Wednesday, April 29, 2020

PART 2 - Epidemics and “God”: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Albert Camus’ 'The Plague', and the Question of God



(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 3)

PART 2: Natural Calamities and the God-Question

Negative Limit Experiences (like “Plagues”) and the Question of God

     We saw in The Plague that Camus’ position on the theme <Calamities and the God-Question> is to bracket “God” out of the equation and put the spotlight instead on the absurdity of life (viewed as <the arbitrariness of the destruction of life>). That absurdity is in turn given as the very reason for humans to unite, be in solidarity with one another, and generously give of themselves in order to preserve and enhance life to the best of their abilities.

     Let me reflect now as a theologian and explicitly put the God-question back into the equation in the context of a calamity such as a virulent epidemic by asking: Where is God in all of this?

     The very first thing that strikes me when I do this is the realization that when truly thoughtful people insert “God” into the equation of a natural calamity (even if they happen to be theologians!), the logical reaction is just to feel helpless and stumped. How does one even begin to answer that question? If someone thinks they can deal with that question adequately by facilely declaring clichés such as “God has a mysterious purpose for all,” “All things shall be well in the end,” or some other similarly cozy, comforting, and even cloying formulae, it seems (at least to me) that they are simply not looking at the absurdity and real pain of trauma well enough and … in the eye. In fact, in an interview in Time Magazine, the respected Anglican bishop-New Testament scholar N.T. Wright declared bluntly (referring to the religious meaning of the Covid-19 pandemic),

It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead (Wright 2020)

     Here, Wright touches upon a very important characteristic of religion that is seldom pointed out: that authentic religion cannot actually explain why natural tragedy happens. In more concrete terms, the question “Why does God allow this (… say, pandemic)?” is almost always useless. No one (no matter how high and mighty a religious figure one is) can ever say why. This is the reason why Camus and other thinkers have settled instead on making the very absurdity of life the very means to make better sense of some tragic events. When people demand that religion does something it cannot actually do, the result is equally tragic: people lose their faith in God; they become angry or they sink into despair.

     Wright, I think, rightly shifts the focus onto something religion can and should do—It can soften and deepen the heart to plumb the profundity of compassion through—what he calls—“lament.” Wright explains,

Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world (Wright 2020).

“God” as a “Symbol” of the Human Effort to Wrestle with Life

     And yet humans continue to wrestle with life and its many apparent absurdities. I have come to conclude after many years of studying religion that, seen from a humanistic standpoint, “god” is primarily a symbol of the human effort to wrestle with life’s difficult questions … such as the “why” of natural calamities. In other words, when humans try to make sense especially of great suffering (such as the one caused by disastrous epidemics), they have and continue to invoke “god,” imagining a supernatural and powerful Being with the ability to stop disasters from happening or to turn things around when the situation becomes quite bad. Again, analyzed from a humanistic standpoint, a god who might directly intervene to alleviate the world’s suffering primarily seems to be a symbol of the trust and hope that continue to live on in our hearts which in turn give us the strength and courage to go on with the struggle as we face the different painful challenges that beset us in life. I understand and respect that. However, I also want to acknowledge its severe limitations.

     Now as we have seen, Christianity (and, as far as I know, any other religious tradition) has no easy and conclusive answers to the question of <why do life’s absurd sufferings happen?>. To expand on that by rephrasing it, let me say unambiguously that the “God” invoked by Christianity usually does not have answers to the big “Why” question of calamities such as chaos-generating and deadly epidemics. It’s enough to look at God’s answer to the fabled Old Testament character Job when he requests some answers to the question of his undeserved suffering. God in the book (Job 38-39) proclaims that human wisdom just cannot plumb the mysteriousness of God’s ways (recall “limit experiences”) and so it (human knowledge-wisdom) amounts to nothing before God. That is another way to say that all our human efforts to understand the wherefore and whither, the why and the <to what end?> of suffering are practically pointless in a sense because we will never get any satisfactory answers.

     Even Jesus in the New Testament gospels does not make an effort to answer these questions. Rather, what the Christian tradition embodied especially in Jesus presents is an invitation and a summons (and this is very important), first, to refrain from judging because we really do not know everything; second, to be compassionate for the sufferings that all of us have to endure; and, third, to act resolutely and lovingly to alleviate suffering.

     But the plot thickens with regard to the god-question. If that is so, what use is there for “god” then? Is it any good to have faith in a god who seemingly cannot even supply us with adequate answers to our questions about the apparent random suffering that is visited upon us in life (such as Covid-19)?

