Now almost twenty years ago, the tragic death of a college friend from cancer shortly after the birth of his first child was the catalyst for my period of deconstruction. Inexplicable suffering in the world had always vexed me--childhood diseases, natural disasters killing thousands--but my friend's death was scalding salt water on life's "open wound."
A few months later I read Lewis's A Grief Observed for the first time in years. Like Lewis, I never felt as if I questioned God's existence, but I certainly questioned what kind of God he was, and I could claim nothing more than an agnostic view of a number of faith claims people in my tradition proudly confessed.
Although I tend to recoil from the "God's ways are not our ways" response to tragedy and suffering, when it came to theodicy, I eventually reached the point where I conceded I would never find an intellectually and emotionally satisfactory answer to pain.
I recall an old post from Richard that still resonates with me a lot in which he said--and I'm paraphrasing--Jesus's teachings offer no explanation for suffering in the world, but they do tell us how we should respond to it.
‘The open wound of life’ - that’s a very evocative description of how ‘the problem of pain’ (chiefly that of others) seems to me - it’s a wound I’ve been tending for thirty and more years. At times it threatens to kill my faith altogether; at other times it almost closes over - but then something happens, or a fresh idea strikes me, and rips it open again. So thank you for writing. Currently I’m pondering Thomas Jay Oord’s ‘The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence’, and wondering whether his ideas ‘let God off the hook’ (of responsibility for suffering). It’s a quite different angle from which to approach the problem, and it’s taking quite a bit of effort to work out whether it fits other aspects of the ‘theological framework’ with which I try to make sense of my faith.
While I don't agree with your division of Christians into those who make life harder and those who make life easier because I think we all do both, intentionally and unintentionally, I think that a drop more of grace on my part is far better than anything else I can do about the suffering of others. Thank you for this.
Thanks—just two caveats. Your sharp contrast between Christians who ease burdens and those who make life harder has real bite, but maybe too much clarity. Most of us shuttle between the two, even in the same hour. - And if theology becomes mainly a coping mechanism, doesn’t that risk turning consolation into a ceiling rather than a doorway—to change, to solidarity, even to joy? I don’t say this to blunt your epiphania. I just wonder whether the drop of grace you glimpse might call not only for relief, but also for renewal. Maybe even for recognition: good grief can be grateful.
Have been thinking today about the idea of theology ‘being a way of coping’ - at this point in my life it is a way of coping. It is an explanation, as well as a source of hope. It is helping me calm down.
But, when I first embarked on pursuing theology over a decade ago it was an exciting search for truth. a ravenous curiosity to seek God, to know God more and to glean wisdom. Little did I know that it was the beginning of me deconstructing everything I thought I knew. Theology opened up a whole new world, it was exciting and opened new ways of thinking & being. It was exciting.
However, over the last few years it has simply become a way of coping. Something to cling too, or a way of understanding why I was clinging to God.
Theology is helping me navigate what has been a dark, terrifying time. I have recently, started to pick this up again.
As I stepped into your theological world, I saw the hopelessness of finding answers for suffering. What could I offer from my world that would not sound shallow to you in your world? Even offensive? But not all theological worlds have answers to all theological problems. You may need to set aside your world to find an answer to this obsessio.
It sounds like you have come out the other side of your deconstruction - you speak of it as being a phase. But deconstruction is how new worlds are formed. In the reconstruction phase you lay the first stone, and how you choose that stone profoundly influences the trajectory. It sounds to me like your first stone was the premise that if God is a loving God, he would not have allowed all this suffering. That being the first stone, you can hardly expect the world you have built to answer the question of suffering.
I am not saying that you should discard your world, but perhaps construct a new one with a different cornerstone. My cornerstone was the true vine. Mapping the vine as described in John 15 morphed into a detailed diagram of the kingdom of heaven. Understanding the meaning of the Greek word for true also played a huge role. It wasn't what I thought it was.
