{"id":26646,"date":"2026-03-11T06:55:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T10:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26646"},"modified":"2026-03-11T09:15:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:15:00","slug":"26646","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26646","title":{"rendered":"Healing Acts of Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pieces (Official Lyric Video) - Steffany Gretzinger | Have It All\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fI9aqfmVmPc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Wednesday, March 11, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Greg Boyle considers how many of the evils we witness today reflect the consequences of our painful disconnection from the God of love:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the face of senseless gun violence, political treachery and revenge, hate crimes, mass shootings, and terrorist attacks, some people will just say, \u201cSin and evil are on display.\u201d When we do this, we\u2019ve given up. We\u2019re not even trying. We declare that we will no longer be seeking solutions, because we believe that human beings are somehow stained from the start. Original sin doesn\u2019t explain the terrible. Lots of things do. Original sin is not one of them. There is no sin gene in us. We\u2019re born from love and always invited to love\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I asked a friend to talk to her daughter who had just graduated from a Jesuit [Catholic] university about how she and her peers saw sin. Her daughter said, \u201cWe don\u2019t really use the word \u2018sin\u2019 or talk about it. Sin is an Old World map.\u201d Now, I suppose some might lament that sin is not on the front burner. It\u2019s actually not even on the back burner. It is nowhere near the stove. And, of course, if you tried to use an Old World map today to get you to, say, Iraq, it would drop you off at Mesopotamia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We could lament that young folks might see sin this way. <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Or we could find the invitation in it. Is the love of God looking down on a sinful world in need of salvation, or does our God see a broken world in pain and in need of healing?<\/span><\/strong> Scripture has it as \u201cThen your light shall break like the dawn and your wound shall quickly be healed. The light shall rise for you in your gloom. The darkness shall become for you like midday\u201d [Isaiah 58:10]. I endlessly tell gang members that the God of love doesn\u2019t see sin. Our God sees son (and daughter). \u201cI believe that sin has no substance,\u201d Julian of Norwich writes, \u201cnot a particle of being.\u201d Then she says, \u201cWith all due respect to Mother Church \u2026 but this does not line up.\u201d She couldn\u2019t get sin to align with her God of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Boyle suggests a shift in emphasis when it comes to behavior:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <strong>moral quest has never kept us moral; it\u2019s just kept us from each other<\/strong>. So maybe we should abandon the moral quest, since it\u2019s an Old World map, and embrace instead the journey to wholeness, flourishing love, and defiant joy. We don\u2019t want to end up in Mesopotamia. <strong>Yes, we want to do the next right thing, but what is the next right thing and who is able to choose it? Only the healthy person can. So we help each other, not to make better choices but to walk home to well-being and deeper growth in love<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@bradleyjersak124315\">BRADLEY JERSAK<\/a>    MAR 10<\/td><td><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@bradleyjersak124315\"><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Ancient Flood Myths as Sociological Theodicies<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/d6b111df-997b-4f59-b882-fd752b1b512b?j=eyJ1IjoiMmRrajIifQ.ND0qR5RKsmVnltuWgIlyr3BY7uwq2Kt9ZzX29UJK4cg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!5QCw!,w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc46d0ff1-fbd5-45e2-a944-cd382a66ea8d_2700x1718.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Epic of Gilgamesh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Definition:<\/strong>&nbsp;Theodicy is the branch of theology that seeks to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with the belief in a benevolent, omnipotent God. Theodicies aiming to provide a rational explain of why a good God permits the presence of tragedy and injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Recommended Reading:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Cat Bohannon,&nbsp;<em>Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution&nbsp;<\/em>(Knopf, 2023)<em>.&nbsp;<\/em><br>Matt Lynch,&nbsp;<em>Flood and Fury:<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God&nbsp;<\/em>(IVP, 2023).<br>Susan Neiman,&nbsp;<em>Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy<\/em>(Princeton University Press, 2015)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Theodicies<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>I am not fan of theodicies. Following Martin Luther and Simone Weil, I believe that every effort to rationalize affliction inevitably calls evil good or good evil, precisely because the premises are flawed. I regard Luther and Weil\u2019s Theology of the Cross as an anti-theodicy that sees goodness and affliction intersect in the Passion of the Christ without trying to harmonize real contradictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, theodicies are ancient. They express humanity\u2019s authentic lament and our wrestle with the&nbsp;<em>Why?