God Moves in Mysterious Ways

God moves in mysterious ways. You hear it again and again. It's a cliche´. Any twelve year old understands what it means. Still, let me emphasize that the phrase recognizes the possibility of complex as well as simple causality: god is an explanatory principle, and explanations can be simple – cue ball hits eight ball, eight ball drops in corner pocket – or complex - cue ball is mis-hit, cue ball rockets off table, smashes the beer mug, gives Beverly a concussion, gets picked up by a frustrated Bill who throws it at Amos who's distracted the mis-stroking Babs, Amos ducks, the cue balls ricochets from the jukebox, lands on the table, hits the eight ball, the eight ball drops in the corner pocket.

Readers of pk, if there still are any since my arrest and censoring, should know that pk's regular example of complex causality concerns schools prescribing a certain stimulant to hyper-active children: why, the naive might wonder, would they stimulate someone already judged over-stimulated? Because the stimulant it is hoped will stimulate the child's natural repressor. The kid's behavioral governor is stuck, give it a kick and it may kick in: calming the child.

Why bring it up again here? Because I just read a science report arguing that while psychologists say that forgiveness is good for the forgiver, holding a grudge may stimulate improved behavior from the person the grudge is held against. Say the husband, strays, his wife is pissed at him, she stays pissed, he may modify the behavior that pissed her off in the first place. So: there may be a trade-off. Forgiveness may help one thing: the psyche of the trespassed against, that same forgiveness may fail to habilitate the trespasser.

Of course things can be impenetrably complex. Schools and wisdom are mutually alien in pk's book, spouses are not infallible in that same book, scientists too can be simpleminded, but lets leave our model simple and only slightly less simple for simplicity's sake: for communication's sake. God can hit an eight iron straight into the cup; god can choose driver, bounce the golf ball off the oak, have a squirrel carry it to where a sea gull picks it up ... and drops it so it bounces off a turtle, and lands in the hole. God moves in mysterious ways. God moves anyway he wants to.

Now: back to forgiveness: The gospel says that on the cross Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." In that story Jesus seems to be offering ignorance as an excuse. The stupid are innocent no matter what harm they wright. The ignorant are innocent. Only the clever are wicked and deserve punishment. That sounded good to me as a child. In recent decades I've hated the idea. I believe that the pain of a stubbed toe is essential for learning. I reject the junkie's solution to life: feel nothing.

But with the idea that God moves in mysterious ways the possibilities for complexity become infinite. God send Jesus so that we'd recognize that he was good, recognize that he was God, so that we'd stand there like morons while our rulers arrested him, convicted him, scourge him, tortured him to death, for some sort of magic without which an infinitely powerful god is helpless to do what he wants: to forgive us. Why couldn't he just forgive us in the first place and same himself, his son, the pain? the inconvenience? Or did God forgive us the way the woman forgives her husband, the woman who didn't want her husband's behavior to improve. She was so pissed at him that she wanted God to damn her husband: so she forgave her husbands, so her husband would continue as a philanderer, and God would curse him as an unrepentant sinner?

Maybe God wants to forgive man for crucifying Jesus so that man won't learn from his ancient behavior, so modern man will be just as corrupt, just as unjust, just as passive before their misbehaving rulers, just as criminally negligent. Not only did our ancestors stand with their thumb in their ass while Jesus was crucified, but their descendants stood with their thumb in their ass while the Church declared geniuses to be heretics, while the Church threatened Galileo, while the Pope put out a contract on Luther, Christians behaving very much the Jews of the Temple of Jerusalem whenever reformers appear. God forgave man so man would still be so stupid in the twentieth century as to stand with its thumb in its ass while Ivan Illich was defrocked, stripped of his resources: and, in the twenty-first century, while Jesus' disciple pk, while Illich's disciple pk, was stripped, silenced, arrested, tortured, censored ... broken.

Boy, that's some potent forgiveness. God moves in mysterious ways.