Last Post: Thoughts and Hopes

When I think about the life I have lived, I have always been thinking on things, trying to figure out how to do something better, or trying to understand why I am the way I am or why someone else is the way they are or why things are the way they are and how they might be different. I am always at work, whether I mean to be or not, in trying to understand things. And, my thinking has always pushed me into a mystery where thinking stops and has to give way to wonder. Another way to say this is that this drive I have to understand leads towards a mystery in which the One who created all life dwells. However, my thinking only leads me in this direction when it is characterized by trust and hope. When my thinking becomes characterized or fueled by distrust and despair (sin), I think myself away from the mystery and "into a corner."

As H. Richard Niebuhr has written, life comes down to one basic thing: whether you respond to the "power that brought you forth" with trust or distrust. Whether you view life with trust or distrust; whether you view others with trust or distrust; whether you experience deep down that the Power that brought all things into being is gracious or callous (or, perhaps cruel or indifferent).

If this is the deepest response of a human being that colors all other responses we make day to day, do we make it consciously or unconsciously? Clearly, it is a mixture of conscious and unconscious feeling/thought. If this is the basic response that determines all other responses in life, it is significant to note that the Psalm writer, who is surely our guide in spiritual matters, struggles often between a basic feeling of thanksgiving and complaint towards God. But, complaint about God's seeming distance and complaint about God's slowness in acting, is not the same thing as distrust of God. In fact, the act of complaining in the Psalms shows that the Psalm writer continues to place his hopes in God, continues to see God as his salvation amidst times of sorrow and even bitterness, and continues to believe that God is well-disposed towards him and his people.

And, as I close this last post on this blog, I end with one question: can a person who doesn't claim to "believe in God" be making a positive response to God in his or her living without being consciously aware of the "theological" meaning of life? I, along with H. Richard Niebuhr and Karl Rahner, think that the answer is clearly "yes." Jesus is the one who said: "It is not those who say, "Lord, Lord," who will enter into the kingdom of heaven but those who do the will of my father who is in heaven." I give thanks for all those who are walking in that mercy and fairness and love intended for us all by the One Creator, Judge and Redeemer of all life. I give thanks for all goodness in human life, whether it comes from those who profess to have faith in God or those who do not. In the end, the prayer that moves my heart is: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." That God be given God's due on earth; that God's righteousness be known on earth; that God's good ways be manifest in human life; that God may no more have to suffer the injustice that is done on earth; that the One true and holy and kind and wise being might be honored and loved and respected and thanked for bearing all of humanity's struggle and trouble and sin. That God might finally have another Sabbath, and a chance to sit back and look at all creation and behold that it is very, very good. That is the hope of my heart.