Mine wasn't really deconstruction, it was building a new world from the ground up. I just pushed aside my current theological world. I did not dismantle my current world to build it back better. I built a new home while still living in my old home, not moving in until it was ready. I didn't trash my current world, I just pushed it to the side. The old world kept wanting to intrude, and it was difficult to keep that from happening. But it worked, now I have two worlds where I can traffic. One was the Evangelical world, and I don't know what to call my new world - still pondering that.
If I were to share an answer to your question from the perspective of my world, it would make no sense to you in your world. That is how these things go. When I practice my theology, people love me. When I share my theology, they hate me.
On another note, I love the way you have introduced us to the concept of different worlds where we can freely move from one to the next, respecting that in one world they drive on the other side of the road, and that is just how they do it there. This has helped me see how I have been judgy of worlds that do not align with mine, and how others have been judgy with me for not aligning with theirs. I think perhaps when I am in someone else's world, I need to respect the side of the road they drive on.
The ability to skip from planet to planet gives me insights that could not be seen otherwise, ask questions I would not have thought of. This is a rare ability. Your sharing has given me permission and courage to use this to my advantage. Before now, I was a one-world theologian. Now I feel like a globe-trotter, trotting from one globe to the next.
A world of thanks to you. I am finding your thoughts most helpful. Refreshing.
“The goal of the Gospel is NOT to affirm you, celebrate you and accept you.
The goal of the Gospel is to rescue you, transform you and redirect you.”
This was recently sent to me by a dear friend via FaceBook, who definitely inhabits a different ‘Theological World’ than I. He means well and loves the Lord assertively, but his soteriological construct is 'exclusive', rather than 'inclusive', and could be construed as being subtly belligerent as well. My friendship with him is more important to me than unpacking, deconstructing and ripping into what he’s said. How I respond to his Theological World, will ultimately reflect my own. If I truly call him my “Brother in Christ”, the need to win the argument, to be understood and to have him see things my way, should never take precedence over the joy of our friendship.
"My obsessio was Suffering. Not my personal suffering, but the suffering of the world."
Friend Beck, you speak my mind and heart on this. It was the beginning of this concern about universal suffering that led me from the Lutheran tradition of my childhood to my Quaker faith and practice of the past 40 years.
"...other genres of revelation may be intimate and subdued, attentive to the weight of the present; they can express lament at what we already lost, at all we cannot save—acknowledging all beings in their precious particularity. And they can invite us to acts of care, beyond the usual calculous of returns."
Lamentation is a form of accompaniment. Before one can offer any sort of healing ministry, one needs first to sit with the ones in suffering, in order to validate the hurt, the fear, the anger, the unanswerable grief.
Laments do not need an answer; they hold an answer. So many psalms of the Hebrew Bible begin with lamentation. The response of YHWH in the second part of such psalms is not to “fix” the problem but to say, “I am still with you.”
I like hearing about Theological worlds 😁. It's so fun. I think you and I come from the same one, or at least similar ones... I also think Jesus's obsession might have either been Suffering or Justice too...so I think you are in good hands
Thanks for sharing your theological world. So helpful. This series has come at a good time for me.
I think my obsessio is suffering too. And, as part of this, I have also felt like people needed more power. Originally my motivation was having hope that I would see Jesus lifting peoples burdens and setting people free, including for myself. But over the last few years I have found that whilst I am still surrounded by suffering people, I myself, personally have had to face my own personal horrors, shocks, griefs, terrors and more sorrow than I have felt I could bare. It is this that has drained my energies, not other peoples sorrows. It has made me useless to be able to help others for a season.
I am not sure about my epiphania. I feel I need to do some work on this. I want to work on this to try to find a way to settle, to live, to inform my prayer life and to work on what can be ‘now’ and accept what is ‘not yet’.
I have often found the language of captivity and deliverance helpful, like in Isaiah 61. Satan feels like a real, clever, living active being for me- even though ultimately I DO believe that he was disarmed at the cross - that Jesus did come to destroy the works of the devil - but, I don’t think this will fully be realised until the eschaton - it is why I have no earthly political hope, or the energy to be an activist- but, one day there will truly be no more tears. I believe that. History will come to it’ conclusion, it will play out. However, I have always hoped to see more of the good news here and now in the earth than I actually see.
