What I Don’t Understand about God (Part 2)

Among all of the other things that I do not understand about God is this: I do not understand what God is like.

I’m pretty sure that one of the things that God is supposed to be is good. One of my uncertainties is exactly how we know that God is good. My thought was this (and I remember hearing this somewhere a long time ago and thinking that it made sense to me, so I can’t claim any originality here): we claim that God is good, but supposedly God Himself defines what is good. If that’s true, then what is good is an arbitrary choice by God. Today, God might decide that genocide is not good and it would not be good. It might even be a sin. Tomorrow, though, God might decide that a little genocide is just fine. That isn’t, I think, what most of us mean by good. Good was good in the past, it’s good today, and will still be good tomorrow.

It seems to me that in order for us to say that God is good, good must exist apart from God, so that we can hold up good and see what it looks like and then hold up God and see what He (or She or It) looks like. If they look the same, well, then, God is good. If not…

And you might be thinking, but God is good and is the very definition of good. God would never do something like decide that “a little genocide is just fine.” As I recall, though, God on more than one occasion allowed, condoned, or ordered genocide. See, for just a few examples, Exodus 17:13, Numbers 21:3, Deuteronomy 2:33-34, and Deuteronomy 3:6.

It was at about this point that I was starting to feel confused and like I was missing something or possibly misrepresenting something. So, I Googled “Is God good?”

One of the hits was this site: https://answersingenesis.org/who-is-god/god-is-good/is-god-really-good/

I’m going to ignore the author’s misrepresentation of Darwin and focus on my question. The site’s author simply asserts that God is good and that there is no conception of good without God. The author states, “Again, from where do you get your definition of ‘good’? Only the Bible provides an absolute moral standard by which we can measure what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad.’”

Well, as I noted above, that means that genocide is bad – or good – depending on the mood God’s in. I’m not sure that works for me.

So, I checked out this YouTube video: http://www.everystudent.com/videos/isGodgood.html

Right on its opening screen it promised to answer my question.

But, it didn’t. The narrator asked the question, then discussed the notion of human freedom of choice, and then simply asserted that God is good.

So, no help from a quick Google search. The video, however, did touch on another area in which I lack understanding. The narrator pointed out that God is omnipotent, that God can do anything that’s logically possible (thus, no square circles). She then pointed out that God created people. When He did so, though, He didn’t want robots. He wanted real people and that meant giving them freedom. According to the author, humans have used their freedom to make bad choices.

I’ve heard sermons in a number of churches over the years and listened to a number of Christians discuss this issue and all of them seemed to agree on this next point: humans are sinners and cannot help but be sinners. No matter how well-intentioned a person is, no matter how strong that person’s convictions might be, no matter how devoutly that person believes, that person cannot help but to sin.

And, for me, that’s the rub. If God is truly omnipotent, could He not create beings with the freedom to choose and the strength of will to live up to that choice?

I could go on, but I think I’ve maybe made my point. I have no idea what God’s like and many of the answers I get to that question give a picture of a God (like the nasty feudal king of a God described in the first Web site I talked about) that I could simply never follow.

What I Don’t Understand about God (Part 1)

My Mom and Dad split up when I was young, so I don’t have many memories of doing things with my Dad when I was growing up. One thing I do remember is this. Back in the spring of 1965, I was six years old and just finishing first grade. We had moved to Northern Virginia at Christmas and I was still getting used to the area. One thing that was different was that I had to ride a bus to and from school. Before the move I had walked to school. This was a long time ago and I was young, so a lot of the details are fuzzy, but apparently I wanted to walk home from school. I’d been paying attention on the bus ride, so I knew the route.

Then I got my chance. One day my teacher was sick and we had a substitute who didn’t know who was a walker and who was not. So, when the office secretary came on the intercom to announce that the walkers could leave, I left. It was a bit over 2 miles from the school to my house (2.19 according to MapQuest) along some fairly busy roads with no sidewalks. I was young. It never occurred to me that it would take me longer to walk home than it did to ride the bus.

