Forgiving God. A Review.
I read Brian Macallan’s new book, Forgiving God. Embracing a Risky Adventure with the Divine for the International Open and Relational Theology Conference this February. Here are some thoughts.
In Forgiving God, Brian Macallan, a South African born, Australian theologian shares the story of his journey with colon cancer and how this served as a catalyst for the gut-honest exploration of his faith and how a Process theological perspective helped him navigate his cancer experience, his deconstruction, facilitate significant life changes and priorities, and salvaged his relationship with God.
Reading Macallan’s book stirred memories in my own heart. Not only reminiscent of my deconstruction - reconstruction journey and tripping into Open and Relational Theology, but my own journey alongside my wife as she walks her cancer story.
It has been said that God sometimes offends the mind to reveal the heart. I’m given to rephrase this as Life will, sooner or later, offend the body, to change the mind and free the heart (authentic self). This is confirmed in the pages of Forgiving God.
In the words of modern psalmist, David Bowie “Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes” Macallan sets the stage by expounding on the not so obvious as you might think - Things change. Reminding us that everything is in process in big and small ways. Some sudden and fast while others are glacially slow. It is difficult to see change when we are in the middle a hard charging western life … or particularly in the mundane of everyday. It is often in the shadow of tragic loss or from a life lived with a series of loss that affords us the near 20-20 hindsight to recognize the changes.
Macallan offers examples of change outlining a meta-trajectory towards the better, without dismissing the very real challenges and struggles we face as individuals and communities. He lands this for us in a more granular way too, reminding us that we as individuals change too. Changes physically (as my 56-year-old body attests this morning), and also in the way we see the world, how it works and our place in it. We change in response to our lived experiences - new information, enriching events… and the experiences of the heartbreak of loss. From a faith perspective, we experience changes in the way we understand God including God’s nature and how God is at work in the world, and this affects the stories we tell about each other and God.
Brian generously shares his story - his childhood, spiritual journey, and his experience through Colon Cancer. His vulnerability serves as a kind of on ramp - a vulnerability that invites the reader into his story in a personalizing way, forging a connection which is an effective way to open us up to new ideas.
Macallan introduces the idea of an “Intrusive marker event.” A term coined by James Fowler that identifies a significant life event that dramatically de-centres our worldview - sometimes to a point where we can no longer go on with business as usual. In Macallan’s case, his cancer diagnosis was such an event and the motivation for him to write the book.
A Mike Moment - Welcome to my brain.
The term “intrusive marker event” hijacked my attention. I suspect because it is so sterile, so matter of fact and clinical. It doesn’t capture the horror of a catastrophic diagnosis, the emotional mess, along with tears, snotty-nosed, ugly-crying, depression, anxiety, and down-right panic. Cancer, along with a whole host of other catastrophic experiences are not sterile and not so easy to encompass with clinical detachment. Even religious deconstruction can be extremely difficult on many levels - intellectually, socially, existentially, and often results in fear, anger, guilt, a sense of betrayal, abandonment, rejection from beloved community, and deep anxieties for our eternal well-being.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with Brian’s story, or really the book itself. The term simply made me freshly aware of my aversion to the sterile clinical approach and its aversion to acknowledge the fullness of the human experience.
Back to my review
Brian shares his faith journey through cancer with generous vulnerability. He writes: “I had been a Christian for over two decades, a church leader and was now a lecturer in theology, yet my beliefs were as fragile as ever.” He writes about the tools he previously used to manage the biblical/theological difficulties he had - however, in the shadow of a colon cancer diagnosis “the theological bubbles I had set up were beginning to burst.” He shares how the once authoritative sources of his theological road map were no longer providing the sense of security and comfort they once had. ”As certain aspects of my traditional beliefs collapsed, so did my faith. I felt a mixture of trepidation and relief”
Relief? Remember when I wrote Life offends the body to change the mind and free the heart? The journey through cancer opened his eyes in a fresh way to the genuinely important things of life. I know this sounds cliche’ nevertheless, often very true; through ‘new eyes’ the importance of his spouse and children along with other important relationships became crystal clear. This inspired genuine personal change that meant less work, more family. Less people pleasing, more authenticity. Along with healthier habits. Here Macallan offers the reader a gift - through the vantage of his fresh eyes, he invites us to take a hard look at our priorities.
Macallan unpacks the theological issues contributing to his faith struggle and these include the biggies on many peoples list: the problem of evil, God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and who is responsible for sin. For example, Macallan explains If God is, as traditionally believed, all-knowing and has all the power, he concludes God should have known creation would be a mess, should have fixed it, shut it all down or never created in the first place. In this light of an all-knowing, all-controlling god, Brian, like many of us conclude that humans are not the problem, God is, and he writes “I revolted because I was revolted.”
