God's worst enemy? Himself or us?
Suffering
is an experience of the entire human family. It isn’t confined to any
segment of society. It afflicts babies in the womb and the newly born,
the aged, the impenitently wicked people and the devoutly righteous
people, the people whose theology is bizarre and those who have “all the
truth”.
Those
who fervently believe in God, particularly those shaped by the
Hebrew—Christian scriptures, argue a lot even among themselves, trying
to figure out how God relates to human suffering. Aside from some Joban
figures among us, most of vigorously reject the view that human
suffering is the result of God’s peevishness or vindictiveness. We don’t
hold that we’ve sinned against him so he just lashes out in unbridled
anger. We think a God like that would be unworthy of the name “God” and,
besides, he has finally revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ
and there’s nothing vindictive in that life!
Some of us toy with the idea that God can’t do anything about human suffering because much of it is the result of people freely choosing
to injure someone else. If God can’t do anything about truly “free”
will (whatever its limits) then he can’t do anything about the pain that
sinners inflict on one another.
Of
course he could immediately strike dead all the vicious sinners, that
is, all those who make little or no attempt to live decently and
neighbourly. I suppose he could, but then that would generate pain for
their dependants as a human judge often does when he sends a criminal to
jail or death and breaks the hearts of his children.
In any case, that might
work for a lot of human suffering but it leaves untouched the natural
disasters that in each generation leave us wide-eyed in horror. Then
there’s the countless diseased and dead that are ravaged by parasites
and murderous microbes. We might get God off the hook with the free will
argument but we can’t do it with when it comes to cyclones, famines,
earthquakes, tsunamis and the like.
Some
of us are sure that all this has nothing to do with God. He made the
world and it just so happens that these things happen. It’s just bad luck that these things happen and we get caught up in them.
[Should we conclude that without meaning to he built a pathetic world
that, like a faulty machine, breaks down frequently and injures those
around it? Or should we conclude that he deliberately made it to break
down frequently? Either way it doesn’t appear to speak well of him as a
creator.]
In
the face of natural calamities we’re sure that decent people, people
who are able, should pitch in to help the sufferers and that those who
are able and simply won’t—why they’re not decent humans. That line of
thinking leaves us with a niggling uneasiness about what a decent God
would do. Would he not miraculously fix everything if he could? It’s
true that that would mean he would ceaselessly be working miracles. So?
If he’s a decent God with an ounce of compassion would he not go to the
trouble to work a ceaseless stream of miracles? [Do we not think he
wants humans to work ceaselessly for the betterment of their fellows?
Why, then, wouldn’t he?]
Better
still, why didn’t he make a world where such things couldn’t happen? Or
since he has already made it the way it is, why does he not now change
it into a world where such things can’t happen?
Some
among us think that all suffering is God punishing the personal sin of
the people who are suffering. When we remind them that innocent babies
are suffering they tell us that even the innocent babies sinned in Adam
and deserve what they get. I suppose that’ll satisfy a certain kind of people.
All
of this and more we say to try to get God off the hook, to save him
from bad press. But maybe we're not able do that and maybe he neither
wants it nor feels the need for it.
The biblical God is the kind who will say things like (Exodus 4:11): “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I the Lord?”
He’s
the kind of God who says (Amos 4) he sends drought and famine and
pestilence—calamities that engulf the innocent as well as the
impenitently wicked.
A public relations manager would say that God was his own worst enemy and that he should keep his mouth shut and let us talk him out of the trouble he’s in.
No comments:
Post a Comment