if we are trying to protect God, to give Him a pass in someway, or have gathered around us worthless friends like Job had, who offer opinions over silence, and provocation over love, then we are approaching this entirely the wrong way. God doesn't need protection - which is why we find no straight answers in the book of Job other than that He is God and things are the way they are. And it may oftentimes be the case that these facts are the only things we have. But I might suggest we may have a few more things to cling to as well....

One is to recognize that sin and evil, pain and suffering, will be legitimate items we all will deal with in this life. The paramount reason for this is that God has granted "agency" or "freewill" to nature (indeterminate agency) and to humanity (limited freewill; limited in the sense of our birth, environment, circumstances, etc).

Secondly, God is as real as reality; He is always dearly present with us in every life event and at all times; and thirdly, His power is real but mitigated by creaturely agency. Not by allowance, not by primordial divine fiat, but because He birthed a world from love. A love which may make choices, create order from chaos, generativeness from hatred and misery, compassion, mercy, forgiveness to those having none. We, God's children, are very much like our God. We bear passion, anger, despair, grief, and all the things which make up life. We are because He is.

So how does one respond to suffering that it might be reduced? One way is to act redemptively, to live compassionately, to be available to those who themselves are suffering, to provide nourishment to one another, to gather about us those might listen and support us in love and not criticism, and to seek to alleviate the passing of this pain forward to other circles of humanity or the earth.

Evil is real. In God there is no evil. But we do not need to defend God to ask the questions of sufferings due to sin and evil. We live in a lost world which many times chooses not to love, nor to do the right thing. To ignore and not alleviate the pain of others. To promote its pain and make it all the worse. These are not loving actions. This is not how the gift of "agency" is to be used.

Christians give 5 (6) reasons for suffering. They may help but they are not recognizing several factors. First the list. Five (Six) reasons for suffering:

1 - Its painful but I'm better off now so the harm is good (optimistic stoicism) 

2 - Its a difficult experience but I've learned from it and am moving on (forgiveness, hope) 

3 - ?? 

4 - Yeah, its hard, and I wish it will never happen again (admittance, wishfulness) 

5 - It was really, really bad. Its terror and horror I am trying to live with. Perhaps learn something from. I've tried to reconcile it but will always, always regret that it happened to me. There can be nothing that will ever make up for this terrible tragedy. (grief and lost) 

6 - My suffering has reduced my voice to a place where it can never speak again. I find myself incapable of finding any good out of it. It has left me dead, miserable, angry, in full despair. I will never be able to learn from it or grow forward with it. (irrecoverable grief and lost)

In any healthy response the individual, or society (I think of Laos under Pol-Pot), must be allowed to suffer. To grieve. To feel the (tragic) lost of a part of their life. How the road to any kind of recovery proceeds from there is left up ultimately to the individual. It can occur in the strangest of ways and if it is really real, it will have really real affects and consequences that provide healing and hope.

Secondly, do not feel you have to vindicate or protect God. God will always be there and is always meaningfully real and loving to us. God does not project the control Christians demand of Him because He cannot in a freewill world of agency. What He can do is be there when harm and tragedy comes, and try to mitigate the suffering you are enduring. His love will not be the less for any doubt, uncertainty, or anger you have. It is a constant even as life is left open to us to move forward as best we can under His care and divine agency in our lives as best as He can do in a sinful world.

Looking at Jesus, through the sufferings of His life, God was with Him, fully loving, fully guiding, but the world can be evil and cruel and live with stopped up ears and hearts. Jesus died not only for our sins but because of our sin and evil. But what He did was to bridge the gap between God and humanity in sublime ways of identity with us in our humanness. Our joys and pains.

The other thing is how we think of God's power. In Jesus God's power was made strong by being weak. By allowing sin and evil its affects. By bearing this sin and pain that an atoning efficacy might be made. Did God determine to die or make efficacy in this way? It both yes and no. As God he knows our hearts and surmised He would be placed in a position like this in some manner.

Why? Because God doesn't determine the future, He allows any futures their fullest possibilities and opportunities. The future is borne of infinite processes each yearning towards generative fullness. But it has also been mitigated by sin with is the opposite yearning. One that leads to death instead of life. A God who is in full control of our circumstances has failed us already. But a God who speaks "to become as He is becoming" is a God worthy of worship.

May God's peace and healing be with you this day.

R.E. Slater

The Power of Love

by Catherine Keller

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FREE SPEECH AND RELIGION

Hosting a Day of Religious Pluralism:

Two Cities Celebrate the Energetic Engagement of Difference

Article Link

by Allison K. Ralph

April 24, 2019

There have been too many instances of bias-motivated violence in recent years: parishioners murdered at their own bible study meeting, holiday shoppers run over at a market, young people executed by a neighbor who didn’t care for their faith. Incidents like these, says Joumana Silyan-Saba, who has helped the city of Los Angeles organize its Day of Religious Pluralism since 2015, were moments of pain, but also “moments where we decide what defines us.” It was incidents like those that were the impetus for the city of Los Angeles to partner officially with its thriving interfaith scene to establish a unified stance to promote social cohesion and “celebrate our unity and shared compassion for our fellow human beings by honoring and respecting diverse beliefs and practices.” For the last four years, the annual Day of Religious Pluralism has drawn diverse participants, established and solidified partnerships across boundaries of faith and no faith, and galvanized local leaders to engage each other in practical efforts to strengthen the greater community using common virtues.

The resolution and events showcase the kind of efforts promoting religious pluralism that the Inclusive America Project has championed for years. Believing that few issues today are as vital for American civil society as maintaining our national commitment to religious pluralism, our focus includes developing relationships between religiously affiliated organizations and government agencies. We aim to highlight and disseminate proven long-term strategies to increase respect for diverse religious identities in the public sphere, foster positive interfaith interactions, and form productive partnerships among people of different beliefs to advance the common good. This is why we are thrilled to report that the expansive vision of the city and interfaith community of Los Angeles has been so successful.

