Robert Barron - When God’s Ways Are Confusing
Peace be with you. Friends, today I want to do something I don't usually do, which is to preach on the second reading. During these last several weeks, we've been reading from Paul's Letter to the Romans. And maybe in another year I could just focus on this magnificent text. Paul to the Romans is one of the great texts in our whole tradition. Paul is the first theologian; he's the first person really to think the Christian thing through in a very disciplined way, because of course all his letters predate the Gospels.
Romans, written sometime maybe in the late '50s of the first century, is Paul's longest and most systematic statement of Christian faith. Almost every major theme in theology is in Romans. Whitehead said that all of philosophy is a footnote to Plato; you could say all of Christian theology is a footnote to Paul. And Paul is at his fullest expression in the Letter to the Romans. So you get the impression, I think, it's an important letter. Well, today we have a very interesting, famous passage, and I'm just going to read it to you. It's very brief. "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways"!
You've probably heard that passage. It comes at the culmination of a section of Romans, Romans chapters 9 through 11, where Paul is talking about the problem of Israel and the Church. And I'm not going to go into that; that's not my point today. But it's a famously thorny problem. So Israel is the chosen people. Paul is an Israelite. And he recognizes Jesus as the Messiah; he's the fulfillment of Israel. And he makes that announcement, and some people accept it, but to be frank, most of Israel doesn't accept his message.
So what's the relationship between the majority of Israelites who have rejected the message and those few Israelites and Gentiles who've accepted it? How do you think together Israel, the chosen people, but Christ, the fulfillment of Israel, etc.? As I say, I'm not going to go into that. Take a look at Romans 9 to 11 for the details. The point is it culminates with this famous line, when Paul is trying to search through this mystery, this confounding problem, and he says, "The depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments how unsearchable his ways"!
I do a lot of debate and dialogue with non-believers. Very often when agnostics and atheists attack the faith, it's along the lines of, "How could an all-knowing and all-good God allow", now fill in the blank, "the suffering of children, or allow natural catastrophes, or allow animals to suffer the way they do, allow leukemia in a five-year-old. These are just so anomalous. How could you possibly believe that an all-knowing, all-good God could allow these things"? Much of the objection hinges upon the puzzle, the puzzle that is proposed by the existence of God.
Well see, here's a classic answer from within the heart of our tradition. "I admit it," Paul says, "I admit it. God's ways are confounding to us". "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways"! So the atheist or the agnostic might say, "Well, isn't that neat? Isn't that an easy way out of the problem? We just say, 'Oh, it's a great mystery.'" Well, not really. We have to realize whom we're dealing with and whom we're talking about when we deal with and talk about God. As I've said many times before, God is not something in the world.
So I'm looking around this studio where I'm recording these words, and I can point to various objects and people. I can go outside and point to various activities, and I can read the paper about certain events. I can consult the scientists, and they tell me about things happening within the cosmos. Okay, those are all objects and events and experiences within the world. If I use philosophical language, those are all categorical things. They can be categorized. I can say, "Oh yeah, that's this type of thing and that's something else. Oh yeah, that's where that thing ends and where that thing begins".
These are all definable. Even the planet Jupiter, well yeah, it's this massive object, but I can define it. I can set the limits to it. I can say, "Well, yeah, that's Jupiter, but that's Saturn over there". There's that person, and here's this person. They're separate, they're definable, they're categorizable. Then there's God, the Creator of all things, the reason why there's something rather than nothing. The explanation for the universe itself is not an ingredient in the universe. Does that make sense? It's not a thing among others within the universe.
I think very often the atheists and agnostics make that fundamental error. They think of God as some big object. "Some say it's there, some say it's not. Let's go find out". But that's what God is not. Therefore, God, in our great tradition, is described as being "totaliter aliter". That means not just other, like Jupiter is other than Saturn. God is "totaliter aliter". It means he's "totally other". God can't be compared to anything within the world. It's not as though, "Well, here's this thing and then there's God over there".
