The Problem of Evil and God

So... I came across a real conundrum in my other blog; see Behold, this evil is of the LORD (Isaiah 31) and the comments thereon.

I have touched many times on the Problem of Evil in this blog, but it deserves a revisit due to the issues brought up in that post and the KJV. While more modern translations of the Bible take advantage of the nuance of the Hebrew word mostly translated "evil" in the KJV to translate it into words like "calamity" or "misfortune" or some other less charged word, the Hebrew word "raʿ" is the word used in Genesis chapters two and three in the phrase "tree of the knowledge of good and evil,"which seems unequivocally about evil, and there are many verses in the Bible that have God being the creator of "raʿ". Now nuanced translation of this word is not necessarily wrong, but it's still quite suggestive. To me it suggests that for the Jew and the Christian, there is a need to solve this conundrum:

A) God is good.
B) God is all-powerful.
C) God is all-knowing.
D) Evil and suffering exist, and...
E) Some evil and suffering is created by God.

It's much more challenging to formulate a convincing theodicy with statement (E) in the mix, don't you agree? Yet based on the Biblical evidence, (E) is difficult to deny.

My approach to a theodicy has always been first of all to place a caveat on statement (B) and say that God must be limited by the boundaries of logic. If God is not bound by logic, then nonsense becomes possible and throws all logic out the window. God can make himself not exist. God can give humans free will and make us always choose right. And especially apropos to this discussion, God can remove evil while letting evil still exist, therefore (D) is false regardless of your personal experience of evil and suffering. I hope people can see this is nonsense.

If we suggest that it is not logically possible to create a world full of beings with free will without allowing evil, that's a beginning, but it doesn't quite address (E). Particularly, of course, it would seem that (E) clashes with (A) almost in itself. I think there are two issues that need to be addressed with respect to this clash. The first issue is why a good God would add evil to a world that already has evil. I think this is easier to address than it may seem. I believe chiefly when God visits evil upon people, it's for the purpose of discipline. We as a society recognize a need to discipline children, although there are vast differences of opinion on how best to do so. Even if you are a parent who doesn't believe in corporal punishment, discipline of any sort tends to involve creating some sort of discomfort in children to make them reflect on why their actions were wrong. In other words, we feel that when children act in an evil manner, they need to suffer for it; it sounds more cruel when phrased this way, but I believe that is essentially the nature of discipline. On a wider level, society accepts that when people break the law, it is required to make them suffer. Maybe that is in some form of restitution, maybe incarceration, and sometimes even death. (While I am personally aganst the death penalty for numerous reasons, it can't be denied that there is a large segment of society that feels it is justified.) So, extrapolating from the moral standards we hold in society to the moral standards held by God, I would say that God is sometimes enacting evil for the sake of justice and discipline, which I suggest are greater goods.

The second issue is the more difficult one: why does God allow or even enact evil upon good people? As I said in the post on my other blog, the Book of Job shows us that sometimes God inflicts evil on good people. Perhaps Job is a special case, but it's quite evident from real-life experience that everyone experiences evil and suffering, and it's quite possible that some is inflicted by God. Let's question Job first; is there a purpose for Job's suffering? When I was in high school, we read Job in our humanities class; everyone in my class except for me was convinced Job must have done something to deserve him suffering, but if that was true, wouldn't God say so? No, Job was definitely suffering through no fault of his own, so why? I've heard it posited that Job is actually a key piece of scripture, because in a way it asks and anwers the question, "Is humanity really worth God's love and grace?" Do people just follow God for rewards, or is there a recognition of God's inherent goodness and sovereignty? Job is a test case, being one of the most upright and moral men God had at that time. If Job can be put through loss of all he has and further suffering on top of that and still praise God, then it shows there is something deeper in the relationship between God and mankind. And Job passes the test, even with God showing up at the end of the book to pretty much taunt him!

