my process

I don't know if the way I think about God (the divine, "The Force" if you will) is original, but since I was young, I've assumed a certain process to theology. First, I think about what I know of evil and innocent suffering. Then, I try to square what I know with my conception of God (this is called theodicy generally). There's no perfect theodicy, but I really think that doing theology without at least trying to make theodicy is not helpful.

Then, I take the conception of God that best fits what I know about evil, and I try to sort out what God does. What are God's limits? How does God interact with us? What are our responsibilities toward God? This is where social justice comes in. Once I know more about what God wants, I can start to order what we have to do about it.

So, I guess it's a sort of cycle: there's evil that I know of; that supposes a certain kind of God (for example, One who permits evil as a result of human freedom); such a God demands a reaction from me; usually, that reaction is to work to lessen the evil I saw.

This process has worked for me - maybe it will work for you. The good thing about it is that it's open to discussion. As long as we're honest about the world, and try to observe it well, we can compare our starting points and our understandings of God.

In the future, I'd like to tell you about my limited understanding of God that I've begun to arrive at with this process, as well as touch on some other issues related to theology: narrative, faith, religious practice. Now, I'm Jewish and most of my examples will come from my tradition, and I hope what I write about will have use for people of any faith.

Feel free to write back with your responses to my posts - partly I'm writing to join the marketplace of ideas. Bear in mind that anything on this blog might appear in future sermons, articles or even a book.

God bless!