Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect

Devotional for the United Church of Christ Science and Technology Network

January 4, 2018

Rev. Dr. Ruth E. Shaver

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28 (NRSV)

Despite what Sheldon Cooper thinks, Isaac Newton’s birthday does not, any longer, coincides with the date on which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. When the Gregorian calendar was introduced and adopted starting in 1582 to correct the astronomical inconsistencies caused by too many leap years, Newton’s December 25, 1642 birth slipped to January 4, 1643. I’d LOVE a walk-on role on The Big Bang Theory to present this scientific information to Sheldon, especially since the correction was done under the aegis of POPE Gregory XIII. Today, not Christmas, is Newtonmas, caused by the implementation of a calendar designed by a scientist who observed the skies carefully.

Newton’s Third Law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s the law of cause and effect, the mechanistic understanding of the world around us that helps us explain the vast majority of events in our lives. When we’re children, we explore the world by doing things to see what happens; most of us learned, either by doing or observing, that when you push a swing (action), it comes back to you (reaction). The stove is hot, touch it (cause) and you’ll burn your finger (effect). Pray to God (cause) and your prayer will be answered with what you want (effect).

Wait. What?

I suspect the first time that most of us encountered anything that didn’t fit the cause and effect model was when a prayer wasn’t answered the way we wanted it to be. Pray for a bicycle, get a sweater. Pray for a puppy, get a little brother. Pray for a little sister, get a kitten. The adults in our lives probably explained that God doesn’t always answer prayer. That isn’t a helpful way to move us beyond a theology rooted in the Newtonian universe in which we can trace everything back to the uncaused cause posited by St. Thomas Aquinas. What’s the point of prayer if God can just refuse the call?

I’ve come to realize that my great-grandmother, Ruth Hampton Scott, was a proto-quantum theologian in an era before anyone outside of the Manhattan Project had any inkling of what quantum mechanics might be. One day when I was maybe 6, a major prayer of mine was not answered the way I wanted it to be. I don’t even remember what I prayed for because MaMa’s answer was so profound. She quoted Romans 8:28 (I know, she made me look it up, too!) and then said, “God always answers prayers. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s maybe or not yet. Sometimes the answer is no. And sometimes, the answer is HELL NO.” (That was also the only time I ever heard my great-grandmother and namesake swear, which may be one reason [cause] of my strong memory of it [effect].) MaMa went on to explain that she had realized over her life that she often prayed for things that would not have been good in the end for her or for the people for whom she prayed. Her desire in each circumstance was only one possibility and that God, who is the God of possibilities, had a much bigger view of things than she did. So she started praying most of the time not for specific outcomes but for the best possible outcome for as many people as possible. It was, she said, the way she best understood how “God works for good in the world.”

Over the years of my own faith development, I’ve added to MaMa’s understanding as I’ve wrestled with such ideas a predestination (UGH, why I didn’t include verse 29 above!) and free will (YAY!). Predestination is something possible with a Newtonian God, the One who knows everything we will do from the moment we’re born until the moment we take our last breath because this God knows every cause and effect from the beginning of time until its end. This is the “omniscient” God many of us were taught about as children and the “omnipotent” Being who can, when so inclined, mess with the universe to make it do whatever God wants it to do. I still can’t wrap my head around the possibility of free will under God who already knows our final disposition. 

Free will in a universe where God is about possibilities rather than cause and effect makes much more sense to me. This God, I imagine, is one who is omniscient as far as knowing everything it is possible to know, e.g., the past and the present moment as well as the probabilities for the future but not the future itself. This God, I think, is one who may have been omnipotent at some point (perhaps before time as we understand it began with the Big Bang) but who has willingly abdicated some portion of that power to allow the laws of the universe to work unfettered by divine intervention. This is, I think, the God of whom Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke when he said, cribbing from Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” because I believe that the probabilities ultimately bend toward peace, hope, and justice. (Which makes me wonder if the cold death of the universe [“when hell freezes over”?] is the only way we get those things, but that’s another post for another time…)

This quantum God of probabilities and possibilities appeals to me much more now than when I was first introduced to the ideas about this God in process theology. With the God of probabilities and possibilities, nothing is truly impossible…but some things are highly improbable. This has restored my belief in what we consider miraculous and renewed my sense of wonder about the world around me. How improbable. How amazing!

Prayer:

Holy God of the Improbable, thank you. Thank you for miracles that we cannot now explain, for the miracles of the past that we now can, and for all the miracles that will happen in the future because nothing is truly impossible with you, no matter how unlikely it may be. Now, if you could just sway the probabilities toward every molecule in my body abruptly relocating itself to Bora Bora simultaneously…

Rev. Dr. Ruth Shaver is the Interim Senior Pastor of First Church of Christ Congregational, United Church of Christ, in North Conway, New Hampshire, and a Sinai and Synapses Fellow in the Class of 2017-2019.