Wednesday, November 08, 2006

taking a chance on God

The philosopher Jean-Luc Marion would have us believe that having faith in God means being radically open to possibility, which must mean, any and all possibilities. Taking his cue from the late medieval and early modern voluntarists (God could do anything, even make a square circle, even reverse the Ten Commandments!), he says more or less that our categories of good and evil, freedom and unfreedom, justice, truth, hospitality, et al, only apply to our world, and by no means do they apply to "God's world" which transcends being altogether. So, being open to possibility means being open to the possibility of something awful, something worse than I could ever imagine, as well as something infinitely greater than I could ever imagine. This means that all of us must roll the dice and take a chance on God, taking the risk that what we receive back will be much greater than what we sacrificed, being open to the possibility that it will not. This is simply another way of saying that we must be open to the possibility of our own deaths at all times, to live like there may be a future even when this belief is unwarranted by the evidence. Although Marion adds hastily that all possibilities are ultimately loving, this strikes me as more ominous than comforting. This could be taken to mean that even awful possibilities are in their essence really loving, possibilities such as being attacked or tortured. I am not allowed to have any presuppositions about these possibilities, according to Marion, I must simply be open to them. It strikes me that 9/11 was one such awful surprise, a moment of truly sublime evil. Are we willing to take a chance that the next revelatory event may be something as great as 9/11 was evil, even perhaps, infinitely greater than 9/11 was evil? After 9/11, are we still willing to be open to the future, whatever it may presage? What does it mean to show courage in the face of terror? Or to have faith?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you take into consideration the proof that 9/11 was conducted with help from individuals within the U.S. govt, you have your infinitely greater event.

Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, former Regan official has noted that another false flag event could involve nuclear strikes by the U.S. on its own population to initiate another war. So tragedies far greater than the official version of 9/11 are already proven, and thought ever more possible in the future.