(146) Suffering Is One of Many Mysteries

Author: Bob
To:  John and Steve

John and I agree (and possibly Steve also) that God is ineffable, and “the truth” about God and life’s meaning is not comprehended with certainty by human beings. I think that John and I agree on the point that neither scripture, nor intuition, nor logic/reason, nor experience, nor religious institutions and traditions, nor science can enable us to know with certainty “the truth” about ultimate questions.

However, there is an important distinction that I think needs to be made between the often elusive task of establishing certain “truth” and the sometimes less daunting task of identifying probable or certain “non-truth”.

This distinction accounts for some of the difference in perspective between John and me. John keeps saying that logic isn’t a path to God. I agree with him in the sense that spirituality has got to encompass intuition and passion and doing what is right, not just clinical logic. But logic is a tool, if we let it be, to help keep us away from false belief or belief in nonsense. Logic, for example, tells us that it is quite absurd to believe in notions of Biblical or papal inerrancy, when the word “inerrancy” means without error, and when we know that the Bible assumes the pre-modern world view of the sun revolving around the Earth and popes have apologized for mistakes. Nonetheless, notions of inerrancy continue to be fanatically supported by those who cannot stand ambiguity.

John concludes that “the best any of us can do” is “to CHOOSE to believe certain things about God and his relationship to us, and live our lives accordingly” (Post 142). And it is true that we each make our free will choices about what we believe. I choose to believe a number of things that are beyond my capacity to prove. I choose to believe that the universe is ultimately intelligible, in part because I choose to believe that there is intelligence behind its creation. I choose to believe that there is a benevolent creator. I choose to believe that human beings are not orphans in a universe that ultimately is mechanistic and impersonal.  I choose to believe that there is ultimate purpose behind the universe, and that human beings are purposefully here, and that there is also a larger and deeper purpose for human beings beyond what we experience in our lives on this earthly plane. And I can’t prove any one of these beliefs. I hold them through intuition, hope, spiritual optimism.

But rather than make a case that simply choosing is “the best” we can do, I contend that the very least that any of us should strive for is to choose beliefs about God and life that are not illogical, nor disproven by reliable empirical data, nor offensive to conscience. There are theories that we may be able to reject on logical or empirical grounds, regardless of whether or not we might fancifully “wish” or “want” them to be true. And I see little reason to be receptive to theories about God that offend the conscience.

With those comments as background, I’d like to turn once again to the subject of suffering. Over the course of our discussion, we’ve raised a number of theories about suffering. Some of these theories, I think, are impossible to prove or disprove empirically or logically, and are not offensive to conscience. With these theories, probably the best we can do, as John put it, is to choose to believe or not. But this is not the case with all theories.

John has noted, for example, at least three possible solutions to the mystery of why there is suffering that I admittedly think cannot be disproved. Yet, I personally think that these theories are improbable, and overall I don’t think that they take the issue of human pain and suffering seriously enough. I choose to not believe them. These particular theories, it should be noted, can operate within or outside of a theistic framework, and each seeks to recast the nature of suffering. I’ve tried in the following to summarize each and comment on them.

1.  Perhaps there isn’t undeserved suffering. The basis for this theory is belief in reincarnation and karma, or the idea that we reap what we sow. Suffering or negative circumstances faced in this life represent a deserved balancing of the suffering or negative circumstances inflicted upon others in a prior life. Since the suffering is deserved, it is not unjust. Thus, if a theistic God is placed into the picture, the God who allows deserved suffering to take place is not unjust.

Comments -- .This theory has some implications to be considered. If true, we cannot view newborn babies as beings born in innocence with a clean slate upon which they can make of life what they will. Instead, each newborn is a reincarnated soul with certain negative baggage or earned blessings from a prior life, though we are ignorant as to the details. The theory could be a discouragement to a spirit of altruism or righting injustices in the world. That is because under the theory, by “doing good”, we may actually be disrupting the karmic scheme of justice. By this theory, what might otherwise be seen as wrongful injury or injustice could now be seen as merited suffering. This notion of reaping what you sow also has the ring of an “eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” notion of justice. Does the idea of forgiveness fit into the scheme? And how does the Holocaust fit into this theory? Who in their right mind thinks that the Jewish people reaped whatthey had sown in the Holocaust?

2. Perhaps there is no involuntary suffering. A basis for this idea are the remarks of “Seth”, as channeled by Jane Roberts, which suggest that before an individual soul is incarnated on earth, that individual contracts out details of the life experience so that the life to be lived meets the experience or growth needs of that soul. Pain, suffering, premature death -- all of that may be part of a soul’s voluntary contractual arrangement with other souls. Again, even if a theistic God is placed into the picture, the idea is that since the suffering is voluntarily undertaken, it can’t be held against the goodness of God.

