Imagine if you called for help and no one came.
Imagine further that no one even knew what you meant when you asked for “help”, that when you said the word “compassion” all you got was a blank stare or when you said “justice” people just scratched their heads.
The problem of suffering has plagued theologians (both the armchair variety as well as the professional kind) and braced cynics for millennia. How can we look at the world in which we live and conclude that God is either all-powerful or all-loving? Either He loves us but is powerless to end our suffering, or He is able to end suffering on earth but just doesn’t care enough to want to make the effort. Perhaps He is neither all-loving nor all-powerful. Perhaps, some wonder when they watch the evening news, He isn’t there at all.
This topic has been extensively written about, and endlessly debated. I think for many newly-minted college atheists it’s definitely a hot seller. There are many good ideas about the problem of evil, and how a good God could allow suffering (most of those ideas having to do with the inevitable consequences of man’s free will). Even so, I’m fairly certain I can’t end the debate here. But I do want to add a twist, and that’s this: Without evil in general and suffering in particular, most of the qualities that we love in people, many of the things we think of as “character”, would be non-existent.
It occurred to me awhile ago as I thought about what had happened on Sept 11th that just as without sin there would also be no forgiveness, and just as without crime there would also be neither justice or mercy, a world without suffering would also be a world without compassion. A world without need is a world without giving. And a world without all of the things which we hate in life just might also be a world without all of the things we aspire to, all of the things we hope to be, all of the best qualities that we love to see in others and someday hope to see in ourselves.
Think of it this way: The outpouring of compassion and charity in response to acts of terrorism, the actions of a heroic many, acts of sacrifice in the face of suffering… all of these would have been left undone, had tragedy never occurred. A world without terrorists is a world without heroes.
Does that make it worth it? Does growth justify pain? Does healing justify illness? I don’t know if I can answer that question. In fact, the question is so large, I feel helpless in the face of it. But I do know that when I see suffering, looking for the Kingdom response, seeing the positive character quality that the particular tragedy could evoke helps me to make sense of what would otherwise be completely senseless.
They say that a broken bone, once healed, is stronger than one never broken. What if, in God’s economy, a healed person is better than one who has never been sick? What if a grateful, forgiven person is better than one who never needed forgiveness and a person who has been through tragedy, loss and suffering, yet grown because of it is better than one who never knew pain? What if a fallen world, filled with compassion, forgiveness and redemption is better than one that never knew sin. Maybe that’s why God “allows” all those things that make us ask why.
Recently I watched the Michael Moore documentary “Roger and Me’ about GM plant closings and their effect on the town of Flint, Michigan. All through the film was sprinkled footage of families being evicted from their homes, even one on Christmas Eve. Moore’s point was to show culpability by the head of GM, Roger Smith- why wouldn’t he come to Flint and see what practical effects his decisions were having on this community and on families and individuals? As I watched scene after scene of mostly women being removed from their houses or apartments, what I kept wondering was not “where is Roger?”- not even “where is God?” but “where are the Christians?”
The tragedy of those evictions represented many things- a failure in the system, irresponsibility both corporate and individual, the downside of a capitalistic system… but most of all they represented an opportunity for compassion, for mercy, for giving. But no one seemed to want to grab hold of that opportunity. The cries for mercy from mothers of small children watching their belongings being lined up on the street outside of the houses they were losing went unheeded.
What would have been the result had someone stepped in, taken one of those families under their wing and helped them? How would the Kingdom have been advanced if it had been Christians rather than a film-maker who heeded the words of Scripture to “Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Fight for the rights of widows.” (Isaiah 1:17)
Jesus said that we would always have the poor. The real question is, will they have us? Will we allow the suffering in the world to act upon us, will we allow tragedy to have its intended effect on us- planting the seeds of compassion, seeing them sprout into giving and coming to full flower in self-sacrifice?
The question of suffering will always remain. People will always ask “Why is God allowing this?” But at a certain point we lose the right to even ask the question if we are unwilling to do anything that might contribute to an answer, even if it’s just the answer to one other person’s suffering.
Imagine if YOU called for help and no one came.
Bob Hyatt lives in Portland, Oregon and is a recovering youth pastor, media designer, husband and soon-to-be father who dreams of a position as teaching pastor in a church that appreciates the spiritual value inherent in a good cup of coffee.
A world without heroes: a brief and humble attempt at theodicy
It’s true that from a functional perspective Without evil in general and suffering in particular, most of the qualities that we love in people, many of the things we think of as “character”, would be non-existent. We view character, and character is explained to us in the Bible, from the perspective of our current reality. Even God’s actions/character, when brought onto the scene, are referenced in relation to how we live here. Character is explained in the context of trial, tribulation, etc. because that’s where we are now. Apparently if we didn’t have these, it wouldn’t need explaining.
