The Shaping of Evil (Jeremiah 18: 1-11)
I’ve been engaging in some fascinating discussions this week on a chat board I post to, about British physicist Stephen Hawking’s latest book, and his strong assertion that the universe created itself with no divine power being present. The board in question is full of mostly agnostics, a few evangelical Christians, one or two very vocal atheists, and a gentleman a few years older than I am who pastors an African Methodist Episcopal church out west. Much of our discussion has focused not on the debate over divine intervention, and whether or not God exists, but on how tragedy affects people, and how they respond to it. My pastor friend, John, pointed out that Hawking’s entire life has been wrought with trials that make him sound like a modern-day Job. He’s had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) for nearly 50 years, his first wife was unfaithful and eventually divorced him, his second wife allegedly abused him physically, and he’s needed 24/7 care for decades. As John put it, he’s known more than a few people who “quit God” in such circumstances. His former boss, a woman who was once a devout Catholic, is now convinced that God does not exist, because the breast cancer she had to fight at age 42 ‘cost her the man of her dreams’ – meaning, her boyfriend decided he couldn’t deal with it and broke things off with her.
Amid the sad stories that were shared, the comment that stuck out to me came from Doug, who observed “I’m pretty much an agnostic, but anyone who would quit God after this never believed in the first place.” It caused me to wonder, how do we see the presence of evil in our lives? Is it a proof that there’s no God? If we don’t accept that, if we believe that in spite of the presence of evil, God exists, then why does it occur when the Scriptures state that God loves us? What is its purpose in the life of the Christian?
Let’s consider what we see as evil. Merriam-Webster defines it primarily as “the fact of suffering, misfortune or wrongdoing”. Their second definition is “something that brings sorrow, distress or calamity.” It strikes me as notable that only ‘wrongdoing’ is really an action word here. Every other word is a neutral word. Sorrow and misfortune aren’t something we actively do; they’re something we experience. These things are experienced by every human being, regardless of whether or not he or she believes that God exists, so it’s really pretty useless to use its existence as a testing rod of the existence of a divine being. However, its existence can be used as a testing rod in another way: how it shapes those who experience it.
Some of the greatest Christian thinkers in history suffered terribly; one of the strongest examples is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theological boy wonder who earned his doctorate at age 21 with a groundbreaking thesis. He came to Union Seminary in New York in 1930 for further study only to be disappointed that it wasn’t up to the exacting standards of his seminary back in Germany. He was radically changed through his participation in the worship life of a Black Baptist church in Harlem; he later claimed that it was here, in worship with those suffered oppression on a daily basis, that he “turned from phraseology to reality” and where he began developing his ideas about the cost of discipleship. Ultimately it led him to leave the US, against the advice of others, and return to Nazi Germany to help fight the Third Reich, which eventually imprisoned him and later executed him at age 39 – only three weeks before the fall of Berlin. On the other hand, we have Stephen Hawking, who has been through trial after trial as mentioned already, and apparently is convinced there is no God. The fact that he’s an atheist has nothing to do with what he’s suffered; in fact he credits his illness with helping him to focus solely on what he was researching, with no distractions. The evil itself seems to be less the deciding factor in these men’s lives than how they responded to it.
I believe that’s really what God is saying to Jeremiah through this passage. It bears noting that the prophet is told specifically to go to the potter’s house in order to hear God’s message. The prophet observes the potter working with the clay, which is completely reliant on the potter and the wheel as to what shape it will take. I read a little online about what a potter does; he stated that there are three types of clay with which he cannot work: clay that is completely dry, clay that lacks moisture, and clay that has hidden air in it. The first two made sense to me; it was the description of the third I found fascinating. He explains that a pot may look perfect, but in fact have a hidden pocket of air in it. When the potter puts the clay in the fire and heats it up, the air trapped inside expands and explodes the pot. I’m certain the prophet saw a beautiful metaphor in these facts as he observed the process and then heard the Word of God speaking to him about it. It’s a good and wonderful thing to be saved by God’s grace, yes. It’s a good and wonderful thing to know the love of Christian fellowship and the joy of discipleship. But keep in mind that our statement of faith in the United Church of Christ also says that there is a cost to discipleship. Bonhoeffer learned this so well that it became the title of his magnum opus, published when he was only 31 years old. Evil shapes who we are as people because, like the clay pots being fired, it perfects us. It’s not without trial that we learn how to be better people and better Christians.
It’s rather an odd idea, that evil would have a good purpose in the life of a Christian. But God DOES promise that those who turn away from evil will be heard, and saved. When I was in my first year of seminary studies, all incoming students were required to take their first course together; it was called Pilgrimage in Faith. We spent four hours together every Monday evening, beginning with lecture, then a communal dinner, then small group discussions, and finally ending the evening with a brief worship service. During that class, a fellow student wrote a beautiful poem in her native Spanish about the seminary process; she shared it with us at the end of the academic year. It includes a directive from God to the student: vas a llorar porque dentro el fuego debes pasar…vas a sangrear. You’ll cry because you have to go through the fire. You’ll bleed. You won’t get through this without some pain. But I’ll be there with you, the entire time, supporting you. I feel your pain as keenly as you do, because I’ve been there myself. And I, too, had God there with me, the entire time, supporting me.
The final verses of this passage deliver the good news in the midst of the talk of using evil to teach the message: that if the evil does not consume us, that if we do not allow ourselves to bend to it, God does intend good. One might ask, but then how do you explain how evil shaped the woman who had cancer and lost her boyfriend and her faith as well? How do you explain the physical deformity in a man with the mind of a genius who is so focused on reason that he has no time for faith? Evil is not a tool that God uses to test people and how much faith they have; if that were true, I don’t think any of us would be sitting here now! Evil is a barrier to be conquered regardless of the eventual outcome in our personal lives. It is not evil that shapes us and our faith; it is in fact our faith that shapes us and how we respond to evil. Bonhoeffer wrote, “If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence…we…have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.” We would never fully understand the grace of God without also understanding the pain of God.
So I’ll boldly assert here today that evil can actually be a good thing in the life of a Christian. It brings us closer to God, and closer to understanding God’s purpose for us. The question is, how will you respond to it? Are you completely dry? Do you have too little moisture? Are there hidden pockets of air in you that will cause you to explode when you’re tested in the fire? Which type of clay are you?