Comments -- Under this theory, souls between incarnations appear to have a masochistic bent. Many souls with a pending incarnation are apparently willing to voluntarily subject themselves to great suffering. Entire groups of people may willingly contract for their own mass extermination. The notion of contracting in advance for important details in the life to be lived is a contradiction to the notion that we make the minor and major decisions of our lives out of our moment-to-moment exercise of free will.

3. Perhaps suffering is illusory. There are advocates of the idea that human life is an illusion, or is just a dream from which we will awake, or is a temporary manifestation of God which enables God to experience the world from all angles, or is so limited in duration compared to the eternity of a life to come that it hardly matters. For example, John wrote in Post 23 that as he looks at “all the misery in this world”, he comes to the tentative conclusion “that these things are really not happening at all.” These horrors, he wrote, “are an illusion or a dream, which we have created around ourselves for some reason that only God really knows, but that at death we awaken from this dream and rejoice to see our worst fears and experiences melt away in the same kind of forgetfulness that most people have regarding bad dreams upon awakening.”

Comments – I’m not attracted to the notion that the reality we think we experience isn’t really real. Also, this notion is too dismissive of the intensity of the human experience, including the pain and suffering, in my view.

By the way, I would like to also note that this theory ought to be a particular anathema to fundamentalist Christians of the Mel Gibson ilk (not that this point argues at all against the theory’s validity!) I would just note that such Christians appear obsessed with Christ’s earthly suffering, and they like to contend that God’s willingness to come to earth (or to send his son) to experience human suffering in human form and to die is the ultimate proof of how much God loves us. Thus, I would think that they would find the idea that all suffering is illusory to be quite problematic.

So, I choose to not believe the theories regarding the mystery of suffering that have been noted by John. I don’t think that the solution to the mystery lies in recasting the nature of suffering. I believe that human life is sacred, that suffering is real and palpable and does present a real challenge to belief in God. But that’s my choice. Though these three theories seem to me to be rather fanciful, and though I don’t think they take human pain and agony seriously enough, would I say that not one of them has any chance of being true? No, I can’t say that, because these theories operate outside the realm that logic and strong empirical evidence can reach.

But we’ve also discussed some other ideas about suffering, which more explicitly bring the question of suffering into a theistic context. Here, at least at first, the suffering issue is not so much about facing mystery as it is about facing a logical conundrum – if there is a God, and if God is all-powerful and all-good, why is there suffering?

It appears to me that you both believe that events basically unfold as God wishes them to, that God through active intervention or by deciding not to intervene is in control of what happens. God, you think, intervenes in human affairs in physical terms and in other ways, and on a case-by-case basis. God sometimes chooses to intervene to protect people from suffering, but other times chooses to not intervene or even causes suffering for higher purposes.

I see this differently. I do not believe that events basically unfold as God wishes them to. Bad things happen that are not desired by God. I do not believe that God has this detailed plan by which control is exerted over what happens in the world. I do not believe that God intervenes in human affairs in physical terms and on a case-by-case basis. I do not believe that God makes case-by-case decisions to intervene to protect or not protect people from disease, natural disasters, or evil-doers,

I do believe that God created the universe and natural law and gave us the gift of consciousness. However, God allows natural laws to work as given, and allows human beings to exercise the free will we’ve been given without intervening physically to stop that exercise. I do think that God is suffused throughout the universe, including within us, like DNA. I also think that to the extent that we are willing, God works with us psychologically to bolster courage, peace, and goodness in us. Thus, prayer and other spiritual practices are tools for seeking the peace and the strength for us to do what is right (God’s will) rather than tools to petition for what we want. But since I do not see God as a case-by-case intervener, the mystery of suffering is not about why God sometimes intervenes to stop suffering and sometimes doesn’t. The mystery is why, if there is a God, we don’t have a world with a higher degree of apparent justice and goodness and a lesser degree of apparent injustice and suffering.

The problem with the claim you make, that God is a sometimes activist, case-by-case physical intervener in our human affairs, is that by implication you make God morally culpable for senseless suffering that is not stopped. When you provide examples of how you think God thinks or acts, it seems to me that you provide additional support for my view. Your examples illustrate how theology positing an in-control or actively intervening God also posits a God that is morally compromised and not all-good. 

For instance, Steve, you use Biblical examples to argue that God brings or achieves something good out of the suffering God causes or allows. You see this idea in the story of Job, which you cited in an earlier piece. In that piece, you noted that though Job is a righteous man,

“A series of calamities befell him. The roof collapsed on the house where his children were having dinner. All were killed. Raiding parties from another tribe stole his herds and killed his servants. He became seriously ill, covered in sores. His wife abandoned him, suggesting that he curse God for his misfortune. His friends were no consolation; they suggested God was punishing him for something wrong he must have done. God gives Job no explanation for these tragic events.”

