The Creatively Sober Life
In Process Perspective
Dear Process Theologian,
In your view do we humans truly feel God's feelings? Literally? Or is this just metaphorical language? When I was drinking I sometimes felt within me a hope for sobriety, although I often hid from it. Was I literally feeling God's feelings? Was God hoping, too?
Sandra
*
Dear Sandra.
Yes. At least that's the way it looks for those of us influenced by John Cobb in A Christian Natural Theology. According to Cobb, God has ideals for us relative to each occasion or moment in our lives, which Cobb calls initial aims. Cobb then adds:
"Every occasion then prehends God’s prehension of this ideal for it, and to some degree the subjective form of its prehension conforms to that of God. That means that the temporal occasion shares God’s appetition for the realization of that possibility in that occasion. Thus, God’s ideal for the occasion becomes the occasion’s ideal for itself, the initial phase of its subjective aim."
Just substitute the word "person" for the word "occasion" and you'll get the point. We feel God's feelings literally at every moment of our lives and to some extent share God's hopes for us, God's appetitions for us. We feel them prereflectively, consciously and subconsciously, as intuitions in the gut.
This is one way to think of the image of God within each person. God's yearnings for us are also, at a deep and prereflective level, our yearnings for ourselves. When you feel the call to sobriety, with its promise of freedom and agency, love and wonder, vitality and creativity, faith and forgiveness, you are feeling God. And if you want to think a little more about what the sober life can be, please know that it's not just freedom from substance abuse, it's freedom for a full and vibrant way of living.
We call it the process way and it includes many qualities of heart and mind. See the image below.
Process Theologian
In your view do we humans truly feel God's feelings? Literally? Or is this just metaphorical language? When I was drinking I sometimes felt within me a hope for sobriety, although I often hid from it. Was I literally feeling God's feelings? Was God hoping, too?
Sandra
*
Dear Sandra.
Yes. At least that's the way it looks for those of us influenced by John Cobb in A Christian Natural Theology. According to Cobb, God has ideals for us relative to each occasion or moment in our lives, which Cobb calls initial aims. Cobb then adds:
"Every occasion then prehends God’s prehension of this ideal for it, and to some degree the subjective form of its prehension conforms to that of God. That means that the temporal occasion shares God’s appetition for the realization of that possibility in that occasion. Thus, God’s ideal for the occasion becomes the occasion’s ideal for itself, the initial phase of its subjective aim."
Just substitute the word "person" for the word "occasion" and you'll get the point. We feel God's feelings literally at every moment of our lives and to some extent share God's hopes for us, God's appetitions for us. We feel them prereflectively, consciously and subconsciously, as intuitions in the gut.
This is one way to think of the image of God within each person. God's yearnings for us are also, at a deep and prereflective level, our yearnings for ourselves. When you feel the call to sobriety, with its promise of freedom and agency, love and wonder, vitality and creativity, faith and forgiveness, you are feeling God. And if you want to think a little more about what the sober life can be, please know that it's not just freedom from substance abuse, it's freedom for a full and vibrant way of living.
We call it the process way and it includes many qualities of heart and mind. See the image below.
Process Theologian