I am disappointed. Truly disappointed.
But, perhaps we miss it.
I write this after having just sat in a meeting where a young, teenage woman I am working with has relapsed and is experiencing scary psychotic episodes - it is so very sad - so very hard - her life has been stopped in it’s tracks, just as she was preparing to be discharged home back to her friends, back to her school and back to her family. Now she is stuck here, against her will, as she is unable to think rationally enough to make the right decision. Here is like hell on earth at times - but sadly this ‘hell’ is keeping her safe.
This is unfair. This has nothing to do with her guilt.
And, I do not believe in hell either. In the fulfilment, in the eschaton, why would God have a ghetto of suffering, torment attached to the New Heaven and The Earth? How could this be envisaged in the New Creation? The concept of hell isn’ t justice for me - it is cruelty. It feels incomplete.
I find the concept of accepting, facing the reality of the ‘open wound of life’ helpful. I guess this is my starting point and anything that comes along that brightens this, lightens living in a world that has a relentless open wound is a grace.
During the Christmas holiday of 23-24 I believe the heavens sent me a gift…
I found a baby budgie in my garden. Never in a million years would I have dreamt this up, or asked for this as gift from the Creator! But, it felt like a personal gift.
I rescued this precious, helpless, screeching budgie and he has become my pet. He helped revive me in 2024. He was a great teacher in my darkest hour. He delights me. He feels precious even though I joke at him and say if I went to the pet shop he would only have cost me £20 quid! Ha! He has been priceless, a tiny, weeny, beautiful, pretty, wondrous part of creation for me to enjoy, look after, tend too. And, rescue. He would not have survived the night what with the cold, wind and cats.
But, sometimes it crosses my mind that one day I will go to his cage, he will have fallen off his perch and I will find him at the bottom of his cage, dead. So sad.
This is the pain of life, the cost of living. This is the ever open wound of life.
But, in the mean time he has been such a source of joy, a source of inspiration and in the same way I have reached him, found him, provided a safe home, provided for his needs, given him joys to enjoy and amuse himself, my Father in Heaven who cares for me, like he cares for sparrows, can provide for me.
There is wonder in creation. I am truly appreciating this for the first time. I have also loved my pets, but this £20 budgie thing has been one of the most profound lessons and gifts in my life.
I’m sad and happy as I read this: It’s lovely and it is right, it’s wrong and confused. Everything is worldview defense, I suppose. Everyone seeks some safe harbor. Seeds seek some nurtured loam. Matter coalesces and bonds, passions fulminate and explode. We’ve levelled the mountains and filled in the holes, to the bitter winds never ceasing. Our roots are exposed.
Language, symbols and relations they roil and boil—the soil is turned over. A bit of humility and eccentricity to try to take cover. Everyone cleaves out a sojourner’s home. Is it cool? Are we on the fashionable margins? Is it real? Does it feel? Does it work? Have we gotten past our immaturity still?
Are we building? Are we breaking? Is the all hard work worth taking? Is it rest? A distraction? Am I now a part of the unfair equality faction?
We’ve been loved by the fundamentalist. We’ve been burned by progressive hate. Humbled by rubes and humiliated by new saints. Narratives are like roads on a map ever changing. Washed our feet in the new storm that was raging.
It’s all good. It’s all okay. And if we’re all ‘post’ something, let it be post-posthaste.
Dr Beck, thank you. At first I identified with one obsessio, that of belonging, but then your courageous sharing made me realize that I also resonate with the same heartfelt kinship with suffering, especially of the innocent: children and creatures (I have been know to apologize to the roach as I step on it). Is it possible to walk in two worlds at once? Or perhaps, as one finds its epiphania, another obsessio comes to the forefront.
