The real difference between men & women explained...

I have been enjoying (perhaps a little too much, since it is calling me away from long-delayed housework) the Godspy site. I especially enjoy the letter to Wormwood on the DaVinci Code (but didn't Screwtape destroy Wormwood?) Whatever the case may be, it's worth reading.

Strange New World

My chaplaincy assignments were given just yesterday-- I will be working with pediatrics, pediatric ICU, a floor of general surgery, and oncology (cancer patients, including pediatric oncology). I am very nervous. I thought to volunteer for the pediatric floors because I like kids so much, but as we walked through the floors yesterday, I realized-- 'oh dear, these will be hurt, scared and dying kids.'

My first on-call day is next Friday, and I will stay at the hospital all night to field the calls of any who need a chaplain. Our hospital being so large, with a cancer hospital and a level one trauma center, complete with a choplift, I expect to be quite busy. Whew.

Despite my anxiety, I did find a few words of comfort. The two-year daily lectionary today includes Jeremiah 31-- the new covenant written on the heart. This text comes in the context of a tirade against Israel's unfaithfulness. Jeremiah has worked himself into a lather proclaiming that the wrath Israel has experienced comes as a natural consequence of her failure to obey Torah. (The Torah here is not so much a set of rules, as it is a gracious gift to show Israel how to live best in the world. God's wrath is not really retribution as much as it is letting people have exactly what they want, experiencing the consequences of sin)

And they do experience the consequences-- in their own bodies (political & physical): Assyria & Babylon crushed their governments, and carried many into exile. Most lost their land and freedom. Many lost their hope and their faith. Israel lived in a state of exile.

However, Jeremiah tells Israel (and us) that despite their suspicions, God has not abandoned them. He has espoused them. And he promises to make his gift of the Torah internal for them, to ingrain it into their very beings.

As Christians, we confess that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the law. In the very flesh of the Jew from Nazareth, we see what one who is obedient to the Torah in every way looks like. Moreover, through his faithfulness to the Torah, which is the will of the Father, he offered up his life as a sacrifice for us. Through his life we receive adoption from God our Father. Through the Holy Spirit, we become more and more conformed to his cruciform life.

In the midst of all our anxieties and doubts, let us all pray this Pentecost: "Amen, Come Holy Spirit!"

These are keen words of hope for those like myself who fear failure. What if I say the wrong thing, or nothing at all when I come into the room of a dying child? What if I hoard my time selfishly and don't visit those that I ought to? Our Lord has espoused us and nourishes us with the body & blood of his Son. We have hope and sustenance in the life of the Church. We have courage to carry this work to a hurting world.

Problems of Thought & Belief


The first few days of my CPE chaplaincy have been remarkably good. I am working in a level one trauma hospital, with a cancer hospital and a large pediatric ward. My peer group is entirely made up of fellow Lutherans from my seminary. My supervisors seem very professionally knowledgeable, but laid back all the same. The mentor I have been shadowing is a wonderful young Presbyterian minister named Phuk, who, like me, has almost been married a year. His deeply faithful ministry and presence are inspiring for me already.

For those of you unfamiliar with seminary jargon, CPE is Clinical Pastoral Education, which consists of ministerial work in a hospital, prison or shelter and supervised reflection on that ministry. So far, so good.

As far as I understand it, the impetus to begin this program was all very good.
Concerned (mostly Episcopalian) thinkers wanted to bring a modicum of experiential learning to what was largely an exclusively cognitive and intellectual seminary curriculum. I suppose that in this, they were right on. Seminarians need the opportunity to begin to reflect on actual ministry experience. They need to learn to think (and pray and comfort and give counsel) on their feet. They need to receive guidance from experienced supervisors, and feedback from their peers. They need to bring their theological resources to bear on people who are really and deeply in need and to test their own ability to do so effectively and sensitively.

However, it seems that much of this program is built on decidedly non-theological ground. For example, suffering was defined for us in a lecture yesterday as "a refusal or inability to accept change." Well, perhaps in some sense this is true. But I think that this definition is very problematic when viewed from within the Christian tradition.

What does this definition have to say about evil? Change itself is in some sense benign-- every thing within the world is subject to change. But what makes particular changes cause suffering? Christians answer that it is evil-- something lacking substance, that ought to be but is not, something incomplete or deficient. Evil is a lack, a gap & a decay in the fabric of the universe.

Evil comes in two varieties-- natural evil, which is when the good of one particular creature / thing comes at the expense of another. For example, a lion and a water buffalo. Or a common cold and human comfort. The loss of a water buffalo's life or the absence of human comfort during a cold is not the result of a moral deficieny, but rather the cost of one particular creature's thriving to another.

Moral evil is, however, the result of moral deficiency. When creatures make a choice to behave in a way that should not be, or when they ought to behave in a way that they do not, they cause others great pain. This kind of suffering should be protested. Can we not hope in a God who rectifies what is wrong?

The definition of evil is central to the Christian doctrine of creation-- God created everything, and it is called good. What is not good cannot have come from God. Therefore, God himself must have a stake in repairing and redeeming what is damaged and deficient. Christians trust that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are at work in the cosmos, redeeming it. While we see only part of what is happening through God's work, we place our hope in the eschaton and the fulfillment we will see & experience through the blessed Trinity.

Our ministry must grow out of that trust, and spring forth from that hope. Otherwise, we're trusting a different gospel. We're putting our hope in different fulfillment.

The definition we received yesterday is clever in the way that it elides the theological by locating suffering exclusively within the subject. However, I want to grant a person's subjectivity a proper space within the definition of suffering, because it obviously has something to do with the whole picture. (Think of hypocondriacs who suffer enormous anxiety over health conditions that are not at all really threatening.)

Presupposed in the definition of suffering that says it is refusal to accept change, and made explicit in our lecture, is a deficient corrective to suffering: coping with it. The subject who suffers should simply learn to accept those changes which underlie that suffering. Our job as ministers is simply to help people feel good and learn to accept change. I count this proposition as skubala (greek for "shit," used by Paul in Phil. 3:8, usually translated as "rubbish" despite the lexicon's insistence that it is slang for "dung" and was meant to be offensive).

Rather, we are called to proclaim hope in the God who has come to bind up the broken hearted and to set the captive free. This does not mean that we don't help people to cope at all, but underlying that work is an abiding trust that God is active and working for change. On our lips is a song of all that God has done, is doing, and has yet to do.