For you, the message of the story is that Job learned (as, presumably, the rest of us are to learn) to have faith in God’s wisdom and providence even in the face of unexplained and undeserved tragedy.

But let’s look again at the story.

You say that a series of calamities befell Job.

Well, that’s one way to summarize the story, if all we’re concerned about is Job.

But in the story, we have a roof collapsing, killing all of Job’s children.

This was not just a calamity for Job. This was the obliteration of innocent children.

And in the story, we also have raiding parties who come in and kill Job’s servants.

This was not just an economic / lifestyle calamity for Job. This was the murder of innocent people.

And then, upon hearing the story, we are expected to think that all of this is okay? That God’s in control – that all of this was allowed by God to test or build Job’s character, or to teach Job or us that he ought to have faith even in the face of tragedy?

This is not a good story. This is a story with an unsavory vision of a God willing to see mayhem and death of innocent people, including children, to make some point.

You also cite the story of Joseph. Once again, we see the same thing, if we examine the premise of the story a little further.

You note that Joseph has the special God-given ability to interpret dreams, enabling him to foretell seven years of bountiful harvest followed by seven years of severe drought and famine. When the famine arrives, only Egypt (under Joseph’s leadership) is prepared. This affords Joseph with an opportunity to forgive his brothers who have previously harmed him, because they come to Egypt from a neighboring land where they are starving. You see this as God intervening to turn a bad situation into good.

But what this story tells us, if we choose to believe in it, is that our actively intervening God chose to allow Joseph to know in advance a plan (presumably God’s plan, if God’s in control) to have seven years of severe drought and famine. Moreover, God chose to allow that severe drought and famine to go forward without intervention. Well, severe drought and famine means that there would be widespread suffering, starvation and death, including children.

So, once again, as with Job, we have a story which suggests that it is okay for widespread suffering and death to occur among innocents if it provides God (and Joseph) with a vehicle to teach a lesson. This is not an all-good God.

And John, you take this notion of a morally-challenged God to another level. In one of your recent pieces, you suggest:

“it may very well be that we reaped a Hitler because we sowed seeds of looking away for too long while we allowed Hitler to sow his own seeds of anti-semitism. And God did not intervene to prevent a holocaust because we did not intervene to prevent a Hitler.”

In this, it seems that God is saying “I am so disappointed or angry with the non-Jews who allowed these seeds of anti-semitism to be sown that I’m going to teach everybody a lesson by allowing the slaughter of six million innocent Jewish people. I’m going to let innocent people get gassed in showers, burned in ovens, and the rest. That’ll show them.”

This is a just, “all-good” God? Is God petty – “well, you looked away and didn’t fight prejudice, so I’m going to allow mass extermination?” Does God condone mass violence as a means to an end? And what is it about the process of thinking upon religion that seems to draw people to the idea that the way to address sin is to have those innocent of the sin die? As John sees it, we don’t prevent seeds of anti-Semitism, so God lets millions of Jewish people die. As Christianity sees it, human beings sin, so Jesus, sinless God in human form, needs to die.

But no matter what is said in this trialogue, it will not cause Steve to critically re-examine some Bible stories and see the dark, negative nature of God that lurks within them. It will not cause Steve to take serious note of the immoral “collateral damage” said by some Bible stories to be caused by God -- the Job story and the Passover story being just two of numerous examples.

And I don’t think that anything said will change the fact that when I speak about suffering, John sees a God who is “too small” because God does not seem “all-powerful” and because the image of God is not fanciful enough; and when John speaks on suffering, I see a God who is “too small” because that God is not “all good”, but rather is morally culpable for suffering, and ineffective to boot.

Nonetheless, I return for a moment to my earlier point, that I think that the very least that any of us should strive for is to choose beliefs about God and life that are not illogical, nor disproven by reliable empirical data, nor offensive to conscience. So, as I’ve just argued, my first objection to your (Steve and John’s) theistic view of suffering and God’s role is one of conscience and, to some extent, logic. That is, God’s behaving as you say (or the Bible says) God behaves is offensive to the conscience. The God pointed to is not “all-good.”

Now I can already hear the upcoming wailing and gnashing of teeth, the sharpening of pencils or the dusting off of keyboards. You’re poised to ask, “Who are you to judge God as we’ve portrayed God in our statements, and to do so through the use of human ideas about right and wrong? Who are you to suggest that the case-by-case decisions we think God makes -- to allow roofs to cave in on children, or to plan famines, or allow the Holocaust – dispute God’s goodness?” Well, with regard to such points, I concur with the thinking expressed by the preacher Henry Ward Beecher around 1870.