Two worlds at once! What a concept. This is the first time I heard this spoken out loud! As I consider this, I realize that is absolutely necessary, otherwise we will continue to talk past one another, speaking the same language without our dictionaries being aligned. You have solved for me the problems I have been facing for a while now. I always require people to converse in the context of my world. I need to move over to their world when speaking to them. I need to speak in their world, but live in my world. Being of the male persuasion, this may be difficult for me, but I think I'll give it a go.
When you maintain multiple worlds, you just need to keep them separate. Each world is like a wineskin; you don't want to mix the red wine with the white. You also need to know what world the people you are talking to are operating in. That is why it is important to understand them before attempting to be understood by them. If you slip back into your world, you may cause cognitive dissonance, which I have found is a very real thing.
The most exciting thing I have found is to create your own world, attempting to capture the essence of Jesus' theological world. I don't think that world has been formulated yet, as there are deficiencies in all the worlds I've seen. Developing your new world is where you begin with a clean slate and start connecting the dots. When they all connect, you know your are on the right trail. Trust me, they will connect, but this is not like deconstruction, where you begin with a house and tear down sections to rebuild. This is where you buy an undeveloped piece of property and begin with the foundation. Hint: seek ye first the kingdom of God. Godspeed.
Always glad to give someone a new idea to contemplate. I might disagree however, with the idea of working to keep your worlds separate. I am not sure we are necessarily in control of this process. Assuming we are seeking to grow in the Spirit, living a life in the Spirit, as He works in us I believe we leave behind those old obsessions or fears become more like Him, which includes being better able to envision where someone else is coming from. Along with this process comes wisdom and discernment, so that in learning compassion and developing relationships, we do not lose ourselves in someone else's obessio. At that point, then, we ask the Spirit to guard our hearts and minds.
Now almost twenty years ago, the tragic death of a college friend from cancer shortly after the birth of his first child was the catalyst for my period of deconstruction. Inexplicable suffering in the world had always vexed me--childhood diseases, natural disasters killing thousands--but my friend's death was scalding salt water on life's "open wound."
A few months later I read Lewis's A Grief Observed for the first time in years. Like Lewis, I never felt as if I questioned God's existence, but I certainly questioned what kind of God he was, and I could claim nothing more than an agnostic view of a number of faith claims people in my tradition proudly confessed.
Although I tend to recoil from the "God's ways are not our ways" response to tragedy and suffering, when it came to theodicy, I eventually reached the point where I conceded I would never find an intellectually and emotionally satisfactory answer to pain.
I recall an old post from Richard that still resonates with me a lot in which he said--and I'm paraphrasing--Jesus's teachings offer no explanation for suffering in the world, but they do tell us how we should respond to it.
Dear Dr Beck,
I always find your posts and books helpful and insightful. Thank you for them.
On this matter I have found the book of David Bentley Hart about the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean really helpful. I dare to recommend it to you.
Thank you again and please keep writing
Kind regards
Graham Allan ,
Nelson ,New Zealand
‘The open wound of life’ - that’s a very evocative description of how ‘the problem of pain’ (chiefly that of others) seems to me - it’s a wound I’ve been tending for thirty and more years. At times it threatens to kill my faith altogether; at other times it almost closes over - but then something happens, or a fresh idea strikes me, and rips it open again. So thank you for writing. Currently I’m pondering Thomas Jay Oord’s ‘The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence’, and wondering whether his ideas ‘let God off the hook’ (of responsibility for suffering). It’s a quite different angle from which to approach the problem, and it’s taking quite a bit of effort to work out whether it fits other aspects of the ‘theological framework’ with which I try to make sense of my faith.
While I don't agree with your division of Christians into those who make life harder and those who make life easier because I think we all do both, intentionally and unintentionally, I think that a drop more of grace on my part is far better than anything else I can do about the suffering of others. Thank you for this.