The organizers in LA wanted the event to become a template for other cities to establish their own unique Day of Religious Pluralism. There is even a toolkit available. Four years after the inaugural event in LA, the city and faith communities of Atlanta designed their own inaugural Day of Religious Pluralism, which took place on April 4. Farida Nurani, a volunteer of the Ismaili Muslim community and part of the Aga Khan Council for the Southeastern United States, was one of the organizers. Inspired by LA’s resolution and events, she says her Ismaili community reached out to other local faith leaders and to the mayor’s office to tremendous response. Like LA, city and faith leaders collaborated to draft and pass a proclamation to “affirm our shared, cherished values of dignity, unity, respect and compassion for our fellow human beings” and establish their inaugural event. As the planners in LA had hoped, Atlanta then took the idea and made it their own. In formulating their event, they drew also on the articulation of pluralism at the Global Centre for Pluralism.

With a theme of Beauty in Harmony, Atlanta’s event was centered on art as a language that can cross all barriers. Curated art exhibits as well as poetic and musical performances showcased faith-inspired beauty in harmony with diverse compatriots. It was a tangible representation of pluralism at its best: an intentional meeting of commitments rather than a surface-level assimilation of beliefs. The evening ended with a Civic Dinner that included a facilitated conversation on religious pluralism. Organizers are already planning for next year’s event.

Events in both cities have spurred tangible outcomes that have bettered society at large. In LA, the city’s collaboration with its faith partners created a kind of institutional frame where non-governmental actors – faith leaders, community members, non-profit leaders – could connect. From there, collaborations developed organically around numerous issues including homelessness and emergency management. In Atlanta, the Civic Dinner template for conversations on religious pluralism had never existed; now the organization is expanding what it developed for the Atlanta event and plans to add religious pluralism to its regularly offered topics.

Although organizers in both cities are proud of the work done and thrilled with the outcome, they stress that success depended on strong collaboration between civic and civil partners who developed real relationships with each other. These events were not organized and dictated by any one organization with the hope that everyone else would get onboard. Instead, resolutions and events were planned on a consensus basis and documents were developed iteratively with participation from a diverse group of faith leaders. That collaborative process set the stage for real buy-in from the communities.

Organizers in both cities also stressed the importance of the public ceremonial aspect of civic involvement. The symbolism of the public ceremony around formal proclamations and resolutions recognized collective representation of city, community, and country. These documents were symbolic of us as citizens, all of us, acting as one to stand with and protect each other not in spite, but because of, our differences.

In addition to the toolkit mentioned above, the Inclusive America Project can offer further resources to those interested in this work. Developing a Day of Religious Pluralism is a tangible and generative way for civic and faith leaders to address the rising tides of hate. Such work, done in good faith through difficult moments, is not only a practical approach to building local community resilience, it is also a very real way to build a joyful human community.  As Joumana Silyan-Saba, oversight committee member for the Day of Religious Pluralism in LA said, “It is a shining light in a very dark time.”

Using Music to Tackle Hate

MAY 17, 2018 • MARCI KRIVONEN

https://aspeninsight.simplecast.com/episodes/4f883832

Film Review - Annihilation: Death or ReBirth?

A n n i h i l a t i o n
by R.E. Slater

pressed into the viscous space

at once consumed, conformed,

transformed, all become one

joining vacuous light

free time skips, stops, skips again
shimmering, ethereal shapes
surrounding spellbound travellers

infiltrating broken selves

mutant airs silence all living
strange creation abounds
devolution in real time

tearing, ripping, binding

fearful symmetry flows
across organic spaces

deadly silence stilling

all once alive

R.E. Slater

January 3, 2020

rev. December 3, 2021

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

Watching Annihilation provided a lot of commentary in my head related to species self-destruction and survival, personal upheaval and pain, ecological resets, necessary random, chaotic cycles inserted into ordered systems, and all of the above when describing God, self, the human condition, creation, and so forth. Relevancy22 is an attempt to restart theological discussions in light of contemporary sciences and philosophies as they lead the way towards "re-refracting" our interior spirits and beliefs outwards-and-inwards to what is necessary in face of the blind, unhelpful dead-ends we seem to find ourselves in which continually marks our human experience. And it is in the spirit of burning down (sic, pyrotheology) what we think we know to relearn what is unseen which Annihilation repeatedly addresses through its timeless evolving script. In the end, when disorder is inserted into our present (and therefore, our past) contexts it leaves us as other than ourselves - as reflected mirrors of our former selves - forever changed by personal or societal experience, either for better or for worse. As a theologian I chose the later against all other options however paradoxical it might seem at the moment as such moments are moments of becoming rather than merely existing, of evolving rather than dying, as re-synching with the God of the universe held in its infinitely looped prism-like processes reflecting unconcluded journeys of creational space, the deaths of self, and the births of becoming. Enjoy.

R.E. Slater

December 31, 2019

Annihilation Official Trailer

Film Reviews & Explanations

Collider - https://collider.com/annihilation-movie-explained/

The Verge - https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/23/17042290/annihilation-review-natalie-portman-oscar-isaac-alex-garland-jeff-vandermeer

Vulture - https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/annihilation-movie-ending-explained.html

Digital Spy - https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a852095/netflix-annihilation-explained-ending-spoilers/

Den of Geek - https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/annihilation/271159/annihilation-ending-explained

Annihilation EXPLAINED: Character, Theme and Story Analysis

Additional References - Click here

Wrap - Up

Annihilation and Ex Machina director Alex Garland on using sci-fi to explore self-destruction - 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17029500/annihilation-ex-machina-director-alex-garland-sci-fi

Biblical History is Actually Biblical Story Telling in the Bible

Herodotus (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC)

As far as I know, the Greek writer Heredotus was the world's first true historian who attempted to arrange history into historical accounts. But when reading Heredotus one finds out very quickly that his historical accounts might not quite add up to what actually happened during or before his time. In fact, we discover that Heredotus is really good at telling the same story in many different ways as audiences listened to his recounts. As he spoke, if he detected interest in one area more than another he would dive into that area to enlarge its script.