“No man can limit and define God. After all intellectual statements have been made, after all definitions have been given, immensely more is left untouched than has been touched. But the functions of the divine nature, the quality of that nature and its moral essence, one may suspect or know without comprehending all of God.

Bring me a glass of water and I know what water is. I may not know, if I am untraveled, what are the springs in the mountain, what are cascades, what are the streams that thunder through deep gorges, what are broadening rivers, what are bays, or what is the ocean; and yet I may know what water is. A drop on my finger tells me its quality. From that I know that it is not wood, that it is not rock, that it is not air, that it is not anything but water.

I am not able by searching to find out God unto perfection; and yet I know that, so far as I have found him out, and so far as he is ever going to be found out, whatever there is in nobility, whatever there is in goodness, whatever there is in sweetness, whatever there is in patience… I know that all these elements belong to God… who, though he may be found to be other than we suppose, will be found to be not less, but more glorious than we suspect…”

“It is impossible to separate the fundamental ideas of the perfect human character from the ideas of divine rectitude. You cannot have two moralities… That which is right in God is right in man. That which is not right in man is not right in God. You cannot confound things without utter destruction to a man’s reason and moral sense, by saying that things which it would be fundamentally wrong for a creature to do, would be right for God to do. If lying is wicked in man, it is even more wicked in God. If it be man’s duty to maintain fidelity to word and pledge, still more intensely is it morally obligatory that a superior Being should… It is sometimes said that such and such courses would be unspeakably cruel in men; but that God is the Judge of the whole earth, and whatever he does is right. It is not so. A thing that is essentially cruel among men, becomes essentially cruel, under the same circumstances and in the same light, if performed by God… There is to be moral unity everywhere.

Any other view than this introduces infinite confusion. Hence any teaching of God that contravenes the world’s sterling notions of morality will make it impossible to say, “Thy will be done.” If there be a style of theology that shocks the moral sensibility, that overthrows the ordinary deductions of conscience, that throws the ordinary sentiments of honour, and truth, and fidelity into disgrace it will make it impossible that any one should worship God. No man can worship except by the consent of his understanding, by the consent of his moral nature, by the consent of his heart and affections; but it makes all the difference in the world, in leading men to worship God, what is the God that you frame and present to them for worship. For if he be not beautiful, men will not admire. If he be not attractive, men will not be drawn toward him. If he be not worthy, men will not applaud… To teach that God has a right to do as he pleases – unless he pleases to do benevolently – is to teach a view of God which cannot but affront the moral understanding.”

But if conscience is my first objection to your view of God’s intervening presence, logic and empirical evidence are additional objections. 

When I wrote the “Left Tackle” piece, I was reacting to pieces by both of you which seemed to indicate that you view God as able, willing, and successful in protecting good people from suffering. In that piece, I sought to make the point in a light-hearted and in a more tactful way than I will today, that, as I saw it, this claim is absolute nonsense. What I was noting in that piece is that we can see as a fact of everyday life that people do not get protected and senseless destruction and suffering occurs. It was this piece which apparently provoked John to think that I was arrogantly claiming to know “the truth” and to have solved all of the mysteries of the universe and the meaning of life.

Well, I come back again to my point that while there are so many issues in life and in theology where it is damn difficult or downright impossible to ascertain “the truth”, there are issues in life and in theology for which it is not so difficult to ascertain what is certainly false or almost certainly can’t be true. And the reason that the issue of suffering has presented such a challenge to faith through the centuries is because the prevalent notion of an all-good and all-powerful, physically intervening, in-control God just does not fit with the reality of an unjust world we see and live in.

I am reminded of an argument made by C.S. Lewis that we’ve discussed before in this trialogue. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man [Jesus] was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us…” 

This argument as a Christian apologetic falls apart by assuming that it is factually established that the earthly Jesus claimed or thought himself to be Lord and God or even uniquely son of God. That is not clear at all, and it is not believed by many or even most non-fundamentalist Biblical scholars. But it is factual that we see injustice and suffering, and so I think that the argument could be recast as follows to address suffering.

We see lots of bad things happening to good people all around the world. Seeing this, you might choose to believe that God operates under no constraints and could protect people and prevent this injustice and suffering, but doesn’t wish to Or, you might believe that God wishes to protect people and prevent injustice and suffering, but operates under certain constraints which prevent this from happening. Or, you might choose to believe that there isn’t a God or it’s impossible to know. But let us not come away from the issue of suffering with some nonsensical affirmation that an all-powerful and all-loving God operates with no constraints, actively protects people, and exercises effective purposeful benevolent control over a world that is chock full of violence, suffering, and injustice. This option is not open to us.