Now God, being omniscient, already knew this would happen before it happened. God knows how every individual will stand in the face of adversity. So why go through with it? Because everyone who witnessed it, including Job, Job's wife, Job's friends, and the "sons of God" (i.e. angels, including Satan), now can see Job's character for themselves. Adversity reveals character, which is useful for spiritual growth, and spiritual growth is very important. Towards the end of John's gospel, Jesus talks a lot about the adversity his disciples will see once he's gone to Heaven; Paul talks about his personal sufferings in his letters, and says it's for the glory of God. The Bible teaches that being a follower of God is a good thing, but not that it's pleasant; quite the opposite. God often promises to send comfort in times of trouble, but also, you should expect that trouble.

So what is my conclusion? Sometimes evil and suffering are tools to make people become better people. Sometimes we need to be pushed out of complacency and grow, and evil and suffering do that. Whether we're doing something wrong that needs correcting or doing something right that we need to be pressured in to persevering, sometimes we suffer for the greater good. Of course, I know not everyone will find this convincing, and there is always suffering and evil that seem too much to be appropriate, but it's always a possibility that it has purpose. As always, please feel free to comment.

Elizabeth: "The Oath of God"

I had a few other topics I was considering blogging on, including the lovely but somewhat unusual seder I went to last night, the death of Anna Nicole Smith (which ought to be old news by now, but you'd hardly tell it by watching television) and actually something strange I recently saw at McDonald's; but I had something that really touched my heart in a surprisingly special way in the last 24 hours, and I intend to write on that.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, has recently had a remission of her cancer, for those who didn't manage to pick up that tidbit of information from between reports of Anna Nicole's death. Back in 2004, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and while it seemed for some time that she had managed to beat it, it seems that the cancer had spread to her bones, and this time, there is nothing that can be done about it.

The latest issue of Newsweek features a short interview with Edwards on the topic of her coping with cancer, and in reading it, I found a lot of truly inspirational stuff. The one thing that really jumped out at me was that the interviewer asked her essentially about how it had affected her faith. Years before, Edwards had lost her 16-year-old son in a car accident, and she started to speak about her reflections on God's treatment of her and her family.

I had to think about a God who would not save my son. Wade was—and I have lots of evidence; it's not just his mother saying it—a gentle and good boy.

This is the sort of thing that I hear so many people struggle with when they talk about faith. I've blogged on it several times. It seems so often that I hear people who come to this issue, and they don't so much "struggle" with the idea, it seems, but come to a quick conclusion: There must be no God. (Not that I want to cheapen the power of that conclusion; some people may not have jumped to it so easily, and yet still arrived there. Faith (or lack thereof) is a personal thing.)

Philosophers discuss it. Pastors preach on it. Complex theological concepts are batted around by both professionals and laymen like myself. However, there is something simple and profound that perhaps is typified in the book of Job.

Most of you are probably somewhat familiar, but let's review the basics of that book of the Bible, considered by many scholars to probably be the oldest book of the Bible, and one of the oldest philosophical discussions of the problem of suffering. (You may read it here, if you want to, but the book is rather long; you can get the gist of it by reading the first three and last three chapters.) There's this guy Job, and he's an exceedingly good man. God is discussing him with Satan, and Satan claims that Job is only good because he gets rewarded for his goodness by God, and if he had nothing, he wouldn't be such a great guy. So God allows Satan to take away everything Job has, and leave him in poverty. Job's response?

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." (Job 1:21)

This alone is pretty impressive. Most of us wouldn't be so complacent. Satan is not satisfied, however. He claims that so long as a man has his health, he hardly is suffering. So God allows Satan to make Job break out in "painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head." Now Job has really sunk to a low point, and most people would expect him to give up his faith. Indeed,

His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"

He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (Job 2:9-10)

To me, that is real faith, deep faith. Faith that doesn't just expect God to be like a genie that grants your every wish, but knows that God is good and righteous even when you can't see His justice in action. Faith that says,

"Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him..." (Job 13:15)

And that's really the point of the book of Job in many ways: that we have to accept God on His own terms, even if that means suffering for our faith. People will make accusations against people of faith (as Job's friends do, later in the book) and against God because they want and expect God to behave a particular way. But God does not live by our rules, if indeed He lives by any rules at all. Should we expect the Creator of the universe to live up to our expectations, or should we only expect Him to be who He claims to be?