&nbsp;<\/em>of the absurd inside our fragile belief systems. When I regard that deeply human effort through that lens, I have a lot of patience for what\u2019s going on. As I discovered recently, alongside the particular calamities that trigger our theodicies, we can also identify ongoing social crises that a culture has begun to recognize and weaves with the activity or inactivity of the Divine in the narratives we compose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Flood Stories as Theodicies<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Ancient flood myths are a form of theodicy. The collective memory of a world-ending or catastrophic floods are ubiquitous to human cultures across the world. While they very dramatically, they also share themes including creation, judgment, survival, and renewal.&nbsp;<br>A brief web search turned up far more than I expected:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol>\n<li>Mesopotamian Flood Myths:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Epic of Gilgamesh:<\/em>&nbsp;Utnapishtim survives a divine flood by building a boat, similar to Noah\u2019s Ark.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Atra-Hasis:<\/em>&nbsp;Another Mesopotamian tale where a flood is sent to curb human overpopulation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Jewish Flood Narratives:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Noah\u2019s Ark:<\/em>&nbsp;A global flood sent by God, with Noah saving his family and animals in an ark.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Enoch:<\/em>&nbsp;Noah\u2019s flood sent to drown the Nephilim, who are destroying the world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Greek Mythology:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Deucalion and Pyrrha:&nbsp;<\/em>Zeus floods the earth, and Deucalion and Pyrrha survive by building a chest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hindu Mythology:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Manu and the Fish:<\/em>&nbsp;A fish warns Manu of a great flood, and he builds a boat to save himself and the seeds of life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chinese Mythology:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Great Flood of Gun-Yu:<\/em>&nbsp;A flood controlled by Yu the Great, who becomes a cultural hero.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Native American Flood Myths:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Ojibwe:<\/em>&nbsp;The Great Flood and the creation of Turtle Island.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Choctaw:<\/em>&nbsp;A flood story involving survival on a raft.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mesoamerican Myths:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Maya Popol Vuh:&nbsp;<\/em>A flood sent to destroy the wooden people, an early creation of the gods.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Inca Mythology:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Unu Pachakuti:<\/em>&nbsp;A flood sent by the god Viracocha to destroy giants.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Norse Mythology:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Bergelmir:&nbsp;<\/em>A flood caused by the blood of Ymir, the primordial giant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>African Myths:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Mandingo:<\/em>&nbsp;A flood story involving divine retribution and survival.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Pacific Islander Myths:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Hawaiian Flood Myth:<\/em>&nbsp;Nu\u2019u survives a flood in a canoe, guided by the god Kane.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Australian Aboriginal Myths:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Floods caused by ancestral spirits<\/em>&nbsp;as acts of creation or punishment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Zoroastrian Mythology:\n<ul>\n<li><em>Yima\u2019s Vara:<\/em>&nbsp;A divine flood avoided by building an underground refuge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m particularly interested in reading how&nbsp;<em>some<\/em>&nbsp;of these stories may function as theodicies and what crises they address. While some flood stories focused on how the gods\/God created conditions for human habitation (<em>Ojibwe<\/em>) or disposed of monsters that threatened human life (<em>Enoch, Unu Pachakuti<\/em>), I\u2019m pondering those that may begin with the memory of a catastrophe that begged the question of why it happened. The story may then function as an archetype and\/or warning for the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An additional note: prior to the Enlightenment (including in the Bible), theodicies did not distinguish between natural disasters and human wickedness since both alike were considered sovereignly ordained acts. Whether it was a plague, a famine, an earthquake, or an invading army, God is typically pictured as the active agent (though Jesus handily refutes that inference in the first paragraph of Luke 13).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gilgamesh via Bohannon<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The earliest Sumerian poems about<strong>&nbsp;Gilgamesh may be&nbsp;<\/strong>dated as early as&nbsp;<strong>2100 BCE<\/strong>, prior to the composition of Genesis. In that account, Enlil (the chief god) leads the decision to flood the earth. Why? Because the gods (most of them) are irritated by the growing clamor and chaos caused by humanity. The rising din is disruptive\u2014by eliminating humankind in a great flood, peace will be restored. Humanity is saved when&nbsp;<strong>Ea&nbsp;<\/strong>(or Enki), god of wisdom, secretly warns Utnapishtim and instructs him to build a boat. Utnapishtim survives the flood, so the human race is preserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Previously, I had not given any thought to the meaning of the gods\u2019 aggravation or why our noise assaulted to their ears. But I\u2019ve been captivated by Cat Bohannon\u2019s must-read book,&nbsp;<em>Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bohannon posits that flood myths such as&nbsp;<em>Atra-Hasis&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;<em>Gilgamesh<\/em>&nbsp;were composed to address a human crisis: the problem of explosive population growth in the cities. The gods were annoyed because the people were \u2018noisy\u2019 &#8230; but why noisy? Because of the rapid expansion of big cities, due in great part, she believes, to practices such as urban wet nursing (and her argument is biologically solid).