What I am saying, then, is that I do not think that it is an adequate response to the logical conundrum of an all-good and all-powerful God’s co-existence with evil and suffering to say that (1) the prevalence of suffering is a mystery to be cast aside or an idolatrous intellectual puzzle to be left for solution in the afterlife, so (2) in the meantime, let’s just retreat back into the dogmatic sanctuary of belief in what is not credible at all, that an all-powerful, case-by-case and physically intervening, just, loving God effectively controls what happens in a highly unjust world.

Perhaps you are a reader, though, who believes that it is a miracle when a town prays, and a hurricane headed its way veers in a different course and destroys somebody else’s town instead. Perhaps you believe that the God who did not prevent the Holocaust actively intervenes in relatively minor matters like helping a praying student pass an exam. Perhaps you are one who thinks it’s a miracle when one person is spared in a disaster without questioning whether this means that God intended to let all the rest perish. Perhaps you think that God provides effective earthly protection to the faithful, though Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Gandhi and King were assassinated. If that’s where you sit, you probably will find Steve and John to be your cup of tea. I can’t go there.

Now, there are those who take the issue of suffering very seriously and believe that the most logical solution to the God and suffering conundrum is that “God” most likely does not exist. A good example of the thought process leading to this view is a book I’ve read recently and would recommend entitled God’s Problem:  How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer, by Bart Ehrman. I respect the serious regard and empathy that Mr. Ehrman has for human suffering, and I agree with much of what Mr. Ehrman says. However, I do not reach Mr. Ehrman’s agnostic conclusion.

Mr. Ehrman makes a number of points about suffering itself for which I am sympathetic. He writes that:

“The reality is that most suffering is not positive, does not have a positive lining, is not good for the body or soul, and leads to wretched and miserable, not positive, outcomes…  We should never, in my view, take a glib view of suffering – our own or that of others.’’

“Suffering is not only senseless, it is also random, capricious, and unevenly distributed.”

“All one needs to do is look around to see that the wicked often thrive and the righteous often suffer, sometimes in horrifying and repulsive ways.”

“For many people who inhabit this planet, life is a cesspool of misery and suffering. I came to a point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge of it.” 

“The God that I once believed in was a God who was active in this world. He saved the Israelites from slavery; he sent Jesus for the salvation of the world; he answered prayer; he intervened on behalf of his people when they were in desperate need; he was actively involved in my life. But I can’t believe in that God anymore, because from what I now see around the world, he doesn’t intervene…”

“If God cures cancer, then why do millions die of cancer? If the response is that it is a mystery (“God works in mysterious ways”), that is the same as saying that we do not know what God does or what he is like. So why pretend we do? If God feeds the hungry, why are people starving? If God takes care of his children, why are thousands of people destroyed by natural disasters every year? Why does the majority of the earth’s population suffer in abject poverty?”

Mr. Ehrman indicates in the book that while it has not been easy or pleasant for him, he has left the faith. He is, he says, an agnostic, not knowing if there is a God, but thinking that if there is one, “he certainly isn’t the one proclaimed by the Judeo-Christian tradition, the one who is actively and powerfully involved in this world”, and is “not the kind of being that I believed in as an evangelical: a personal deity who has ultimate power over this world and intervenes in human affairs in order to implement his will among us…” Mr. Ehrman concludes the book with the thought that our response to suffering “should be to work to alleviate suffering wherever possible and to live life as well as we can.”

However, as Mr. Ehrman points out, many human beings in the world are in such dire circumstances that there is not much prospect for their living life well. Consequently, I find myself in agreement with Mr. John Hick, who has written that:

I can agree with many secular humanists that a man’s life can, if he is fortunate, achieve a rounded completion and satisfactoriness despite his mortality. But I shall go on to argue that this in fact only happens to the fortunate few, and that life can only have positive meaning for mankind in general if there is further life after bodily death in which a meaning-bestowing end is achieved.”

Along the way in his book, Mr. Ehrman cites The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. In that work, one of the main characters, Ivan Karamazov, indicates that he believes in but wants nothing to do with God. It seems that Ivan feels very strongly that even if God exists, it is nobler to spurn God than to embrace God when we know that God has accepted or allowed such horrible suffering in the world. I have heard a similar view expressed by people who are angered about the suffering they’ve seen others experience and who then direct their anger toward fawning portraits of God by organized religion.

While I also experience the emotion of anger toward suffering and injustice, I do not therefore reject God or the idea that there may be a spiritual answer to the problem of suffering. One reason that I am loathe to do so is that such an abandonment of spiritual optimism or hope makes the very suffering that we abhor the final word. Is premature, violent death or loss of loved ones at the hands of evil-doers the universe’s last word for the victims of the Holocaust? In that infamous case from some years ago, is death by drowning in a bathtub at the hands of their own mother the universe’s final world for the Yates children? I reject that. I think that it’s important to aim to be rational and empirically realistic in our thinking, but also desirable to be spiritually idealistic and optimistic. My hope is that such sufferings are not the final word. Instead, there is something more and better to come. There is, as John Hick wrote: a “final blessedness”, an “infinite future good” that will “render worth while all the pain and travail and wickedness that has occurred on the way to it,” There will not be any “finally wasted lives” or “finally unredeemed sufferings.”

