A Light Turns On

[I noticed that not much of substance has been posted here as of late, so I thought I would post tonight's work. It may be an assignment for my process theology class, but it really deals with the issues of religion and disability which is a part of what I see my ministry to be. Enjoy!]


A Light Turns On
There is a lot that could be said in response to C. Robert Mesle’s book Process Theology: A Basic Introduction. Perhaps, later, I will write down more of the myriad things bouncing around within and around the electrons of my brain after having read just half of the book. It seems to me however, the most important thing to respond to would be that which most excites me, most, that which is found on page 64.
For quite some time I have found myself fascinated by the healing narratives in the gospels. This does not mean that they are among my favorites or that I even like them. On the contrary, I find them perplexing and the ‘traditional’ interpretations of them problematic to say the least. On the one hand, these accounts of the gospels show us the compassion of Jesus in healing the lame, blind, deaf, mute, and sick; and as such, these accounts show the Divinity inherent in Jesus. On the other hand, these accounts are rife with exhortations such as “your faith has made you well” (Luke 8:48), which are problematic because they lay responsibility for healing not upon the Divine but in the faith of the one being healed. As someone who feels called to ministry with and for the disabled, these healing narratives pose a conundrum I must grapple with. I already know to well how placing the responsibility for healing upon the disabled can hinder rather help persons of faith with disabilities. I have and will continue to give much thought to how the healing parables can be presented in a more inclusive way. A new possibility of how to do this occurred to me while reading Mesle’s book.
Mesle presents the process view of God acting in the world as a balancing act that allows for a creaturely freedom to chose between possibilities while at the same time providing an “experience of God’s ‘lure’ toward some of those possibilities over others.” . Indeed Mesle presents evolution as the acts of electrons through which God acts by “‘calling’ those gamma particles ‘this way’ in the hopes that a few will respond and nudge the evolutionary process along toward more interesting possibilities.” This seems, and always has seemed, much more plausible to me than some other theological presentations of creation. While Mesle goes on to assert that our experience of God is based on our total experience , Mesle seems to leave the practical implications of this theological view quite open ended. This open ended-ness is understandable, as it seems required by the process theology which created it and which is ever responding to God’s call. However, at the very end, Mesle drops in a note that “process theologians would not rule out altogether the possibility that bodily cells might also, on some occasions, surprise us with their responsiveness to God’s call towards health.” While I understand and even agree with what Mesle is saying, I find it very annoying that he does not connect the thoughts he presents. The connection, which will be helpful in my own ministry, is as follows. If God created evolutionary jumps by calling particles in one direction, then disability can be seen as a physical misalignment of particles below the cellular level rather than as the result of sin or disbelief. If this is so, then the healing parables can then be seen as God working in the world, through the Jesus, to perfect creation. If both of these are so then at the practical modern day level we can affirm that disability/illness has no connection to sin, and that although it may be beyond our ability change, the hope for healing is always possible in God.