This is what made Heredotus a very good story teller. He went with the audience's interests. I would think the ancient biblical stories were told in similar fashion. As stories... not as histories. Why? Because remember, Heredotus in 450 BC was the first to attempt to give historical accounts of history and as you know (or maybe you don't) much of the Old Testament is earlier than 450 BC. And so, it is for us to glean what the biblical story teller is trying to tell us behind the story he is telling.

In reference to the article below, I thank Mr. Enn's for his perspicuity. Well done Peter!

R.E. Slater

February 9, 2019

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A Quick Word About How Genealogies

in the Bible Aren’t “History”

Link article here

by Peter Enns

If you clicked on this post—what is wrong with you? Step back for a moment and think about it: you clicked on a post about genealogies! Seriously. Go find something to do.

If you’re still here, thanks for hanging around. Just promise me later today you’ll do something for yourself: take a walk outside, chase squirrels, talk to a human being, anything.

Anyway.

When the topic turns to Genesis 1-11, namely whether or not these chapters are “historical,” people will often kindly tolerate me as I go on and on (and on) about how those chapters aren’t really historical accounts but something else. Pick your word: metaphor, symbol, myth, legend, or whatever. Frankly, after you take “history” off the table, it doesn’t matter what you call it.

But sooner or later someone will ask, “But what about the genealogies in chapters 4, 5, 10, and 11? These aren’t stories of talking serpents or magic trees, but a record of names. Surely, this is a clear sign that the author intended to write history, not fiction. ”

Perhaps. And don’t call me Shirley.
The truth is, the appearance of names in a list does not mean we are reading “history.”

As tedious as it may sound, sit down one day and make a side-by-side list of the names (yes, you heard me) in 4:17-26 and 5:1-32. Commentaries and some study Bibles will correctly tell you that these genealogies are parallel (cover the same ground) but are not identical. These are two traditions that the editor of Genesis decided to keep, even though including them side-by-side like this is a blatant assault our modern notions of what history writing is supposed to look like (the nerve).

A second genealogical pair is found in 10:1-32 and 11:10-26. They are less parallel than the first pair, but they do cover some of the same ground and differently. (They also give two different accounts for the spread of humanity after the Flood, but I digress.)

Even Jesus has 2 genealogies that do not square up: Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-28. They are not completely different—they overlap a lot—but they are also significantly different.

Almost as if they did this on purpose. Which they did.

In fact, it’s the differences that help us see the different theological purposes of the Gospel writers.

Without getting longwinded, Matthew’s genealogy, divided into 3 neat segments of 14, goes back to Abraham and portrays Jesus as the king of David’s line who will bring an end to Israel’s exile. Luke’s genealogy overlaps with many of Matthew’s names, but is much longer and connects Jesus back to “Adam, Son of God,” perhaps to present “Jesus, Son of God” as a second Adam. (Note that the next scene in chapter 4 shows Jesus successfully resisting the devil’s temptation, unlike the first Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden.)

I am not saying that genealogies are all automatically fabrications, devoid of any sort of historical memory. I actually think that is not the case. Some no doubt have genuine historical value in our sense of the word, but the degree of historicity in the genealogies is up for discussion on a case by case basis.

My bigger point here, however, is that seeing how genealogies behave takes off the table the common assumption that genealogies place us safely (whew) on historical ground and are indications of the writer’s intention to write history and so we should accept them as such.
But, frankly, we have no earthly idea what ancient writers intended, nor do we know what “historical” would have meant to them.

But whatever the writers were after exactly, the inconvenient presence of parallel genealogies is, ironically for some, biblical proof that their conception of “historical” differs markedly from ours.

Taking a step further back, the parallel genealogies are simply examples of a general pattern in the Bible for writing about the past: the inclusion of more than one version—like the 2 “accounts” of Israel’s monarchy (books of Samuel/kings and the books of Chronicles) and of Jesus’s life (4 Gospels).

The biblical writers were not “historians” writing “accounts” of the past. They were storytellers accessing past tradition to say something about their present. That includes genealogies.

Genealogies in the ancient world were not examples of a plain and simple, just the bare fact, recording of the objective past. They were—like the Bible’s handling of the past in general—creative retellings of the past where the line between history and fiction are blurred and often for us difficult, if not impossible, to discern.

Madeline L'Engel & Thomas Oord - Being Light in the Darkness

"A Wrinkle in Time" author Madeline L'Engel's postmodern day counterpart is theologian Thomas Jay Oord who similarly deals with the issues of light and darkness - of how a loving and sovereign God acts in a world filled with sin and evil. In essence, God’s love makes a real and direct difference in the world and that without it there would be no hope. Evil would fill the entirety of its condition where no goodness or love could be found.

Yet God's love makes a real difference against evil when men and women submit to His divine love providing outcomes to creation which could not exist without creaturely obedience in response to the divine call, revelation, and examples set forth in Scripture (Jesus, for one) by God's positive, direct actions to love.

God's love is a love which partners with His creation without coercion, controlling, or determining obedience. Like a marriage partnership, He works within the limits we allow Him who fills His children with love and goodness when tempted at all times to give up, to allow sin and evil full reign. Little Meg in L'Engel's story fought against this same urge to discover she had the power to say no to evil when allowing the love and light of God's presence to guide her actions.