Leslie Weatherhead put it this way:

“It is no good pretending there is no darkness. Mystery, horror, pain and frustration darken almost everyone’s sky at some time or other. But after that there will come a blessed dawn for every human soul and for the whole human family of god. Let us dare, here, to think the best…”

And Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote that:

“The demand for justice requires that a solution shall be reached, in which the oppressors, brought to their senses by the reforming influence of punishment or by the conquering power of love, shall join with the oppressed, redeemed from their disasters, and that together both shall bear a part in some universal consummation that is adequate to explain and justify the strife and suffering of earth…”

Like Mr. Ehrman, though, I don’t envision God as stereotypically imagined in the Judeo-Christian tradition – an all-powerful external male cloud being who actively and powerfully and physically (miraculously) intervenes in human affairs to see that his will is done in the here and now.

However, my experience and starting world view is somewhat different than Mr. Ehrman’s. I did not come to “belief” or what I might prefer to call “spiritual optimism” through the lens of the Bible and evangelicalism. Therefore, I have a less exacting frame, I think, of what “God” must be.

To start with, I think that there is a need to look at these concepts of “all-good” and “all-powerful” that are attached to God within the suffering conundrum. (And please forgive me for some redundancy in this discussion with some things I wrote and quoted in earlier pieces; this is intended as a summary statement about the issue).

As I’ve noted before, I start with the premises that we (human beings) have a general understanding of what is good, and if “God” exists, God is “good” in ways which are generally comprehensible to us. I am not a relativist. I believe that some value systems are “better” than other value systems, and some values trump other values. I would like to quote again the following from Leslie Weatherhead, because what he said I think explains very well my own starting point when it comes to the God and suffering issue. Weatherhead wrote that:

“if we know anything at all in this life, we know that it is better (equal more good) to be kind than cruel, better to love than hate, better to be unselfish than selfish, better to care than to be indifferent, better to be humble than conceited, and so on.

… It therefore seems to me sound to argue that if this august being we call God exists at all, his character must contain the qualities which, at the best, we admire. For if not, we are better than he is, unless our sense of values is utterly wrong… Of course, if our sense of values is misleading; if there is no moral distinction between feeding a million famine-stricken people and murdering a million Jews in gas chambers; if being loving is really no ‘better’ than being cruel, than God may be a cruel, unjust obscene monster; the argument comes to an end; and we are left puzzling as to how a glorious thing like unselfish goodness has ever come to be on the earth.”

I think that we do have some understanding of what is good and what is not, and I also think that we accurately perceive that much of the suffering that goes on in the world is not desirable.

However, a key point may be that even an all-good and all-powerful God cannot have things operate in contradiction simultaneously. Even God – if God exists -- has to make certain choices. Even God cannot make “A” and “not-A” happen if the existence of “A” makes “not-A” logically impossible.

Thus, God cannot give human beings the free will to act, and yet control their actions. Similarly, but not quite as clearly, it may be that God cannot set forth a universe that both does and doesn’t operate under precise, regular natural laws.

The concept of God being “all-good”, then, is that within the bounds of what is logically possible, God seeks a state of optimal good.

And the concept of “all-powerful” means having the capacity to achieve what is possible, while still needing to make choices between mutually exclusive paths and while still having the discretion to not exercise the capacity to achieve what is possible. 

So, yes, I find that the free will defense and the operation of natural laws provide a basis for thinking that God may exist even though there is extensive suffering. It seems to me that Thomas Erskine made sense in writing:

“Why does an omnipotent God being creatures into existence who grieve themselves and cause grief to Him? I answer, God, in making men, made creatures whom He desired to be good; goodness means choosing to be good; they cannot be made good, they must choose it, and omnipotence cannot do that without unmaking the man… God desires the joy of seeing His creatures choose to be good, and the capacity of choosing to be good implies the capacity of refusing to be good.”

And I choose to believe that William Stone Coffin was right in spirit in his belief that:

“God doesn’t go around the world with his hands on steering wheels, his fist around knives, his fingers on triggers. On 9/11 He watched in horror, His heart the first of all our hearts to break. Come to think of it, the whole surface of the earth is soaked with the tears and blood of the innocent, almost all of it our doing. The one thing we can hold against God is giving us our freedom.”