When I didn’t get off the bus, my parents were understandably upset. I’m not sure what they did, but they found me as I was climbing the hill to our house. I’m not sure what happened when I first got home, but I do remember ending up in a bedroom with my Dad, scared and expecting to be spanked.

But I wasn’t spanked. I remember my Dad took off his belt, folded it in half, and then he held the ends together in one hand and the midpoint in the other hand. When he pushed his hands together and then snapped them apart, his belt made a slapping sound. He did that a couple of times. I think he asked me to scream when he did it.

I don’t remember what he said to me that afternoon, but I never tried something like that again.

Did my Dad have a reason to punish me? Yes. This wasn’t my first transgression involving getting home from school (I’d been caught taking a forbidden shortcut before we moved). You could even say that he had an obligation to punish me. I’m sure some who read this might fault him for sparing the rod and spoiling me. I will say this, though. What he did worked. I never did that again and I knew that I was loved. And, ultimately, I think I turned out ok.

So, what is it that I don’t understand? In an earlier post, I said that I had been raised Roman Catholic, but ended up agnostic. There were simply too many things that Catholics believe that I did not for me to call myself a Catholic. Eventually, I realized that I had the same problem with Christianity in general. There are some aspects of Christianity that I just do not understand.

Recently, I’ve been talking about God and religion with a friend. I even attended the Christmas Eve service at her church. I ended up having a really good night’s sleep that night and a very peaceful Christmas Day. By peaceful I don’t mean quiet – I’m often home alone, so it’s often peaceful that way here. I’m talking an emotional peace of a kind that I’ve rarely experienced since Jonathan’s loss.

And that has me once again reexamining my beliefs. Ok, so what’s that got to do with my Dad not hitting me when I was a kid? Well, one of the things that I don’t understand is the very basis of Christianity: the notion that Jesus died to atone for humanity’s sins, so that those sins might be forgiven.

As I understand it, it goes something like this: God made The Rules, declaring that certain acts are sins and a whole bunch of other acts are not sins (another thing I don’t understand is why an omnipotent God couldn’t make creatures capable of following The Rules, but I digress). If you sin and do not atone for that sin, when you die you will die forever or go to hell forever or some other such nasty fate. To prevent that from happening, God in His mercy sent Jesus to die for all humans, so that we wouldn’t have to die to for our sins. All we have to do is accept Jesus as our savior and ask forgiveness.

But why did anyone have to die?

I mean, He’s God, right? He made The Rules. If He wants to forgive a human’s sins, can’t he just do that without the bloodshed? Can’t He just say, “If you accept Me as God in your heart and ask Me for forgiveness, then I’ll forgive you.”

My Dad figured out that he didn’t have to hurt me to keep me from “sinning.” You’d think a God could do that, too.

Lemons

Welcome to my morning, welcome to my day

Oh yes, I’m the one responsible

I made it just this way.

- from Farewell Andromeda

- by John Denver

If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

Yellow is the color of lemons, bananas, and gold. You decide how you will color your life.

Over the last few months more and more of these inspirational sayings have shown up on my Facebook timeline. I don’t think anyone is posting them with me in mind; my friends are just posting things that move them and I get to see them. When I see them, I find myself thinking, “That’s not really true.” The John Denver song is one that I used sing when I was deliriously happy (or what passed for deliriously happy in me). I haven’t been able to sing it since March 2012.

I’ve also been seeing those “Gratitude Challenges” on Facebook and desperately hoping that no one will challenge me.

See, I used to think that how you thought about the things that happened was what really mattered. Parents divorced? No problem, it’s not about me, it’s about them and at least the fighting is over. Stepfather’s an alcoholic? Again, not about me and he at least taught me to do my work well. Screwed something up at work? Learning experience. So, I get where those sayings (and Denver’s song) were coming from. But I just can’t make a positive of Jonathan’s loss. My mind rebels at the thought of even trying. I didn’t make this day, I would not have made it just this way. If I had made this day, Jonathan would still be alive. He’d be healthy and happy. He’d be in grad school, his career off to an amazing start and he’d have an amazing friend who only had eyes for him…

But I didn’t make this day and gratitude is complicated. Everything is shadowed by the hole in my heart where Jonathan was. Intellectually I know that I have a pretty good life. I’ve got a relatively secure job that I really enjoy, a nice home, and a lot of good friends. I have one really good friend, who somehow always seems to know when I need to hear a friendly voice. Benjamin is doing really well in college and he seems happy and healthy. I have enough resources to feel secure and to be able to engage in my hobby. There’s a lot to be grateful for, and I guess that, in some ways, I am. It’s just that some of the positive emotion that’s part of gratitude – the joy or happiness or pleasure – has been sucked out by that hole.