Some Christian groups call this incarnating moments of Jesus when God's presence in our faith in Him become pregnant with empowerment by His Holy Spirit. Other Christians, using less direct Christian descriptions, sense only the power and presence of a loving God asking us to say yes to Him that He might bring hope and healing not only to ourselves but to those around us in fundamental acts of Christlike actions.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

March 13, 2018

Reference Links:

• A Wrinkle in Time
• Uncontrolling Love Essays
• Uncontrolling Love

 

What Does God’s Love Do?

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/what-does-gods-love-do#undefined.gbpl

by Thomas Jay Oord

March 7, 2018

If God’s love is uncontrolling, what does it actually do? Is God uninvolved in our lives? Or is God more like an object that inspires without directly affecting us?

In a recent International Journal of Systematic Theology article, Kevin Vanhoozer offered a dialogue between John Webster’s views of love and my own. Kevin wonders if my view of God’s uncontrolling love means God is ineffective in bring real change.

In this essay, I explain that God’s uncontrolling love makes a real and direct difference in the world.

What Divine Love Does

Vanhoozer wonders what God’s love actually does. “If it is real,” he says, “it should make a difference.” I agree.

My theology emphasizes that God’s love makes an actual difference in creation. God acts in many ways to promote wellbeing. God is the necessary cause in the existence of everything, moment by moment. But I do not think God’s action controls others.

I often refer to Aristotelean notions of causation when explaining my view. I think God expresses love as efficient, final, or formal causes, for instance. But God never acts as a sufficient cause. That would involve divine control. God always loves, and divine love is uncontrolling.

God’s love is more than an example that we might find inspiring. It is also directly affecting us moment by moment, empowering us to choose.

An Uncontrolling God Acts

Vanhoozer’s comments remind me of a worry the philosopher Arthur Holmes once raised. Holmes argued against theologies that say God lovingly persuades but never coerces. To him, the God who persuades “cannot act.”[1]

Holmes seems not to see the important distinction between 1) acting that affects outcomes and 2) acting that unilaterally determines. The vast majority of, if not all, actions we witness in the world affect others without controlling them.

In my view, God’s always acts, and divine love is action that makes a difference. Creatures or creation more generally cannot prevent God from acting. The outcomes God desires for creation, however, require creaturely response. Because God’s actions are always loving, God never singlehandedly determines others to generate outcomes.

The Marriage Proposal

I acted when asking my fiancé’ to marry me. Her favorable response, however, was required for the outcome I desired.

If I had tried to force, control, or unilaterally determine her, few would call such coercion loving. If she responds positively to me, however, we can say my action made a difference in generating the outcome I wanted: marriage. I think divine love is analogous.

Of course, I’m happy to say that my marriage proposal was accepted, and Cheryl and I have been married for almost 30 years. And my goal for our marriage to be excellent still requires her response. One person cannot guarantee a happy marriage!

God’s Love is Effective

Vanhoozer introduces a word in his essay that I do not think describes my view of God’s action well. That word is “non-effectual.” When summarizing my theology, he says I believe “God thus loves creatures not by strongly causing (i.e., determining) good things, but rather by constantly issuing non-effectual calls, thus weakly causing good things (when they happen).”

The word “non-effectual,” as Vanhoozer uses it, might sound as though he thinks my view entails that God’s actions do not produce any effect. He apparently means by “non-effectual” that I am claiming God’s actions do not necessarily produce God’s desired effect.[2]

To describe my view better, Vanhoozer might rephrase his sentence. The revised sentence might say “God loves creatures not by controlling events and thereby unilaterally causing good things but rather by constantly calling and empowering creatures, thereby symbiotically causing good things (as creation cooperates).”

This alternative statement rightly emphasizes my view that God’s actions are causal but not controlling. God’s actions in the world require creaturely cooperation to produce the results God wants. God’s actions prompt creatures to act in ways to produce some desired effect, but they do not necessarily produce such an effect.

Is Strong Divine Action “Determining?”

In summarizing my view, Vanhoozer says “strong” divine action is “determining.” This implies that weak divine action involves lack of control, in the sense of not producing the desired effect necessarily.

It seems that Vanhoozer believes controlling others to produce desired outcomes is the “stronger” form of power. I once believed this. But as I have argued in various publications, I now believe God’s almighty power is uncontrolling love.[3] And as I argued in previous blogs, this uncontrolling love can do miracles.

I believe the strongest form of power is cooperative rather than controlling. And many essayists in the new book, Uncontrolling Love, seem to agree.

God Acts as an Omnipresent Spirit

Let me conclude with brief words about God’s being. Like most theologians, I think that God is incorporeal. God is spirit (Jn. 4:24). I deny that God has a localized, physical, divine body with which God exerts an impact.

The biblical notions of God as ruach and pneuma are important for understanding why God fails to prevent genuine evil. While in some instances we use our bodies to prevent evil, God as spirit has no localized divine body to use in this way.

As spirit, God exerts efficient causation of the sort we think metaphysically analogous to other causal occurrences in the world. But efficient causation does not mean sufficient causation. Affecting others doesn’t mean controlling them.

One view of the human mind-body relationship helps as an analogy. Just as our minds exert efficient causal influence upon our bodies without entirely determining them, so God as spirit exerts causal influence upon creatures without entirely determining them. God acts causally without controlling others.[4]

Conclusion

God always acts, and we creatures cannot control God. God’s love is uncontrollable.

But God’s actions never control creatures. “Love does not force its own way,” to quote the Apostle Paul. Or to put it my language, God’s love always influences but is also always uncontrolling.