I have also found the writing of John Hick, particularly in his book Evil and the God of Love, to be a helpful elaboration upon the issue of suffering. Mr. Hick has written that:

Anti-theistic writers almost invariably assume… that the purpose of a loving God must be to create a hedonistic paradise; and therefore to the extent that the world is other than this, it proves to them that God is either not loving enough or not powerful enough to create such a world. They think of God’s relation to the earth on the model of a human being building a cage for a pet animal to dwell in. If he is humane he will naturally make his pet’s quarters as pleasant and healthful as he can. Any respect in which the cage falls short of the veterinarian’s ideal, and contains possibilities of accident or disease, is evidence of either limited benevolence or limited means, or both. Those who use the problem of evil as an argument against belief in God almost invariably think of the world in this way…

Mr. Hick argues that life is “a hazardous adventure in individual freedom” that would be less worthwhile without either hazards or the freedom. The purpose of life, as he sees it, is not the maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain, but “soul-building”, the building of loving moral character. And, he argues that “in a world that is to be the scene of compassionate love and self-giving for others” it is not surprising that suffering would fall somewhat haphazardly and with some inequity. For, he writes, “it is precisely this feature of our common human lot that creates sympathy between man and man and evokes the unselfish kindness and goodwill which are among the highest values of personal life.” He concludes that suffering does challenge faith “with its utterly baffling, alien, destructive meaninglessness.” Still, he concludes that “at the same time, detached theological reflection can note that this very irrationality and this lack of ethical meaning contribute to the character of the world as a place in which true human goodness can occur and in which loving sympathy and compassionate self-sacrifice can take place.”

I think very highly of Mr. Hick’s work, and think that his perspective or argument on this difficult issue has some merit. But do I find it to be fully satisfying? No. It’s helpful, though, in keeping me in the ballpark of thinking that there may be a satisfactory explanation for suffering. It helps take me from the realm of seeing suffering as a logical conundrum for belief in God back into the realm of thinking of suffering as a mystery with possible solutions which are not incompatible with belief. But like Mr. Ehrman, the issue of suffering still leaves me with some unease and some doubt. If human beings were given gifts of independent thinking, independent will, and independent action, why should that gift be all or nothing? Why couldn’t free will operate up to a point, but not to the point of inflicting great evil or gratuitous suffering? Is this world really the best that a good God can put into place? Why should evil and suffering be necessary consequences of free will here, and yet not in an afterlife (if there is an afterlife as it has often been imagined)?

But then another point needs to be made, I think. While suffering is indeed an important issue and a mystery, it is not the only mystery worthy of attention. It is one of many mysteries. If all things have a cause, how does the process get started? Why does the universe have natural laws, or operate with such regularity? If the universe at its essence is material or mechanical, what explains the fact that animate organisms exist (organisms capable of self-directed motion)? Further, what explains the existence of intelligent, self-conscious beings with highly complex DNA structures? And, yes, the skeptic should indeed ask why there is suffering; but also the skeptic should consider this: why is there any goodness in the universe? Why do we see human beings (and some animals) act with empathy or engage in actions that are antithetical to self-interest? Also, does the human race have an overarching purpose and significance? Or does the human race signify nothing except that which it signifies to itself?

Rather than inclining me away from belief in God, as the issue of suffering may incline us, thinking upon these issues inclines me in the direction of belief. For example, on the mystery of consciousness, I am favorably inclined toward the type of thinking expressed in Roy Varghese’s appendix to Anthony Flew’s book There Is A God:

“In considering our immediate experience, let us perform a thought experiment. Think for a minute of a marble table in front of you. Do you think, that given a trillion years or infinite time, this table could suddenly or gradually become conscious, aware of its surroundings, aware of its identity the way you are? It is simply inconceivable that this would or could happen. And the same goes for any kind of matter. Once you understand the nature of matter, of mass-energy, you realize that, by its very nature, it could never become “aware”, never “think”, never say “I.” But the atheist position is that, at some point in the history of the universe, the impossible and the inconceivable took place. Undifferentiated matter (here we include energy), at some point, became “alive,” then conscious, then conceptually proficient, then an “I”. But returning to our table, we see why this is simply laughable. The table has none of the properties of being conscious and, given infinite time, it cannot “acquire” such properties… And, at a subatomic level, what holds for the table holds for all other matter in the universe.”

“The power of thinking in concepts is by its very nature something that transcends matter.” 

“If we are centers of consciousness and thought who are able to know and love and intend and execute, I cannot see how such centers could come to be from something that is itself incapable of all these activities…”

Or, let’s consider the issue or the mystery behind “goodness”. On this, I am favorably inclined to the perspectives expressed by people like Thomas Erskine and Harry Emerson Fosdick.

