This issue has been running around in my head for months. I have neither the historical nor the theological training to address it, so I am pleased to find Tim Miller’s work here and reblog it.
NOTEBOOK 1: GOD’S WILL & INTERPRETING HISTORY
(As an appendix to Humility is Endless, the seven-part Notebook is a collection of connected quotations from scripture, interpretation, and history, which further illustrates the destructive nature of fundamentalist belief and religious certainty of any kind. My own commentary is the thread running through them all.)
As an addition to this essay, here are more instances from history where, to our peril, various contemporary events were interpreted as obvious manifestations of divine action.
While the superficial justification for anti-Semitism has always been a variation on, “[Because] Jews suffered proved that Jews deserved to suffer,”[1] this is also generally true for everyone at some time or another: it is always assumed there is an obvious, divinely sanctioned correspondence between our religious or political or civic affiliations, and the fates of those religions and nations, even though there rarely is. Even worse…
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I appreciate you reblogging this piece; all of the Notebook blogs take up immensely unanswerable questions about religion that have been bothering me for some time. At least so far few people seem to have read them. Hopefully a few will here.
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I hope so as well. I think the topic is always relevant but perhaps especially so right now.
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