Where is God in Our Suffering and Struggle?

August 9, 2020 • Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Romans 8:22-28
(adapted from The Message)
Pastor Jeff Wells

I am really jazzed about process theology and have been ever since I first learned about it. I am going to use that term a lot in this message so, sometimes, I am going to call it PT, for short. PT didn’t bring me back to Christian faith, but it sure has helped me to find a deeper and richer faith because in PT I discovered a God I could really love. So I decided this week to preach again on August 23 about some ideas in process theology. And when I did that, the Worship Vision Team decided we would do a series of messages on process theology. So we can look forward to lots more great reflection and growth. 

Process theology is so important for our community. The Church of the Village identifies as a progressive, radically inclusive and anti-racist community. And I can’t imagine a progressive Christian theology without a heavy dose of process theology. This theology grounds so much of what we say and do. Process theology is a huge influence on Pastor Alexis, Jorge, and me and on so many in our lay leadership. Several of our recent guest preachers are process theologians, like Catherine Keller and John Thatamanil. Others are certainly strongly influenced by process theology. 

Today, I want to focus in on “the difficult times of pain,” as the scripture lesson puts it. I want to use process theology to approach the question, “Where is God in our suffering and struggle?” That question feels so urgent and important right now. It requires us to think about who God is – and that’s theology. We are going to do theological work together this morning! And I am excited to be doing that with all of you. 

I believe that the nature of God as unveiled in process theology provides the best answers to the question we are grappling with today. We are in the midst of a worldwide Coronavirus pandemic. The lives of Black people continue to be terribly harmed by ongoing racism, white supremacy, and police violence. As a consequence, the potential richness of all of our lives is significantly diminished. Climate change threatens our planet’s air, land, water, flora and fauna. Entire species of plants, insects, birds, and mammals are threatened with extinction. Where is God in the midst of all of this? 

But, before we can answer that question, we have to grasp who God is. The God most of us grew up with was presented as all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful, eternal, unchanging, and incapable of suffering or feeling pain. That view of God is widely held and rooted in classical Christian theology. In this view, God is around and active in our lives and maybe the Holy Spirit is with us most of the time, but that “God” exists separate from and outside of the created order. Also, that God has a “will” and “plans” and “laws” and wants us to abide by these or suffer punishment for our disobedience. That God can do whatever he wants. God can choose to act or not to act. God can choose to be in relationship with us or not. That God may be loving and forgiving, but is also presented as a rule-maker, a director of events, and a judge.

But this classical conception of God has a big problem with evil and suffering and injustice. Because, if God knows everything and is supposedly good and loving and is powerful enough to make things happen – like heal the sick, create justice, or prevent the explosion in Beirut – then why does God not act to stop these natural and man-made evils and suffering? Classical theology gets tongue-tied trying to come up answers to that dilemma. They are usually fuzzy and flimsy. This has led to some really dumb or hurtful statements, like “it’s a mystery” or “God’s ways are not our ways” or “we can’t know the mind of God, but surely God must have a good reason for allowing these bad things to happen.” Also, there’s the classic explanation that says, “Well, God has to allow for human free will, so while God could prevent evil and suffering and injustice, but he doesn’t.” These high-level theological reasonings trickle down and become part of Christian personal piety and spirituality. So we often hear in response to an instance of suffering, “everything happens for a reason.” Or, when someone responds to the loss of a loved one, you might hear, “God must have needed another angel is heaven.” Or, to cite a personal example, when I was a newly-minted pastor, I was trying to comfort a mother who had just lost her 16-year-old daughter to cystic fibrosis. The girl died because the hospital could not find a match for a second lung transplant. I said, “She’s in a better place.” No! What better place could there be than with her mother? It still pains me to remember that.

Process theology (PT) offers us a radically different but, also, richer and fuller understanding of God. According to PT, God is not outside of and lording it over the universe as the director of all things. Rather, not only does God know everything that has happened and is happening, God actually participates in every momentary event and experience as it is happening. So God can’t choose not to be in relationship with us or any other entity in the universe. Being in an active relationship with all things is fundamental to who God is. That goes for human beings and all living things – and also for non-organic things, like the boulder I am sitting on – all the way down to the level of subatomic particles.

