Theodicy and the Steve Jobs story

October 24, 2011 By

I do not expect a second wave of Steve Jobs religion coverage at this stage of the game, even with the fascinating, almost civil religion tone of the official Apple memorial service.

But it could happen.

Why? For starters, the Associated Press news story about that Walter Isaacson biography of the Apple visionary opened with a strong religion-angle hook and then — longtime GetReligion readers know that this is rather rare — it backed that lede with a strong piece of new information, drawn from the book.

Sure enough, Job’s religious journey into Zen Buddhism began at a familiar starting point, one that GetReligion has underlined many times in mainstream coverage of major news events — “theodicy.”

the·od·i·cy
noun, plural -cies.

a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil.

Thus, the opening by Rachel Metz, as featured in USA Today:

SAN FRANCISCO – A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a skeptic all his life — giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children, calling executives who took over Apple “corrupt” and delaying cancer surgery in favor of cleansings and herbal medicine.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, to be published Monday, also says Jobs came up with the company’s name while he was on a diet of fruits and vegetables, and as a teenager perfected staring at people without blinking. …

The book delves into Jobs’ decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumor — a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable.

Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, the book says, before finally having surgery in July 2004.

Now here is my main line of questions about that. Is it really accurate to say that he gave up religion as a child, since it’s clear that alternative forms of religion and/or religious practices played a crucial role in his life? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that he walked away from the Missouri-Synod Lutheran faith of the family that had adopted him? He eventually chose another religious path.

Also, what does “skeptic” mean in this context, in light of his life-and-death trust in elements of Eastern faith? Is the implication that he was skeptical about a personal God, about theism? Was he simply skeptical about the miraculous?

There seems to be some connection between the religious issues and the medical issues. In the heart of the story, readers learn:

Fortune magazine reported in 2008 that Jobs tried alternative treatments because he was suspicious of mainstream medicine.

The book says Jobs gave up Christianity at age 13 when he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine. He asked his Sunday school pastor whether God knew what would happen to them.

Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.

In the print edition, the wording is somewhat different — but the content remains the same.

OK, GetReligion readers, has anyone out there already dug into the book? Does this AP story do justice to the religion angle in this seeker’s life?

Filed Under: Journalism, People, Religion, Web/Tech, World Religions

Hollywood rediscovers religion! Again!

October 5, 2011 By

Anyone who knows anything about the religion beat knows that there are stories that the pros end up writing time and time again. Holiday stories are the most obvious, but there are others — such as all of those theodicy studies that your GetReligionistas keep pointing out year after year.

Well, I’ve been thinking about this one for some time now and I think I am ready to make the call.

Every three to five years, mainstream journalists — or those at The Los Angeles Times, at the very least — will discover the amazing, shocking, unknown fact that dedicated religious believers who attend worship services approximately once a week like to go see movies just like everybody else.

In fact (gasp!) they can even be thought of as a kind of “niche” audience that deserves special attention and the occasional quality film that takes them and their concerns seriously. I realize that it’s strange to pin the “niche” label on about 20 to 40 percent of the U.S. population, but there seem to be groups that Hollywood has trouble detecting in its focus groups.

Do you remember the stunned newspaper articles that created “The Passion of the Christ”? And then there was the wave of coverage that came soon after that, about the time of “The Blind Side.” I was interviewed for the Los Angeles Times piece on that one and the reporter who talked to me was slightly apologetic about the fact that the newspaper’s editors still thought that this old story (can you say “Chariots of Fire”?) was brand new and fresh as a daisy.

So here we go again. This time, we’re watching a true mini-wave of low- to mid-budget Indie films with a “spiritual” bent, aimed at (gasp!) several different “spiritual” audiences. When you put that into a Los Angeles Times trend story, it sounds like this:

In many quarters, Hollywood has long been regarded as an essentially godless place. But judging by the offerings at the movies this season, and more in the works, Tinseltown is rediscovering religion.

My advice: Someone needs to copyright that phrase, “Tinseltown is rediscovering religion.” You can make some money off it in three to five years.

But back to the story.