I can’t seem to fix that. I don’t know if it’s fixable. I didn’t make this day. And, folks, sometimes a lemon is just a lemon.

Doubts

My experiences ... had burned away big pieces of my soul. At the time, it had nearly destroyed me, and I had thought I might never recover. I still thought that.

***

Perhaps I had become a jar in the shape of [myself], a jar that held some of the pieces of the man I had once been, but not all. Never all. If that was my new truth - and I had begun to suspect that it was - then what I had to hope for was to find and hold on to the best pieces...

- from Blade Reforged

- by Kelly McCullough

I read these words a short time ago and they resonated deep inside me. Several times lately, when examining my life, the word “shattered” has come to mind. My emotions, my personality, my ability to concentrate and to get things done were all shattered. So, I sit down to practice my guitar and within minutes my mind is elsewhere. I sit down to read and within minutes my mind is elsewhere. I start work on my research paper and within minutes…

Well, you get the picture.

In the past I rarely walked away from a challenge, yet that seems to be all that I’m doing these days. I saw myself as a “fix it” guy; when I was in my early 20’s K-mart handed me a non-functional department and I made it work. Over and over, that seemed to be what happened. I made broken things work. Before March 1, 2012, I felt like I was making a difference, that I had contributed in a positive way to the life around me, in my work and at home. Well, the universe slapped me in the face with something I can’t fix. Jonathan lost everything that might have been. Benjamin lost his brother. I lost my son. There’s simply nothing I can do, no way to make it better.

And so I’m looking back and wondering what I’ve ever actually accomplished. The fact is that the K-mart departments I took over would have still existed. You simply don’t run a K-mart store without a Health and Beauty Aids or a Toy department. Would Shepherd’s Honors Program or Psychology Department have ceased to exist? I doubt it. Even the biggest thing that I supposedly did – chair the General Studies Committee during the reform of that program – would that have not happened without me? In reality, there was any number of people who could have guided that process. I suspect that some of them could have even made it a smoother process and less of a “squeaker” victory. Even so, I might have been able to deal with all that, but I once told a group of new faculty to make sure to make time for family, because when they were old and retired, it wasn’t going to be Shepherd sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch with them. But look at me. The two women I married, both of whom I loved dearly, decided I wasn’t worth living with.

Now, I’m not looking for anyone to electronically pat me on the head and say, “There, there, it will be all right.” And I’m not expecting an It’s a Wonderful Life moment. Angels don’t have time for the likes of me (except one – you know who you are). Part of this is just venting and there’s no one here to vent to.

Part of it is just fear. In looking at the pieces in the jar, trying to find the good ones to keep, I really can’t find any.

It’s Not the Same for Men

This blog was meant to share my thoughts about how I got to where I am. One of the most significant things that has ever happened to me was becoming a father. I recently came across the following paper, written for one of my undergraduate English classes just 6 months after Jonathan was born.

Normally, for a week-long vacation, I’d buy ten to twelve books. I’d read them all, too, and sometimes more. This past summer I had two months off and I bought about a dozen books. I read five of them.

It’s not that the other books weren’t good. This summer I became a father and when my wife Diane went back to work, I took over as primary caregiver for our two-month-old son Jonathan. I figured that, while the baby napped, I could take care of the house and squeeze in some reading.

Soon I found that I had to change my expectations. Where once I read chapters in a day, I now read pages. A load of laundry was seldom finished the same day it was started and loading the dishwasher took hours.

Since housework isn’t number one on my fun-things-to-do list, I didn’t mind much. I spent my days playing with the baby, or taking him for walks. Every so often, Jonathan would take a catnap and I’d read a little or do some housework. Before long, we settled into a routine.

