Job & the Trauma of God

“Job’s response is not a confession of sin but a recognition of his limited knowledge about the God who has led him to discover Wisdom in the world at large. Job does not confess; he concedes he has done no wrong but that his knowledge of God is limited!”

- Trauma and Wisdom Therapy- A Commentary on Job, Norman Habel

God trauma is a horrific thing, Habel has written a book, superficial on the whole, but spotted with a few interesting thoughts throughout, that uses Job to illustrate both the experience, and one possible, almost Taoist, way through it, although I would point to many ways.

I'll mention this is not just a theoretical book, such as that of the much better thinker Marcus Pound, who has a view of Christianity not as something which heals the sense of alienation or split that accompanies us in so many ways; rather, Pound claims, it posits the split as such, only now from the perspective of excess.

I ought to also mention, this isn’t a Christian interpretation of Job, but a strait reading. For most ancient peoples, including Christians up until the 1500’s, if a text was deemed “scripture” it was used to commune with a god, it was thought to be this god speaking in the here and now, it always needed to be interpreted, (contra Luther’s rule of reading the plain sense) hence in Gregory the Great’s 4 volumes on Job he constantly plea’s with the reader not to read with fleshly eyes. I’ve written on how traditional Christians read the Bible HERE

Psychologically, Job is often seen as man beginning to have a new vision of God.

In any case, there are many ways to read the text, this is but one, which I think sheds light upon the experience of God trauma. I’ll simply quote large chunks and occasionally comment in blue.

In Trauma and Wisdom Therapy- A Commentary on Job -- Norman C_ Habel he remarks that the first thing Job is forced to confront is the “Eternal Why” as he explores the misery of meaningless existence.

For Job and the Wisdom community that Job represents, the hedge Job experiences is the opposite of what it’s supposed to be, a barrier to misfortune, and now acts as a boundary of inescapable misery created by God, here identified as the ancient Eloah.

His friends appear, accuse Job, give their own version of God and His ways, and Job tells them their words are all hot air and obvious untruths.

Job then moves to accuse God as his very enemy.

Habel writes,

“The narrater shows how a human being experiencing extreme trauma can come to the frightening conclusion that misery, servitude, and suffering are inevitable consequences of being a human being living on Earth.

He even goes so far as to laugh at the tradition that human beings are created in the image of God. They are not created to rule on Earth but to be slaves and hirelings.

Job does not experience his identity as being imago Dei (in the image of God), but as imago servi (a slave of God).

"Despite the devastating trauma of his community, the narrator reflects a wild hope embedded among expressions of deep despair and a sense of hopelessness. The narrator refuses to succumb to total despair; he dreams of a new day for his people, even if it is portrayed as a bizarre return from Sheol.

Yet, beyond the Covenant God and the God of unwarranted disasters, the narrator has Job expecting an unidentified power to intervene that will enable Job to “see” a different God, face to face. The way in which that hope is finally fulfilled for the traumatized Wisdom community is a consummate leap of faith by the Wisdom-oriented narrator.

Suddenly, amid his trauma, his agony, his isolation, and his hope of litigation, he has a wild dream of a Redeemer rising to be his advocate!

The trauma portrayal of Job is designed to undermine the concept of retributive justice as pivotal for divine human relations and to explore a new paradigm for understanding the role of divine justice in the world of a community suffering trauma.

The Covenant God of reward and retribution deserves to be exposed as a false god.

The pain, it would seem, is not so much due to the sickening impact of the colorful portrayal of the worlds of the wicked but rather the harsh reality that retributive justice is understood to be at the center of God’s relationship with humans.

Job, however, is willing to expose the Covenant God of Israel as a futile source of support for his traumatized companions.

Job is not willing to concede that ultimately God may be in the right. Nor is Job willing to forgive God.”

                                                            

Habel then speaks of the next few stages on the way to wisdom :

“Job asks why he was born and forced to live in miseryAbove all, he asks why a hedge has been planted around him so that he sees no “way”—no meaning, purpose, or direction in life.

To ask “the eternal why” activates the spirit of the trauma sufferer to take even bolder steps— in contemporary terms activates the stress hormones in the mind, or in Wisdom School terms awakens the incarnate Wisdom in the heart.

Stage 2

Scream Bloody Murder

Job moves beyond questions of why or calls for compassion to screams and violent outbursts of anger in the face of the Covenant God whose harsh ways the community has been expected to endorse.

Stage 3

Test Your Old Beliefs

Job challenges the very idea that God is a constant compassionate and caring companion. In particular, he challenges the reality of a righteous God who is renowned for his fair administration of reward and retribution. He even accuses his God of being a Seeing Eye who relishes the sight of Job’s trauma.

Stage 4

Take a Leap of Faith

When the God of traditional values seems to be nothing short of an adversary or even an enemy, the trauma sufferer may contemplate suicide. Alternatively, he or she may dare to take a bold leap of faith and confront that God with a barrage of accusations or an attempt to take that God to court to reveal that God’s guilt.

Job contemplates that leap of faith and faces endless frustration until the healing process begins and he formulates in writing his declaration of innocence.

The decision of Job to record his experiences in writing is a precedent that the Wisdom narrator introduces to a traumatized community reluctant to make their faltering faith public.

The stage of challenging prior traditional understandings of God prepares the way for the introduction of existential Wisdom and Wisdom therapy to guide Job and the traumatized Wisdom community on a journey toward healing.

