God, Divine Intentionality, and Interventionism

Rather than speaking of divine intervention, panentheism speaks of divine intention and divine interaction.  Or, to use sacramental language, it sees the presence of God "in, with, and under" everything--not as the direct cause of events, but as a presence beneath and within our everyday lives.

[This framework] allows for prayers to have effects, including prayers for healing.  It does not rule out extraordinary events.  But it refuses to see efficacious prayer or extraordinary events as the result of divine intervention.

From  [the panentheism] point of view, interventionism not only has insurmountable difficulties, but claims to know too much; namely, it claims to know that "intervention" is the explanatory mechanism for God's relation to the world.  Except in the very general sense of "divine intentionality" and "divine interactivity," panentheism does not claim to have an explanation of the God-world relation. It is content not to know.

-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 66-69

Eugene England - No Greater Need

We have no greater need than that there be a force of healing in all our public and inner strife: that there be some source of forgiveness and change for the oppressor as well as help for the oppressed; that there be something large enough in love to reach past the wrongs we each have done and can never fully make restitution for; that there be hope in the possibility that any man can be renewed by specific means to a life of greater justice and mercy toward others. But for most men the claim that such a possibility truly exists is scandalous.

Eugene England, "That They Might Not Suffer: The Gift of the Atonement"

While suffering may indeed be a soul-making process (some psychological research indicates this to be true), it is not inflicted for this “greater good.” Perhaps it is not that God allows our hearts to broken, but, in many cases, He simply cannot prevent it. But because of the love He has and the at-one-ment He seeks with us, His own heart is broken and yearns to heal both ours and His. Atonement is about unity, unity is about love, and love is about vulnerability.

Walker Wright, Mourn With Those Who Mourn: The Weeping God and Me

The great healing of the universe is centered on the breach in our relationship with our God.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 90

"Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western world by air pollution and the glare of artificial light; for my children's children, the power, peace, and healing of the night will be obliterated."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 126)