Mick-Rick Essays on the Sacred and Profane

By Michael Maasdorp and Richard Arthur DeRemee

This second Mick-Rick book begins by posing ten questions to which the authors independently respond with short essays. This format contrasts with the debates of book one. (The Mick-Rick Debates: Controversies in Contemporary Christianity) The ten Questions touch on fundamental issues facing todays Christians such as suffering, life after death, religious cosmology, moral principles and others. The intention of the questions is not to provide pat answers but, rather, to stimulate reflection on the nature and content of Christian Faith in the context of the modern world.

The second part of the book consists of two essays. In Before and After the Big Bang, Rick argues it is possible to live in both the worlds of materialism as represented by science and the immaterial world of religion. Religion or the sacred provides meaning for life; science or the profane provides for our material needs.

Mick holds the idea of traffic between the natural and supernatural destroys the foundations of modern knowledge. In his essay, On Our Own But not Alone, he suggests that to attain maturity we must also gain autonomy, neither of which survives in a world invaded by the supernatural.

The book concludes with a debate on the nature of Constructs that are key mental tools used in religious and philosophical discourse.

Similar to the first book, the interlocutors, Michael Maasdorp (Mick) and Richard Arthur DeRemee (Rick) conducted their conversations over the Internet on the Radical Faith web site (http://homepages.which.net/~radical.faith/index.htm).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 19, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465331397

Michael Maasdorp

Brief Author Biographies Michael Maasdorp (Mick) is a member of an Anglican religious community, The Society of the Sacred Mission, located in Durham, England. He was born, raised and educated in South Africa. After careers as a businessman and parish priest he devoted himself to writing on matters of faith and maintaining the Radical Faith web site. Richard Arthur DeRemee (Rick) retired from the Mayo Clinic after more than thirty years as a physician and professor of medicine. He was born and raised in Minnesota and in the Lutheran faith (ELCA). In retirement he devotes his energies to thinking and writing on religious and philosophical issues.

Book preview

PART I

QUESTIONS

1     

Why does God allow suffering?

Mick: Once upon a time an angry young man hurried up to Jesus and said, Listen here! You go around preaching that God loves us all. But if that’s true, why does God allow people to suffer?

Jesus replied, We know from our forefathers that God made the world. God doesn’t make bad things. Have I got it right?

Yes, said the young man.

Well, continued Jesus, our forefathers also observed that suffering isn’t compatible with a loving God

That’s what I’m saying, said the youth in an irritable tone. Get to the point!

Hang on! said Jesus. I’m getting there! He took a copy of the Scriptures and turned to the Book of Genesis.

Everyone knows that Adam and Eve rebelled against God, he continued. The tale makes the point that everyone, innocent and wicked alike, is being punished for that rebellion.

Well! said the young man. If that’s the case, then God’s not a very nice person.

I take your point, responded Jesus. But I tell you truly that one day we’ll find out how God made living things. We’ll realize that the story of the Fall was intended to make us feel better about God’s creation. We can, as it were, blame it on the snake.

The young man smiled. You’re making sense at last! he said. What you’re implying is that we’ve got to start with the world as it is, as God actually made it.

That’s right! exclaimed Jesus. I tell you truly that God deliberately made our world the way it is. So there’s no point in asking why God allows suffering. The only question is what we are to do in and with this wonderful world. We’re part of nature. We have to work out how to make the best of it, including the suffering which comes to all of us in illness and old age—not to mention the trials and tribulations of surviving from day-to-day. That just the way it is! God is good and knows best. Our task is to trust in God.

The young man looked skeptical. I suppose I can swallow that, he said. But you’ve deliberately missed out the most important part.

Oh! Have I? replied Jesus. Tell me more.

Yes. You’ve missed out all the suffering human beings bring through greed or lust for power or plain ill-will.

I have indeed, replied Jesus, looking grave. But you can’t blame that on God. Surely we make that kind of suffering ourselves. God plainly allows us a degree of choice. So if we won’t love each other, we have to bear the negative results, don’t we?

I suppose so, said the young man. He looked faintly disappointed.

If you think carefully, said Jesus, you’ll discover that I’m right. Now go and try your best to love others!

The young man went away, somewhat put out, for he was a stubborn and self-centered person.

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Rick: Most if not all people suffer at one time or other. The degree of suffering may range from trivial to cataclysmic. Toleration for suffering depends on the capacity, either constitutive or acquired, of the individual to endure pain.

In order to better understand suffering it is appropriate to attempt to define and analyze its nature. Suffering is not a single entity or faculty that can be easily excised from the human psyche or experience. It is a complex state of mind that derives from at least three factors.

First, it all begins with a conscious human being.

Second, there is a source of pain, either psychic or physical, that impinges on the conscious person who is then aware of the personal focus of that pain.

Third, the pain continues over a relatively prolonged time, requiring endurance.

The presence of suffering in the world has often been cited as evidence against a loving and caring creator. How can anyone allow a loved one to suffer? Even mere human beings are generally averse to causing suffering and history is full of examples of efforts to alleviate suffering.

Of course, history is equally rife with suffering deliberately perpetrated by human against human. But how can a benevolent creator be so callus as to allow suffering in the first place?

If one believes, as I do, that the material universe is the creation of God and that that creation is perfect, suffering becomes more understandable. In the context of this creation, all material reality adheres to universal laws instigated by God. God gave us our bodies that follow these established principles.

The greatest human gift of creation is that of consciousness. It distinguishes us from all other animate beings and enables human dominion over the material world. In order for humankind to be relieved of suffering, we would have to relinquish our consciousness. If consciousness were taken from us, we would be reduced to the state of insentient animals and life would cease to have significance or meaning.

Potential sources of pain would remain in abundance but if no consciousness existed to give that pain a personal reference there could be no suffering.

Thus, I see no way to avoid suffering. The capacity for suffering is inherent in our being conscious human beings. A creator, having finished his work, does not dabble with it continuously. He does not change his creation just to respond to complaints, either trivial or profound.

Although the physical world cannot be changed in its essential nature, I think it is possible for God to intervene in suffering by speaking to the hearts of men and women. God can inspire these earthly agents to effect change using the tools of the material world available to them.

Though no one wants to suffer, there are positive effects as iterated by Paul in his Letter to the Romans, Chapter 5:  . . . we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope . . .

2     

Are there immutable moral principles that apply at all times and in all circumstances?

Rick: Some say there is no reality beyond the material, that human existence is but the result of chance