We cannot control God: God’s love is uncontrollable! But God can’t control us: God’s love is…

TJO

Notes

[1] Arthur F. Holmes, “Why God Cannot Act,” in Process Theology, ed. Ronald Nash (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1987).

[2] I am grateful to Kevin Vanhoozer for responding to a first draft of this essay and clarifying what he means by “effectual.” I tried to incorporate his thoughts here.

[3] See my books, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010); The Nature of Love: A Theology; and The Uncontrolling Love of God.

[4] For more on God acting as a spirit, see my essay, “The Divine Spirit as Causal and Personal,” in Zygon 48, no. 2 (2013): 466-77.

* * * * * * * * * *

Against a personal struggle to make sense of evil L'Engle found a way to communicate her Christian faith to a world struggling with the same: “If I’ve ever written a book that says what I feel about God and the universe, this is it,” L’Engle wrote in her journal about “A Wrinkle in Time.” “This is my Psalm of praise to life, my stand for life against death.”

R.E. Slater

March 13, 2018

“A Wrinkle in Time” author Madeleine L’Engle. (Crosswicks) 

Publishers rejected her, Christians attacked her: The deep faith of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ author Madeleine L’Engle

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/03/08/publishers-rejected-her-christians-attacked-her-the-deep-faith-of-a-wrinkle-in-time-author-madeleine-lengle/?utm_term=.88714a8525aa

by Sarah Pulliam Bailey

March 8, 2018

It took 26 publisher rejections before Madeleine L’Engle could get “A Wrinkle in Time” into print in 1962. The book was an instant hit, winning the Newbery Medal the following year, but despite its wild success, L’Engle still had fierce critics — including a good number of them who disliked her book for faith reasons.

While L’Engle considered herself a devout Christian, and sprinkled the book with scriptural references, she was accused by some conservative Christians of promoting witchcraft and the occult — an accusation made later against “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling.

The religious wariness likely also contributed to some publishers’ rejection of the book, but it didn’t stop “A Wrinkle in Time” from being popular for more than 50 years after it was finally saw the light.

A Disney film adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time,” which opens Thursday, stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine and Zach Galifianakis, and is directed by Ava DuVernay of “Selma.” In the story, 13-year-old Meg Murry, played in the film by Storm Reid, is guided by three angelic beings on a quest to find her father, a scientist who had gone missing.

“If I’ve ever written a book that says what I feel about God and the universe, this is it,” L’Engle wrote in her journal about “A Wrinkle in Time.” “This is my psalm of praise to life, my stand for life against death.”

Ava DuVernay's adaptation of the classic book has an all-star cast, including

Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling.(Walt Disney Pictures)

[ Sorry, grownups. ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ is a kids’ film — for better and for worse. ]

Before she died in 2007 at age 88, L’Engle was the rare writer who ran in both liberal mainline Protestant circles and elite literary ones in New York City, and who also had made conservative evangelical fans around the country. L’Engle was part of an exclusive society of authors, including Eugene Peterson, Richard Foster and Philip Yancey, who remain popular among evangelical readers.

“Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys,” L’Engle wrote in her book “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.”

L’Engle is sometimes compared with 20th-century British author C.S. Lewis, who wrote popular children’s literature, as well as books defending and explaining the Christian faith. L’Engle graduated from Smith College, and a collection of her papers is held at Wheaton College, the evangelical school in the Chicago suburbs that also holds some of Lewis’s papers.

She wrote that publishers had trouble with “A Wrinkle in Time” “because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children’s or an adult’s book, anyhow?”

“A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeleine L’Engle. (Square Fish) 

A woman named Claris Van Kuiken, who was a member of the Christian Reformed Church, wrote a 1996 book titled “Battle to Destroy Truth,” tying L’Engle’s work to New Age spirituality. She argued that L’Engle’s works “preserved the ‘ancient wisdom’ or ‘secret doctrine’ condemned by God Himself.”

L’Engle was baffled and frustrated by some of the vitriol she faced from fellow Christians, her granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis said Wednesday. Although she once considered herself an atheist, after L’Engle became a Christian, she had a daily practice of reading the Bible and praying. Her granddaughter said L’Engle’s coming to her faith was slower “acceptance of what she had always known to be true,” rather than a sudden conversion moment.

“She was a Christian because she was deeply rooted in its traditions and language, and she was moved by and trusted in its stories,” Voiklis said.

Although L’Engle did not like denominational labels, she mostly attended Episcopal churches, serving for about four decades as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, an Episcopal church and one of the largest cathedrals in the world.

“The themes that are important in Christianity permeate her writing: good and bad, light and darkness,” said the Rev. Patrick Malloy, subdean of the cathedral. “She was open to questions and to looking at new ways to say old things.”

In the 1990s, L’Engle began attending Sunday services at All Angels Church, an Episcopal church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side known for attracting artists. She wanted the smaller community of All Angels but still attended noon prayer and evensong services at St. John the Divine, Voiklis said.

St. John the Divine Cathedral. (Sarah Pulliam Bailey) 

Voiklis, who co-authored “Becoming Madeleine,”said her grandmother’s faith informed everything she wrote, including numerous books, plays and poems.

“She preferred scientific metaphors, and scientists to theologians, because she understood that science is more open to revelation than religion,” Voiklis said. “Religion divides us into teams.”

L’Engle wrote that “A Wrinkle in Time” was her rebuttal to German theologians, who she complained were too rigid in their answers to cosmic questions. “It was also my affirmation of a universe in which I could take note of all the evil and unfairness and horror and yet believe in a loving Creator,” she wrote in “Walking on Water.”

But some conservative Christians took offense to elements of “A Wrinkle in Time,” including what they saw as relativism. The book lists Jesus alongside the names of famous artists, philosophers, scientists and Buddha.