                                                  

Interactive Stages

Stage 1

Go Back to Wisdom School

That mystery is encompassed in an ancient poem that may well be designated a Wisdom Manifesto (ch. 28). In that declaration, we are confronted not only with the science of how to find existential Wisdom but also with a God whom the wise recognize as the original Wisdom Scientist. This God is a far cry from the perception of the Covenant God found in part I of this volume.

The healing journey begins when the trauma sufferer goes back to Wisdom School, meets the original Wisdom Scientist, and discovers the way to find Wisdom in a world of searching and suffering.

Stage 2

Tell Your Trauma Story

By making their trauma experiences public, the traumatized Wisdom community, whom the narrator is challenging, has opened the way to discern a solution to understanding the nature of their plight and their God.

Stage 3

Recognize the Option of a Would-Be Arbiter

Unfortunately Job had none, but someone may function as this.

Stage 4

Explore the Locus of Wisdom with the Wisdom Therapist

God, the Wisdom Therapist, poses insightful questions that challenge Job to leave the dust and ashes of his trauma location and explore locations where the healing presence of innate Wisdom may be discerned in the complex design of the cosmos.

The Wisdom therapy of the book of Job involves experiencing provocative questions that challenge previous understandings of God and reality, questions that guide the trauma sufferer into amazing new levels of consciousness that overwhelm the cruel world of trauma.

The narrator has opened the doubting minds and the traumatized spirits of his Wisdom community to an amazing cosmos where mystery and meaning are embedded in the “ways” of Wisdom that function as healing pulses for all who are conscious of their spiritual presence in the cosmos.

Stage 5

Celebrate Healing

Job is ready to withdraw his court case against God, leave his trauma location identified with dust and ashes, and explore.

Job has gained a deep Wisdom consciousness about the presence of Wisdom active in the world that surrounds him. Job has discerned God as the Presence of Cosmic Wisdom.

The Wisdom therapy Job experiences also has the potential for the traumatized community whom Job represents to dismiss their Covenant God and be free to experience the Wisdom that the Wisdom God identifies operating in every component of the cosmos that surrounds them, a freedom that is worth celebrating.

Wisdom was not first and foremost something humans “acquired” (qana), but A driving force in nature, a dynamic dimension of the universe discerned by ancient scientists of the Wisdom School, a force that warrants investigation even today.

Wisdom in this school of thought was not primarily a depth of knowledge acquired by the wise, but a vibrant innate force dimension in the domains of nature, and ultimately in the cosmos.

Ironically, the God who finds Wisdom does finally speak, but his therapy does not focus directly on the personal guilt or trauma of Job but beyond Job on the Wisdom design of the cosmos.”

Thus, it doesn’t focus on answers, but rather on being present and open to a force, a Tao, a way. I've written on Ritual Knowing being a direction, not an explanation HERE.

Job, in the midst of his trauma, associates God’s inherent Wisdom with his power..

The educated reader will notice this corresponds to calvinistic and modern conceptions of God, departing from classical theism, that privilege His will above His nature, as Love, making God something like a really powerful person, a being in this universe existing more or less as everything else exists and acts, whose will is then in contest with ours, approached with a discourse of information rather than transformation, as I wrote about HERE. 

“Wisdom is not to be discerned by trying to understand the mind of God but by recognizing that Wisdom is a cosmic reality.

                                                        

Job does not rehearse all the pains of his life again, even though Job outlines his personal history in his litigation narrative. In this Wisdom therapy, Job is taken on a journey with a different God—this God’s own life story is related to the cosmos and its origins. On that journey, Job experiences the therapy of endless questions about the wonders and design of a Wisdom-filled universe.

The outcome of this form of Wisdom therapy is for Job to gain an amazing cosmic consciousness, a profound Wisdom consciousness, and a challenging primordial consciousness—a new relationship with the Wisdom presence in the cosmos that surrounds him and the enigma of a God, the Wisdom Scientist who discerned Wisdom in creation.”

This reminds me of the venerable way of unknowing, privileged in eastern Orthodox Christian apophaticism, or negative theology, and spoken about in works like the medieval mystical text The Cloud of Unknowing teaches that you can only experience God by forgetting and unknowing what you are most certain about.

Or St. Gregory of Nyssa’s way of constantly purging yourself of concepts viewing the journey towards God as a progression from light to a "dazzling darkness," where true knowledge is found in unknowing, Nicholas of Cusa’a Learned Ignorance, or in eastern ways, such as Ramana Maharshi’s way questioning just who is doing the questioning until one realizes one is not one’s mind, and even in modern therapy modalities such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy where you create space between your thoughts and your observer self.

Wisdom therapy involves responding to a range of insightful questions that enable you to leap from the misery of the moment into the mysteries of the cosmos, from the turmoil of trauma into the unknown of the universe, where Wisdom is a pervasive, positive presence and its role a therapeutic force that binds and guides the realms of creation.

The God YHWH that the Wisdom narrator claims is the voice from the whirlwind is clearly not the divine caricature called YHWH found in the prologue NOR the Covenant God of the friends OR the storm God El that Elihu claims to defend.

While the voice from the whirlwind may appear to reflect a common theophanic tradition, the process is one of discerning interrogation, not revelation of divine truths or messages. The image of the Wisdom Therapist is radically different from the images of the Covenant God in the discourses of the friends.

The task of Job is to explore mysteries in a complex cosmos, not to heed a revelation from the traditional God of Israel. The challenge to this “hero” is not one of strength but of knowledge, Wisdom, and discernment.

