Originally published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 30, 2007.
I was raised in an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn in the 1940s. My parents had lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. The theology we were raised on went something like this: Life is hard; pain and struggle are part of it. We take pleasures where we find them, but mostly we accept and endure, and look to heaven and the life to come.
When things got good, we wondered if too much earthly delight would compromise our eternal reward. Clearly this doctrine was in need of some correction.
There is another theology going around these days, the flip side of the one I was raised with. This theology tells us that we are entitled to prosperity here and now, and that if we pray hard enough, have enough faith, give money, and do good works, God will come through for us. Ask. Believe. Receive.
Now, while there is certainly truth in the notion that a generous spirit contributes to a healthy life, and while I also believe absolutely that faith in God transforms lives (as a spiritual director, I see grace at work every day in amazing ways), I believe there is real danger in trying to reduce the chaos of life and the mystery of God to a neat cause/effect formula: We do for God/God does for us.
And what happens when it backfires? Over 15 years in practice, I have seen the damage done to people who have followed the prescription --- Ask, Believe, Receive --- and do not receive. Good people, faithful people, who have done all they can think of to "please" God (as if God needed coaxing!), so he will give them a child or cure their husband's cancer or heal an addicted relative or help them pay the mortgage.
Despite their ardent prayers, the womb remains barren, the cancer spreads, the son overdoses, the money runs out. Their certainties crumble and they are left floundering in a sea of questions: Does God really exist? Is God on my side? Have I done something wrong?
Where do I go from here? They blame themselves, they blame God or simply walk away at the very moment when God most longs to be there for them.
It is important for purveyors of the prosperity gospel, well-intentioned as they may be, to realize that their theology only works in Drive. And reversals can be mortally wounding to faithful people.
It is one thing to pray to be open to God's grace; quite another to make promises on God's behalf that may or may not come true. God is not like a stock we invest in for solid returns or an insurance policy with guarantees for those who pay their premiums. We live in a beautiful, dark and broken world. Bad things happen to good people all the time. And vice versa. Why? We don't know. We just don't know. That is no answer, but it is the truth.
What we do know is that God is with us wherever we are, our companion in our suffering, offering in the darkest times fresh supplies of strength and courage and hope and love. There is a chilling scene in Elie Wiesel's book "Night," a scene in the camps. A young boy is being hanged, and the inmates are forced to watch. At one point the man behind Elie asks: "Where is your god now?" Elie replies, "He is there, hanging from the gallows."
Suffering is not a sign of God's wrath or God's indifference. It is a fact of human life. We don't seek it; we certainly don't sanctify it. But when it is inescapable and we are driven to the depths, if we listen in the stillness, we may hear the heartbeat of love, comforting us, sustaining us, laboring to restore us to life.
I was raised in an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn in the 1940s. My parents had lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. The theology we were raised on went something like this: Life is hard; pain and struggle are part of it. We take pleasures where we find them, but mostly we accept and endure, and look to heaven and the life to come.
When things got good, we wondered if too much earthly delight would compromise our eternal reward. Clearly this doctrine was in need of some correction.
There is another theology going around these days, the flip side of the one I was raised with. This theology tells us that we are entitled to prosperity here and now, and that if we pray hard enough, have enough faith, give money, and do good works, God will come through for us. Ask. Believe. Receive.
Now, while there is certainly truth in the notion that a generous spirit contributes to a healthy life, and while I also believe absolutely that faith in God transforms lives (as a spiritual director, I see grace at work every day in amazing ways), I believe there is real danger in trying to reduce the chaos of life and the mystery of God to a neat cause/effect formula: We do for God/God does for us.
And what happens when it backfires? Over 15 years in practice, I have seen the damage done to people who have followed the prescription --- Ask, Believe, Receive --- and do not receive. Good people, faithful people, who have done all they can think of to "please" God (as if God needed coaxing!), so he will give them a child or cure their husband's cancer or heal an addicted relative or help them pay the mortgage.
Despite their ardent prayers, the womb remains barren, the cancer spreads, the son overdoses, the money runs out. Their certainties crumble and they are left floundering in a sea of questions: Does God really exist? Is God on my side? Have I done something wrong?
Where do I go from here? They blame themselves, they blame God or simply walk away at the very moment when God most longs to be there for them.
It is important for purveyors of the prosperity gospel, well-intentioned as they may be, to realize that their theology only works in Drive. And reversals can be mortally wounding to faithful people.
It is one thing to pray to be open to God's grace; quite another to make promises on God's behalf that may or may not come true. God is not like a stock we invest in for solid returns or an insurance policy with guarantees for those who pay their premiums. We live in a beautiful, dark and broken world. Bad things happen to good people all the time. And vice versa. Why? We don't know. We just don't know. That is no answer, but it is the truth.
What we do know is that God is with us wherever we are, our companion in our suffering, offering in the darkest times fresh supplies of strength and courage and hope and love. There is a chilling scene in Elie Wiesel's book "Night," a scene in the camps. A young boy is being hanged, and the inmates are forced to watch. At one point the man behind Elie asks: "Where is your god now?" Elie replies, "He is there, hanging from the gallows."
Suffering is not a sign of God's wrath or God's indifference. It is a fact of human life. We don't seek it; we certainly don't sanctify it. But when it is inescapable and we are driven to the depths, if we listen in the stillness, we may hear the heartbeat of love, comforting us, sustaining us, laboring to restore us to life.