     I think that this question is crucially important especially for people who consider themselves believers. Some will simply choose to ignore it for fear of rocking the boat too much and losing their “simple, childhood” faith. As I’ve wrestled with this question through the years though, I’ve realized that unless one faces this gnawing question squarely in the face and attempts to give some response to it, I’m afraid one will never shed a childish faith and advance to a more mature stage of being a believer. So let me share my two cents’ worth coming from some of my efforts over a long time to make sense of the God-question.

“God” as a Hypothesis about Reality

     One of the most useful and thorough books (although a bit on the cerebral side) on the questions of God’s existence and nature that I’ve come upon thus far has been the Catholic theologian Hans Küng’s Does God Exist? An Answer for Today [1980]. There Küng uses a good amount of space to survey and analyze the many efforts to prove, be agnostic about, or deny the existence of God through the centuries. When he comes at last to stating his major conclusions about God’s existence and nature, he starts by positing God as a human hypothesis. God as a hypothesis, Küng proposes, would be the answer to humanity’s most ultimate questions. Apropos that, we can say that these three following questions are probably the most important and consistent “ultimate” questions that human beings have asked:  Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

     Küng points out that if God does exist there would be meaningful answers to those questions. Therefore, in answer to ‘Who are we?’, God would be the ultimate ground of being that defines our identity: We (and all of reality) are all grounded in God; we carry in ourselves—as the Bible says—the divine image (Imago Dei). Thus, God is the “primal ground” for all life and reality.

     In answer to ‘Where do we come from?’, God would be the source, the creator and sustainer of all human and natural existence. God is then the “primal support” of everything.  Finally, in answer to ‘Where are we going?’, God would be the (primal) goal in whom everyone and everything will ultimately find their fulfillment.

     Therefore, the ideal hypothetical situation is that all human and natural life takes on a deeper meaning with this awesome “God” as the ground, support and goal of everything that is. And that would make life definitely worth living to the full, despite the acute menace of fate and death, apparent emptiness and meaninglessness, sin and suffering. This, I can say, is a rather sophisticated way of expressing the traditional God-believer’s ultimate reasons for having belief in God.

     (Another recommended work) On the question of God, a more contemporary and robust exploration of this theme from an explicitly theological lens can be found in Catholic theologian Elizabeth Johnson’s Quest for the Living God (2007). I highly recommend it for further study.

The "Unprovability" of God - Revelation

     Let me underline that in the reflections above, God, we can say, is a hypothesis that humans have and continue to put forward in order to make sense of life. However, there is one big problem that is seldom stated in a straightforward way: It is commonly acknowledged in the discipline called the philosophy of religion that, despite the best efforts of many brilliant minds throughout history, there is actually no definitive way to prove conclusively this hypothesis that God exists. What Küng has stated above is merely that, if the hypothesis of God were true, then all life and existence would take on a deeper and fuller meaning.

     Meanwhile, religious traditions such as Christianity have emphasized the notion of divine revelation: that God has—it is believed—revealed to some chosen humans the very nature of the Divine and also certain firm truths about God and about life which are trustworthy and reliable. Well, I don’t like to enter too deeply into this line of discussion here. Let me just state my personal and very honest opinion on the notion of revelation. I may sound like an agnostic here but bear with me: I honestly think that the concept of revelation just does not speak anymore to many people in the contemporary world—especially people who have not been raised to believe that there is a God.

    Moreover, a detailed historical study of, say, Christianity and of its different supposedly firm and solid revelations (as I have done professionally for practically my whole lifetime as a scholar of religion) will reveal instead that these grandiose claims about “revealed truths” should always be taken more modestly because all so-called “truths” (that not only Christianity but practically any religion proclaims) actually bear the tell-tale marks that they are all too human (more than divine!)—that is, these “truths” are anthropologically, historically, and culturally conditioned in a radical way. It is seldom acknowledged that these very “human” truths have been imbued with an aura of sacredness and infallibility by some authority in the tradition’s history more than anything else for the purpose of forging a given community’s identity through a common belief in supposedly “revealed truths” rather than as a witness to conclusively demonstrable truths. Despite that, I continue to be a person of faith-trust for reasons I cannot explain sufficiently here but let me just say now that I am a very, very “modest” believer (hoping that I will have to explain my reasons for being so on another occasion). For these reasons, I do not usually like to take the path of “divine revelation” when attempting to speak about “God” to present-day people (to myself first and foremost!) who are on the whole historically conscious and are trained to think critically through things.