Significantly, the realms where Job is expected to discover the “answers” to the profound questions posed by the whirlwind therapist are in nature not society, in the domains of the cosmos and world of the wild, not the human communities where Job experienced his traumatic disasters.

The God whom Job encounters in the wild is far from the wild God that Job believed was harassing him in society, or the storm God El that Elihu claims to defend.

                                                              

Job comes to know a God of cosmic Wisdom that transforms the trauma sufferer into a human being with a rich cosmic consciousness, an acute awareness of the domains of the cosmos to which he is connected by a common force called Wisdom.

Job’s response is not a confession of sin but a recognition of his limited knowledge about the God who has led him to discover Wisdom in the world at large.

Job does not confess; he concedes he has done no wrong but that his knowledge of God is limited!

By exploring the operation of Wisdom among the creatures of the wild, the person experiencing trauma in society may experience a liberating vision in nature:

'The ibex “know” their time of delivery. The hawk and the eagle have “the discernment” needed to soar over rocky crags. Every creature is expected to possess innate Wisdom, which is why the ostrich episode is so provocative. Innate Wisdom is tantamount o incarnate know-how!'

By posing questions about the creatures of the wild, the therapist leads Job to move beyond his victim mentality as a traumatized human being to discern his “place” is the wider community of the wild where innate Wisdom guides all living creatures, even those in the wild, to celebrate life.

God acknowledges that Job is the one seeking to bring God to court, but God responds by challenging Job to prove his capacity to comprehend the ways of Wisdom in the cosmos rather than face him in court.

In this response, Job recognizes he is “small,” especially in the context of the cosmic design. He does not confess “I have sinned” or “I have done wrong.” 

“I am small” implies “I am humbled by the speeches of God just as I previously believed I was humbled by his afflictions” (7:1–6). At this point, Job does not retract his case, but neither does he renew his challenge against God. 

For Job the case may be closed, but YHWH renews the challenge with the introduction of Behemoth and Leviathan in the speeches that follow.

In this text, God declares that dominion over creatures such as the wild ass and the wild ox is not possible for humans. The wild ass defies the world of humans and refuses to obey a human taskmaster.

                                                             

In this discourse, the therapist who has awakened Job’s cosmic consciousness (ch. 38) and Job’s Wisdom consciousness (ch. 39) now awakens Job’s primordial consciousness. Job is also connected to the domains of chaos that are part of God’s cosmic design. To discern innate Wisdom active in all the domains of the universe is to “see” the dynamic Presence of Wisdom permeating the cosmos, and in the process to “see” God.

I have written HERE on how it is not from metaphysics that one is "inspired" to see the meaning of nature, perception must be morally conditioned -the senses rendered rational to mirror the rationality of the world, the Platonic axiom that “Only like can know, and be known by, like.”

I would say, and have written HERE we must be shaped a certain way to perceive the world. As Charles Taylor has shown, rather than the enlightenment subtracting various belief structure to show us the “real world” it simply replaced them, which we take for granted. 

After all, ritual shapes us and only certain kinds of people can receive the world a certain way, HERE I discuss this more. 

"It is now possible for Job to respond to this presence, not as an angry adversary, but as a humble human ready to answer his Wisdom Therapist and enunciate the radical change that has occurred in his understanding of reality.

In a roundabout way, Job has achieved his goal to meet God, not as his adversary in court but as the Wisdom Presence in the design of the cosmos. To see God as Wisdom Presence in the cosmos overcomes his sense of God as the Seeing Eye observing him down on Earth. God can be “seen” in the domains and design of the cosmos, not necessarily as a discrete celestial being but as a Wisdom force that integrates, permeates, and activates the Universe.”

I’ll mention this is a all a new way to imagine God, Newsom, in her book Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations, writes of a “Bakhtinian loophole” left in its various understandings and notes that Job’s response reserves “the possibility of a word yet to be spoken.” In Job we see several conceptions of God as well as reactions to our human experience.

Habel, in contrast to theological attempts to understand (the God of) the Book of Job, analyzes its subject; and, yet in contrast to accounts primarily based on psychodynamic models of personhood, it does not solely focus on the subjective experience of Job, but rather attempts to reconnect the self and the world.

Rudolf Allers, the famous existentialist Therapist defined as the ultimate goal of all psychotherapy: To reconcile man and the world by looking not only at what is (conditions), but also at that which could (freedom) and should (meaning) be.”

As such, Marshall H. Lewis, a logo therapist commenting on Job, will say,

“….the problem is perhaps not so much the unfound answer as it is the question. For inasmuch as impersonal meaning would be the designator of something so remote from everyday human existence that it would have little, if any, actual existential relevance, an impersonal, generic answer to the problem of suffering would also be far too removed from actual human experience to be of solace, or perhaps even understandable (which, by the way, also portrays Frankl’s position on the theodicy problem: He held that there is indeed an answer, but one that we would not be able to understand intellectually). But…it is possible to address the problem of evil and suffering without fully understanding it; and the answer is not merely cognitive or affective, but existential.”

Another Logotherapist commenting on Job, Dr Atlas, states, “Like Job, the logotherapeutic patients are educated to realize that their problem may not be answered, and perhaps, need not be answered. Frankl and Job teach the patient and the student respectively to have unconditional trust in a very conditional life.”

Of course, only when a person is in contact with the world, somatically, fully being in the world, so that the logos, or spirit, or Tao, governing the cosmos is at one with the the inner impulses of the nous, yielding a real felt connection, can anything like secure trust in life occur…but…trust for what? Safety? Love? Protection?….

