Skip to main content

oh good


Last week, I was reading some lectures given by Bernard Lonergan in 1959 and quite enjoying them. It was like taking a nice, leisurely walk.  One of the reasons it reminded me of a pleasant saunter in the forest on a spring day was because it gave me a break from reading Ricoeur.  Monsieur Ricoeur's brilliant philosophical mind likes to dive into craterous valleys and leap atop spiky mountains while balancing plates on his head.  At least that's what it feels like to simple, old me.

Anyway, I was enjoying my walk in the park with Lonergan as he discussed the subject of human good when I came upon the following paragraphs.  Abruptly, the walk in the park ended as a huge crevice opened up before me regarding the concept of "good."  Here is the quote:

"...the good is not apart from evil in this life.  In his Enchiridion (Handbook), St Augustine made perhaps one of the most profound remarks in all his writings, and for that matter in the whole of theology, when he said that God could have created a world without any evil whatever, but thought it better to permit evil and draw good out of the evil. 

We must not forget that what God wants, the world God foreknew from all eternity in all its details and freely chose according to his infinite wisdom and infinite goodness, is precisely the world in which we live, with all its details and all its aspects. This is what gives meaning to a phrase that might at times be considered trite: resignation to the will of God.  God does not will any sin, either directly or indirectly.  He wills only indirectly any privation or punishment.  What he wills directly is the good, and only the good.  Yet the good that God wills and freely chooses with infinite wisdom and infinite goodness is this world.  It is a good, then, that is not apart from evil.  It is a good that comes out of evil, that triumphs over evil." [1]

Dagnabit, Lonergan.  Why'd you have to go and say that?  Those are unsettling words!  Don't you know that "good" is squeaky clean?  Bright and shiny and oh so pure?  Never been touched or soiled by dirty, filthy evil?  It has never even looked at anything remotely un-good or for that matter thought about it?  It has never acknowledged the existence of anything less than good, so glorious is its glory?  Ah yes, the romantic idealist was popping up again.  My concept of "good"was something so totally divorced from evil that it would never get its hands dirty.  And fortunately, that is the same separatist image that Jesus shattered when he embraced full humanity.

"Good" deserves more credit than I had been giving it. It is much grander, much more gracious, and much more powerful than my sterile version of it.  I had been thinking of a one-dimensional, fenced-in "good."  Something that keeps itself apart from yuckiness and bad people, unsullied by evil and suffering.  In fact, the "good" that Jesus showed us is a "good" that embraces all the yuckiness and suffering and evil and still remains good. How does it do that?  I don't know.  But I need it!

However, embracing this concept of "good" is troublesome.  Lonergan introduces that bothersome phrase, "resignation to the will of God."  I really, really want to stay in my spring forest, walking along with birds chirping and a soft breeze blowing, everything in a state of heavenly goodness.  But once I acknowledge that this good God, in choosing to make a good world, chose this broken, imperfect mess around me, I become disillusioned.  Where is my utopia?  I want more than this!  I want sweet candy goodness!

This meaty, sinewy, raw idea of goodness is difficult to take in.  This earthy goodness bleeds and cries and dies, but somehow,this goodness remains undefeated.  This goodness embraces suffering, opens its arms to death and injustice, pain and sorrow, and swallows it all. Digests it. Turns it from poison into food -food that strengthens it.  In that case, evil can no longer be seen as the equal opposite of good.  Instead, evil becomes part of the tapestry of a bigger good: a red thread of spilled blood, a scarred circle of healing, a blue string tied to a green string in a reconciliation knot.  This tapestry of "good" is so much bigger than I had imagined.  So much more colourful than my eyes are able to see.  So much less fearful (shouldn't good run away from evil) than I made it out to be; in fact, good knows no fear.  It is deep and wide and broad, searching out the low and yucky, muddy places, just like the love of God.

Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see - how good God is. Psalm 34:8 (The Message)

1. Bernard Lonergan. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan: Topics in Education: the Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, p. 29-30.

the photo:  the back of a woven rug - a gift from my sister and bro-in-law in Afghanistan
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go
3 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   Consider but a sampling o
10 comments
Read more

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim
Post a Comment
Read more