To get the whole picture, read the whole thing here.And so we arrive, once again, at that hallowed time of the year when man bows his head to the Lord, trembling in fear, pounding his chest in regret and sorrow while tearfully begging absolution and mercy from the Creator of the Universe. This is a time for admission, for contrition. A time for swinging a chicken—or cock, as the English say—around your head. (No other hook-nosed creature, not even Jews, has suffered as much throughout history as have chickens.) It is a time for an honest taking stock of oneself—one’s failings, one’s sins, one’s mistakes, one’s errors. With one notable exception:
God.
God murders, God kills, God takes revenge, God, by his own admission, is a jealous God. God turns his head. But God doesn’t apologize. Not for war, not for disease, not for Ashton Kutcher, not for anything. We’ve been apologizing to him for years, and—nothing. Not a peep. Not a whoops, not a sorry, not a “My Bad on the whole Hitler thing.” So, seriously: No more apologies. I’m not apologizing for anything (and I say this over a breakfast of a bacon-and-egg sandwich), not for one more goddamn thing until he does, and I think all Jews, all over the world, ought to unite at last and join me: No apologies. No sorrows. Not this year.
It’s God’s turn:
O Mankind, son of your fathers and your fathers’ fathers, let My prayers come before you, and do not hide yourself from My supplication. O Mankind, I am not so arrogant nor so hardened to say, “I am righteous and have not sinned.” For truly I have sinned. I have turned away from you, and I have done evil in your sight.
(God should bend forward at the waist here and upon reciting each sin pound his chest with his fist.)
For the sins I committed against you with diseases of the body, and for the sins I committed against you with diseases of the mind.
For the sins committed by murdering your parents, and for the sins I committed by murdering your children.
For cancer and for AIDS and for heart disease and for emphysema and for Alzheimer’s and for Parkinson’s. For regular leukemia, and for childhood leukemia.
For the commandments I gave you that I don’t even adhere to myself.
For hangovers...
Mr. Auslander raises a significant issue that Judaism, in my humble opinion, is ill-equipped to handle and that most Christians would also find shocking, if not blasphemous: arguably, the world sucks and God is not off-the-hook for it, nor should he be.
I think that Christianity does provide an answer, one formulated in an unconventional book by Jack Miles titled Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God
One of the arguments Mr. Miles makes - and I hope I understood it correctly - is that reconciliation and forgiveness is a two-way street and that in Christ, God doesn't only forgive us but also, that He asks to forgive him for all those ills the author of this piece ennumerates.
In fact, Miles submits that by undergoing the Passion - along with the Incarnation, an allegation that most Jews find scandalous and nonsensical - humanity discharged upon God the full fury of our indignation for creation being the way it is, in a sense "punishing" God for its shortcomings. God, by becoming human, experiences directly the consequences of creation and the frustration of humans with it, achieving mutual reconciliation and forgiveness.
The radical questions posed in this piece may require a radical answer from God of the sort that Mr. Miles proposed. Miles' answer may be worth of some intellectual consideration and his book, a reading.
I also want to state that the idea of "forgiving God" is not totally foreign to Catholic thought, for it appears in a different form in Dr. Peter Kreeft's book Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion
.I think that a variant, more theologically sound restatement of Miles' thesis can be pursued in light of modern questions about - and directed to - God, and also from the viewpoint of "kenosis" or "self-abasement" or "emptying" of God in Christ as described in the Christological hym found in Phillipians 2: 5-8. I think that through His kenosis God took human nature not only to share the travails of our existence, but also to confront our anger and frustration at it, to the point that He allowed himself to suffer the fury of our indignation in His Passion and death, laying the ground for the profoundest reconciliation between Creator and creature. The answers to Mr. Auslander's angry questions lie, in my view, in the central Christian tenet of a suffering God.
Of course, all these thoughts are my own, are very preliminary, and whatever conclusions I may reach I submit to the Church for ultimate correction.
Your thoughts?