What did Edwards come to believe as a result of her personal losses?

...I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all.

This is what touched my heart. It sometimes made me seem like a pessimist to my fellow Christians, but in times past, when I had gone through suffering and loss, there were people who told me that I should expect things to improve, because God was looking out for me. My response? "God was looking out for Job, too, wasn't He?"

But for me, this wasn't pessimism, it was realism. If I take God and say that He's a powerful being who exists to take care of my problems, I don't think I'm being Biblical. Jesus Himself promised that we would have trouble (John 16:33), and who am I to say that Jesus is wrong? This isn't bad. Sure I should hope for the best, but just as I'm not going to limit God by saying that He can't fix all of my problems, on the flipside of that, I'm not going to limit Him by saying that He will fix them. Sure, it takes great faith to expect miracles, but doesn't it also take great faith, to say, like Edwards:

I'm not praying for God to save me from cancer. I'm not. God will enlighten me when the time comes. And if I've done the right thing, I will be enlightened. And if I believe, I'll be saved. And that's all he promises me.

I pray that for so many of us unsure in our faith through hard times, that will be enough.

Moralists Anonymous

I have another post I've been working on, but I put it aside for this. This post is dedicated to one of my biggest fans, who posts quite often on my other blog, and even occasionally here: Anonymous. This guy is great, not so much that he's always the kindest comment poster or deepest thinker, but I am flattered that he takes time out from all his poetry writing, clever quipping and police informant work to drop in on my blog and give me his opinion. Lately, he had a lot to say in response to my post on slavery (scroll to the comments), but in the end, it apparently boiled down to an issue that I haven't addressed there, and probably never will, due to the nature of the blog.

The issue is the moral nature of God. Anonymous claimed, as many before him have done, that there is good reason to question whether or not God is morally right in His actions and overall interaction with humanity. For many people, this issue is raised as part of the Problem of Evil. Short version: (A) God is good. (B) God is all-powerful. (C) Evil exists. It is claimed that all three of these cannot be true, and if this is so, and rational people cannot reject (C), then (A) and/or (B) must be false, and Christianity cannot be based on truth. This is also related very closely to the problem of suffering, which is essentially the same, but with "evil" replaced by "suffering". Anyway, the point is that the nature of God becomes questionable in this light, and one must wonder what Bible believer can say about it.

I'm pretty sure I have addressed elsewhere the issue of questioning (B), but due to Anonymous' questioning, I think it might be time to shed some light on (A). Why does it sometimes appear to some that God is immoral, and how do Christians reconcile this? Why does God allow evil that seems like it would be simple enough for an all-powerful God to stop, and on top of that, why does the Bible condone things like slavery and capital punishment that many of us find morally distasteful? I'm not going to pretend to have the answer, although I may highlight my favorite theory before I wrap this up.

One of the very common ways to respond to the issue is to simply say "We have no right to judge God." This actually comes in a number of different forms, some of which blur the boundaries with other types of responses that I plan to discuss here. One form is that of the defaulted reverential approach to God, where one has simply been taught that God is Holy and wonderful and that one should never question God's goodness because...well, just because! What are you, some sort of heretic? A more abstract but actually in a way more reasoned approach is to simply point out that since God created the universe and the living creatures in it, they belong to Him, and he gets to do whatever He wants with them, and if you don't like it, go make your own universe! Maybe that's alright for some people in their own minds to take a position like this, but for someone who is not a believer to begin with, this approach will be sadly lacking in weight. Furthermore for those of us that are believers that want to have any sort of serious discussions of theology, there is a need for a reasoned approach. This isn't it.