In the span of just a few weeks starting in late August, audiences looking for God at their local multiplex have had their choice of titles, including “Higher Ground,” a chronicle of one woman’s struggle with her faith; “Seven Days in Utopia,” an inspirational golf drama; and “Machine Gun Preacher,” about an evangelist who takes up arms in Africa. And the onslaught isn’t slowing down. “Courageous,” about policemen wrestling with their faith after a tragedy, opened this weekend. Emilio Estevez’s “The Way,” about a father on a religious pilgrimage, is set for Friday.

These films follow the success this spring of “Soul Surfer,” about a Christian teen surfer’s comeback after losing an arm to a shark. Released by Sony’s TriStar division, the film brought in nearly $44 million at the U.S. box office.

In many cases, these movies are not filled with unknown actors; they star top performers such as Robert Duvall, Melissa Leo, Helen Hunt, Helen Mirren and Louis Gossett Jr. (all Oscar winners), plus Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen and Gerard Butler.

So why is Hollywood looking to a higher authority?

Because this is America and large parts of American are filled with ordinary Americans? Because millions of regular worshipers also like to overpay for popcorn from time to time?

Actually, this story is one of the better “hot trend” pieces that I have read on this topic. It talks about the days in the mid-20th century when religious films were normal. It discusses the low-budget trend symbolized by the “Facing the Giants” Southern Baptists down in Georgia who recently released “Courageous.”

However, this story should win some kind of prize for daring to mention the following shocking facts.

Ready? Are you sitting down?

Rich Peluso, vice president of Affirm Films, the Sony Pictures division that acquires faith-based and inspirational films, said some in Hollywood still believe that the audience for religious-themed movies is limited to the Midwest and South.

“The reality is that the Christian population in Los Angeles, based on pure population size, is one of the largest populations of Christians in the country,” he said. “In Seattle and Portland, we do extremely well with the faith-based populations there. And Chicago and New York. Faith-based films tend to do well where Christians are, and they tend to be everywhere.”

All together now: Who are those guys?

So here is my request for GetReligion readers. Have you paid attention to these stories through the years? Please send us URLs for some of the best and worst of the “Tinseltown gets religion” coverage. Let’s have ‘em. And which movies should have been mentioned in this latest Times piece, but were not?

Filed Under: Baptists, Evangelicals, Film, Pop Culture, Religion

Few big questions, no answers, in Rockaway

September 11, 2011 By

Like many of you, I spent much of today watching a surreal combination of two kinds of television programing — 9/11 coverage and professional football. What is there to say about that?

I was thankful — “happy” is simply not the right word — that MSNBC decided to run almost all of its original Sept. 11 coverage. Nothing could have shown how much our world has changed than the images and words from that time. Nothing.

Your GetReligionistas will wait for the actual coverage of the memorial rites to make comments on how the religious content was handled. Will anyone, for example, offer factual insight into President Obama’s choice to read Psalm 46? It was a choice that was both fitting and bold, especially this cadence:

The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved.
He uttered his voice.
The earth melted.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come behold the works of the Lord who has made desolations in the Earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the Earth.

As always, theodicy was everywhere.

America is still the kind of place in which ordinary people demand both questions and prayers. There will simply be too much religion-beat material today and tomorrow to read and critique.

However, the question for me is whether the press will deal with the religious content of the day, rather than simply nod at the words and the images. Out of all of the material in the Sunday papers, it was a chunk of the massive New York Times coverage that struck me the hardest, in this regard. Did anyone else read the feature story about the tug-of-war in Rockaway between the commitment to honor the dead and the desire to, somehow, move on? Here’s the opening of this emotional piece:

Just off the boardwalk, towheaded children bounced on a blow-up trampoline. Grown-ups bantered and showed off babies. An annual charity event was starting off summer on the Rockaway peninsula, a sliver of Queens jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. In the usual place of honor, between the Budweiser and the barbecue, stood photographs of grinning young men: all childhood friends, all dead.