Thanks—just two caveats. Your sharp contrast between Christians who ease burdens and those who make life harder has real bite, but maybe too much clarity. Most of us shuttle between the two, even in the same hour. - And if theology becomes mainly a coping mechanism, doesn’t that risk turning consolation into a ceiling rather than a doorway—to change, to solidarity, even to joy? I don’t say this to blunt your epiphania. I just wonder whether the drop of grace you glimpse might call not only for relief, but also for renewal. Maybe even for recognition: good grief can be grateful.
Have been thinking today about the idea of theology ‘being a way of coping’ - at this point in my life it is a way of coping. It is an explanation, as well as a source of hope. It is helping me calm down.
But, when I first embarked on pursuing theology over a decade ago it was an exciting search for truth. a ravenous curiosity to seek God, to know God more and to glean wisdom. Little did I know that it was the beginning of me deconstructing everything I thought I knew. Theology opened up a whole new world, it was exciting and opened new ways of thinking & being. It was exciting.
However, over the last few years it has simply become a way of coping. Something to cling too, or a way of understanding why I was clinging to God.
Theology is helping me navigate what has been a dark, terrifying time. I have recently, started to pick this up again.
Theology, is helping me cope.
As I stepped into your theological world, I saw the hopelessness of finding answers for suffering. What could I offer from my world that would not sound shallow to you in your world? Even offensive? But not all theological worlds have answers to all theological problems. You may need to set aside your world to find an answer to this obsessio.
It sounds like you have come out the other side of your deconstruction - you speak of it as being a phase. But deconstruction is how new worlds are formed. In the reconstruction phase you lay the first stone, and how you choose that stone profoundly influences the trajectory. It sounds to me like your first stone was the premise that if God is a loving God, he would not have allowed all this suffering. That being the first stone, you can hardly expect the world you have built to answer the question of suffering.
I am not saying that you should discard your world, but perhaps construct a new one with a different cornerstone. My cornerstone was the true vine. Mapping the vine as described in John 15 morphed into a detailed diagram of the kingdom of heaven. Understanding the meaning of the Greek word for true also played a huge role. It wasn't what I thought it was.
Mine wasn't really deconstruction, it was building a new world from the ground up. I just pushed aside my current theological world. I did not dismantle my current world to build it back better. I built a new home while still living in my old home, not moving in until it was ready. I didn't trash my current world, I just pushed it to the side. The old world kept wanting to intrude, and it was difficult to keep that from happening. But it worked, now I have two worlds where I can traffic. One was the Evangelical world, and I don't know what to call my new world - still pondering that.
If I were to share an answer to your question from the perspective of my world, it would make no sense to you in your world. That is how these things go. When I practice my theology, people love me. When I share my theology, they hate me.
On another note, I love the way you have introduced us to the concept of different worlds where we can freely move from one to the next, respecting that in one world they drive on the other side of the road, and that is just how they do it there. This has helped me see how I have been judgy of worlds that do not align with mine, and how others have been judgy with me for not aligning with theirs. I think perhaps when I am in someone else's world, I need to respect the side of the road they drive on.
The ability to skip from planet to planet gives me insights that could not be seen otherwise, ask questions I would not have thought of. This is a rare ability. Your sharing has given me permission and courage to use this to my advantage. Before now, I was a one-world theologian. Now I feel like a globe-trotter, trotting from one globe to the next.
A world of thanks to you. I am finding your thoughts most helpful. Refreshing.
“The goal of the Gospel is NOT to affirm you, celebrate you and accept you.
The goal of the Gospel is to rescue you, transform you and redirect you.”
This was recently sent to me by a dear friend via FaceBook, who definitely inhabits a different ‘Theological World’ than I. He means well and loves the Lord assertively, but his soteriological construct is 'exclusive', rather than 'inclusive', and could be construed as being subtly belligerent as well. My friendship with him is more important to me than unpacking, deconstructing and ripping into what he’s said. How I respond to his Theological World, will ultimately reflect my own. If I truly call him my “Brother in Christ”, the need to win the argument, to be understood and to have him see things my way, should never take precedence over the joy of our friendship.
