A Work in Process: Seeing Possibilities Instead of Roadblocks
Photo courtesy Tim Mossholder
In less than one week, I am retiring after a career of 40 years total working in church ministry and in higher education as a professor and administrator. I first learned of process thought and of the work of John Cobb as a seminary student in the early 1980s, but I did not begin to fully appreciate what it means to live with an awareness of the impact this perspective could make on my life until about three years ago, during the pandemic, when I was privileged to listen to some lectures Dr. Cobb gave on Whitehead’s Process and Reality online. I was interested in reading Whitehead because, about 100 years ago, he taught my philosophical mentor, D. Elton Trueblood, at Harvard. Trueblood saw something in me which few others saw and nurtured it as I was a student at Earlham School of Religion.
Photograph of Elton Trueblood from A Society of Friends
I think one of the reasons most people did not see what Elton saw in me was because I was born with cerebral palsy. I walk and speak differently than people typically do. It has been that, on numerous occasions, people who do not even know me have assumed I was mentally disabled, based on an observable physical disability, or even intoxicated, because it is simply difficult for me to enunciate words as clearly as most people do. I was told I would never be able to be independent, have a job or a family, and would need to be cared for my entire life. A prominent minister told me once that my disability made me unsuitable for marriage, and therefore ineligible for ministry, even though I had a keen sense of a divine call to ministry from my sophomore year of high school on. This put me in a very disparaged state of mind and emotion, and when Elton Trueblood invited me to be one of his mentees, that was one of the first steps in a healthier direction. Meeting my wife and beginning a life with her, being ordained to Christian ministry, and starting a family added to that better sense of well-being. Nonetheless, then, and even now, the daunting scars of those put-downs still hold some haunt for me.
By the time I was married, I had transferred to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. I happened to take a three-week January term class on the problem of evil. In three weeks, we looked at most of the major thinkers in church history and what they said about this problem which has kept many honest people from embracing faith. None of the ideas offered satisfied me intellectually. One of my classmates went on to become one of the most prominent African American Baptist pastors in the country. I remember the last day of the class; he broke down in tears. He said to our professor, “Professor, we have discussed all these ideas of why God allows evil. I don’t know why. Right now, I don’t care why. I just want to know, is God going to make it all right in the end?” His frustration resonated with me.
For me, it was so difficult to avoid blaming God for my cerebral palsy. I was born in West Virginia, delivered by a doctor who did not believe in doing Caesarian sections for any reason. When the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, he let me come down the birth canal. The anoxia which came with that journey caused my cerebral palsy. I thought God could have prevented that, and even though I felt a call to serve God, I had some anger with God because in my mind, God chose to have me go through this debilitating life.
Then, I encountered Whitehead and John Cobb, and began reading and interacting with people who are now my friends. Thomas Jay Oord’s book, God Can’t was particularly helpful. I had wondered in seminary if possibly the “answer” to the problem of evil was not that God was not all-loving, but that perhaps God was not all-powerful. I pondered that for three decades but never voiced it much. The experience of process thought gave me permission to lean into that idea and see where it took me.
Photo courtesy John Towner
I would not be honest if I said I have it all worked out and now everything is peachy. All my doubts and questions and struggles are fully resolved—NOT! But I have come to appreciate the concept that God did not do this to me. And even though I can tell you that while old thought patterns are hard to break, I am no longer angry at God, or at least I am in the process of getting there!
My wife and I were just this evening discussing how God did not force my mother to choose an obstetrician who did not believe in doing Caesarians, and therefore God is not the cause of my cerebral palsy. It is taking time but slowly that is taking hold in my mind, and it is so helpful to know. From the time I took the course on the problem of evil forward, I have thought I would rather have a God who loved me and would help me, if possible, than a God who could help me but did not love me enough to do so. This is not abstract theology, for me, this is quite personal.
Shortly after taking the course with Dr. Cobb, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Wow! A double whammy! One estimate is that these two conditions coincide in 1 out of every 138,000 people. One thing I knew about Parkinson’s was that there is a correlation of higher prevalence of the condition with people who have been exposed to the chemical ROUND-UP. I spent most of my time as a pastor in farming communities in Iowa, North Carolina, and Indiana, where this and other chemicals were used. What is more, my home in my high school years was about five miles from where this product was produced. I am fairly confident that I breathed it in on numerous occasions. I am equally confident that God did not force people to use or produce it. It just happened. I honestly think, whatever the “reason” for my contracting Parkinson’s was, it was not because God forced me or anyone else into anything.
I must also say, that being part of the process community has helped heal me because my fellow scholars, clergy, and just friends I have made have received me so kindly and treated me with respect. I still have days where I am discouraged (who wouldn’t with this on my plate?) But for the most part I feel like I am connected to a community of people who have given me reason to see myself with a little more dignity and grace than I ever have before.
Process thinking has given me a sense of hope in dealing with all this. I am dealing with a world where its Creator wants to constructively engage with it, and its inhabitants, in a life-giving and life-affirming way. This gives me permission to live a life-affirming journey of my own. I am not there yet. A beloved friend of mine in the movement said to me the other day she is sure I am never unkind to anyone because of the unkindness I have received from others. Let me lay that rumor to rest here and now. It is untrue. Sadly, sometimes I am unkind. I feel awful about that, but I have also found grace to let go of some of the guilt and keep moving forward. As our name indicates, I am still a work “in process.”