The roguish blond one brandishing the beer mug — Charles F. X. Heeran — died on Sept. 11, 2001. One of 12 killed from his church alone, he worked at the bond-trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald, high up in the World Trade Center. The one in shades and flak vest, Michael D. Glover, joined the Marines, spurred by Charlie’s death. In 2006, Lance Corporal Glover was killed by a sniper in Iraq.

Ten years after 9/11, a kind of memory industry hums along in Rockaway.

The peninsula suffered one of the nation’s most concentrated losses when the terrorist attacks scythed through generations of firefighters and Wall Street traders in the largely Irish-Catholic neighborhoods here. Fifty-nine people from Rockaway died; about 70 counting summer and former residents. One enclave, Breezy Point, lost 32 of its 5,000 people. A proportional hit to New York City would have taken 51,000 lives.

The location for this story is, literally, defined in terms of blood and religion.

Religious institutions and references dot the text. It’s impossible to write the story without them.

At the very end, the Times finally gives us a religious voice. I assumed, at this point, that readers would be offered some kind of context, some kind of summary statement — a thesis — the voice of a pastor in dialogue with one of the families at the heart of the drama.

Belle Harbor’s priest, Msgr. John Brown, has requested remembrances for a parish history. There has been little response. “The first question I got,” he said, “was, ‘Why?’ ”

In their no-frills way, the Heeran brothers are taking stock.

“I think about what my brother would be doing,” Sean said. “He’d be a multimillionaire on Wall Street. He’d be a father.”

Billy said: “I’m over his death. But not over the fact that he was killed by terrorists.”

Their whole family is going to ground zero on Sunday, for the first time in years. Billy hates seeing other bereaved parents there; Sean and his wife prefer visiting their brothers’ graves. (They had the grim luck of recovering remains.) “I think this’ll be the last one,” Billy said. “I just want Sept. 12 to be a new day.”

Small things still flatten Ellen Moran: catching her mother crying at her rosary; seeing pictures of her brother John’s boys. “I’m caught off guard more often than I would like today, that it’s still such a powerful shock,” she said. “That whole surrealness, it just hits you again — like, did that really happen?” …

And that’s about it. You’ve got Catholic schools, Catholic people, Catholic grief, a Catholic mother with a rosary. You know, all the usual colorful religious stuff. But where are the Catholic questions? You see, if you have the big questions, then you can listen to the voices who try to provide some answers.

Now, I know that it might be too much to add some factual, journalistic content about the fact that — painful as this is to admit — believers have suffered and died before, for centuries and centuries, while seeking answers to some of these big, eternal questions.

I know that not everyone finds comfort in the ancient answers, but many do. That tension is part of the story.

The Times didn’t write that tension into the Rockaway drama.

Maybe tomorrow.

IMAGE: From the Breezy Point 9/11 Memorial page at YellowEcho.com.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Islam, Journalism, People, Religion

Listening to ancient voices of grief

July 17, 2011 By

This may sound like a rather religious or even doctrinal question, yet it is a question that I want to ask for totally journalistic purposes.

Here it is: What do you think that modern women and men know about grief, suffering and the presence of evil in our world that was not known by, let’s say, the ancient Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, etc.? In other words, when issues of theodicy arise in the news — whether through tornadoes, tsunamis or the twisted minds of local or global terrorists of all kinds — are we not dealing with issues that are, in and of themselves, ancient as well as modern?

Thus, journalists should not be surprised (Thank you, Peter Jennings, for stating this candidly) to find that the people touched by these tragedies almost always discuss them in religious and eternal terms. This is a journalistic reality.

I bring this up, of course, because the mainstream press is back on the theodicy beat again this week because of the numbingly brutal murder of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky in Brooklyn.

In ancient Jewish traditions, the rites of burial and grief take place very quickly and the big issues are confronted head on in the traditional prayers that link individuals back into the circles of family and community through the generations. Once again, these are ancient issues and they are treated as such. This is a reminder to the grieving that they are not alone — in the present day or in the context of the ages.

The New York Times stepped carefully into this spiritual arena this week with a story on the Jewish traditions related to “sitting shiva” in the days after the loss of a loved one. As you would expect, the story is quite direct in its description of what takes place. In terms of color and details, this story writes itself:

The Jewish custom of shiva, the seven days of intense mourning, often has its spirited aspects.