"My obsessio was Suffering. Not my personal suffering, but the suffering of the world."
Friend Beck, you speak my mind and heart on this. It was the beginning of this concern about universal suffering that led me from the Lutheran tradition of my childhood to my Quaker faith and practice of the past 40 years.
What way forward I have been shown in worship and in walking with others begins with lamentation, followed by grace. As Mayra Rivera writes (https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/iconographies-of-catastrophe-and-lament/),
"...other genres of revelation may be intimate and subdued, attentive to the weight of the present; they can express lament at what we already lost, at all we cannot save—acknowledging all beings in their precious particularity. And they can invite us to acts of care, beyond the usual calculous of returns."
Lamentation is a form of accompaniment. Before one can offer any sort of healing ministry, one needs first to sit with the ones in suffering, in order to validate the hurt, the fear, the anger, the unanswerable grief.
Laments do not need an answer; they hold an answer. So many psalms of the Hebrew Bible begin with lamentation. The response of YHWH in the second part of such psalms is not to “fix” the problem but to say, “I am still with you.”
I like hearing about Theological worlds 😁. It's so fun. I think you and I come from the same one, or at least similar ones... I also think Jesus's obsession might have either been Suffering or Justice too...so I think you are in good hands
Thanks for sharing your theological world. So helpful. This series has come at a good time for me.
I think my obsessio is suffering too. And, as part of this, I have also felt like people needed more power. Originally my motivation was having hope that I would see Jesus lifting peoples burdens and setting people free, including for myself. But over the last few years I have found that whilst I am still surrounded by suffering people, I myself, personally have had to face my own personal horrors, shocks, griefs, terrors and more sorrow than I have felt I could bare. It is this that has drained my energies, not other peoples sorrows. It has made me useless to be able to help others for a season.
I am not sure about my epiphania. I feel I need to do some work on this. I want to work on this to try to find a way to settle, to live, to inform my prayer life and to work on what can be ‘now’ and accept what is ‘not yet’.
I have often found the language of captivity and deliverance helpful, like in Isaiah 61. Satan feels like a real, clever, living active being for me- even though ultimately I DO believe that he was disarmed at the cross - that Jesus did come to destroy the works of the devil - but, I don’t think this will fully be realised until the eschaton - it is why I have no earthly political hope, or the energy to be an activist- but, one day there will truly be no more tears. I believe that. History will come to it’ conclusion, it will play out. However, I have always hoped to see more of the good news here and now in the earth than I actually see.
I am disappointed. Truly disappointed.
But, perhaps we miss it.
I write this after having just sat in a meeting where a young, teenage woman I am working with has relapsed and is experiencing scary psychotic episodes - it is so very sad - so very hard - her life has been stopped in it’s tracks, just as she was preparing to be discharged home back to her friends, back to her school and back to her family. Now she is stuck here, against her will, as she is unable to think rationally enough to make the right decision. Here is like hell on earth at times - but sadly this ‘hell’ is keeping her safe.
This is unfair. This has nothing to do with her guilt.
And, I do not believe in hell either. In the fulfilment, in the eschaton, why would God have a ghetto of suffering, torment attached to the New Heaven and The Earth? How could this be envisaged in the New Creation? The concept of hell isn’ t justice for me - it is cruelty. It feels incomplete.
I find the concept of accepting, facing the reality of the ‘open wound of life’ helpful. I guess this is my starting point and anything that comes along that brightens this, lightens living in a world that has a relentless open wound is a grace.
During the Christmas holiday of 23-24 I believe the heavens sent me a gift…
I found a baby budgie in my garden. Never in a million years would I have dreamt this up, or asked for this as gift from the Creator! But, it felt like a personal gift.
I rescued this precious, helpless, screeching budgie and he has become my pet. He helped revive me in 2024. He was a great teacher in my darkest hour. He delights me. He feels precious even though I joke at him and say if I went to the pet shop he would only have cost me £20 quid! Ha! He has been priceless, a tiny, weeny, beautiful, pretty, wondrous part of creation for me to enjoy, look after, tend too. And, rescue. He would not have survived the night what with the cold, wind and cats.