Gradually, my fears about my capabilities as a parent disappeared. I developed the ability to tell which cry meant “I’m hungry” and which meant “Dad, please change my diaper, I’m uncomfortable.” Also, I learned that adeptness at changing diapers can, like other skills, be acquired through practice. I also discovered what most mothers already know: it’s easier to watch TV than to read a book while feeding a baby. The TV schedules were committed to memory and He-man, the Thundercats, and Beaver Cleaver kept me entertained while Jonathan guzzled down his formula.

The best times of all were those right after Jonathan had eaten, when he was relatively alert and content. I spent hours watching him discover the world around him. I’ll never forget the look of surprise on his face when he realized that the funny thing waving in front of his eyes was his own hand, or the look of triumph the first time he swung that hand out and grabbed the afghan on the sofa.

It was in the grocery store that I first began to notice people’s reactions to us. They seemed uncomfortable with the idea of a man taking care of an infant. When my wife was with us, other women would stop us to ask about the baby, but when Jonathan and I went alone, no one ever stopped us.

At the doctor’s office, questions about the baby’s behavior were invariably addressed to my wife. Even relatives who knew that I was caring for Jonathan asked Diane how he was doing and left me out of the conversation.

In our neighborhood are several groups of mothers whose children play together. They carpool together, have coffee in the afternoons together, and provide each other with support and friendship. I met several of these mothers when Jonathan and I were out walking. They all seemed hesitant about talking with me and I was never invited to any of the “get togethers.” My offers of coffee or soda were never accepted. It seems that, while men were out creating the “old boy network” in business, women were creating the “mom network” at home and it’s just as hard for a nurturing father to break into the “mom network” as it is for a businesswoman to break into the “old boy network.”

Two months after my wife went back to work, the school year started for me. My mother watches Jonathan for me while I attend classes. Something she once said illustrates the different attitudes toward male and female parents. She asked me how Diane was handling being at work away from her baby. I answered that she was doing about as well as I was being in school away from mine. “Don’t be silly,” my mother said. “It’s not the same for a man.”

She’s not alone in that belief, and I’m not alone in refuting it. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates than in only 1% of the 25 million families in the United States is the father the primary caregiver (Trafford, 1987, p. 13). In a Washington Post article, Abigail Trafford (1987) interviewed David Frank, who detailed a series of experiences similar to mine (p. 12). Robert D. Reed (1987), who spent a year as a male nanny and is now a social worker for the Children’s Aid Society in New York, wrote in American Baby magazine, “What I find exasperating about the job is not the lack of leisure time but the stigma attached to it. My parents are having conniptions, and my peers are baffled” (p. 28).

Dr. Kyle Pruett, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center, studied 17 families in which the mother and father reversed their traditional roles. When asked if the “mothering” job was really different for men than for women, he replied, “Not radically. The fathers would say, “This can be so boring. My mind is sleeping’ – the things we’ve heard from young mothers for years. This has more to do with the job than with gender” (Trafford, 1987, p. 14). Further, when Dr. Pruett was asked what surprised him most in the study, he answered, “How profoundly moved the fathers were by the experience. They changed as men – and as human beings. It surprised me to see how available they were to the complexity of the role” (Trafford, 1987, p. 14).

So it seems that there is very little real difference between men and women in the nurturing role. After all, don’t babies evoke some parental response in almost any adult? As for me, the warm playtimes I’ve shared with Jonathan and the chance to be a bigger part of his life than my traditional role calls for, these outweigh the funny looks I get in grocery stores.

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Reed, Robert D. (1987, June). My life as a male nanny. American Baby, 28.

Trafford, A. (1987, April 28). Fathers raising kids – what happens when mom goes to work and dad stays home. The Washington Post, pp. 12-16.

Music

I just got back from a walk around my neighborhood. In the last decade or so I’ve come to appreciate spring (fall used to be my favorite time of year), but tonight it felt – in a way – empty. It seems wrong somehow that the world should awaken, that there should be so much beauty, when Jonathan is gone.