As I said, there is a blurring of the boundaries between these different types of responses, and it may not be really clear why this is different, but another approach is to claim that morality is actually a creation of God, and since God made it, He has a certain amount of control over it. This is a strange and many-faceted idea that sometimes is approached from the other direction in a manner of speaking, when someone tries to argue that without God, there is no morality, period. The idea in such an approach is to suggest that the fact we can make moral judgments somehow verifies the existence of a higher moral standard, and that that standard can only be the almighty creator of the universe. Perhaps somebody can suggest to me a good book or essay to read on the subject because I frankly have never understood this position, and every time I've heard it, it seems to be stated as though it's self-evident. Putting that aside and getting back to the subect of God's "control" over morality, a good metaphor is that life is like a game where the rules exist in God's head. Whatever God does, He can bend the rules to fit his actions, or, more to the point due to God's omniscence, God has created the rules with loopholes for Himself. (That's an over-simplification, but I'm really convinced that the argument boils down to that in essence.) Those who don't like this argument seem to feel that it's a matter of hypocrisy that God doesn't have to obey moral law while His creation does, and there might be something to that. One thing that Christians in particular have claimed is that in the person of Jesus, God lived the life of a mortal, and in the thirty-odd years He spent on earth, He willingly subjected Himself to those laws. Whether that helps the argument or is even plausible to those who read the Gospels with a skeptical eye, who can say?

Similarly, but with some deeper theological implications, there are those who claim that God, a being of a higher order and quite different from us in many ways, does obey moral law, but has a completely different set of moral laws that apply to Him. Generally, this is hard to explain in the particular case of God, but perhaps can be illustrated in a different way. Let's talk fleas. Most people would not think it immoral of a person to buy a flea collar for their pet. The flea collar kills fleas, but we recognize that the fleas are detrimental to the health of the pet, and for the pet's sake, should be eliminated. If the pet chose to wear it or managed to remove it, either way, most people would not think such an action on the part of the pet would be immoral. Now despite the fact that the pet and the owner are unhappy with the flea, nobody would particularly feel that the flea was immoral for biting the pet (or the owner, for that matter) since that is the way it survives, and cannot be expected to do otherwise. Also, the flea has no comprehension of why it is unwanted (if indeed it is aware of it at all!)

So, as the difference between fleas, pets, and pet owners implies different moralities not just in degree, but in kind, so God exists in a state where His morality is perhaps as unrecognizable to us as ours is to a flea. And the comparison is perhaps appropriate, as many have wondered about the morality of God creating fleas in the first place. It may be that God has created fleas (and evil and suffering in many other forms) for reasons that we simply cannot fathom, not being God. I think a likely objection to this view is that if God's morality is of a kind that is not related to ours in such a fantastic manner, how can one even know that God is moral? Really, we'd just be guessing and/or taking God's word for it. While that objection is basically true, this may nonetheless be the case, like it or not.

Now, my preferred manner of viewing the morality of God is that God's morality is of a higher order than ours, but not so much of a different type. The distinction between this position and the last one is that while we often do not understand the moral aim of any choice God makes, it is not because it is intrinsically unknowable. The issue for God is that God sees the big picture. My children don't understand why it's not good to eat nothing but candy all the time. They're too young to understand nutrition. Frankly, I don't understand nutrition either, but I'm mature enough to recognize that there is a right and wrong way to choose foods, even if I don't always do it. My kids could grow up to become nutritionists or doctors, and have a much better grasp on the concept, the potential is there. Now while we can't "grow up" and become God, I think that God has knowledge that leads Him to do things that is often beyond our current grasp.

One of the biggest things that I feel that God understands better than any person alive is the concept of death. There's a bit of a trend I've seen lately, perhaps started by Steve Wells in his blog Dwindling In Unbelief, to point out that if one goes through the Bible, we see God killing more people than Satan. I am personally of the belief that when God (and perhaps Satan as well?) kills a person, it is a different matter than when a human kills another. This is not a matter of God having the right to kill because He created life (a fairly popular response), but God having the right to kill because He and He alone, being omniscient, knows the full implications of ending any particular life at any particular time. One of these days, I'm going to have to do a post on my view of the spiritual aspect of murder, I have what I think is an interesting personal take on the matter. Why do I take away my kids' candy before dinner? Because I know something that they don't. Why does God take away a life or allow some other form of suffering? Because God knows something we don't. People can complain that God allowed a man like Hitler to exist, and then turn around and complain the He allowed a baby to die. We may not be aware that had that baby grown to adulthood, he would have become a man far worse than Hitler, and it was better that he died before setting off down the path that led to that end. Wildly theoretical, I know, but not at all impossible.