Despite the prevailing sorrow, visitors might gather around platters of food in a bereaved family’s home and celebrate a long life, or remember foibles with affectionate laughter.

But not after the death of a child, particularly one who died in such chilling fashion as Leiby Kletzky, the 8-year-old Brooklyn boy who was kidnapped and killed this week. Throughout the morning and afternoon on Friday, a stream of visitors entered the Kletzky family’s brick apartment building on 15th Avenue in Borough Park. Almost all were somber, as if on a mission they did not relish.

Shoeless and sitting on a low chair, Leiby’s father, Nachman, received the visitors alone in a narrow dining room while his wife, Itta, and their four daughters clustered in a bedroom off the kitchen. Around the apartment, there were so many gifts of fruit and cakes that the family had been forced to send some back. But these were no consolation, visitors said.

“They’re trying to cope,” said Jonathan Schwartz, 42, a close friend. “They keep on saying that God gave them the privilege to raise this child for nine years.”

The questions looming in the background are huge, especially in the case of the brutal murder of a child. However, these questions are not new. I would assume that Jews and Arabs living in the danger zones of the Middle East through the ages have become tragically familiar with the questions asked after the bloody deaths of children.

There is much to praise in this report. The writing is clear and it does not seem that the Times team invaded the family’s privacy in any unnecessary way. And what about the intersection of these sober rites with other traditions during the week?

With the beginning of Sabbath approaching — a night and day when even shiva is interrupted — Mr. Schwartz and other visitors grasped at the thought that the usually joyous observance would provide a respite. “It’s the day of peace,” Mr. Schwartz said. “It will affect us for the better.”

Still, it was hard to escape reminders of Leiby’s ordeal. Outside the building, neighbors had posted a sign that said: “Please be sensitive to the family. DO NOT share rumors, stories and information you have heard — at all!!” Leiby was suffocated and his body was dismembered, but people close to the Kletzkys say they have tried to spare the family the details.

With so many solid details included, I almost hate to discuss what is missing. However, I must.

After all, what is missing is the content of the Orthodox Jewish traditions themselves — the content of prayers handed down from generation to generation, the very words of the prayers that offer comfort, yet starkly face the realities of life and death.

If reporters are looking for solid, newsworthy quotes that address the big questions, all they have to do is listen to the psalms. There are times when journalists must quote scripture and liturgical prayers, if they actually want to deal with reality of the mysteries that they are covering. It’s scary to quote the Bible and other ancient prayers. But it gets easier, once reporters actually begin listening to the voices around them.

So this story is about sitting shiva. What words go with these rites? The place to start is right here, especially Psalm 49.

Please read carefully, because you will be listening to millions and millions of voices through the ages. These believers faced the same questions being asked in Brooklyn today. They are part of the story. Amen.

Filed Under: Judaism, Marriage & family, Religion, Worship

Blood, tears and theodicy in Brooklyn

July 14, 2011 By

One of the most important lessons that journalists learn as they gain experience is that accuracy is not a matter of knowing more and more things about more and more subjects. The first thing that reporters must know how much they don’t know. Humility then leads to the kinds of questions that produce accurate, insightful stories.

I am not, of course, arguing against reporters studying to learn more about the stunningly complex world of religion — of course not. In my experience, it is the reporters who attempt to learn more about religion who grasp the degree to which there is more to learn. I feel the same way, of course, about subjects such as science, the arts, sports, etc.

Learn more and you will ask better questions, for the simple reason that you have an increasing awareness of how much you don’t know — compared to those who live inside world’s defined by the major faiths and myriad lesser known faiths.

A case in point: I once read about 5,000 pages of Mormon materials (children’s educational materials offered the best insights) while preparing to interview two of the faith’s top leaders. It helped me ask better, more specific questions. It also showed me how little I knew, even after taking graduate courses on new religious movements in American history. I needed pew-level knowledge, you see.