Well, then I could define God. Even that word definition, "definire". "Finis" in Latin means a limit. To define something is to set a limit to it. God can't be defined. God can't be delimited. Therefore, he can't be contrasted with or compared with anything in the world. Now, start reading the mystics on this. This means that God can't be seen. Now, don't think of that as, "Well, there's some visible things floating around and there's some invisible things like atoms and all that". No no, God is in principle invisible. He can never come within the scope of my senses or of my mind.
When I move into the reality of God, I'm going to that place, I'll quote U2 here, but they're relying on the mystics, where the streets have no names. If the streets have names, I kind of know where I'm going. Think when you get in your car. We all do it now: just put your address in the GPS and it follows the route and it knows the names of the streets, and you get where you're going to go. But see, when you're dealing with God, who's not a thing in the world, you're going into a place where the streets have no names. That's why there's that great text in our mystical tradition called "The Cloud of Unknowing". Beautiful, isn't it?
Think of the cloud on Mount Sinai, the cloud that signals the presence of God. It's a cloud of unknowing. "I can't see. I don't know where I'm going. I can't get my bearings". "The depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways"! Why is God doing what God is doing? I don't know, and that's not a cop-out answer. You see my point? That's the only answer I can coherently give given the nature of God. Now, let me take it a step further. So that's the undefinable quality of God, but God is also a person. God's not some dumb object or force. God is a person. I don't know about you, but persons are always mysterious. And I'm talking here about human persons.
If you meet somebody, you can look at them and size them up, and your senses tell you a lot of things about them. You can read about them, you can Google them and find out information about them,that's all true. But a person always remains elusive and mysterious, because the person has got a hidden, secret identity that is apparent to you only when the person reveals it. Isn't it interesting that married couples, married for forty, fifty years, will say, "My husband or my wife is now more mysterious to me than she was before". That makes perfect sense to me. Perfect sense that the more you delve into a human person, the stranger and more elusive and mysterious that person becomes.
Now, combine these two things. God is an infinite, undefinable person. Therefore, how inscrutable his judgments, how unsearchable his ways. Stay with that last phrase for a second. Think of a little child in relation to his parents. A little three- or four-year-old. And the three- or four-year-old understands, "Oh, my parents love me, but man, do they do strange, inscrutable things. Forcing me to go to bed when I don't want to. Telling me I can't do this or that, and that's the very thing I want. But when I'm hungry for something and they tell me no, I can't have it. They take me to this guy wearing a white coat and he sticks needles in me. I don't know what they're doing".
If a child could be given the vocabulary of St.Paul, he would say vis-à-vis his parents, "How inscrutable they are, how unsearchable their judgments. I don't know what they're doing. Somehow I know these two people love me, but boy do they do strange things to express it". Well, obviously the little kid doesn't have the capaciousness of mind to take in what his parents understand: why they don't give him candy before dinner, why they make him go to bed, why they bring him to a doctor who gives him shots, etc. Parents get it, but the child, in principle, can't get it.
Now, take that, everybody, and lift it to the infinite degree: the difference between our consciousness and God's consciousness, the difference between us and this infinite, indefinable person who is God. Is it puzzling that his judgments seem pretty strange and inscrutable to us? "How could God allow such a thing to happen to me"? And we've all experienced it, I get it. Any religious person; in fact, the more religious you are, the more you're going to feel this. "How could God allow", now fill in the blank. Why do we think for a second that we should be able fully to understand the judgments of God? No, no, "the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God".
You say, "Okay, well then where am I left"? You know where you're left, I think we're all left, is in the attitude of that child vis-à-vis his parents. "I know these people love me. I know that at some deep, instinctual level. I don't understand why they do everything they do, but yet I will trust. Yet I will trust". And see, now we come, everybody, and I'll close with this, we come to the central teaching of St.Paul, which is what he calls faith. But see, faith, don't think of it propositionally first of all, as accepting certain propositions. Think of faith as meaning this existential trust. I'm justified, Paul says, by faith, by this trust in God whose ways and judgments I know remain inscrutable to me. We are relating to an infinite, indefinable person who loves us. Therefore, in him we place our trust. And God bless you.