Victor Thasiah, a religion professor at California Lutheran University, Thou- sand Oaks, and a marathoner, knows about keeping the faith, finishing the race and fighting the good fight toward what he calls a “patient, gener- ous understanding of others.”
so honest about his angst that there is a German word to describe his struggle: Anfechtungen, or moments of doubt and anxiety.
BRIAN STETHEM/CALIFORNIA LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY
individual pastoral counseling to a new model focused on community well-being. We are accustomed to the one-on- one, clinical, chaplain model of pas- toral care. But what if six couples are going through a divorce at the same time? Several people lose jobs? One or more lose a child? If they seek out individual counseling with the pas- tor, they will never get to know each other or learn from one another’s experience of God and faith at that time. When they are in relationship, learning from one another, the com- munity of the congregation gets to learn as well.
22 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
How can we create conversations that bless each other? How can we equip lay caregivers to care for one another and attend equally to people’s pain? Those are the questions that drive me.
Jacqueline Bussie Director, Forum on Faith and Life; associate professor of religion, Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn.
Martin Luther’s relationship with God was very ambivalent. He was
I’ve resonated with that because when I was in college my mother began dying of early-onset Alzheim- er’s disease. I’m comforted by the fact that among Lutherans, the Anfechtugen are welcome to be spo- ken out loud. That’s what I love about being a Lutheran theologian. There is nothing I can look at and not ask hard questions about. Nothing is off limits. In my “Problem of Evil” class, we spend time on how to respond to whatever we define as evil. We balance the evil we see with our response of hope. We also read about and practice lament as a form of hopeful resis- tance. At the end of the semester, students can write a traditional paper or a lament. Last spring 18 out of 20 chose to write a lament. We sat in a public space, on the lawn, read- ing aloud. People cried and held each other’s hands as they read and listened to one another’s struggles. I also read a lament. I can’t ask for vulnerability from others unless I’m willing to model it.
What we learn together is that we have to talk about the things we are afraid to talk about without cover- ing them with pious platitudes. My students really respond to that kind of radical authenticity and vulnerability. Interfaith cooperation, my new role, is related to the problem of evil because of religious conflict. I am teaching and researching how we can embrace the religious neighbor and still stay deeply rooted in our own tra-
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