The idea of conformity is one of the major themes in the novel, which was published during an era when Communism thrived. Conservative Christians were not only confused by the book, said Don Hettinga, an English professor at Calvin College, but they also proved its point by forcing conformity to a certain way of thinking.

“A Wrinkle in Time” author Madeleine L’Engle. (Crosswicks) 

L’Engle was not afraid to push buttons, said Luci Shaw, a poet, co-author, editor and a friend of L’Engle’s for more than three decades. She said L’Engle was a universalist, believing that all humankind will be invited into heaven, and she loved gay people at a time when many Christians were suspicious of them.

“Many conservative churches draw a circle, and certain people can’t enter the circle because they haven’t been baptized or committed themselves to Christ,” Shaw said. “Jesus drew a circle that was much bigger, and it included everybody. She had a broad sense that we’re all in this together, that God’s love is the power that runs the world.”

In some ways, L’Engle could be compared with Marilynne Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Gilead”; a member of the liberal-leaning United Church of Christ, Robinson still finds fans among conservative evangelicals. But L’Engle was likely more controversial because she was writing for children, said Sarah Arthur, author of a forthcoming biography of L’Engle titled “A Light So Lovely.”

“If Madeleine had backed off from theology, it would’ve been safer,” Arthur said. Her literary friends often didn’t understand why she had to write so much about faith, Arthur said, while she received criticism from some conservative Christians. Yet she straddled both the Christian publishing world and a nonreligious publishing world in ways most authors cannot.

Hollywood has sometimes struggled with films that have spiritual or religious undertones. The film “Noah” received backlash for its loose interpretation of biblical narratives. “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” about Moses, was criticized for whitewashing the characters. And some filmmakers don’t include religion at all: Angelina Jolie’s film “Unbroken,” an adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s book on Olympian Louis Zamperini, did not include his Christian conversion.

The film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic sci-fi fantasy novel “A Wrinkle in
Time” had its trailer debuted at the D23 Disney convention in Anaheim. (Reuters)

Early reviews of “A Wrinkle in Time” are mixed, drawing a 44 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And a film starring Oprah, who is also controversial among some conservative Christians, might not attract the same kind of crowd that soaked up films such as “The Passion of the Christ,” “The Blind Side” and Disney’s adaptation of Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

Arthur fears that the film could turn L’Engle’s work into a “ ‘power of positive thinking’ approach to spirituality.”

“There are a lot of people who believe the strength that you need to fight the darkness is in you,” Arthur said. “But it’s because they were connected to the source of light who is Jesus. If it’s unmoored from Madeleine’s Christian faith, it’s missing a big piece of the spiritual thrust of what she was doing.”

The film, which preserves “a more vague spirituality,” makes no effort to appeal to the moviegoing audience that typically flocks to Christian movies, writes Alissa Wilkinson, a film critic at Vox and an English professor at King’s College in New York City. Instead of including particulars about many religions, Wilkinson writes, the film smooths “them all out into a vague swirl of ‘love.’ ”

Would L’Engle have liked Hollywood’s adaptation? Her granddaughter, who saw an early version, said it gave her the “same feelings of inspiration and optimism” as the book.

Hettinga, who had not seen the film, believes L’Engle would have loved the reinterpretation that made the main character, Meg Murry, a black girl from an interracial marriage. For its time, L’Engle’s book was groundbreaking by portraying Murry’s mother as a well-educated scientist with two doctoral degrees.

“I think she would like something that caught the spirit and wouldn’t try to be literal,” Hettinga said.

SPB

* * * * * * * * * *

Additional References to L'Engel's work

“The wound is the place where the light [must] enter you.” – Rumi, Persian

21 Memorable Quotes in "A Wrinkle in Time."

One of the many themes of the movie speaks to the idea of conformity. Says L'Engel's daughter: "...The story wasn't a simple allegory of communism; in a three-page passage that was cut before publication, the process of domination is said to be an outcome of dictatorship under totalitarian regimes, AND by an excessive desire of security under democratic countries." Now isn't that interesting? It wasnt until a year ago in 2017 that many can now see the truth of how fear brings about so much damage to a society. - re slater

Wikipedia, "A Wrinkle in Time"

I loved the mystery and wonder in the first third of the movie and had wished it persisted throughout the script though at some point one has to acknowledge that each of us deserves love and that this affirmation needs to be repeatedly expressed enough until it finds a home within our souls against all the words and lies which too often lingers in our ears holding its message back. - re slater

Rereading “A Wrinkle in Time,” After a Childhood Enthralled by Madeleine L’Engle

Oh the Games We Play with God and Church: A Study of Game Theory and Favorable Outcomes

 

The games we play
http://gospelfutures.org/2013/04/04/the-games-we-play/

by Neil Williams
April 4, 2013

When the mathematical genius John von Neumann (1903 – 1957) sat down to figure out how he could use mathematics to improve his poker playing, little did he realize the repercussions of his inquiry, not only in mathematics but also in almost every other field of inquiry. Considered the father of game theory, Neumann, with the economist Oskar Morgenstern, produced the founding textbook Theory of games and economic behavior that revolutionized economics.

 

When playing a game such as poker, you have limited information (you cannot see all the cards), other players will deceive you, and they intend to win. Game theory is about what decisions and strategies you should take to achieve a favorable outcome.

 

Games consist of three main areas: players, strategies, and outcomes. A basic form of a game is a two-person game where a win for one player means a loss for the other. Known as a zero-sum game, the outcome of this type of game adds up to zero—a win (+1) is offset by the other player’s loss (-1). These games are one hundred percent competitive with no co-operation between players.

 

In a positive-sum game, your win does not mean a total loss for your opponent and involves some co-operation as well as competition. In such games, all players benefit, the outcome being positive. The cliché “win-win situation” refers to a positive sum game where all players benefit from the outcome. Trade between two nations is a classic example of a positive-sum game.

