Week 4: The Hidden Realm
Just before we married, Rory I visited his hometown of Vancouver. I loved walking through the thick, lush rainforest with all its shades of green, brown and umber.
We’d walked probably half a mile when Rory happened to mention banana slugs. I had never seen one, so he pointed one out to me—big, slimy slugs in a golden umber color, about 6 or 7 inches long. As soon as he pointed one out to me, I looked down and realized that they literally covered the entire path we were walking on. I had been walking through and probably on banana slugs without seeing them, because they weren’t what I expected to see. But as soon as I had the expectation of a banana slug, I was able to see them everywhere.
Something like that is at play in this week’s discussion. To a surprisingly large degree, our worldview—our expectations and assumptions about the world and the universe—determine what we do and what we do not see.
Non-human Caused Evil
We have been looking at the problem of suffering and of evil. In particular, we’ve explored Open Theism as a response to the problem of evil—how we can believe in God’s goodness in the face of the evil and suffering of the world. So far we’ve looked at the role of human freedom—why God would take a risk on human freedom to give us a radical degree of agency to affect the future. I think that’s a very good answer to the problem of human-caused evil.
But that’s not the whole story. We know there is suffering that has no relationship to human choices. There is suffering that is caused by natural disasters (even before climate change was a factor). There is suffering that is caused by cancer, by disease. By birth defects like the life-threatening heart defect that affects our granddaughter. While we tend to romanticize nature, the natural world itself includes suffering—for example, in the way that what we euphemistically call “the cycle of life” requires large predators to prey on the weak to survive.
This is a thornier issue to resolve, and not many theologians of any variety have attempted it. Two Open and Relational Theologians who have are Thomas Jay Oord and Greg Boyd— although they have different answers. I’m more familiar with and drawn to Greg Boyd’s answer so I’ll spend the majority of time there. But I want to mention Tom Oord because, first of all he’s a friend, but also his explanation has been meaningful to many. Tom has a number of very accessible books, including God Can’t and The Death of Omnipotence. Tom argues that because God is spirit, without a physical body, God is not able to influence things in the physical universe, but needs the help of physical beings—humans—to affect things.
Greg Boyd’s answer is quite different, and drawn from Eph. 6:10-13:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
Paul is describing what missiologists call “the excluded middle”—a hidden realm of spiritual beings or forces that are at work in our world. For most of the world’s history, and in most of the world still today, that “middle kingdom” has been a part of the worldview, part of the understanding of reality.
But for those of us in the West post-enlightenment this middle area just isn’t part of our worldview. It’s not something we think about, something we expect to see operating in our world. But perhaps, like the banana slugs, they are still there—our lack of awareness doesn’t make them go away. We don’t see them precisely because we don’t expect to see them. Even when we’re reading the Bible, full of references to angels, demons, spirits, we don’t see them, we read right over them, because they are not part of our worldview, our expectations.
It’s very different in other parts of the world, where the hidden spiritual realm is part of their expectation and understanding of the world.
This has a down side—there can be a gullibility, a lack of critical discernment. It can engender fear. It can also lead to a kind of fatalism—that everything in this world is merely a reflection of a larger cosmic battle between good and evil that is really beyond us, and we’re just helpless pawns. Most alarmingly, what is often called “spiritual warfare” had been associated with the rise of Christian nationalism, with a focus on territorial demons and “taking back” the nation.
Yet this awareness of the hidden realm is very much a part of the biblical record, and while it has that danger of fear or fatalism it also has a great sense of expectation. There is an expectation that prayer matters because God is not only real, but active and moving in our world in unseen ways.
The Western view, even among Western Christians, is quite different. We believe in God, but that middle realm of demons and angels doesn’t factor in very often. \We don’t think or talk about it very much so we don’t notice or expect certain things to happen.
That has a good side. The rigorous use of reason and intellect is important. Western empiricism causes us to take seriously our choices and their consequences. But it also can lead to a functional atheism where we think and act like we’re all alone.
When we downplay the role of Satan or evil, it creates the very problem we’re exploring—how do we explain suffering? Why does an all-loving God allow not just human-caused suffering, but natural disasters, cancer, birth defects?
The Hidden Realm
So we want to avoid the fatalism and passivity of one perspective, but also avoid the functional atheism and cognitive dissonance of the Western worldview. Greg Boyd calls his perspective “warfare worldview,” but I think that’s too easily confused with the spiritual warfare views of Christian nationalists. Walter Wink calls it “integral worldview.” I simply call it “the hidden realm.”
This view holds that there are unseen forces at work in the physical material world that interact with our human freedom. Boyd sees these forces embodied or personified in a literal Satan and minions, Wink sees them more as “forces”—a spiritual force for domination and control. But both take the existence of evil seriously.
This view holds that what we see in this world—the odd and disturbing interplay of tremendous good and insufferable evil—is at least partially a reflection of these unseen forces and the struggle between God and those who align with the Kingdom, and Satan or what Wink calls the forces or systems of domination. The world as we see it is not the world as it was created or meant to be—or as it will one day be—but is a result of this cosmic battle.
Of course we know the world is not binary—good/bad, up/down. And people are not binary—all good or all bad. But this view holds that there are unseen forces behind that. Yet we’re not helpless pawns. Our awareness of these forces allow us to choose where we will align ourselves at any given moment.