This largely depends upon the person, as I've written HERE, as the phenomena of life is projected upon a specific map of consciousness, often inherited, and then, even when contested, simply swapped for another available framework defined within that particular culture, often believed by the person to be some pure objective stance.

Even if such a thing existed, if you've got a torn, twisted movie screen, the picture is gonna look awfully warped.

Or, from a Catholic perspective, as the theologian Herbert McCabe puts it,

"The story of Jesus...is the projection of the Trinitarian life of God on the rubbish dump that we have made of the world….

That the Trinity looks like a story of (is a story of ) rejection, torture and murder, but also of reconciliation is because it is being projected on, lived out on, our rubbish tip; it is because of the brokenness of the world."

Hope - Virtue or Rhetorical Technique?

                                                                   

        Jeffrey S. Metcalfe notes that for Augustine the supreme happiness in temporal life is never achieved, so love and hope are also required. Love cannot exist without hope.

For Augustine, without the hope that a future good will result from one’s love and faith, faith sets up a happiness that excludes its beholder: faith becomes terror.

Without hope, love ceases to produce any happiness in the present, for one’s failure to love completely will always remain a source of misery.

Without hope, the believers faith will be miserable, there will be no happiness in the present, and thus, his love will not move him into action. Without love moving him into action, his hope is pointless, and his faith empty.

However, for consolation St Augustine says that “though human life is compelled to be wretched by all the grievous evils of this world…so we do not enjoy a present happiness, but look forward to happiness in the future.”

For the Black Theologian Vincent Lloyd this hope is the textbook definition of classical psychoanalytical melancholia.“In both, an object is lost, it is mourning without end, the bereaved individual feels the loss not in the external world but in herself, thereby securing a present identity in an eternal loss.”

The only difference between Augustinian hope and mourning, he says, is that,

“In hope, that object is projected into the future, in melancholia, it is projected into the past.”

In this light, Lloyd claims that the virtue of hope serves as a tactic to avoid tragedy. “When one object is pushed so far forward that it is no longer part of our time, It is just hope.” This serves as a threat to ordinary life precisely because this hope is not of our time: the eternal future is always in the future.

Lloyd believes that hope obfuscates this process. “Thus, the effect associated with hopefulness, the cheery disposition for which no cause can be found, is in fact the affect produced by a most profound melancholia.”

This leads Lloyd to conclude that “hope is not a virtue, it is a rhetorical technique.” He recommends Joy.

Unlike hope, joy can delight and move the hearer, and since it does not intend any future object, it eludes the problematic of hope by refusing to bypass the tragedies of real situations. “It begins in the ordinary and stays in the ordinary.”

Of course, one may ask - “Whence joy? In what exactly?”

This is in contrast with the philosopher of love Gillian Rose who does believe in hope, only for her, unlike Augustine, hope’s object is not an eternal future, but an eternal present.

Hope allows this speculative identity to be thought by suspending any secured links in the present to the future and the past, which allows for a present identity to be projected into the future without a priori confirming it.

That this identity might be negated in the future, as the future will be negated in the present, does not adversely affect hope.


Thus Rose writes, “If I am to stay alive, I am bound to get love wrong, all the time, but not to cease wooing, for that is my love affair, love’s work.”

Here love’s work is made possible by Rose’s refusal to cease wooing which is faith: a commitment to persevere even in the prospect of certain failure.

This seems like an awfully shaky proposition, hoping some future imagined identity, which may never be, will withstand the bloody vicissitudes of life.

Oddly, all these writers leave out the Christian response, at least in Eastern Orthodoxy. The Early Fathers will say that we have been given a foretaste of heaven, this we experience primarily through Grace or the working of the Holy Spirit. Also, we have, at present, a gift that acts as some kind of assurance - the gift of Faith. In fact, for the apostles, faith and hope were practically interchangeable.

There is a problem though.

Since we can only know God through analogy, the Saints speak of this joy as a great wedding feast, a marriage consummation, the care of a loving father, the wooing of young lovers, or the wonder when witnessing the birth of a child.

Indeed, even the experience of beauty itself, or perhaps a glimpse of paradise breaks through when we are carried away during liturgy or in prayer.

Is this enough? That depends on ones internal disorder, the external stresses one suffers, and what barriers to those stressors one has - friends, community, work, a partner etc Perhaps an experience of divine rescue, from addiction, loneliness, or ill health…

What of the rejected? The ones who know no good father, or security in this life, who’ve never married, whose every earthly hope has been shattered and betrayed? Is a pretty liturgy enough?

For these, where is their hope? 

Hope is often treated as if it were exclusively a private resource that individuals develop from within and sustain apart from others.

Yet this ignores the enormous role of loving friends and family or a caring community.

On their essay Hope, Attachment and LovevAnthony Scioli and Henry Biller note that,

“…. to experience a full measure of hope, an individual must perceive a living presence that can give as well as receive….attachments are crucial for its development. .bonds with others serve as both a basis for generalized hopefulness as well as grounding for specific hopes and dreams.”

Relationship expert John Gottman describes how success in marriage depends on “encouraging one another’s dreams and aspirations”.

Gina O'Connell Higgins’ book, Resilient Adults, deals with survivors of severe  childhood abuse.  Conceptualizing hope as a gift imparted by a special provider, she quotes survivors’ experiences of friends or caring adults in terms suggestive of received “light”, a “safe harbor” or a “safe haven”.

Erikson linked hope to basic trust and receiving adequate care in the earliest years of life. For Erikson, hope was the bedrock on which the other human virtues might be established. It was “a very basic human strength without which we couldn't stay alive.”

