Searching for Goodness
Psalm 146[1]
In some ways, it’s easy to see all that is good in this
world. We don’t have to look any farther than the freshness of a beautiful
morning, or the vibrant colors of a stunning sunset. The world of nature is so
full of beauty we have to make an effort not to see the goodness all around us
all the time. And then there’s our human family. Yes, relationships can be
challenging, but if we direct our attention to what is right about our
relationships, it’s not hard to find plenty of people in our lives who are good
and kind and loving. You know, the ones who know us, flaws and all, and still
treat us with love and respect. You know me well enough that it shouldn’t
surprise you that I find children to be some of the most consistently beautiful
people in this world. All of that and much, much more leads us to conclude with
Louis Armstrong, “and I think to myself, what a wonderful world!”
But there is another side to life in this world, what one
contemporary voice calls the “tragic” side of life.[2] Yes, there are a lot of good and kind people in this world, but there are also
a lot of hurt people who hurt people. Right now, at this moment, there are
perhaps more people in our world who are affected in some way by war than at
any other time in history. So much so that it’s hard to accurately estimate
just how far the violence of war extends. But perhaps an even more “tragic”
side to our experience with this life is that most of us know that we live in a
world where “bad things happen to good people.” Whether it comes from other
people or simply from “life,” when this happens it can be hard for us to see
any goodness in the world at all.
This can pose a serious challenge to our faith. We believe in
a God who is loving and all-powerful. But for some of us, the pain and
suffering in this world make it difficult if not impossible to believe in such
a loving God. Surely a loving God would intervene on behalf of the innocent who
suffer, especially the children. Of course, it makes much more sense to say
that much of the suffering in this world is caused by people rather than blaming
it on God. But we’re still left wondering, in view of all the pain in this
world, whether God is either loving or all-powerful. Some would say God is
loving but can’t do anything about the suffering in this world. I don’t think
that helps very much. Others would take the darker option and conclude that God
is neither loving nor good, precisely because he could do something but chooses
not to. Either way, we’re left with a crisis of faith. And questioning God’s
goodness can leave us wondering if there’s any good in the world at all! That’s
a pretty dark place to be.
I’d like to be able to tell you that the Bible gives us a
clear answer to this dilemma. But it doesn’t. What it does do is continue to
insist that God is both loving and all-powerful. Take, for example, our lesson
from the Psalms for today. The Psalmist affirms that God is all-powerful,
saying, “joyful are those … whose hope is in the Lord their God.
He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them” (Ps 146:5-6, NLT).
Throughout the Bible, God’s creation of all the heavens and the earth, along
with all that is in both the heavens and the earth, stands as the fundamental
witness to God’s power. God alone is the one who had the power to create all
the heavens and the earth, and everything in them. That means that God also has
the power to “keep every promise forever,” so that we can find joy in life by
placing our hope in God. That remains true even in the midst of the confusing
mix of good and evil we have to contend with in this world.
I think it’s important here to sort out what God has and
has not promised. God has not promised to give us everything we want in
life, in the way we want it, when want it. What God promises us is, in a word,
justice. That might not sound very appealing. We think of justice in terms of
crime and punishment. We think God’s justice is the opposite of God’s mercy.[3] But listen to the promises of our Psalm for today: “He gives justice to the
oppressed and food to the hungry. The LORD frees the prisoners. The LORD opens
the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are weighed down. The LORD loves the godly. The LORD
protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows” (Ps
146:7-9, NLT). What God promises is to right the wrongs, to provide for
those who have no means to provide for themselves, to show compassion and mercy
to those who are the least and the left out and the passed over and the shut
out. That’s the kind of justice God promises.
This gives us one way to find goodness in this world.
Wherever there is restoration for those who have been wronged, wherever those
who suffer want have their needs provided, wherever those who endure oppression
find freedom, wherever God cares for the last and the least and the left out,
we can see God’s goodness at work in this world, right here and right now. But
we have to have the right frame of mind to be able to see these things as the
fulfillment of God’s promises and find joy and hope in them. And the frame of
mind we need to see God’s goodness all around us is one of generosity,
compassion, and mercy. That’s because the essence of the promises that our
Scripture lesson says God will keep is generosity, compassion, and mercy. When
our mindset is one of selfishness, or stinginess, or criticism, or we’re stuck
in fear, anger, or envy, it’s hard for us to even see God’s mercy at work in
this world, let alone rejoice in it.
I think Jesus embodies a mindset of generosity, compassion,
and mercy. Of course, he was well aware of all the wrongs in the world. And it
grieved and even angered him when he saw them. But at the end of the day, Jesus
lived with an unwavering confidence in God’s generosity, compassion, and mercy.
As a result, he went about extending that generosity, compassion, and mercy to
others—even to those who opposed him, even to those who were trying to kill
him! That’s what he was doing when he healed a gentile woman’s daughter, even
though both of them would have been despised by most of the Jewish people of
their day. Or when he cared for a deaf mute, who would have been very easy to
overlook and ignore. When we look at people in need with a critical or judgmental
mindset, it lets us off of the hook and makes it easier to just walk right past
them.
But as our lesson from James puts it, “Mercy overrules
judgment” (Jas 2:13, CEB). In our reading from the New Living
Translation we heard that verse rendered, “if you have been merciful, God
will be merciful when he judges you.” But most other versions translate it more
like the Common English Bible: “Mercy overrules judgment.” That’s a
principle that relates not only to God’s judgment, but also to our attitude
toward being judgmental. “Mercy overrules judgment.” Always! One reason for
that is because exercising mercy not only opens our hands so that we share with
those in need, but it also opens our eyes to see how God is keeping his promise
to show mercy and compassion to us all.[4] I think that’s the key to being able to see what is good in this world, even
though a lot of bad things happen. When we learn to see God’s mercy at work in
this world, we can also see the good all around us.
[1] ©
2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, PhD on 9/8/2024 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church.
[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 1st edition, 118-25, where he
defines the “tragic sense of life” in terms of the question “Does anyone know
or care that we are here?” (118), a question he suggests we must ask “In this
world of time and happenstance, of good fortune and bad, of pleasure and pain,
of surpassing joys and nightmarish cruelty and unhappiness” (119). In the context
of this unavoidable dimension of human life, he defines faith as “faith that there
is something that lifts us above the blind force of things, a mind in all this
mindlessness” (125). It is faith “That there is something … or someone
… who stand by us when we are up against the worst, who stands by others, the
least among us” (125), which amounts to saying “yes” to life “for what it is,
neither more nor less, without any additions or subtractions” (120).
[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith,
127: “The opposite of God’s justice is not God’s mercy, but human injustice.”
He goes on to define the “passion for justice” on God’s part reflected in the Hebrew
Bible as directed toward human social structures that are “politically
oppressive,” “economically exploitative,” and “religiously legitimated” (130). The
answer to these unjust social structures is the Kingdom of God, which
represents “what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of
this world were not” (132)!
[4] Cf. Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge: A Shortened Version of ON BEING A
CHRISTIAN, 295-97: “man [sic] can accept the identity, value, and meaningfulness
of reality and of his own existence in particular only with a ‘basic trust.’ …
if man [sic] wants to realize himself at all, if as a person he wants to gain
freedom, identity, meaning, happiness, he can do so only absolute trust in him who
is able to give him all this.” This basic trust is defined as “trust in God,
inspired by faith, as it was made possible by Jesus Christ.”
No comments:
Post a Comment