Macallan’s story doesn’t end here and with the troublesome God ideas laid out, he begins to share his reconstruction with an introduction to Process theology as alternatives to these inherited, troublesome God ideas. Macallan leads us on an introductory exploration of the nature of reality - composed of events/relationships and a reminder that at the core of reality itself, everything is interelated and changing. It is here that he introduces us to a few of the prominent Process voices/thinkers and their ideas - Alfred North Whitehead (reality as a process of becoming), Charles Hartshorne (God knowing the future), Catherine Keller (persuasive power), Daniel Dombrowski (Panexperientialism), David Ray Griffin (panentheism), and Phillip Clayton (emergence within creation). This serves a short but good who’s who of the zoo of the Process community and a primer into some of their big ideas.
While it’s not practical in a book like this to include every voice, I was surprised with the absence of Thomas Jay Oord as his approach to the theodicy is both novel and compelling.
An interesting idea in the chapter entitled: Can the Real God Please Stand up, where Macallan has a couple of paragraphs subtitled Does God Change? He briefly explores the Process idea that God can be influenced and change. He points to the scriptures where it appears as if God has changed Gods mind in response to prayer - the interconnected nature of reality and the close relational connection between God and the world. The big idea here is that God experiences what we experience and is affected/moved/influenced by the experience. Macallan then ponders the idea that perhaps human moral imagination may influence and stretch God’s moral capacity as much as God affects ours.
Certainly, a new idea for me. I agree with the entangled relational nature of reality and between God, creation and specifically humanity. I agree that God shares in the experiences of humanity and is genuinely moved and inspired to act - in ways that are consistent with God’s essence. I agree in this sense of the genuine relational reciprocity between God and human. We part ways with the idea of humans influencing God to love better.
For me, God is Essentially Kenotic (Phil.2:7). God’s essence, character, nature is self-giving Love. That by nature God is love (1 John 4:8 & 16), the source of non-coercive creating, relational love in the cosmos. By nature, God cannot help but fully love. In a deeply incarnational sense, the God-who-is-love is the divine fractal of persuasive love within a becoming universe. God’s essence of love is unchanging, while God’s experience is always changing. The idea that God is the fullness, source, and inspiration of love in creation, that we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19) and models this self-giving love in Jesus, is more compelling for me.
However, this difference of opinion should not diminish the idea of genuine relationship and the capacity to partner with God towards the most well-being possible, moment by moment.
I appreciate the way Brian lands the big Process ideas in very practical ways - specifically, our opportunity, invitation, responsibility to cooperate with God. From the large global collective actions to the everyday actions, “small turnings” and “embodied ethics,” Macallan offers a spectrum of thoughtful practical responses to the invitations of God.
With the big ideas introduced, Brian explores some of the implications with respect to Gods nature/character and how God might be active in the cosmos. The interconnectedness of reality - including God interrelatedness with the world with all its pain leads Macallan to suggest we need to forgive God for God’s shared responsibility in an interrelated world that includes suffering and evil.
Forgiving God closes with an invitation to embrace risk as part of a relationship with God. The subtitle “Risky Adventure with the divine” is provocative especially when much of western evangelical fundamentalism sells a kind of certainty. As Macallan’s story illustrates, this certainty is not very rugged for real life, and strikes the match to the theological house of cards.
Of course, life has a unique way of disrupting our sterile theological ideas. We all, at some level, know that risk is inherent in life. That the bubbles of certainty and security we construct are illusions, comforting and helpful … until they’re not. The ideas Brian shares doesn’t make the tough stuff go away, rather affirms a way of knowing that through the good, the bad and the ugly, we have a partner and faithful friend in God - instead of a Janus-faced adversary.
Forgiving God - Embracing a Risky Adventure with the Divine is a good on-ramp for those who are wrestling with some of the big ideas about God in the shadow of the hard stuff of life. It is accessible for a swath of folks in no small part because of Macallan’s generosity and vulnerability in sharing his story. Indeed, a primer to the big ideas of Process theology with enough meat to intrigue the nerdier of us to go a little deeper. I appreciate the way that Macallan helps land some of these ideas by sharing how they have practically worked themselves out in the terra firma of his own life.
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Details:
Forgiving God. Embracing a Risky Adventure with the Divine
Brian C. Macallan
Process Century Press (Dec 27 2023)
Paperback: 134 pages
Join me this July 8- 12 in the Grand Teton mountains of Wyoming for ORTcon ‘24. This will be my third consecutive year attending this annual conference, and it has been fantastic! Details here.
"It has been said that God sometimes offends the mind to reveal the heart. I’m given to rephrase this as Life will, sooner or later, offend the body, to change the mind and free the heart (authentic self)." Nice.