     The more fruitful path to take for me when we attempt to study religion and the idea of God (or gods) nowadays, especially when it is done in the context of a growing number of people in my (Western) context who consider themselves SBNR (Spiritual but not Religious), “Dones” (We’re “done” with religion!), or “Nones” (We have NO religion!), is rather to understand religion and the idea that there might be a God as first and foremost a human endeavour to search for meaning. “God” functions then as a way that humans have made use of in order to add meaning to life or to make some sense of life—life which many times can be very mysterious indeed.

     Can there be other ways of making life meaningful other than positing the God hypothesis? Of course there are! This is by no means the only way to “create meaning.” But it is probably the way by which most people have tried to make sense of life and reality throughout human history. That is why it is still important that we study the God-question if we are to understand humans and everything connected with them.

Agnosticism and Atheism Compared with Faith in God

     But let’s get back to Hans Küng. Toward the end of his tome on God, Küng, who at this point has already surveyed and analyzed the many efforts to prove, be agnostic about, or deny the existence of God through the centuries, draws a stark conclusion. He states bluntly that, in front of life and its utter mysteriousness (recall again “limit experiences”), both a denial and an affirmation of God are actually rationally possible as choices that humans could make (568).

     Let’s expand on that. First, atheism then is definitely a possible and, in many ways, a rational option in front of life’s mysteries. There is no way to refute or eliminate it rationally. For some people, the dominant experience of reality is that it is radically uncertain and even absurd. There is simply no way to “be certain” that there exists a primal source and a primal support of, let alone a primal goal for everything. Hence, for them, an agnosticism (“I just don’t know about ultimate realities and I prefer not to discuss them” attitude) that often tends toward atheism is the option that makes the most sense. This is very common nowadays and it is not always bad despite what religious people usually say. In fact, agnosticism could be a sign of a healthy humility and that the agnostic person has transcended some simplistic, naïve, and childish images of God.

     For some others, the dominant factors in their experience of reality are darker: radical chaos, irreparable hurt and damage, illusion, meaningless suffering, absurdity, and nonbeing. For them then an atheism that tends toward nihilism is the position that makes the most sense (569).

     Küng asserts however that there is another possible choice that is not irrational by any means and hence also deserves respect and legitimacy even in our secular age. This position is perfectly justifiable even in a rational way – it is the position of the person of faith-trust (note that “faith-trust” might be the best description of “religious belief”) who, despite the radical uncertainty and even the seemingly meaningless suffering and absurdity that characterize reality (life), still decides to have faith and trust in a primal ground, support, and goal of life and all reality – a Being commonly known as “God.”

     Of course, this rationally justifiable “God” should be nuanced well and explained more at length. (And that is not my aim here. I will save it for another occasion.) What we can say is that it is definitely not the “god” of earlier and more naïve stages of faith that could not hold up against the deconstructive critiques of contemporary agnosticism and atheism (such as from the “New Atheists”). Many crude and heavily anthropomorphic ideas of god espoused by a great many religious believers are what modern skepticism about God can arguably attack and refute, and perhaps rightly so. This, we can say, is the “god” that the philosopher Nietzsche proclaimed as dead and, again, perhaps rightly so. The rationally justifiable God is a more robust and mature idea of what Küng refers to as faith-trust in a primal source, support and goal of all life and reality.

CONTINUED IN PART 3
(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 3)


******

Works Cited and Others Work for Further Study

Cupitt, Don (2015). Creative Faith: Religion as a Way of Worldmaking. Salem, OR: Polebridge.

______ (1999). The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech. London: SCM.

Gregg, Carl (2012). “Do We Need a Moratorium on ‘God’?” Patheos, Published October 8, 2012. Accessed April 22, 2020. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2012/10/do-we-need-a-moratorium-on-the-word-god/.

Johnson, Elizabeth (2007). Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God. London: Bloombsury.

Küng, Hans (1981). Does God Exist? An Answer for Today. New York: Vintage.

School of Life (2020). “Albert Camus – The Plague.” YouTube Video, April 1, 2020. Accessed April 20, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYPwX4NPg4&t=62s.

N.T. Wright (2020). “Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To.” Time, March 29, 2020. Accessed April 12, 2020. https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/.

*****

No comments:

Post a Comment