I have always been a Process theologian, more or less; I just wasn’t aware of it. I first became aware of the term, without knowing what it meant, when I was in seminary in 1999. A fellow student, who lived across the hall from me, mentioned it, but he was, frankly, intellectually challenged, and his explanations did not explain very much.
There are several ways into Process Theology, but for me, it all begins with the understanding that God is not all-powerful. I have written about this concept before on this blog, and I have believed it for a long time. This belief is just one among several that would get me branded a heretic by many Christians. Five or six hundred years ago, it would have gotten me burned at the stake. (Not really; I’m a coward, and I would have recanted the second they showed me the implements of torture. There aren’t many things worth giving your life for—religious “truth,” when truth is such an amorphous thing that nobody can be sure of, isn’t one of them.)
Admitting that God is not all-powerful is hard. But once you can get past that hurdle—and for most believers it’s a big one, to be sure—things start to fall into place. Suddenly, the “problem of evil” is solved. I can’t even estimate the number of times I’ve been told, or heard, or read, that someone became an atheist because an all-powerful God didn’t prevent some catastrophe, or that God allowed Hitler or Stalin to come to power, or that God allowed any number of other evils to flourish. And I have to admit I share some of their viewpoint. If I believed there was a God who could prevent evil or relieve suffering but didn’t—well, I would reject that God, too.
Orthodox Christians turn verbal and logical somersaults explaining why God permits evil to exist. Most of the explanations revolve around the assertion that “it’s all part of God’s plan” and that everything serves a purpose, and that it will all come out okay in the end. “God’s ways are mysterious,” they say, and it is not for us mere humans to understand God’s intentions or question God’s methods. Or maybe they’ll say that God is indeed all-powerful but deliberately holds that power in check in order to allow humans to exercise their free will.
Well, I think that’s balderdash. If God is nothing else, God is love. The God I know is incapable of acting in other than a loving and compassionate manner. The God I know would never allow human or animal suffering if God could prevent it. And a loving God would never allow a 6-year-old girl to die a painful death from leukemia if that God could prevent it. What kind of God is it who could prevent but would allow millions of people to starve to death, be killed or displaced by sectarian conflict; who could prevent but would allow child abuse, rape, or other horrendous crimes? What kind of God is it whose plans include the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, Darfur, Wounded Knee, and all the rest? How on earth can one argue that this is somehow for our good? Saying things like, "It's a mystery," or "It's not for us to understand God's ways," just doesn't cut it. That kind of God is not a God of love, and I utterly reject the notion that my God is anything like that. Process Theology holds that because God is Love and always acts from love, God would prevent evil if it was within God’s power to do so. If evil exists, it is on us, not on God, because God cannot prevent it.
It bears repeating: if God could prevent evil, God would.
When you understand that God cannot prevent evil or bad things happening to good people, or good things happening to bad people, you no longer have to try to rationalize away the assertion that a loving God allows or even causes bad things to happen as some sort of master plan that we can’t understand. Which is easier to accept: that the God who is the very definition of love will allow or cause millions of people to starve to death in agony when that very same God could prevent it with ease, or that God agonizes over the starvation of those millions while being unable to prevent it?
And God does suffer with us. God is not omnipotent, but God is omniscient. But beyond that, God’s understanding, empathy, and compassion are perfect. When you hurt, God hurts with you. When you are hungry, God is hungry, too. When you are homeless, so is God.
God is indeed powerful. But God’s power is persuasive, not coercive. Ultimately, who is more powerful: the one who takes a gun and forces to do what you don’t want to do or to bear what you cannot bear, or the one who wins your acceptance and willing participation by appealing to your better nature and never giving up? God knows you better than you know yourself. God knows your needs even before you ask. And God is always with you, urging you on—luring you—into the best path given your circumstances. Some would say God is your conscience, but that would be wildly oversimplifying it. God works on a level that is far below any conscious thought we may have. We are not aware of it, but every second—every millisecond—of every day we are responding to God’s call. And no matter how we respond, God is always ready to adjust; God adapts. After each occasion in which you respond, to a greater or lesser degree, to God’s call, God re-evaluates and offers new possibilities and new choices to which we are given the choice to accept, or not.
And that is God’s power. God never tires; God never surrenders; God never gives up on us. God is now and forever by our side urging us along God’s path—the one that leads to universal peace and understanding, and economic, racial, and sexual equality. Whenever we act in love; whenever we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, or fight injustice of any kind, we are accepting God’s call, regardless of whether we know it; regardless of whether we admit it.
My prayer today is that whoever may read this will gain some understanding, despite my poor word choice and compositional skills, but, more importantly, will respond to God’s call in love and with an open heart, seeking always to create the world God intends for us. Blessings upon us all--everyone, no exceptions.
Amen.