The last few days have been rough. I’ve been struggling with feelings that I cannot express, some because there are simply no human words to express them, others because I think if I dared say them aloud they might cost me one of the few remaining joys in my life.

When I was younger (bear with me, all this will come together), I used to watch the Carol Burnett show. I had the biggest crush on Vicki Lawrence. I also wanted to learn to play the guitar. I had this idea that I would one day – as I believed that Woodie Guthrie had done[1] – hop a freight train to travel across country, learn to play all these wonderful folk songs that no one had ever heard, and then arrive in California where my music would earn me fame and catch the eye of Vicki Lawrence…



On stage at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA, in
November, 1986.

In his early Doonesbury strips, Trudeau’s characters all had an internal monologue going on, each announcing their exploits to an phantom audience of adoring fans. What made that work is that a lot of people actually do that. For me, though, it was always a soundtrack. Except in moments of concentration (like delivering a lecture), there’s a song echoing around inside my head behind my thoughts. Usually a folk song. I’ve come to learn that those songs are often my way of trying to clarify to myself how I feel about the things going on in my life. Sometimes a song will get insistent, and I find that to quiet it I have to immerse myself in it, either by listening to a recording of the song over and over or by playing the song myself.

I started learning to play guitar in the summer between 8^th and 9^th grades. I had gone out for the JV football team, made second string defensive line, then broke my collarbone riding a bike down a hill that I never should have attempted to ride down (I found out much later that the “hill” had been the roadbed of a railroad back around the Civil War – I told you this would all come together). I couldn’t practice with the team, so I bought a guitar for $15 from G. C. Murphy’s, borrowed a book from a neighbor, and began teaching myself how to play. I didn’t play that first guitar long; you don’t really get a quality instrument for $15 (at least you didn’t in 1972). I traded up to a used Yamaha that I played until 1984, when I bought my Martin. That guitar has been with me ever since. We’ve gone a lot of places together, done a lot of things, and shared a lot of joy and pain. That guitar helped me get the songs out of my head and use them to communicate my feelings to other people.

So, I’ve been struggling the last few days, with feelings I can’t express. Then, this morning, I was listening to music as I entered course overrides in my office. It was an album I’ve listened to before, a David Wilcox album called Live at Eddie’s Attic ’11. Suddenly I found myself in tears. The song just washed over me and lodged itself in my head and it has been there since. I couldn’t hear it while I was in class, but as soon as I finished, it was back. So I went for a walk tonight, to listen to the song and try to figure out what it was trying to tell me. One line repeats, and maybe this is my answer:

For in this darkness love can show the way.

---

[1] It was something of a disappointment when I found out that Woodie hadn’t discovered the songs but had, in fact, written them.

Aftermath Part 4: What I’ve Learned

I got no rules to recite except love each other; God, if you’d all only do that, you wouldn’t need no other rules at all, not one.
 

- from Godbody

- by Theodore Sturgeon

As 2011 drew to a close I was feeling pretty good about my life. I was coming off a sabbatical during which I’d launched a new research program, one I was excited about. I’d settled into the single life again, I had a group of good friends around me, Benjamin and I were spending some great time together, and Jonathan was spreading his wings, preparing to soar. I felt that 2012 was going to be a very good year.

All of that changed in the space of a couple of minutes on the afternoon of March 1.

I often talk about my sons in class. My first psychology prof at George Mason often talked about his girls in class, using stories from their lives to illustrate some point he was trying to make. That left a lasting impression on me and over the years I began to see why he did it. I’ve learned so much from trying to be a good parent to my kids. So, recently I found myself thinking about what I’ve learned from Jonathan’s loss, what about this last story of his life I could share with future students.

The first, most insistent thing to come to mind was this: you’re not safe. Not even at home. You can go about your day, doing your work, talking to your friends, and then go home and die simply making dinner in your own kitchen.

But I don’t think that Jonathan would want that to be the meaning I took from his death.

The next thing I thought was that life is fragile. I’ve known that intellectually for a very long time. But no amount of reflection, no amount of reading and studying can prepare you for how easily a life can be snuffed out and for everything that person knew, everything that person felt, everything he loved and longed for, to simply be gone. I could never share my feeble attempts to explain that with a group of strangers, especially those in their late teens or twenties. I’ve only tried with a small group of my friends.