But I wonder if that is the end of the story. From here it only makes sense in terms of the presence of adversity, but at least some of the images of heaven (whether taken as literal pictures of an afterlife or not) portray a state in which what we would call extraordinary character is the norm, because God himself is there the norm. If these images, and the idea of an actual afterlife, are to be taken seriously, then I find myself leaning a bit more toward some of the ideas put forward in C.S. Lewis’ novel Perelandra, in which virtue becomes a greater thing, fulfilled in ways that we here cannot appreciate. Of course Lewis is himself writing from planet earth, and so “dreaming” as it were of how it could be in a place with no pain or sorrow. True, the Eve character in the work has to choose to do right at some point in time, but once this choice has been made, further development in actual virtue is possible. Lewis does not view the absence of an enemy as automatic perfection, but rather the elimination of one obstacle to development in virtue. I at least like the idea of continuing to develop once the other side of things.
That said, all the other questions remain, and your main point is one that hits home with me. Whether we believe that adversity in necessary to virtue or not, here that’s how it’s measured. And the question of God is not answered simply by quoting texts, but by hands reaching out to help. If God is the constant one, then certainly it is up to us to reflect a bit of his constancy by acting in concord with how Jesus acted when on the planet.
Thanks for an excellent comme
Thanks for an excellent comment- well said. In many ways, it goes back for me to a gal I knew in Bible college, who had a lot of questions in her devolving spiral of faith. I could answer all of them (back then I didn’t know better than to try), but one: If God knew that the excercise of our free will would lead anyone, even one person, to hell, wouldn’t the loving action have been to forgo creating man altogether? She could see the redemptive possibilities of suffering in this life. It is limited, temporary and potentially leads to growth. But what about hell?
The only conclusion I can come to is the idea that redeemed, forgiven souls are of such value to God as to outweigh lost, damned souls… It’s not satisfying, but it’s all I’ve got on the worst kind of suffering- hell.
Forgiven souls are of such value to God
Sometimes I feel like that girl from Bible college. I’ve gone from dogmatic certainty to holding the question at abeyance, from abeyance to doubt, from doubt to trying to trust again (loose from dogmatic constraints).
Sometimes when I hear a question like the one the girl posed, I think that we can turn it straight on it’s head: should the choice of one person to not walk with God be the fulcrum for determining the right of others to exist? But that’s basically your point as well, though I think that if free will is the issue, then the ultimate destination is maybe not the main point, but the simple fact of being able to choose. What if the risk of loss is inherent in us being made in God’s image?
That, I think, is the argument of Pinnock, along with the idea that God does not necessarily know each individual outcome in advance. That kind of thinking got him bounced out of the ETS (too bad for them), but at least he’s trying to deal with the question honestly. I think the British physicist/theologian John Polkinghorne argues something similar in his works, starting from the framework of an evolutionary model of creation, and one then starts moving toward the idea that whole darn structure couldn’t have been different.
Another option is the recasting of our idea of what heaven/hell actually are - i.e. are they mythological language for our dreams of an ultimate reward/punishment, to be placed perhaps within the context of Jewish apocalypticism in the first century AD. Maybe that’s part of the “subverting” of evangelical Christianity that Wright talks about.
At this point I’ve got no set idea on this, to be honest. All I’ve got is a desire to trust that the picture of God given us in Jesus is accurate, and that if someone is that lovely, then he cannot be evil or fickle in the way things are ordered and run. But even that is a daily choice.
Hell
The ultimate question is why would God create someone whom he knew would eventually reject him and thus enter hell. Why not simply prevent their birth?
The answer is obviously not easy. Furthermore, the answer will probably not be satisfactory. However, here is my best attempt, which I warn you ahead of time will not be helpful to many of you.
Look at the book of Job. I consider Job to be a “perspective-shifting” book, in the sense that it caused a perspective shift in my manner of thinking about theodicy. Prior to reading Job, I tried to defend God’s actions on a rational human-centered basis. My old way of thinking was like this: It appears that God is doing something wrong. How can I make it appear as if what God is doing is actually okay?
My new way of thinking is like this: It appears that God is doing something wrong. But it is actually me who is doing something wrong, by attempting to be the judge of God!
The fatal flaw in human-centered theodicy is to demand an accounting from God. The effect that Job had upon me was to switch from human-centered to God-centered theodicy. God is important; humans are not. Basically this is the unsatisfying, yet biblically based answer.
More specifically, please examine Job chapter 38. If Job was written as a human-centered book of theodicy, we would expect God to now begin explaining in rational, humanistic terms all the reasons why he allowed Satan to bring sorrow upon Job. Yes, IF Job was a human-centered book.
Instead, we read about God thundering and raging, almost acting as if he were the King of the Universe. God essentially says, “Who are you, Job, to question me?” It is the response of a KING, not a democratically elected President. It is the weight of glory, the power of majesty, that does not deign to answer the pitiful questions of the peasant. THAT is the message of Job.
Getting back to the original question: Why does God allow people, whom he knows will eventually enter hell, to be born?
According to Job, we DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to ask that question. But if we persist in questioning God, look at Romans 9:17. Here Paul explains that Pharoah was raised up for one purpose: that God might display his power. Thus, why does God create people who he knows are bound for hell? So that when he casts them into hell, his power might be displayed!
I warned you this would not be satisfactory for many of you. Why not? Because you are stuck in a human-centered theology, where God must justify his ways to humans, RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND. If you invert your manner of thinking, then the theodicy of Job will finally make sense.