 

Game theory started in mathematics, but expanded to other disciplines including psychology, economics, politics, evolutionary biology, warfare, and theology. We can conceive of most, if not all, interactions in terms of a game: people bidding on an ebay auction, the Cuban missile crisis, a couple arguing with each other, a job applicant negotiating a salary, airlines overbooking flights on the assumption that some passengers will not turn up, a criminal taking a plea agreement instead of a jury trial, a person sacrificing their life for the sake of another.

 

The ways games are structured have implications for relationships and transformation. A married couple may frame an argument as a zero-sum game where each maneuvers, like game pieces on a board, to achieve a winning position—a position that means a defeat for their partner. Seminaries, religions, churches, and para-churches may frame their institutional identity as zero-sum games. Rules and beliefs establish and dictate how and why the game is played and who may play it. If you play, you play to win. If you play, you may only play as long as you stick to the parochial system; otherwise you are out. Blogs—from religious to atheist—will make little progress in relational transformation if a zero-sum mentality demands winners and losers.

 

In these zero-sum games, a community builds a petty game with rules and beliefs that exclude a multitude of other realities, creating a system of thought that is placed above people and transforming relationships.

 

The most famous example in game theory is the Prisoner’s Dilemma devised by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher. The basic idea of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is this: The police have arrested you and your partner-in-crime on suspicion of robbing a bank. Lucky for you, the prosecutor lacks sufficient evidence to convict. You and your friend, however, are locked in separate, isolated cells and the prosecutor comes to you with a few options:

 

• Confess and we will let you go free and put your friend behind bars for 15 years.
• Don’t confess and if your partner confesses we will put you in jail for 15 years.
• If you both confess, we will drop the penalty to 3 years.
• If neither of you talk, well, we have enough to convict you on a lesser charge and put you both away for 6 months.

What do you do? The dilemma is this: the rational choice is to confess, no matter what your friend does. If they do not confess, you go free. If they confess, you only get three years instead of fifteen. But here is the catch: if you both keep silent the jail time is even less—only six months instead of three years. Do you confess or stay silent, or in the language of game theory, do you defect or cooperate? In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the rational choice is to defect, but the best possible outcome for both of you is to cooperate and keep silent.

Cooperation needs a relational connection. To achieve the best possible outcome we need trust, but trust is vulnerable to exploitation. Do you trust your friend enough, because if you co-operate and they deflect, then you are behind bars for fifteen years? In this case, game theory underscores that trust and cooperation achieves the best outcome for everyone. The rational choice is not always the best. The relational choice is the best.

Game theorists have studied many variations of the Prisoner’s Dilemma including iterative cases. Most interactions in life are not once off. Instead of a one-off game, what happens when we have the opportunity to repeat the game a hundred times? What strategy should we now adopt? The answer was discovered in two experiments organized by the political scientist Robert Axelrod, author of the highly influential The Evolution of Cooperation, a book that opened with the question: “Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?” Axelrod invited game theorists in economics, psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, political science, mathematics, physics, and computer science to submit computer programs that would compete against each other in an iterative Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario. What program would receive the highest score? One that was more willing to cooperate? One that defected all the time?

Axelrod describes some of the programs:

Massive retaliatory strike: cooperate at first, but after a defection, retaliate for the rest of the game.

Tester: this program tries to find out what you are like, so it attacks in the first move. If met with retaliation, it will cooperate for a while. Then it will defect again, just to see how much it can get away with.

Jesus: always cooperate

Lucifer: always defect

If Tester plays Massive retaliatory strike, they both do poorly. Tester defects on the first move and Massive retaliatory strike defects from them on.

If Lucifer plays Jesus, Lucifer wins.

Axelrod thought that the winning program would contain thousands or tens of thousands of lines of code. The mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport submitted the highest scoring program, and it was also one of the simplest, five lines of code, a tit-for-tat program, where co-operation was met with co-operation, and defection met with defection. Overall, the top ranking programs were all nice, and on average, the defector programs scored significantly lower.

Axelrod described the tit-for-tat program as nice, retaliatory, forgiving, and clear. It is nice so it starts with co-operation. It retaliates to discourage the other player from continued defection. It forgives and quickly restores cooperation. It is clear in that it is not duplicitous; its actions are straight forward and easily interpreted, thus providing a basis for long-term cooperation. The one distinguishing feature of programs that did well versus those that did poorly, was being nice. In other words, start with trust and co-operation, and avoid unnecessary conflict. A nice player is never the first to defect and co-operates whenever the other player co-operates. Surprising, nice people finish first.

Tit-for-tat is the most successful strategy when the Prisoner’s Dilemma is played numerous times. You start with co-operation and basic trust. If the other player cooperates, you continue to cooperate. If they defect, then you respond with defection. The strategy punishes those who take advantage of other players’ trust and generosity. The strategy, however, also allows for a change of mind. After deflecting, your opponent may once again decide to co-operate with you. In tit-for-tat, you respond with cooperation.

To express these ideas in theological language, for an iterative game that achieves the best outcomes for all players, we need trust, forgiveness, and repentance. Trust is necessary for cooperation and as we cooperate we repeatedly send the message that we are trustworthy. In a repeated game, however, there will be failures by all players. Forgiveness is necessary, for it allows us to continue to play the game when a defector decides to cooperate. Repentance is necessary, for it allows us to change from defecting to cooperating. It turns out that forgiveness and repentance are even more important than first realized by game theorists. In the complicated world of relationships, signals can be misinterpreted. Perhaps a player intended to cooperate but her actions are misconstrued as a defection. A player can make a mistake or perhaps they just need a second chance. Does the game now have to continue with repeated retaliation? Here is where a small tweak optimizes the tit-for-tat program; named “generous tit-for-tat,” it will randomly throw in a forgiveness about ten percent of the time. Call it grace—an undeserved mercy that breaks a cycle of repeated defection.