The theologian William Lynch stated that hopeful attitude is grounded in affirmation and acceptance. Lynch also noted, “the wholly interior hope is a romantic fiction”. It is derived in large part from external provisions such as"liberating relationships.”

Essentially, such development as an adequate attachment system (level 1) facilitates basic trust (level 2) which spawns greater differentiated trust (Level 3), leading to stronger faith development (level 4), which translates into adaptive daily hope responses (level 5).

For those who have been denied these developmental stages of trust, only the cross of Christ remains, and, as such, it is not humanly possible to wish for one's own crucifixion.

This is why the Dark Night of the Soul requires perfect passivity for God’s action, man can never will their own deconstruction. Man can only wish for God’s peace, or His love, or His Grace, but only God can desire God for Himself.

When man is utterly undone, decentered, beyond human help, and begins the threefold reduction; pinned to existence and helpless, he finally abandons understanding for faith, memory for hope, and willing to love.

Even the former Pope Razinger, in his essay On Hope, admits the needs for a kind of secure base of human love first:

“Being is not good, especially if you have not experienced it as welcome, have not had “Yes” said to you, that is, if you have not been loved. This indicates that the fear which transcends all fears is the fear of losing love altogether, fear of an existence in which the little daily disturbances fill everything, without anything large and reassuring coming along to keep the balance. Then these little fears, if they constitute everything that can be expected of the future, will pass over into the great fear—fear of an unbearable life—because hope no longer dwells in it. In this case, death, which is the end of all hopes, becomes the only hope

If the fear that transcends all fears is in the last resort fear of losing love, then the hope which transcends all hopes is the assurance of being showered with the gift of a great love.

One could then say that simple objects become hopes by taking on the coloration of love, by more or less resembling it, each according to its uniqueness. Inversely, in fears one always finds the feeling of not being loved, a hope of love, but a trampled one."

What kind of love does the hope that transcends all hopes await? This is the genuine hope which Dr. Herbert Plugge of Heidelberg, on the basis of his contacts with the terminally ill and the suicidal, calls the “fundamental hope.” Without any doubt man wants to be loved by others.

We need the answer of a human love, but this response reaches farther out of itself toward the infinite, toward a world redeemed.”

To achieve this is no mean thing. It’s common knowledge where poverty reigns so does belief in God. Suffering is a nessasary feature of Christian spirituality. Pope Benedict XVI continues,

“that for the sake of their faith Christians have lost “ta hyparchonta,” that is, their money, their possessions, and what appears in ordinary life to be the “substance” upon which a life can be constructed.

…it is precisely through the loss of what ordinarily constitutes “substance,” the basis of daily living, thatChristians are shown that in fact they have a better “hyparxis.”

However, modern American Christians surely fool themselves when they speak of any thick faith in God; they who can relay on 401k’s, medical science, the Government, and live in tiny fiefdoms where casual desires are instantly gratified at a whim.

For these Ratzinger says,

“…what develops is a pseudo-hope that can only deceive man in the end. The law of possession constrains him to “hypostole,” to the game of hide and seek, of compromises by which one tries to assure oneself of the sympathy of the powers that be, by hanging on to one’s “substance.”

He recommends a Franciscan spirituality, saying,

“Francis is the witness and guardian of hope because he has helped us “accept with joy” (Heb 10:34) the loss of rank, of position, of possessions, and has made visible, behind the false hopes, the true, the genuine hope—the one that no one can confiscate or destroy.”

In his last years Francis had lost everything—health, possessions, his own foundation “ta hyparch-onta.” And it is precisely from this man that the most delightfully joyous words issue. With all his hopes taken away, all his disappointments, there shines forth the “fundamental hope” in its invincible grandeur. Francis had truly left the “accidental” to enter into “substance.” Free of the multiplicity of hopes, he has become the great witness that man has hope, that he is a being of hope.”

Yes, even for a Saint, it took near complete disposition for him to finally relay exclusively on God, hence the former Pope concludes,

“We can remain people of hope only if our life is not contentedly grounded in the everyday but is solidly rooted in “substance.”

I cannot say the same for most other Christians.

So, is it possible to have a hope without a future in the present?

I’ll end with a catchy phrase by St Silouan the Athonite:

“Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not.”

                                                              

Is it a Sin to be Happy? Maybe a little bit

                                                

Christianity is all about happiness, finding our true home, and has always acknowledge the righteous of enjoyment of the goods of the earth….but it’s pretty unique in how it frames things.

Take the beatitudes, what does it mean to be blessed?

David Bentley Hart translation of the NT its it this way:

“How blissful the destitute, abject in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the heavens;"

In his foot note Hart says, “μακάριος (makarios): “blessed,” “happy,” “fortunate,” “prosperous,” but originally with a connotation of divine or heavenly bliss.

The great NT scholar R.T. France says,

“'Blessed’ is a misleading translation of makarios, which does not denote one whom God blesses (which would be eulogētos, reflecting Heb. bārûk), but represents the Hebrew ’ašrê, 'fortunate’, and is used, like ’ašrê, almost entirely in the formal setting of a beatitude.

It introduces someone who is to be congratulated, someone whose place in life is an enviable one. ‘Happy’ is better than ‘blessed’, but only if used not of a mental state but of a condition of life. ‘Fortunate’ or ‘well off’ is less ambiguous. It is not a psychological description, but a recommendation.”

So the point was a complete class reversal of fortunes .

This is a word that was often used in the Classical period to describe the life of the gods.  