A person might object to this sort of speculation as being the same sort of grasping at straws that "blind faith" breeds, and heck, they might be right. However, I have met many atheists that have a similar view of materialistic science. If we only knew more about the universe, they assure us, then we'd have no need for God or miracles or an afterlife. Well, how do they know that? The same way that I know that God is moral. The more I investigate, the more I understand, and as yet, nothing has given me strong reason to think otherwise. And anyway, I do have faith in science in that way as well (well, short the part about not needing God), and I don't think it's wrong. I think science can tell us everything we will ever need to know about the physical universe, if we only investigate carefully. I simply feel that the physical universe is not all there is. There is God, there is the spiritual aspect of our world, and there is a morality, both of man and God that shapes it all in ways that we only partly understand.

Good grief!

I recently came across some material on another site trying to point out the old argument that there can't be a loving, omniscient, omnipotent God and suffering at the same time. It's an old argument that many far wiser heads than I will ever be have argued from either side, so I won't delve into the full argument, mostly to save space. (I dip into it in a later post anyway...)

The thing is, I remember discussing the topic a long time ago with an avowed agnostic. It was interesting to me at that time that the discussion turned to that topic, because at first, we had been discussing the idea of miracles. He referenced an argument from David Hume which I remember differently (and the given link seems to tell it the way I remember), but took his word for it. His version of the argument was as such:

A: A "miracle" is an event that defies the laws of nature.
B: An event that defies the laws of nature cannot be explained by science.
C: One cannot say with certainty that any event is impossible to be explained by science, only that with our current knowledge of scientific principles, we cannot understand it.
D: Therefore, rather than accepting an event as being a "miracle", it is more rational to assume it is simply something that future developments in science will explain to us.

Now, if you accept the definition of "miracle", which is reasonable enough for most people's purposes (although there's a bit more to "miracles" than that), then I think this argument, which was presented to me in less sloppy fashion than I have presented here, holds water pretty well. I admitted to the agnostic that he had a very good point, and as I think I have said in this blog as well, I don't doubt that science will one day explain everything, or at least has no limits to what it could potentially explain.

But the discussion went forward and evolved, as online discussions do, and it turned to what he presented as proof that God (as per the Bible, at least) does not exist. This argument was the argument from my first paragraph here. Now while his form of the argument was better than most I have heard, and he had managed to plug up most of the logical holes that exist in such arguments, I seem to recall two problems with his conclusions. One was very metaphysical, and I won't go into it here. The other was, to my delight, one that I presented in the same form as his previous argument. So many of these arguments for and against God are double-edged swords, and in the end, those who make them feel that they've closed the case, while at the same time, those on the other side remain utterly unconvinced. Oh well.

My argument? Well, the problem, as most people who argue for God to be able to coexist with suffering claim, is that it seems quite possible that good cannot exist without evil. Pleasure cannot exist without suffering. In order to make the world a truly wonderful place, God must allow some to suffer, and it may be beyond our comprehension why. A personal example from my own life was that I dated this woman for a while in college, but the relationship didn't go well. We broke up, and it was painful for both of us. Why should I have suffered that painful relationship and subsequent breakup? Well, I happen to know for a fact that if it were not for that failed relationship, and certain events that happened in the fallout from it, I would never have met the woman who became my wife. At the time I was suffering, I didn't know where it would lead, but it led somewhere good in the end.

That's a small example, but many Christians have heard of a more interesting one from the Holocaust. Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman whose family hid Jews in their house during the Nazi occupation, eventually ended up in a prison camp infested with fleas. She and her sister, who were in the same barracks, had smuggled in a Bible and were holding regular prayer meetings. Corrie was appalled on the night when her sister insisted that they should thank God for the fleas the barracks were infested with.

The fleas! This was too much. "Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea."

"Give thanks in all circumstances," she quoted [from 1Thess5]. "It doesn't say, 'in pleasant circumstances.' Fleas are part of this place where God has put us."

And so we stood between tiers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.

Later, Betsie made an interesting discovery.

"You're looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself," I told her.

"You know, we've never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room," she said. "Well--I've found out."

