Posted by Benjamin on: 02.09.2009 /
Recently I asked on my personal blog “Why do people find Jesus satisfying, as a god?”. I was wondering aloud why Jesus heals only one of the many people at the pool of Bethesda, all of whom were there looking for healing. Shouldn’t “God”, I wondered, be somehow better than us–not limited to making a difference in only one life–but instead able to fix things on a larger scale? It touches on my frustration with the way in which “The Church”/”Christianity”, for the most part, tends to insert too much space between us and Jesus–making him more than human, and different, and … strange. Of course Jesus himself contributes to this with stuff he says right after the pool of Bethesda story. In response to my question, JadeEdf directed me this last week to Annie Dillard’s Essay the Wreck of Time.
Dillard says
We who are here now make up about 6.8 percent of all people who have appeared to date. This is not a meaningful figure. These times are, one might say, ordinary times, a slice of life like any other. Who can bear to hear this, or who will consider it? Are we not especially significant because our century is – our century and its nuclear bombs, its unique and unprecedented Holocaust, its serial exterminations and refugee populations, our century and its warming, its silicon chips, men on the moon, and spliced genes? No, we are not and it is not.
And she ends her essay:
An English journalist, observing the [Missionaries] of Charity in Calcutta, reasoned: “Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.”
One small town’s soup kitchen, St. Mary’s, serves 115 men a night. Why feed 115 individuals? Surely so few people elude most demographics and achieve statistical insignificance. After all, there are 265 million Americans, 15 million people who live in Mexico City, 16 million in greater New York, 26 million in greater Tokyo. Every day 1.5 million people walk through Times Square in New York; every day almost as many people – 1.4 million – board a U.S. passenger plane. And so forth. We who breathe air now will join the already dead layers of us who breathed air once. We arise from dirt and dwindle to dirt, and the might of the universe is arrayed against us.
Dillard talks about how in the Koran (as in the Bible), “God” is depicted as caring about individuals, and even the tiniest creatures. In the Koran it’s the “weight of an ant” he doesn’t miss, while in the Bible, as you doubtless know, it’s the fall of a sparrow. In one sense, perhaps, only “God” could manage the staggering amounts of information/relationship required to be all-cognizant at such levels. We humans can’t seem to pull it off–even science is stymied by the fact that we have a theory of the big (general Relativity), and a theory of the small (Quantum mechanics), which both work quite well at their own scales, but which apparently cannot be reconciled with each other in what has been called a Theory of Everything (disclaimer: I realize I’m talking about this stuff–all of it, as a fairly naive layperson.)
Another friend said to me that this is the point of the story–Jesus is teaching us that we can’t fix everything, and therefore we must choose, and make a significant difference for the few–for those near us. My being balks at this. If *all* can not be significant–if *all* can not be loved and taken care of, then part of me wants to eschew my own significance. Why should *I* be loved and cared for, just because of the luck of the draw? It seems to me that if I am loved and cared for because of dumb luck, while others starve and live and die in darkness alone because the coin happend to come up tails for them, then I don’t ultimately have significance, somehow.
I would love to hear your reactions to Annie Dillard’s essay and/or my thoughts.
Comment by: Martin Gugino
1Logically, it seems like this situation is an urgent call to action - and that not only must I act, do all I can, but I must get others to act, do all they can. Since so far, I have done approximately nothing along these lines, and I am old, this is an awesome and dreadful conclusion.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
2Martin,
I remember the title of a book I heard of once: “The tyranny of the urgent”.
Maybe if you have said a kind word to someone at some point, you can no longer approximate your involvment as “nothing”.
I like your use of the word “dreadful”. It’s something were not so much in touch with in the 21st century west, it seems to me–”dread”. Just as we rarely sense the numinous. Perhaps dread and magic go hand in hand, and having lost the one, we’ve lost the other also?
Comment by: Martin Gugino
3Well yes I did once buy a stick from a bum for a quarter.
Comment by: Bob
4Benjamin — I don’t think we should give up on the little things we do just because they appear to be statistically insignificant. Who cares what the math says? If it nourishes you and someone else how can it be a waste? Who’s to judge what’s truly significant and to whom is it significant? Does it matter if someones else thinks it isn’t as long as it is to us? It just seems rather defeatist, although convenient as I am admittedly lazy more than I’d like to be.