Thomas Erskine wrote that “I feel that goodness and truth and righteousness are realities”, which to him implied a “good, loving, righteous God.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick noted that evil is “the most enormous obstacle confronting faith in a good God”, and so he said, “Let us not mince matters! There is a dark side to this universe which, at least at first sight, seems utterly inconsistent with faith in a good God.” But he went on to say that for him, “Goodness is the most mysterious thing in this mysterious universe,” and he asked, “How on earth did that ever get here?” While it could be that “goodness is an accident in a material universe… consequent upon an infinite succession of happy flukes”, Fosdick said that he found such an explanation “incredible”. Instead, he chose to believe that goodness is “a revelation, a disclosure of something everlastingly so, light from a central sun, living water from an eternal fountain.”

Fosdick wrote that:

“… if there is no God, then one faces the problem of goodness, beauty, truth, all that is lovely in music and art, all that is admirable in character… Any way you look at it, this is a mysterious world, but of all the ways in which the mystery can be stated none seems to me so improbable, so irrational, as to say there is no God, no Mind or Purpose in the universe, and all that is beautiful and right here is the accidental result of physical atoms going it blind. To be sure there is a dark side to life, that often seems inexplicable, but there are also glorious aspects of life which need to be explained…Mothers and music and the laughter of children at play, great minds, discovering truth, great artists creating beauty, towering characters, Christ over all, lifting human life to new levels –there in goodness, is the problem I want solved, and atheism has no explanation to offer.”

Fosdick wrote that:

“Don’t misunderstand me! There are endless baffling problems associated with belief in God. Mystery beyond mystery confronts us in any endeavor to explain this world. But of all attempts to find the source and meaning of our existence, atheistic materialism seems to me to be the most incredible. So I came back to belief in God, not in order to be happily credulous but in order to escape credulity.”

“If you are finding it difficult to believe in God, remember that there also towering difficulties in the way of disbelief of God…  If you subscribe to a materialist philosophy, what you think ought to be will pull in one direction; what you think in your philosophy will you in another. You think man ought to be a high-minded, spiritual being, but you think man basically is an animal, accidentally produced. You think that human society ought to be a family of brothers, but think that man’s history is really under the ultimate dominance of completely non-moral, unspiritual forces. You think that this earth ought to be the scene of an ascending series of ethical victories, but think that it is really a fortuitous sport of protons and electrons. You are, then, an intellectual animal in a universe where there is ultimately no intellectual element, and an ethical animal in a universe where there is ultimately no ethical element…” (my emphasis added)

Leslie Weatherhead expressed his optimism that “each of us is loved by God and precious in God’s sight” and that finally, God will fulfill God’s plan, “so that finally, from the perspective of the next world we see nothing as loss…” He added:

“It is incredible that, considering our own power of loving and our tender compassion for others, we ourselves are stranded on a lonely planet, amid the glittering galaxies and the terrifying immensities, doomed to carry out on earth a meaningless round of insect activities determined by blind chance and impersonal forces… and at last condemned to perish finally in the dust of the cosmos, in spite of all our dreams, with no advantage gained from our sufferings; with both heroism and cowardice, sacrifice and selfishness, lust and love, greed and generosity all brought down to one level of meaninglessness… No, we have seen visions too beautiful to be untrue, and its requires more from credulity to suppose that all the world’s greatest teachers, mystics, prophets, seers and saints have been liars, idiots or self-deluded dreamers, and that our deepest sense of values is mistaken.”

But if God exists, why doesn’t God make that existence more clear? Why is it so ambiguous? On these questions, I find the thoughts of John Hick once again to be helpful. Mr. Hick has written that:

“Human freedom vis-à-vis God presupposes an initial separateness and a consequent degree of independence on man’s part… But how can a finite creature, dependent upon the infinite Creator for its very existence and for every power and quality of its being, possess any significant autonomy in relation to that Creator? The only way we can conceive is that suggested by our actual situation. God must set man at a distance from Himself, from which he can then voluntarily come to God. But how can anything be set at a distance from One who is infinite and omnipresent? Clearly spatial distance means nothing in this case. The kind of distance between God and man that would make room for a degree of human autonomy is epistemic distance… Thus, the world, as the environment of man’s life, will be religiously ambiguous, both veiling God and revealing Him…”

I would like to close this piece by noting that despite our areas of disagreement, John’s letter on mortality (Post 145, “Coming to Terms With Mortality”) caused me to take further notice of how, at a very broad level, the three of us actually agree on a number of issues. All three of us agree, I think, with the following propositions, insofar as they go:

• The world we live in is not just.
• Nobody knows for sure during this lifetime why there is tragedy and suffering all around the world.
• Nonetheless, there is reason to think that “the universe and the journey we call life” has meaning and there is a creator (God).
• There is something beyond this life, “a destination which, when at last we reach it, will more than reconcile us to the difficulties we encountered on the way to it.”