But, sometimes it crosses my mind that one day I will go to his cage, he will have fallen off his perch and I will find him at the bottom of his cage, dead. So sad.
This is the pain of life, the cost of living. This is the ever open wound of life.
But, in the mean time he has been such a source of joy, a source of inspiration and in the same way I have reached him, found him, provided a safe home, provided for his needs, given him joys to enjoy and amuse himself, my Father in Heaven who cares for me, like he cares for sparrows, can provide for me.
There is wonder in creation. I am truly appreciating this for the first time. I have also loved my pets, but this £20 budgie thing has been one of the most profound lessons and gifts in my life.
I’m sad and happy as I read this: It’s lovely and it is right, it’s wrong and confused. Everything is worldview defense, I suppose. Everyone seeks some safe harbor. Seeds seek some nurtured loam. Matter coalesces and bonds, passions fulminate and explode. We’ve levelled the mountains and filled in the holes, to the bitter winds never ceasing. Our roots are exposed.
Language, symbols and relations they roil and boil—the soil is turned over. A bit of humility and eccentricity to try to take cover. Everyone cleaves out a sojourner’s home. Is it cool? Are we on the fashionable margins? Is it real? Does it feel? Does it work? Have we gotten past our immaturity still?
Are we building? Are we breaking? Is the all hard work worth taking? Is it rest? A distraction? Am I now a part of the unfair equality faction?
We’ve been loved by the fundamentalist. We’ve been burned by progressive hate. Humbled by rubes and humiliated by new saints. Narratives are like roads on a map ever changing. Washed our feet in the new storm that was raging.
It’s all good. It’s all okay. And if we’re all ‘post’ something, let it be post-posthaste.
Dr Beck, thank you. At first I identified with one obsessio, that of belonging, but then your courageous sharing made me realize that I also resonate with the same heartfelt kinship with suffering, especially of the innocent: children and creatures (I have been know to apologize to the roach as I step on it). Is it possible to walk in two worlds at once? Or perhaps, as one finds its epiphania, another obsessio comes to the forefront.
Two worlds at once! What a concept. This is the first time I heard this spoken out loud! As I consider this, I realize that is absolutely necessary, otherwise we will continue to talk past one another, speaking the same language without our dictionaries being aligned. You have solved for me the problems I have been facing for a while now. I always require people to converse in the context of my world. I need to move over to their world when speaking to them. I need to speak in their world, but live in my world. Being of the male persuasion, this may be difficult for me, but I think I'll give it a go.
When you maintain multiple worlds, you just need to keep them separate. Each world is like a wineskin; you don't want to mix the red wine with the white. You also need to know what world the people you are talking to are operating in. That is why it is important to understand them before attempting to be understood by them. If you slip back into your world, you may cause cognitive dissonance, which I have found is a very real thing.
The most exciting thing I have found is to create your own world, attempting to capture the essence of Jesus' theological world. I don't think that world has been formulated yet, as there are deficiencies in all the worlds I've seen. Developing your new world is where you begin with a clean slate and start connecting the dots. When they all connect, you know your are on the right trail. Trust me, they will connect, but this is not like deconstruction, where you begin with a house and tear down sections to rebuild. This is where you buy an undeveloped piece of property and begin with the foundation. Hint: seek ye first the kingdom of God. Godspeed.
Always glad to give someone a new idea to contemplate. I might disagree however, with the idea of working to keep your worlds separate. I am not sure we are necessarily in control of this process. Assuming we are seeking to grow in the Spirit, living a life in the Spirit, as He works in us I believe we leave behind those old obsessions or fears become more like Him, which includes being better able to envision where someone else is coming from. Along with this process comes wisdom and discernment, so that in learning compassion and developing relationships, we do not lose ourselves in someone else's obessio. At that point, then, we ask the Spirit to guard our hearts and minds.