As for why Jesus chooses only one (just my best guess), it’s true to life. Who lives and dies, gets and doesn’t get don’t always make sense. Not saying that’s fair, but Jesus never promised us fair. Only redemption that is actually unjust and fortunately so for us.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
5Bob–could you elaborate on this a little. I remember I used to think like this, but I can’t really remember my rationale anymore =)
I’m trying to picture it in my brain. Something like, perhaps, a cartesian plane with the x axis justice and the y axis fortune. So unjust is over in the negative x side, and just is the positive x side. And fortune is on the positive y side, and misfortune on the negative y side. Your describe a point in the upper left quadrant you are labeling “unjust and fortunate”. By which I’m supposing you mean the story that we “ought” to get (whatever the really bad thing is) because of our … misdeeds, but we *don’t* get it, which is fortunate.
Am I understanding you correctly?
This touches on the thread about the Khmer Rouge.
To me justice isn’t so much about making sure people get whatever the bad thing is as a consequence of their misdeeds and unkindnesses. It’s more about what’s fair–that is, evening things out a bit so that I don’t have two jackets while you shiver jacketless.
Am I making sense? I find I longer believe so much in the really bad thing, nor that it’s possible or even necessarily desirable to try to somehow balance out misdeeds with consequences. Maybe I’m just fooling myself, however, since when a somehow smashed my car window on purpose, I *wanted* really bad things to happen to them. But on further consideration I was just deeply saddened at the chain of bad events happening to people which led to this person wanting to break my window.
Hmmmm. Is it unjust for me to choose not to pursue legal consequences for those who commit crimes against me? If you poke out my eye, is it unjust for me to choose not to poke out your eye? Is the justice we are talking about in these last two questions approaching any sort of good ideal of justice?
Comment by: Bob
6Benjamin — Our thinking was actually more similar in regards to justice. I was thinking more about good people not getting what they need rather than bad people being punished or unpunished.
In terms of what I said about Jesus, I meant that in reference to salvation as being un-earnable and the price being unquantifiable. We get it for asking, not for what we do or don’t do. So for the guy that has been “good” his whole life, it can feel a little unjust to see the the guy that recants on his deathbed and receives the same reward. I guess that’s kind of a horrible thing to say as we ought to be happy for him instead.
Does that make sense? I wasn’t meaning in reference to the earthly healings so much. Some of those could feel unjust too but in a more earthly and quantifiable sort of way.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
7This works enormously well for me. I would just take out the “good” before people. I rather want to lean altogether in the opposite direction from the fundamental attribution error, and assume that people are good or not good in correlation with whether or not they get what they need/the situations they (we) are placed into.
Would it be fair to say, perhaps, that at least *some* portion of your thinking about/yearning for justice is directed to stuff that is post-death? Because I have very little to none of that. Can’t get my head nor heart around it at all.
I wonder which of those viewpoints is more motivational in terms of helping us move toward making the world a better/more just place? I can see how both would work.
Comment by: Bob
8Benjamin — You’re right, it’s not really fair of me to categorize people as good or bad. Just people with different deeds and needs.
I thought my point in terms of post-death was really that the things Jesus gives us on earth versus a heavenly reward are different but as I think about it maybe that’s not entirely true. Did the people Jesus healed deserve it any more than the next guy? Maybe in some cases but probably not in all. His seemingly random mercy and unexpected kindness to unexpecting people are things that endear and move me toward Christ.
So I’m not yearning for justice in the post life, but the reconciliation that overcomes injustice. In this life I can say I’d like to see more justice but at the same time I appreciate mercy as well. I’d like to see more compassion and love for people because it would make this world a better place.
So while I may look forward it’s not with blinders on. I can’t make things right for people but I can show them kindness in small ways that make a difference. Sometimes that’s all we need. Just to know that somebody cares.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
9Perfectly put. I want to do more of this–it seems so much more doable than the “making things right” thing.
Comment by: Bob
10Yes, who would know where to start? We just do what we can do but hopefully with more urgency and the hope that we can make a difference.
Comment by: Bryan
11Sorry, I seem to be in a rut tonight. This discussion reminds me of the book by Bart Ehrman, God’s Problem. The subtitle is How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer.
Ehrman is one of our most prominent biblical scholars. Warning to those faint of faith, this question, which has been bothering him for many years, caused him to give up his faith. And yes, his faith was strong before this quest.
Comment by: benjamin ady
12Bryan,
Thank you for stopping by. I wonder why the question caused Bryan (and perhaps to some extent me) to give up his faith, and yet so many Biblical scholars are able to grapple deeply with this question and yet retain their faith? What is the difference between these paths?