I bring this up because of the coverage that is unfolding right now about the brutal murder and funeral of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky in Brooklyn. A reader wrote in to praise the basic Associated Press coverage of this hellish tragedy and I agree with that judgment. At the same time, this is a story in which the religious culture that is being covered is so unique, symbolic and content-rich that it must — ironically — have been easy for the reporters to realize that they had to be careful, clear and specific.

Read this part of the AP report and you can just hear the reporters and editors asking question after question to make sure they got things right. It’s crucial, for example, that the suspect who has implicated himself in the murder — Levi Aron — is an Orthodox Jew, but not part of the Hasidic community.

The Hasidim are ultra-Orthodox Jews who live in somewhat insular neighborhoods. The streets are policed by a group of volunteers known as the Shomrim patrol. Many of the mothers who gathered outside the Kletzky family home Wednesday said the streets are normally safe enough for a child to walk home alone.

Adel Erps, like other neighbors, expressed shock the suspect was Jewish. “He’s a sick person obviously, but it hurts so much more,” she said.

Aron’s family was Orthodox but not Hasidic, and he lives about a dozen blocks away from the Kletzky family. When detectives arrived at his attic apartment around 2:40 a.m., they asked him where the boy was, and he nodded toward the kitchen. …

Detectives saw blood on the freezer door and opened it to discover the feet inside, wrapped in plastic bags, according to the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still going on. A cutting board and three bloody carving knives were in the refrigerator, and a plastic garbage bag with bloody towels was found nearby. Aron told police where to find the rest of the body. …

Later on, there is more background — in part to help explain the visuals in photographs and video reports.

Hasidic Jews abide by strict religious rules that require men to wear plain, dark clothing that includes a long coat and a fedora-type hat. Men often have long beards. Most of the 165,000 members in the New York City the area live in Brooklyn and belong to three sects. Hasidism traces its roots to 18th-century Eastern Europe.

“This is a no-crime area,” said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district includes the neighborhood. He said the boy was the only son of the Kletzky family. The parents have four daughters, and the husband works as a driver for a private car service.

“Everybody is absolutely horrified,” he said. “Everyone is in total shock, beyond belief, beyond comprehension … to suddenly disappear and then the details … and the fact someone in the extended community … it’s awful.”

As you would expect, the New York Times is all over this story and has reporters on staff who know they are dealing with a culture that is both local and foreign at the same time.

I was, in particular, struck by their somewhat risky decision — in my humble opinion — to put some of the blunt theological language of the funeral into print without any kind of context and/or clarification from other Hasidic believers and outside experts. I say this because I have Hasidic friends and I know how careful they are in expressing their beliefs.

Yet in the passion of this kind of scene, blunt words are often used that may make sense to the believers present, but not the reporters.

Let me stress that I think that it was good to go after this content. It is normal for strong religious messages to be present in funerals, as I wrote just yesterday. The issue, for me, is the degree to which outsiders can grasp the following without a bit more assistance (which is hard work, I know). Doctrine is tricky business.

The service began shortly before 10 p.m., and was marked by a speech from the boy’s father, whose voice shook as he stood before the crowd and addressed his dead son, saying in Yiddish that he was lucky to have had him, if only for nine years.

“Thank God we had him,” he said, according to a translator. And then, overcome by emotion, he went silent. A moment later the principal of Leiby’s school spoke.

“He got lost, he got lost,” he said, according to the translator. “There’s nothing to say, he got lost. God wanted it.”

Several rabbis also spoke in Yiddish through intermittent tears, repeatedly breaking down. They extolled the boy’s good qualities, and reminded the community to be careful, urging the adults to protect their children. At one point the rabbi of the synagogue that Leiby attended recalled the boy’s devotion to his studies.

“He was such a good learner,” the rabbi said, according to a translation. “He used to pray all day. It was a pleasure to have him in the class. We’re not the boss. Everything is as God wanted it.”

Yes, bad things happen to good people. The world is broken. Once again, reporters — as in stories about twisters and tsunamis — face the “theodicy” question.

