Not freedom from pain; but from pain, freedom

Not all academic theology is dry, obscure, and conducted in German. I read a peace-giving and inspiring passage today in one of my assigned tomes (although this one is fairly portable and really more of a tomatillo.) The author holds that our human fear and pain supply both our need and our mandate for struggling to understand God, for "doing theology."

We do theology as wounded people, sometimes because of our wounds. . . Our deepest wound is the fact that we do not want to be healed. The famous German-American psychologist Erich Fromm talked about our "escape from freedom." Fromm said that we are afraid of being liberated because freedom means responsibility . . . Similarly, we are afraid of being touched by God. God could upset our lives, plans, and projects. Healing can be painful. We are afraid of saying, truly from the heart, "Thy will be done." Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, remarked that most of us have ho idea who we could be if we surrendered totally to God.

God wants to heal our wound without making them magically disappear. The wounds are still there, like the wounds of the risen Lord. But they might become origins of growth and springs of new life. We do theology not because of hope in a magincally liberated sorrow-free and happy life. We do theology because we hope that wounds may be the source of our strength, that the cross may be the source of new life. That is why we need to be aware of our needs, and we need to see the wounds of our people.

--Clemens Sedmak, from Doing Local Theology: A Guide for Artisans of a New Humanity