Take these Hemlock trees behind me, for example. God has been in relationship with them for a lot longer than with any of us. Hemlocks don’t even reach maturity until they are 250 to 300 years old and they can live as long as 800 years! Some tree species live thousands of years. Imagine what a rich relationship God has with these hemlock. Just think of the suffering and struggle – as well as transformation and growth – they and God have experienced together. And God relates to us that way, too. 

God does not impose God’s “will” in the way many Christians have thought about it. God has an intention, a desire for how we ought to interact, and for the choices God would like us to make, but God does not coerce us to do or to choose anything. Instead, God offers us a set of the best possible choices. God tries to persuade us – to lure us – to choose well. Process theology agrees that God is all-knowing, up to a point. God knows everything that has come before and God knows all of the possible choices we might make in particular moments, but God cannot know or determine our future or, for that matter, God’s future. God does not know what we will do until we do it. So God is not all-knowing or all-powerful in that traditional sense. God’s power lies in persuasion, not coercion. That kind of power is based in love.

What a revelation this was for me! Compared to this actual God, who I experience and learned to love, the God of classical theology was very unsatisfying. I especially did not like the idea that we could have an all-powerful God who does not act to prevent evil or suffering. Or, in some versions, we have a God who helps some people in some circumstances, but not in others. That God seemed cold and capricious. I disliked that God so much, that I abandoned my Christian faith and the church for almost 20 years.

So, back to our question: Where is God in our suffering and struggle? God is, in fact, right there with us in every moment – experiencing our suffering, pain, struggle, and injustice. God is with us right now in each millisecond or our experience. God was with me when I was researching and writing this sermon – luring me with possible ways to focus this message and make it as intelligible as possible. And God is with me now, inviting me to stay calm, to overcome my feelings of inadequacy, to feel free and confident enough to ad lib some of what I am saying. And God is with each of you – I hope she is helping you to take this all in and fall in love with God. The point is that God is in our every moment, loving us, comforting us, experiencing everything we experience, and luring us with possibilities that might move us through or out of our suffering and struggle. 

We are not static. We are always emerging and becoming. This becoming is shaped by our relationship with God. God is actually incarnate in our every thought, decision, and act. And, as our friend, John Thatamanil, says: “God’s own life is enriched by the life of the world.” God moves us, but we also move God. God experiences our suffering and pain. And God changes. 

God cannot offer us infinite possibilities. The possibilities available to us are constrained by the past, by personal limitations, and by a host of social and economic inequities and forms of oppression. Yet, the world is ever-changing and we are ever-becoming so new possibilities are constantly arising. God grooves on creativity and novelty and beauty and love and flourishing. And that’s where we find hope. 

We don’t have to live in the same old ways. White supremacy is not set in stone like a Confederate statue. We can see with our own eyes that God is inviting us to consider possible ways to dismantle systemic racism and move toward flourishing for all human persons. And even where suffering cannot be eliminated, God can lure us to alleviate or transform our experience of suffering and pain and struggle. 

We humans often make choices that are harmful to us or to others or to our environment. God does not give up on us. God has been at this for billions of years. God is very patient and also very persistent and very persuasive in the long run.

How does all of this impact our daily lives? First, the ways we understand the character and role of God are critically important in how we think about our individual lives and our life together as a community. For example, how should we pray? If God is not all-powerful, then God cannot answer our prayers in any ordinary sense. Yet, we could say that God lures us toward the answers to our deepest and most loving desires. If God relates to us through persuasion and not coercion, that means we have to engage our freedom to be persuaded AND we carry a huge responsibility for promoting the flourishing of life around us. We are responsible, along with God’s luring, for removing tyrants from power. We are responsible for choosing among the possibilities for reversing the effects of climate change.

Think about this as it relates to the scripture lesson. Doesn’t this passage sound so relevant to our moment in history? The apostle Paul was not a process theologian, yet we can easily read process theology ideas into this passage from Romans – especially in Eugene Peterson’s beautiful paraphrase of Paul’s letter. The whole world is going through difficult times of pain, says Paul. But the whole of creation is pregnant. Process theology says both we and the whole universe are always in the process of becoming. There is new birth all the time. And, Paul writes, God is right there with us, constantly inviting us to participate in this becoming, choosing to act in ways that benefit not only ourselves, but the whole of creation. We love a God who is big, beautiful, loving, luring, and creative. She is the God of possibilities, who longs to help us alleviate and transform our suffering and struggle. God’s deepest desire is to adventure with us into what we can become, what the world can become. This is love. This is our hope.

(c) 2020 Jeff Wells
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