This was a close call on a terrible, awesome, stunning story. I would be interested in hearing the views of Jewish readers on how the Times handled the theodicy content (please click here) in the funeral remarks. I am not saying that I would have done any better. I am saying that great, great care was needed in handling those remarks.

Filed Under: Journalism, Judaism, People, Religion, World Religions, Worship

Jennings, the Times and tornadoes

April 20, 2011 By

The tornadoes ripped through the heart of the Bible belt, so you knew what was coming in the mainstream coverage — Godtalk. There simply isn’t a way for reporters, even elite reporters, to talk to ordinary Americans under tragic circumstances without eternal issues coming up.

You could see a hint of that in the headline that topped the A1 story, with lead color art, at the New York Times. It proclaimed, with just a touch of omnipotence: “Tornado Swarm Deals Death, but Also Miracles.”

The miracles were, of course, performed by the tornadoes themselves.

However, I must admit that the story captures some classic examples of the tragic, bizarre and touching events that take place inside the zones shaped by the physics of tornadoes (it helps to know that I grew up in the tornado alley near the Red River in North Texas). Here’s a sample of material from the top of this very well-written report:

There was Glen White, 24, who found the strength to push up a wall that had fallen on five residents of a group home. There was the married couple who were thrown into their backyard as the storm exploded their home. They landed close enough, battered and bruised, to hold hands. And there was Molly, a graying donkey who for years has starred in the town Christmas pageant. People say they saw her lifted into the funnel cloud when the storm hit Saturday night. They thought she was a goner. …

Yes, 11 people died in those dark and deafening 10 minutes. Dozens were hurt and homes were destroyed.

As people picked through the mess and showed up with water and fried chicken at temporary shelters Monday, everyone seemed to mix their grief and shock with a sense of marvel that a mile-wide tornado that blew through this land of peanut fields and chicken houses with 165-mile-an-hour winds didn’t do worse.

There’s much more where that came from. However, as I read through the story I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I mean, I’ve been visiting rural North Carolina for decades and spent six years just on the other side of the mountains from Asheville. You can’t go a mile in that corner of the world (OK, maybe five miles) without hitting a Baptist or Methodist church. I know how these folks talk.

So, I wondered, where was God in all of this?

Sure enough, God made the cut in this story — but barely. This is how the piece ends.

There will be cleaning up to do and funerals to plan. People will wait to see if insurance will help them rebuild. They will count their blessings as they mourn their losses, and talk of God’s plan and God’s work. And they will cheer the resilience of the town’s most famous donkey.

“Molly’s going to make it to one more Christmas play,” said Tiffany Everett, 44, who had driven to the destroyed group home to lend a hand.

So the faith-friendly voices were there, their quotes just weren’t good enough to make it into print.

All this reminds me of that encounter I had long ago with the late Peter Jennings of ABC News. I have quoted this here before at GetReligion, but it precisely describes what I think is going on in this Times report.

Jennings and I were discussing this question: Why do so many mainstream reporters have trouble handling religion news? What is the heart of this problem?

Anyone who has watched television, said Jennings, has seen camera crews descend after disasters. Inevitably, a reporter confronts a survivor and asks: “How did you get through this terrible experience?” As often as not, a survivor replies: “I don’t know. I just prayed. Without God’s help, I don’t think I could have made it.”

What follows, explained Jennings, is an awkward silence. “Then reporters ask another question that, even if they don’t come right out and say it, goes something like this: ‘Now that’s very nice. But what REALLY got you through this?’ “

For most viewers, he said, that tense pause symbolizes the gap between journalists and, statistically speaking, most Americans. This is not a gap that is in the interest of journalists who worry — with good cause — about the future of the news.

What he said.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism, People

What hath the LAT wrought

March 22, 2011 By

We mentioned last week that people were trying to make sense of the tragedy in Japan. I noted that a few celebrities did a very bad job blaming the Japanese for angering God; the specific ESPN story I discussed broached but did not address the theodicy question.

This story from the Los Angeles Times tries to answer that question. Its structure reminds me of one I wrote for San Bernardino’s The Sun after Hurricane Katrina and the Sumatra tsunami. However, reporter Mitchell Landsberg doesn’t cast his net as wide, talking primarily to theological conservatives, and only from the Christian and Jewish traditions.