This builds on the notion we explored last week: that the Kingdom of God is both “now” and “not yet.” Because Jesus has come, the Kingdom is “inaugurated”– the power of the Spirit is present and active in our world– so we have healing, reconciliation, renewal, transformation. And yet, because the Kingdom is also “not yet”– it’s complete fulfillment has not yet come—the battle with evil continues, so we still see suffering and injustice in our world. Yet we have a prophetic promise that one day Christ will rule his Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven”—so we have hope that our work is not in vain.
Weapons of the Spirit
As I said, I’m uncomfortable with Boyd’s term “warfare worldview.” But it’s worth noting that while Paul is using warfare imagery, both in Eph 6 and elsewhere, Paul turns the image on it’s head. In 2 Cor. 10:3-4 Paul says, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.”
The Hidden Realm view calls us not to ignore or resign ourselves to evil. Rather, we are, in the name of Christ and power of the Spirit, to oppose evil and suffering—whether human-caused like violence or hatred, or natural like a pandemic. But we don’t do that with the weapons of this world—with guns and bombs. We do so with the weapons of the Spirit mentioned in Eph. 6: truth, faith, salvation.
Most of all, the weapons of the Spirit are rooted in prayer.
Jesus’ plan for overcoming evil is to preach and demonstrate the Kingdom. To decrease the kingdom of Satan by increasing the Kingdom of God. But he does that with the counter-cultural, counter-intuitive weapons of the Spirit, as Paul describes in Col. 2:15: “Jesus, having disarmed the powers and authorities… triumphing over them by the cross.”
Key points of Open Theism
The last three weeks we looked at these key points about Open Theism:
1. Not everything that happens in the world was chosen or directed by God. The future is open to many possibilities.
2. God can make promises about the future because they know what they intend to do.
3. God is in time, as we are in time, dwelling with us and relating to us.
4. The central, defining characteristic of God is love. We were created IN love, FOR love. But love must be chosen. So God chose to create humans uniquely free, able to choose—or not—love.
5. In order to make room for human freedom, God’s omnipotence & omniscience must be limited. If God overrides our free choices, then we were never really free. So the Sovereign God chose to create a world where there is room for human freedom.
6. God is not controlling—God does not coerce or impose their will on the world. God influences but does not force. God takes risks on human freedom.
7. God is moved by what happens in the world and responds accordingly.
Now we can consider one more:
8. There is an unseen realm of good and evil agents—whether embodied/personified or spiritual—that impacts what happens here on earth.
What is appealing about this worldview:
There are several reasons why this worldview appeals to me:
1. It’s biblical
The Bible is full of references to this middle realm—to angels, demons, spirits. We Westerners tend to read right over them, but they’re there—right in front of us.
The whole point of the story of Job is how things happen “behind the scenes”—that there is a whole spiritual realm that affects us and events in this world.
2. It reflects the way we experience the world
This hidden realm view helps us make sense of the world. It fits with our experience of the world, an experience that includes great tragedy and suffering.
Western theologies, that want to emphasize God’s sovereignty, God’s omnipotence, in such an absolute way that nothing can happen that isn’t as God intends, just doesn’t fit with our experience of such inexplicable suffering. And that’s a problem because when we adopt a theological framework that is disconnected from our experience of the world I believe it does something to us, spiritually. It disconnects our heart from our head. It disconnects our beliefs from our practice. Most of all, it disconnects us from God.
But when we adopt a theological framework consistent with our experience of the world, we are able to see what was hidden before—how God is at work around us. Our faith is connected to the real world, resulting in passion and energy.
3. It allows us to see God’s beauty.
Greg Boyd writes that “the most powerful predictor of the quality of your life is your picture of God. Allow your picture of God to be shaped by Jesus.”
This is a world of incredible beauty and of unspeakable evil. On a deep level, we can’t retain our picture of God as beautiful, as holy, as good, if we hold them ultimately responsible for the unspeakable evil of this world. If we can’t offer a satisfactory answer to the problem of evil and suffering then we will feel distant from a God that seems aloof and disinterested. That will impede our worship and hamper our ability to see God’s beauty.
4. It alters our response to that unspeakable evil in the world.
When we believe the evil we see is somehow connected to God, or “the way things are supposed to be” our only possible response is resignation. If we dismiss the question as “mystery" it will distance us from God, who seems unknowable and possibly untrustworthy. But when we recognize it as coming from other free agents, we respond not with resignation but with resistance. We oppose it. We are empowered to confront child abuse and hunger, human trafficking and addiction, hatred and disease, in the name of Christ and through the power of the Spirit.
5. It changes the way we pray.
This perspective calls us to pray differently. We pray urgently. We pray knowing it matters. Which is not to induce guilt that we’re not praying enough, but simply to reaffirm it’s not an empty gesture. It is the way we align with God and God’s purposes.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—Rom. 8:38-39
Help us, Lord, to see and resist evil unafraid, through the power of your Spirit. Help us to be people of prayer, faithfully working for a more just and compassionate world. In the power of the Spirit we ask you to come against violence, against disease, against injustice. Against exclusion and hatred. May we be a part of the way that you are creating among us a new community of faith and peace. In Jesus name, Amen.