From the perspective of Greek paganism, one participated in this divine life through sexual and other indulgences, through prosperity and leisure, and through the acquisition and of power and victory. 

In the Beatitudes, Christ reorients, indeed, inverts what it looks like to share in that life in this world and this age while maintaining in its fullness what that means in the age and world to come.

However, as Fr Stephen de Young comments, 

"Christ teaches that those who experience the beginnings of this destiny in the present world are not the prosperous, the wealthy, the powerful, and the victorious.  Rather, they are those who, despite being in the Spirit, are poor.  They are those who mourn losses.  They are those who are humble.  They are those who hunger and thirst for justice which eludes them in this world. 

These are not those who were seen by ancient cultures to be living the best human life, let alone the life of the gods.  These are those whom the ancients saw as unworthy at best or at worst, under a curse.

St. Luke makes the contrast between ancient understanding and Christ’s teaching even more explicit by paralleling a shortened list of the Beatitudes with a series of woes.”

De young continues,

“The poor are happy but the rich are under a curse.  The hungry are blissful but the full are accursed.  Those who weep are blessed but those who laugh are doomed. 

Those who are hated, excluded, mocked, and derided are experiencing the divine life, while those who are of good reputation and spoken of well by all are damned already. 

For St. Luke, those who enjoy success, prosperity, wealth, and power in this life do so through wickedness and are on a trajectory that leads not to eternal life, but to death, curse, and condemnation in the age to come, an age which has no end.”

Of course, despite all of those troubles, the Spirit bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Eudaimonia as a concept is more related to success, prosperity, and goodness of a life lived in this world - the goal of an ethical or moral life.

It simply lacks the eschatological element exemplified by the Beatitudes. And eschatology makes all the difference.

Jonathan T. Pennington, assistant professor of New Testament interpretation, actually renders the nine occurrences of μακάριος in the Beatitudes in 5:3–12 as “flourishing,” instead of “blessed,”

In an interview about his new book, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, he says,

“Christ doesn’t say, “Flourishing is when you have lots of kids,” “Flourishing are those who have tons of money,” “Flourishing are the prestigious ones in society,” “Flourishing are the virtuous ones in society.”

Instead, it’s flourishing when you have a poverty of spirit, a hungering or thirsting — not positive things.

When you are humble, that means not getting your rights.

When you’re merciful, you are giving up your rights and forgiving someone who has wronged you. All these things he describes as flourishing are totally unexpected.”

 After all the rewards for the six beatitudes in the middle of Lukes Gospel are all in the future tense!

So, the disciples of Jesus flourish because they know that they already are included as citizens of the coming kingdom of heaven. 

As the Christian philosopher David Naugle cleverly observes, biblical happiness is “edenistic,” not “hedonistic”—it is based on God’s creation and re-creation of the world.”

        

                                                               

I’ll point out a few things, in the past, without the constant rustling of alternative lewis that put Christian faith into question, without the scientific materialistic view of the cosmos that unconsciously shapes our perceptions, without the psychological mechanical view of the person as an animal and bundle of psychic drives, and within a tight community of similar believers, it was a lot easier and more plausible to hold this hope. Even among pagans, these still believed in gods and a universe sufficed with mysterious forces and spirits.

One might ask if it is plausible for modern Christians to hold onto such hope in our modern world? Especially with the loud cacophony pop voices promoting and offering easier, less painful alternatives?

Of course, the question arrises if we even ought to want happiness?

If scientific means were found to assure happiness, Darrin McMahon concluded in his recent history of Western thought on happiness, we would "be leaving a piece of [our] humanity behind.”

Mark Litmore comments that “Half century's work on religion suggests it also is a term we should regard with suspicion. It is a modern concept that conflates rather than illuminates,”

We all know the dangers of the prosperity gospel, and famously Christian Smith has pointed out the emergent national religion one might call "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

Happiness is at its center:

1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die

Where religion promises worldly happiness by unworldly means, it seems to betray
both religion and the legitimate pursuit of happiness in this world.

In Christianity, it’s almost as if a life of good fortune is a terrible danger:

“The most dangerous evil in life is not suffering but tranquility.

….holy men, when they see this world’s prosperity to be their lot, are disquieted with fearful misgivings.

For they fear lest they should receive here the fruit of their labours…

And hence it is that holy men are in greater dread of prosperity in this world than of adversity.”

- St Gregory the Great’s commentary on The Book of Job

This is also bound up with Christianity’s confusing relationship with its own stance of self-denial and psychology’s self-improvement.

Those who look to the mystical tradition, the Spirituality of the Desert, claim that self-denial is the path to spiritual enlightenment and discovery of the true self; the ego is a false self. By contrast, the world of psychology endorses the merits of a healthy ego.

However even a muddled mystic as Richard Rohr acknowledges that in the first half of life we need boundaries, a sense of identity and order for our lives:

“You have to first have an ego structure to then let go of it and move beyond it.”

Although it gives credence to one of Nietzsche’s critiques of Christianity, joy is usually thought in the NT as largely a future event, a promise.

The Epistle of James teaches that we should count our trials {πειρασμοί) as joy since they produce steadfastness of character (Jas 1.2).

The first Epistle of Peter states that we should rejoice in our sufferings as sharing in the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet 4.12-14).

Moreover, despite our present sufferings, we look forward to our joy in the eschaton when Christ's glory will be revealed. The Epistle to the Hebrews also posits joy in the hope of future deliverance against the persecutions and trials of the present life (Heb 10.32-39).

When the Fathers speak of things like joy, rarely do they locate it where a modern man might.