And at that point several things came together in my head. I was the last person to talk to Jonathan on his cell phone. I may have been the last person who ever talked to him. I’d been trying to reach him for a couple of days to see if he could take in my mail while I was away at a conference. He called me while I was on the road to the conference with my colleague Anne and a group of students. We talked briefly, but I was driving and about to go through a tunnel, so I couldn’t stay on the phone long, even though he wanted to tell me about a new project at work. Just a few hours later I got the call from City Hospital that he was gone. On the long ride back to Shepherdstown that night I replayed that last conversation with Jonathan over and over in my head. I usually end phone calls with the kids by saying, “I love you.” But in that last call I was rushed and I couldn’t remember actually saying it. So, it meant more to me than I can say when I mentioned to Anne some time later that I might have been the last one to talk to Jonathan and she responded, “That’s so nice because the last thing you said to him was, ‘I love you.’” That brought me almost to tears.

The reality is that life is fragile. To deny that is to deny part of what makes life so precious, so worth clinging to. Life is, in a cosmic sense, difficult to create, it is impossible for us to bestow (except in that most sacred intimacy between men and women), but it is ever so easy to destroy. Every time you walk away from a loved one there is a chance that you will never see each other again.

And so this. It is hardly an original thought; others have said it before and others will no doubt say it again. But this is my lesson: don’t ever waste any opportunity to tell the people you love how you feel. It may be the last thing they ever hear.

********************************

Benjamin, I know that I say I love you a lot, probably even in some situations when it’s a bit embarrassing (like a blog post on the World Wide Web). I hope you know that doing that isn’t just a habit and that I mean it every time I say it.

Mom, Dad, I doubt that either of you knows that I even have a blog. I’m pretty sure that neither of you will actually see this, but I love both of you, too. The same goes for my siblings: Jeff, Kim, John, Judy, Troy, and Nickie. I don’t think we say “I love you” often enough in our family. I hope we can change that.

Heidi, Anne, Joe, Chris, and Richie: I love you guys. I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with or a better group of friends. Your confidence in my leadership abilities is a constant source of amazement to me. Thanks for being there, thanks for listening to some things I know weren’t comfortable to hear (some of them actually having to do with work), and thanks for not treating me as if I were irreparably damaged. I really appreciate it. A special shout out to Anne; your help and support got me through the worst night of my life. I might not have made it back from Pittsburgh without you.

Stephanie. What can I say? I love you, my friend. If I have even a shred of sanity left (which is highly debatable), I owe it to you. Our lunches have meant a great deal to me, and helped me get through divorce and to begin to deal with Jonathan’s loss. You’ve listened when I needed to talk, you’ve talked when I needed to listen, and you always seem to know which one to do. That’s a rare gift. You know, you’d probably make a great psychologist. Up for a career change?

Mike, you, too, have been a great friend. Some of my favorite memories are centered on the courses we taught together, the discussions we had over lunch or in the reading group. Because of them, I think I’m a better chair, a better psychologist, and a better person. You should know that your talk on Constitution Day made me laugh. For the first time since Jonathan’s death, a deep-down, heart-felt laugh. Thank you, buddy. Love ya.

To all my other Shepherd colleagues (faculty, staff, students, and – yes – even the administration), you all are amazing. Over the years we’ve butted heads, we’ve argued, we’ve struggled with budget cuts and a changing academic environment. But, we’ve also laughed, and joked, and we’ve taught a lot of students, and we have, I hope, learned a thing or two ourselves along the way. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but the reality is that we humans are social critters. It takes a village for us to live. You all are my village. Thank you for being so amazing; I love you all.

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This is, I think, the last of the Aftermath postings. That’s not to say that I’ve recovered, or healed, or whatever. I don’t think you ever recover from the loss of a child. I’ll be dealing with the aftermath of Jonathan’s death for the rest of my life. But, as I typed this entry I could sense a door somewhere in my head closing, and I could hear a single word, “Finis.”