Be sure to see mine……

loved this, and appreciate the spirit in with it was written although I have a tiny bone to pick. We actually PAY taxes all year round, and in fact the IRS nearly always takes too much. On 15 April we file a RETURN to get back the excess. We are loyal because there is a reward for us, and we have tangible proof of it both in the filing of the return and the check (or direct deposit, these days) that comes with it. But really the IRS-God is enforcing our “belief” in him (her? it?) in the most brutal manner, by taking away our money and then requiring us to spend hours and many pieces of paper to get it back. If God on High would do that I’m sure more people would listen!

You wrote:
“From my perspective, stories don’t necessarily distort (whether love or the I-Thou relationship), but are simply incapable of being that relationship: they are related to what they recount, yet distinct from it. Having a different ontology, stories rather open worlds wherein I may find possibilities for existing better, worlds that I may, in a certain sense, “inhabit.””

This is pretty much what I was trying to relate. There is an old Zen koan in which the student asks the master, What is Zen? The master says nothing but points at the moon. This is the answer to this puzzle, IMHO: the word is not the thing itself; the finger is not the moon, though it points to the moon. So I agree with you that the main issue is basically that stories (words, symbols) are not the thing itself — but for me, that is a crucial difference. So I would suggest that it *does* distort, at least somewhat, simply and merely by not being the Ding an Sich. To go back to my example: a theory of love, no matter how complete, no matter how empirically based, and no matter how useful in other contexts, is necessarily insufficient for *human* understanding of love. That is only had through loving and being loved. Thus, talking *about* love, in propositional/declarative sentences, even if what is said is true, is necessarily a distance remove from love itself. And this, then, becomes the function of stories – that move, evoke, inspire, induce sym-pathy – by getting the audience to *feel*, not just *think*. That is, of course, half the reason why we like them. But in the end a word is a symbol and, hence, an abstraction, which is a move away form the thing itself. Yes, I agree that stories point us to new possibilities — but, like the finger pointed to the moon, they themselves are not those possibilities. It is up to us to live them, to actualize them, to create them.

“In other words, while they may not point to (in the specific sense of “point out”) God, their very “uncontainability”—their propensity to move us, to encompass us, to draw us into their orbit—is an informer that speaks of other, further possibilities that could be actualized.”

I entirely agree. Eugene Borowitz, a reform Jewish theologian, calls these experiences “transcendence.” He, of course, understands them to point to, or perhaps manifest, God. I respect this view and have no real objection to it except to say that it is not my experience. I find nothing added, for me, by positing a underlying ontology, and find doing so opens up many new problems, for me. Another Jewish thinker, Mordecai Kaplan, also addresses this idea, in ways more congenial to me and very reminisncent of what you seem to be saying. He is a religious naturalist, which means he does not believe in a literal supreme being but still finds religious language uniquely suited to expressed his own experience of holiness. He speaks of God as “the power that makes for salvation” – which requires a lot of unpacking, but basically means those aspects of the universe and of life that serve to promote human flourishing. This would include creativity, possibility, the awareness of tikkun olam – in Jewish thought, the duty to repair the world. I.,e., it is precisely those moments of sublimity that make us aware of how far short of our ideals and values much of the world routinely falls, and thus those moments inspire us to make the world better. Thus, God can, in this sense, be said to “command” ethical action, righteousness, and the pursuit of Goodness.

“Taken from this perspective, I’m not sure if the best question is “does a given symbol system [i.e., the Bible’s] move you?” Rather, it seems to me that the question is “given that certain of my lived experiences do move me, a) how do I construe these experience, and b) how does/ might what moves me or what I desire relate to and inform the rest of my existence?” ”

Again, I agree, and I did not flesh out my thoughts fully enough. I think the experiences we have, that we want to talk about, and that we must use imperfect symbols to do so, engages in a reciprocal relationship to the symbol systems we use. Thus, for many Christians, the symbols of Christ, the Resurrection, atonement, and the like serve both to express and relate them, creatively, back to their own experience. Thus, those symbols both give voice to, and shape, ones live-life and life-experience in a way that, hopefully, makes that life deeper and more abundant.

Thus, in the stories we tell about ourselves and about God, we may understand those stories (as I think you agree) to be pointing to something beyond themselves and beyond reality as we find it, to something better and more life-giving and life-affirming. This is the only “theodicy” that can make sense to me: God, as the bearer of human ideals, “responds” to evil by commanding ethical action, and by demanding, in us, ethical maturity.