Evagrios, identifies joy as the sine qua non of its genuineness:

"If when praying no other joy can attract you, then truly you have found prayer."

The basic reason for the joy found in prayer is given by Saint John of Kronstadt as follows:

"a lively sense of God's presence is a source of peace and joy to the soul.”

In addition to the joy which we receive through prayer and the sacraments, the Fathers also refer to the joy which accompanies the active working of the good and struggling against evil.

A third source of joy is simply enduring suffering while maintaining faith in God.

Saint John Chrysostom in his commentary on 2 Corinthians 1.5 praises the endurance and fortitude of Abraham in his difficulties and then goes on to extol the blessed Paul,

“through seeing trials in very snow-showers assailing him daily, rejoiced and exulted as though in the mid-delights of Paradise. As then he who is gladdened with this joy cannot be a prey to despair; so he who maketh not this [joy] his own is easily overcome of all;... And truly stouter than any armor is joy in God; and whoso hath it, nothing can ever make his head droop or his countenance sad, but he beareth all things nobly.”

James Cook comments HERE:

"Whilst for the classical philosophers the ultimate goal of therapy was the achievement of happiness or wellbeing in the present, for Chrysostom it was to be found in avoiding God’s judgement for sin and receiving the blessings of eternal life.

For him, the sick are those who are facing the judgement of God, and a key part of his therapy of the soul is to awaken in them a fear of hell that they may live more obedient lives and “receive the good things that are to come.” 

The Fathers rarely address these human concerns of finding love or social acceptance or loneliness. Goods that today we say are our "needs", and without which we deteriorate mentally.

St Symeon says,

"Tell me, what is more beautiful than a soul undergoing tribulation, which knows that by enduring it will inherit joy in all things?"

                                                            

What is real flourishing according to psychology?

“Humans connect to other humans at so basic a level that when we disconnect, our souls shatter into a thousand little pieces.”

- Peter Leithart

"If loneliness didn’t exist, we could reasonably assume that psychiatric illnesses would not occur either.”

- Psychiatrist J.H. van den Berg

Before WW II society was more naturally integrated, people needed other people. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to point out marriage, community, and friendship as goods as these were simply staples of human existence.

Our man made world today is premised upon the opposite of the humane, connections make us human, and we’ve created a society of isolation.

One can't take it for granted one will have friends, or a partner. We’re not embedded in social systems that way anymore.

If one wants friends, one has to work at it! Books describe how to intentionally find people, join groups, and then, since we no longer simply bump into one another, how to intentionally maintain those relationships.

Johann Hari, in his best-selling book Lost Connections writes HERE,

“Everyone knows human beings have natural physical needs,” he adds, “Well, there’s equally good evidence that we have innate psychological needs. We need to feel we belong to a group; we need to feel we have a stable future; we need to feel that we are valued; we need to feel we have meaning and purpose in our lives.”

The best predictor of happiness in America? It's Marriage, read HERE .

Many psychologists and researchers go as far as saying marriage is THE key to happiness, after 50 years of hard data, read HERE, it's hard to argue.

When you break it down, marriage does yield much more fulfillment and happiness - although mainly for the more well off, In this article HERE it reports :

"....the subtler truth seems to be that finances, family, and social fitness are three prongs in a happiness trinity.

They rise together and fall together.”

                                                           

For example, being married with no medicine you have a better chance of surviving cancer than being single and having chemo !

This study HERE shows for “prostate, breast, colorectal, esophageal, and head/neck cancers, the survival benefit associated with marriage was larger than the published survival benefit of chemotherapy.”

Loneliness is worse than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Lonely people need more painkillers, they heal much slower, they have more health problems etc etc

Paul Tournier, a brilliant Christian psychologist, argues that untold damage is done in Christian communities by curating “premature renunciation.”

He explains how nonbelievers and Christians alike (while they may not have language to express it) seem to “know” the Two Gospels of both worlds, which seem in opposition to each other. The gospel of psychology, as he calls it, is one of “self-fulfillment” and “self-assertion,” while the Biblical gospel is “self-denial” and “renunciation.”

"To how many generations of miserable exploited people has the Church preached resignation, acceptance of one’s lot, surrender, and submission?”

“We have all seen so many of those men and women who have never grown up because they have been repressed by a religious upbringing, and have been trained since infancy in systemic renunciation.”

“How many mediocre personalities are there in our churches – people who have not the courage to live full lives, to assert themselves and make the most of themselves, and who look upon this stifling of themselves as a Christian virtue, whereas faith ought to create powerful personalities?

He sees the necessity for self-actualization and self-fulfillment to come *before renunciation - first you need a healthy sense of self and self-assertion.

First you need a place. He says,

"It is readily understandable that to be denied a place is to suffer a serious moral trauma. It is a sort of denial of one’s humanity.”

Without this sense of place, the church’s language of renunciation, to “deny oneself,” becomes painful and confusing.

It is to this person that the church says, “Give yourself to the service of others, for in the service of others you will find yourself.”

Tournier responds in a resounding, “No!” for he understands that since the client “has not been loved, or not loved well, he can neither love nor believe in and accept love.”

Tournier notes, the type of person it was who God “called” in Scripture; ones with a well-formed sense of place.

Abraham was well-established in Ur of the Chaldees when God called him. Moses was asked to leave Midian, where he was tending his father-in-law’s flocks. Jesus called Simon and Andrew to leave their well-established fishing profession etc etc all well-situated in society.

