Schubert Ogden taught me this:
Some resort to God-talk so that life can have meaning in the face of all setbacks.
Others (like Ogden) resort to God-talk to articulate their continuing discovery that life somehow does have meaning in the face of all setbacks.
In this year of constant setbacks, even in this past week, I am continuing to follow Ogden’s way. This may sound too optimistic, but note the emphasis on the “somehow.” This is not claiming to know too much.
“I hold that the primary use or function of ‘God’ is to refer to the objective ground in reality itself of our ineradicable confidence in the final worth of our existence. It lies in the nature of this basic confidence to affirm that the real whole of which we experience ourselves to be parts is such as to be worthy of, and thus to evoke, that very confidence.”—Schubert M. Ogden, The Reality of God and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1977 [1966]), p. 37.