Your response is great, and in light of it I’d like to raise a few more (correspondingly lengthy) points & questions.

You write in #29 that “no theory *about* love, no matter how accurate or true, substitutes for actually loving and, in a sense, trying to make such relationship the object of thought necessarily distorts it.” And later, “how do you communicate an experience when any discussion of it, in words (and hence symbols) necessarily distorts that primary, unmediated, I-Thou experience you want to refer to?”

From my perspective, stories don’t necessarily distort (whether love or the I-Thou relationship), but are simply incapable of being that relationship: they are related to what they recount, yet distinct from it. Having a different ontology, stories rather open worlds wherein I may find possibilities for existing better, worlds that I may, in a certain sense, “inhabit.”

Viewed from the perspective of relationship-and-distinction, I think that puts your experiences of being “moved” (e.g., by the “beauty of [your] children” and the “majesty . . . in the stars”) in a different light. For if “they point to nothing beyond their own holiness,” they remain events that evoke the essential (as you say, the “holy”). So, while we created our children, their wonder far surpasses our procreative acts: I do not feel I earned them but feelgifted with them (giver aside). And central to this “essence” is that they bring in a different economy: in their presence we are no longer in the quid-pro-quo of reciprocity, but in the “more” of superabundance.

In other words, while they may not point to (in the specific sense of “point out”) God, their very “uncontainability”—their propensity to move us, to encompass us, to draw us into their orbit—is an informer that speaks of other, further possibilities that could be actualized.

Taken from this perspective, I’m not sure if the best question is “does a given symbol system [i.e., the Bible’s] move you?” Rather, it seems to me that the question is “given that certain of my lived experiences do move me, a) how do I construe these experience, and b) how does/ might what moves me or what I desire relate to and inform the rest of my existence?” Clearly, dangers lurk nearby—our experiences (and the stories we tell about them) can give way to illusion. So I am not suggesting that we make God (or the Bible, or our children, etc.) into anything that want them to be.

Yet I believe that we can mediate the desire vs. illusion dilemma by understanding “reality” as meaning both the true (versus false) and the actual (as the current state-of-affairs, versus the possible [as what may be]).

By doing so, I think that we can legitimately require that God show up (you write “God, to me, has always been silent”) and respond to evil in reality (not by “theodicy”) and authentically desire a God who could be “more” than what we have known, and who could be manifest in ways beyond our past experience. In other words, in this sense we may legitimately value the possible over the actual, the unreal over reality (as “what is”). There’s more argumentation needed to substantiate this, but this gestures at what I’m thinking.

What do you think?

Yes, this is good. Your points again helpfully push me to say better what I’m thinking.

On the one hand I agree with you—we know this God only as this God “shows up.” This is why I’ve been hammering on the hermeneutical value of experience (i.e., the essential role of our lived existence in any act of understanding).

But, on the other hand, we need to have some information about God in order to know how this God is to be expected to show up. What kind of God is this? Several things inform this. One is my expectations (and closely related to this, what type of God [or interaction with God] I’m willing to live with). The other would be sources of information about God. This includes the Bible (this is a big topic that I won’t go into here) but also my own experience of things related to God. Let me give you a few examples.

I am married and have 2 kids. The Bible talks about forgiveness, yet the Bible alone cannot make me believe in the value of forgiveness. That is because forgiveness is not a concept, but an action. And as an action it is fully known and understood in its practice. So I personally understand the value of forgiveness through my interactions with my spouse—forgiving and being forgiven. Same with love, and with other attributes of God’s character.

In other words, God is related to and distinct from my existence. And understanding how God is related and how distinct is essential to my ability to perceive God in human existence, should God “show up.”

So my earlier point: understanding God and understanding self/ world are intimately linked. For if I am not self-aware enough to know that my abusive childhood distorted the value of the word “love” (i.e., my parents said they “loved” me but this love often came in the form of abuse and deceit), then I will be unaware that my expectations of love are necessarily mis-aligned. How can I thus understand (or better, even recognize) God’s love (especially, if as it is claimed, it is true love [and not the false stuff I received])? Clearly, there is more involved in the question, but I think that there is at least this.