That afternoon, she said, there'd been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they'd asked the supervisor to come and settle it.

"But she wouldn't. She wouldn't step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?"

Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: "Because of the fleas! That's what she said, 'That place is crawling with fleas!' "

My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie's bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.

And that's the sort of thing that I thought of when I was told that the world is too full of needless suffering. Just as he had faith in science being able to explain all, I had faith in God and His providence to explain all.

You cannot prove that any given instance of suffering has no point, you can only make the claim as an opinion. Therefore, there is no such thing as pointless suffering, only suffering that we do not yet understand the purpose of.

(Excerpts from Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place)

Fudging the cosmic balance sheet

Although I sometimes plan out these posts in advance, I think some of my best posts are the ones I come up with at random on the way to work in the morning. Well that, and an excess of caffeine surely doesn't hurt.

So, I was thinking about one of the most common theodicies there is, at least as far as I have seen them, and something about it struck me as odd. It's often argued that the real problem with balancing out God's goodness with the existence of evil in the world is that it may not be possible (even for a supposedly "omnipotent" deity*) to create a universe that has goodness without also creating evil along with it. Some people have problems with that, perhaps partially due to technicalities inherent within the concept of omnipotence, or perhaps due to simply not accepting this as true. Most people, however, seem to either accept this as true, or suspect that it may possibly be true. I definitely fall into the latter camp.

Well, it's an interesting position to argue from, and while it may have merit from an entirely philosophical point of view, it occurred to me that this is rather more like a deist theodicy than a true Christian theodicy. I fear that it can often be the case for Christians that when one wishes to discuss theology, the larger discussion on an abstract level can lose sight of the more important specifics of the Christian faith. Can a person remain a faithful Christian and argue a theodicy that states as a premise that evil is necessary?

Yes, normally we tend to understand this in terms of free will. If there exist beings (humans particularly) that have the ability to choose freely between actions that may be good or evil, it simply seems to follow that sometimes evil will be chosen. Indeed, that's the premise that Christian understanding of evil rests on: that Original Sin is a sort of disease that spread upon all the face of creation due to an evil choice by a single man. Biblically and doctrinally, that's a given, and a necessary part of our understanding of the nature of evil.

The problem arises when one looks at the Biblical nature of God and the picture of creation as a whole. Sin and evil entered the world by the sin of one man, right? Then does that not suggest that before Adam's sin, the world was entirely without evil? Isn't there a sort of understanding as well that at the end of time, either at Jesus' return or 1,000 years thereafter (depending your eschatological calendar) that God will make all things new and there will be a world without sin, evil and suffering? It may sound nice in practice, but in the scope of our theodicy, there is a problem, isn't there?

If God created the world perfect, why could it not stay perfect? Indeed, if it was perfect, then it is shown that goodness can exist without evil. If it's a matter of free will opening the door for evil, and somehow free will with accompanying evil is a greater good than no evil without free will, then what does that say about the supposedly perfect world that is to come? Does God take away our free will? Even after Original Sin, God is apparently taking away all vestiges of evil. If this is possible, then why wait to do it? Yes, I know there are fairly coherent arguments about God's desire to save as many souls as He can before ending this present phase of existence, but where does that leave our theodicy?

Most likely, I'm missing something that should be obvious. I just don't see it, though, or perhaps I am facing a gross misunderstanding of Biblical eschatology. Anyone want to share thoughts on this?

(* In a thread on the SAB discussion board some time ago (now long-gone), I was discussing the nature of omnipotence, and in the end, decided that the best way to clarify the nature of a reasonable omnipotence was to coin the term "quasiomnipotence". It seemed to many that if God is truly omnipotent, then He would not be limited by logic. I argued that if God is not limited by logic, then truly anything becomes possible, and all discussions of God reduce to nonsense. For instance, God can make Himself not exist, or He can make evil cease to exist while simultaneously allowing it to continue existence, since logic does not constrain Him. Thus, I define a "quasiomnipotent" being as limited, but only by the boundaries of logic. The true nature of "quasiomnipotence" may need much discussion, but it gives a more reasonable starting point.)