So Tournier sees the necessity for self-actualization and self-fulfillment to come before renunciation, and the former movement can only occur when children experience attachment in their family of origin – when they have a sense of place within their family.




                         

Of course, for a few decades Christianity in fundamentalist Churches become conflated with Americanism and middle class values, and these can be dangerous idols, however family, community, stable wealth, and decent work are universal goods, the only good Ecclesiastes even acknowledged.

Thus, despite heroic theological acrobatics, I cannot square traditional Christianity with any sense of human flourishing. An invisible problem , surely, until the industrial revolution and gone wild in our technological society, and still taken for granted by many of the older generation.

I think the Church needs to rethink it.

Short Story on Loneliness: Food that Perishes

    

"Philosophy which does not nourish" - old drawing I did, various philosophers being consumed, Sartre, Russell, Spinoza etc"

Recently I heard a sermon by a Priest, he said many were counting on a relationship to save them, and this was idolatry. Indeed it is. I've seen it many times, expecting a partner to give you happiness. At the same time, I imagine some may hear this differently, especially the young.

Solitude is different,but loneliness can, in fact, kill.

I’d argue what we call loneliness  today is several different clusters of negative emotions, and several different types of loneliness all converging, and that it’s brand new. We all know loneliness is  twice as harmful as obesity, worse than smoking, chronic loneliness alters the brain, decreases cognitive functioning to the point of qualifying as a traumatic brain injury. Also, one can check, the Church has no sermons on loneliness before the 1800’s; in fact “loneliness” simply meant being alone, with no emotional longing. “A Biography of Loneliness” by Fay Bound Alberti goes into this.

Two good articles on this:

https://stephanjoppich.com/can-loneliness-kill-you/

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/BF01278458.pdf


In any case, I awoke with the following short story in mind:

                                             The Food That Perishes

He pushed wide the heavy Church doors and ducked into the darkness. Candle lit faces crowded the pews. He hesitated. It had been years. He crammed himself into a corner, standing in the back. It was packed. Thick pungent incense rolled through the beams of light streaming from high windows. How much did incense cost? Didn’t the Bible say something about incense being food for God? Moses burnt piles of meat so that the smoke rose up to the heavens, didn't he? His stomach rumbled. Days without food. The acid ate through his gut. A sharp pain, like a blaring alarm he couldn't turn off, it threw his entire nervous system into a panic. He clutched his stomach and grimaced.

The priest glided out in shining robe, a baby faced innocent smile, and immediately launched into his sermon. Bit of a belly there, eh father, he thought, guess the Church weren’t too strict with fasting these days.

“Brothers and sisters,” he intoned, a sea of ill, green faces, stretched tight across yearning skulls, they too, he knew, were starving, and had been for going on 27 years now, “there are those of you who have set their hearts on a full belly, the problem with this, my brothers, is that when it doesn’t happen, you become disappointed, disgruntled.”

His stomach rumbled fierce at the mention of food, he scarcely heard the Priest, his attention strained through the pain to hear, oh, but I am desperate for an answer to this terrible god in his belly... this hunger will never end!

“It is idolatry,” the Priest continued, “you set your hearts on the things of this world, yet we are aliens in this land, passing through, rather hunger for righteousness, man does not live by bread alone, but here, right here brothers and sisters, is the food which does not perish, that forever satisfies, that confers not just life, but eternal life!”

The Priest had worked himself up into something like a frenzy and his eyes glowed with some bright vision,

“Christ is that bread! He will satisfy you! Yes, Christ did not promise a nice house with steak for dinner, caviar for desert, he promised a cross! But he’s here, waiting, right here.

You don't need food to survive. You don’t. Did you know that ? St Seraphim survived four months, kneeling in prayer, without food. It is God, not food, that provides true satiation. You make food an idol when you place it above the Lord. It’s a kind of adultery, cheating on God Himself.”

The Priest paused to collect himself.

The practitioners eyes were glazed from malnutrition, stomachs grumbled, a few sighs, someone groaned in pain.

“It wont be easy. Yes, you will still awake with pangs of hunger, your children will go to bed with tears not hear eyes, you may starve until, indeed, your body gives out, and death overtakes you - but Christ is their! He is there in your pain, in your terrible hunger, even as you starve to death, He will not abandon you.”

His intestines seized up, like a wild animal clawing through his lower gut, he stumbled out of the Church into the bright light, squatted down on the stairs. He rubbed his belly to soothe the spasms ripping apart his abdomen.

Just then a crow landed not far from where he sat. It hopped over. It’s head turning to get a better look.

He thought of reaching out and grabbing the bird, a quick meal, but the pain paralyzed him. It hopped closer.

“I’ve nothing for you friend.”

It cawed and did a little dance.

The man let out a groan, “Do you not find it odd, little friend, that no one in the Bible asked the Lord to be cured of their anger, no woman stumbled up to Him to remedy her vanity, no man concerned with their gluttony or pride.”

“Caw!”

“No, they demanded their daughters be saved from death, their paralysis be healed, they demanded baskets of bread and fish….loneliness, they say, is today’s leprosy, but Christ restored them to health…He didn’t simply keep them company! The nervous symptoms cares little for spirit, it cries out for warmth and flesh!"

The man shook his head.

“Well, friend, at least you’ll listen to me.”

The crow hopped around to the mans battered show, packing at its rubber. In its feathers an ant crawled. The man slowly reached out and picked it off. He crushed it between his fingers and sucked the tiny body into his mouth.

His stomach was settling. The illusion of sustenance, sometimes that’s all it took. Perhaps.