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DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/14/2003 9:23 PM (GMT -6)

There is a song that Alison Krause sings titled, "There is a reason." It goes like...

I've seen hard times and I've been told
There isn't any wonder that I fall
Why do we suffer, crossing off the years
There must be a reason for it all.

I've trusted in You, Jesus, to save me from my sin
Heaven is the place I call my home
But I keep on getting caught up in this wold I'm living in
And Your voice it sometimes fades before I know

Hurtin' brings my heart to You, crying with my need
Depending on Your love to carry me
The love that shed His blood for all the world to see
This must be the reason for it all

Hurtin' brings my heart to You, a fortress in the storm
When what I wrap my heart around is gone
I give my heart so easily to the ruler or this world
When the one who gives me most will give me all

In all the things that cause me pain You give me eyes to see
I do believe but help my unbelief
I've seen hard times and I've been told
There is a reason for it all

That song is from the cd, "so long so wrong".

Now from a systematic theologian perspective, one could have a hissy-fit over such a verse. After all how could there be a reason for it all if the problem is in fact that the ruler of the world is usurping God's place and the problem is she gets too caught up in this world that God's voice fades from us?

But the song is not s'posed to be a systematic theological treatise and the main points is to voice our suffering, acknowledge our sin and need for God and need to trust that there is a reason to continue on despite the suffering endemic in it all.

This serves as a psychic balm since all our doubts over God and suffering, "the problem of evil", are put to rest, ultimately, in an act of faith.

My point is that, in the past, we have tended to rely on a view that even though we don't know the future, God does. And, as such, we can rest assured that its uncertainties will fit into Gods plan, even if they bring suffering for us personally.

With OVTheism, aspects of what gave Christians a psychic balm in the past are denied. There is gratuitous evil and the choices we make do potentially thwart God's will for our lives. Yet the need for a psychic balm is still present. OVTheism relies on imperfect analogies, such as with a chess game, to show how the end can be secure without God knowing the future in its entirety. I say imperfect because the analogy leaves undetermined what, along the way, we should trust in God for and how we should seek to let our lights shine as well.

The consumerism of evangelical Christianity, or their lack of habits of political deliberation, or the wishful thinking that Christians could just have as little as possible to do with politics(the "Ana-Baptist worldview"), or the tendency for some church leaderships to emulate corporation governance-structures with the same inherent tendency for their decision-making to favor themselves over what would best serve the general interest are all instances whereby chosen paths by which we let our lights shine may be fallible and have serious unintended consequences. All of these can be a source of angst as also could any proposed solution to the problems. So there is a need for faith or psychic-balm, but that balm shouldn't prevent reconsideration of the solutions or paths taken.

Anyways, I do like the above song very much, despite it going against OVTheism, because it reminds me of the emotive role played by Theology and the need for faith in light of the potentially psychologically-crippling uncertainties that face us.
dlw

Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes."

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