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus, the social foundations for those flood myths (meaning, how they tried to explain the \u2018why?\u2019 of a big flood&nbsp;<em>theologically<\/em>) was a response to overpopulation. In hindsight, they believed that when the big floods came, the gods\u2019 agenda was to depopulate. In other words, an actual sociological crisis was projected into a divine response to address the problem with a flood. It\u2019s an early form of theodicy. OR was the flood a metaphor for the people themselves\u2026 a human deluge overflowing the banks of the city!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In either case, the story can function as a theodicy (justifying the gods) at two levels: (1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The gods are not simply capricious. Their judgments may be destructive, but their acts aren\u2019t simply arbitrary. When bad things happen, if the gods are involved, they are addressing an actual problem (not necessarily sin) relative to human activity. And (2) at least one of the gods was even sympathetic and humane. In polytheistic religions, the various gods represent aspects or attributes of the Most High God or council of gods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Genesis via Lynch<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>By way of both comparison and contrast, following Matt Lynch\u2019s,&nbsp;<em>Flood and Fury:<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God&nbsp;<\/em>(2023) describes how the Genesis flood story also addresses a sociological crisis\u2014though a different one: the problem of human violence. As Lynch reads, Genesis 6, he hears echoes of Genesis 1, where we read that \u201cGod saw that [what he created] was good\u201d\u2014and specifically,&nbsp;<em>good for people to inhabit.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in Genesis 6:11, we read,&nbsp;<em>\u201cNow the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;Lynch reads a similar Hebrew construct here, but in reverse.&nbsp;<em>\u201cGod saw that the earth was RUINED.\u201d&nbsp;<\/em>That is, the earth was ruined for human habitation\u2014rendered&nbsp;<em>uninhabitable<\/em>&nbsp;by human violence such that human extinction would be inevitable.&nbsp;<em>\u201cGod saw how corrupt [destined to perish] the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways\u201d&nbsp;<\/em>(6:12), leading to a ruined creation that would ultimately be uninhabitable and bring about our extinction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, in meaning-making a big flood in their oral history or cultural memory, the Jews set their story over against Gilgamesh, by reading Yahweh\u2019s flood&nbsp;<em>not&nbsp;<\/em>as mitigating overpopulation through human extinction, but rather, restoring an inhabitable world to preserve humankind&nbsp;<em>from<\/em>&nbsp;extinction. It is a re-Creation story, a reset, a fresh start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Theodicies as Social Commentary<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>What the stories have in common is a flood, an act of divine compassion, and a hero who saves the race by building an ark. And to my point, both are theodicies that seek to somehow rationalize a divinely sanctioned apocalyptic flood. But my question is how the stories also function as social commentaries. Gilgamesh deals with cities flooded with or because of extreme overcrowding; Genesis is critiquing with human violence toward one another and its environmental impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Genesis account, one message is that unlike the Gilgamesh gods, despite the destructive power of the flood, God\u2019s heart is to restore. That\u2019s the theological message. But the story also sends an ongoing ethical message: human violence is so self-destructive that unchecked, it will lead to our extinction. God has provided a way of escape, of salvation\u2014an ark into which all are still being welcomed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Noah\u2019s ark thus becomes a spiritual archetypes for both Jews and Christians, and a metaphor for readers today. It\u2019s&nbsp;<em>not&nbsp;<\/em>that God is the agent of divine genocide, nor that God \u2018sends\u2019 climate-related disasters as punishment upon humanity. But then what? Historically, a Christian reading was that when the flood comes (e.g., politically, socially, ideologically, etc.), there is an invitation via repentance (admitting we can\u2019t save ourselves) to enter \u2018the ark of salvation\u2019 (don\u2019t read that narrowly) to endure whatever comes together as a human family (a&nbsp;<em>every<\/em>&nbsp;human and&nbsp;<em>every&nbsp;<\/em>creature with us) that knows God is ultimately the life-giver and not the death-dealer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, March 11, 2026 Father Greg Boyle considers how many of the evils we witness today reflect the consequences of our painful disconnection from the God of love:&nbsp; In the face of senseless gun violence, political treachery and revenge, hate crimes, mass shootings, and terrorist attacks, some people will just say, \u201cSin and evil are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26646"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26651,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646\/revisions\/26651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}