Playing games that benefit all players depends on healthy relationships. If we are in relationship with other players, we are more likely to cooperate than defect. Relationships encourage a willingness to forgive and repent. Relationships temper our fear that we will be tricked. And relationships temper our greed that seeks outcomes advantageous to us while at the expense of other players.

The tit-for-tat strategy illustrates that a relational approach is far from being a sugary pushover. Unconditional pacifism is a losing strategy because psychopaths and con-artists are always scouting to exploit some unwary soul, softie, or sucker. A relational approach that includes trust, forgiveness, and repentance, also includes a credible threat of repercussion for defection. “If another person sins, rebuke that person; if there is repentance, forgive” (Luke 17:3). A relational approach will retaliate, for example, against the zero-sum games of patriarchy, racism, and other forms of bigotry. It starts with trust and co-operation, is quick to forgive, but will also punish defectors.

There is, however, a problem with a game repeated a finite amount of times. If you know the game is finite and is going to end after a hundred moves, then even after repeated cooperation, the rational strategy is to defect in the final move. Take the money and run—there is no retaliation because the game has ended. This suggests the importance of infinite games, games that continue indefinitely, where there is no end and therefore no temptation to defect at the end.

The religious scholar James Carse has developed this idea in Finite and infinite games: a vision of life as play and possibility. Carse distinguishes between two types of games: finite and infinite. There are substantial differences between the characteristics and goals of finite and infinite games. Carse writes, “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” A finite game ends when somebody wins, thus finite games need fixed boundaries and unchanging rules to decide who wins. Because of the boundaries of finite games, it is impossible to play an infinite game within a finite game. In contrast, infinite games are ongoing and have no fixed boundaries or rules. Thus for Carse, “Every move of an infinite player makes is toward the horizon. Every move made by a finite player is within a boundary. Every moment of an infinite game therefore presents a new vision, a new range of possibilities.”

For Carse, the goal of players of finite games are to become powerful, entitled, Master Players, supremely competent in every detail of the game that they essentially play as if the game is already completed. And because a finite game always ends, finite players have to repeatedly play to prove they are winners. In a finite game, the last thing you want is surprise, whereas in an infinite game, surprise is a reason for continuing to play. An infinite game is fluid and open ended, and the reasons for playing an infinite game are not to become powerful or to win. The concern of infinite players is “not with power but with vision.”

Finite games are defined by their boundaries, whereas infinite games are defined by their horizon. Boundaries are fixed and clear, and one cannot move beyond a boundary. But in an infinite game the horizon is open-ended—it is a direction toward we move, a place we never reach, a journey always open to newness and surprise.

Is Christianity a finite or an infinite game? What should it be? We would be naïve to assume that there is one message of Christianity. In the church’s two thousand year history, people have expressed a multitude of different ideas about Jesus and different versions of Christianity.

It is possible to conceive of Christianity as a finite or an infinite game.

1. Christianity formulated as a finite zero-sum game: we win; everyone else loses. We are master players, essential to this grand game, a game that has a definitive conclusion resulting in a win for us, and a loss for everyone else. The game is one of good versus evil, us versus them. Our particular beliefs and rules establish fixed boundaries of the game, and distinguish us from other Christians and their games. You may join our game and play, but only if you accept the rules that structure and direct our game. The benefits include power, titles, solid explanations, fixed boundaries, solidarity with us, and a winning hand.

As a finite game, Christianity has had little difficulty aligning itself with patriarchy, slavery, racism, hate crimes, torture and death of infidels, and colluding with empires—Roman, Spanish, English, American. In each case, there are clear winners and losers.

If Christianity is setup as a megalomaniacal finite game, it is impossible to play an infinite game. By its nature, it excludes the possibility of the gospel story as an infinite game.

2. A vision of Christianity as infinite play: Jesus creates a new playground that plays fast and loose with the rules, dissolves boundaries and fixed beliefs, and opens new horizons of possibility. In an infinite game, the central themes of the gospel story—incarnation, life, death, resurrection—are articulated in ways that place people and relationships above the system. In Christ, there are no winners or losers—there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female (Gal 3:28). Jesus is not a master player but an infinite player who invites all to an infinite game by including the excluded and rebuking the excluders. Anyone can play, no titles are awarded, no winners are announced, and boundaries are replaced by a gospel horizon.

This infinite game is characterized by vision and openness, where beliefs and rules are continually rewritten in order to keep the game going. To put boundaries on an infinite game, destroys it and stops the game. There is no end of play, and if need be, infinite players will choose death over life in order for the game to continue.

The gospel story as an infinite game contrasts with the beliefs and rules of finite games. Beliefs are certain and bounded. Stories have development, surprises, twists, paradoxes, uncertainties, even contradictions. Beliefs often end the conversation. An infinite story invites further discovery, directs us to the horizon, continues the game, and reformulates the conversation.

If the story is a great pyramid of inspiration and awe, beliefs are limestone rocks dug out from the structure. Beliefs are not necessarily bad, we just need to recognize them for what they are—abstractions from the story, attempts to collate our understanding, pieces of rock dismantled from the magnificent structure. Sometimes these rocks are useful for constructing smaller buildings, but often people just throw them at others. Beliefs are ready tools to create finite or zero-sum games that leverage power over others, but if all we have is rocks, we have reduced the grand story to rubble and can no longer resonate with its openness, poetry, surprises, and vision.

There is an infinite game, an infinite story, which starts: in the beginning was the game maker, and the one who plays, and the one who invites others to join the game and continue the play....