Overall, the story is a good read, and includes thought-provoking and insightful quotes like this one from Erik Thoennes, a Biola University theology professor and an EV Free pastor:

“Is God judging Japan?” he asked. “Well, no more than He’s judging me.”

Yet, this story was not without its problems. Unfortunately, they come at the beginning of the article and belie the foundation upon which the story was reported:

If there is a God, and if He (for the sake of convention) is all-powerful, what in God’s name was He thinking?

This is perhaps the oldest of theological questions — the one that may, in fact, explain the nearly universal human yearning for faith, what evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering calls “the belief instinct.” How can we explain the inexplicable? How can we make sense of suffering?

Atheists say we can explain life’s complexities through science, and that there is no meaning in suffering. It just is, and we should do our best to alleviate it.

Monotheists see it somewhat differently. Faith offers answers, if only the unsatisfying: “It’s a mystery.” But there is little consensus among the faithful.

Let’s take that graph by graph.

In the first paragraph, Landsberg is suggesting that God might not be a He, but that is completely irrelevant to, and distracting from, the topic at hand. More importantly, the early tone is way too cute for what should be a serious, even somber, story. Using God’s name in vain to question what He was thinking is pretty close to a pun, and every journalist knows those are to be avoided.

This second paragraph is a nice set up.

But it is oddly followed with a third paragraph about how atheists see suffering. This is a relevant perspective, but I don’t think it belongs right after a paragraph suggesting that inexplicable suffering gave rise to the idea of God.

In the fourth paragraph, I saw two major problems. One is that monotheists don’t see things “somewhat differently” than atheists. They see questions about God and suffering diametrically differently. And, two, is that monotheists don’t just say, “it’s a mystery so don’t worry about it.” They pine for explanation, which they often find in God’s greater plan. Further, Christians and Jews are far from the only monotheists, though they are the only ones whose views appear in this story.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Judaism, Religion, World

Cappie’s vengeful God

March 17, 2011 By

Speaking of religion and tragedy in Japan, a lot of celebrities should have spoken a little less. In case you missed it, some people have said some stupid things about the tsunami. And some have dragged God into it.

Cappie Pondexter, a WNBA player, was one of those. On Saturday she tweeted: “What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes.”

She followed by using the racist term “jap” and saying: “u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so u can’t expect anything less.”

The ESPN story giving her apology is worth talking about. After providing the background, ESPN quoted Pondexter’s tweets apologizing. Of relevance, she said:

“I wanna apologize to anyone I may hurt or offended during this tragic time,” the tweet said. “I didn’t realize that my words could be interpreted in the manner which they were. People that knw me would tell u 1st hand I’m a very spiritual person and believe that everything, even disasters happen 4 a reason and that God will shouldn’t be questioned but this is a very sensitive subject at a very tragic time and I shouldn’t even have given a reason for the choice of words I used.

So that raised a big question — it’s actually one of the biggest questions about God. It’s the question of theodicy — a topic that comes up quite often in religion-news coverage and, thus, here at GetReligion. It almost deserves its own category in the archives.

As John Hagee learned, this is a tough, tough subject to deal with in the media. But it’s even tougher when the media totally ignores the issue.

ESPN’s response is weak at best. The reporter didn’t try to interpret what Pondexter was saying; he didn’t make any sort of inquiry into whether Christian theology supports Pondexter’s perspective.

He simply quoted a statement from the Anti-Defamation League that references God but mischaracterizes the premise of Pondexter’s statement. The ADL is an anti-discrimination advocacy organization, which is great, but Abe Foxman isn’t a Christian theologian.

So ESPN leaves readers with the impression that Pondexter’s perspective is offensive but presumably not out of touch with what all Christians believe. In fact, many, maybe even most, Christians don’t believe in a retributive God, and the reporter should have taken a moment to find that out and include it in this story.

Folks, that would have taken one or two telephone calls. Tops.

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, Sports, World