Continued from the previous post
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6. The summer of 1994 featured two movies that related to the problem of evil and suffering. I'm sure you know the drill. If God is all powerful, then he is able to stop evil and suffering. If God is all good, you'd think he'd want to stop evil and suffering. Then why does evil and suffering continue to exist?
This question had really begun to trouble me in my final years in Wilmore. It's not that I faced either great suffering or evil. I never have thus far. My mother and father both lived long lives and both passed as peacefully as I would want to. Have I had struggles and disappointments? Of course, but none beyond what is fairly normal for a mortal on this earth.
I have mentioned my struggle with the seeming silence of God. I've mentioned my decade of torture from about the age of 10 to the age of 20. I cried out to God repeatedly for a sense of peace and forgiveness, but most of the time did not sense any clear answer.
In my last couple years in Wilmore, my study of Scripture kept revealing how little my church circles really understood about the Bible. If you have been reading this series, you'll have a sense of that journey. And so, perhaps it is no surprise that I began to long for some sort of direct sign from God of his presence.
7. My final year in Kentucky, I was the facilitator for a small Sunday school class at Stonewall Wesleyan Church in Lexington, where I attended. The two daughters of Gary Cockerill of Wesley Biblical/Hebrews fame were in the small group. Because I had the subject on my mind, we read Philip Yancey's Where Is God When It Hurts.
To be honest, it just didn't satisfy. Frankly, I have never heard an explanation that entirely satisfies. The two main explanations are the free will theodicy (God gives us freedom, which means some are going to freely do the wrong thing) and the soul making theodicy (suffering gives us the opportunity to grow). They both are helpful but still not entirely satisfying.
Over the years, I've engaged a few books on this topic (even took a shot at writing one). At IWU, our Monday reading group read Satan and the Problem of Evil by Greg Boyd. Steve Horst really likes this book. Its biggest move is to give substantial blame to Satan. In Boyd's view, Satan provides a bigger context for the evil and suffering of the world than just the two main explanations.
I actually found The Shack to be somewhat helpful. However, I've never been able to bring myself to be a universalist. I would say it is the free will theodicy on steroids.
This past year, a reading group I'm in with the Horsts and the Varadmans read Tim Keller's, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering. Again, I didn't find any silver bullets in the book. There was a line that I resonated strongly with. He suggests that all the different explanations taken together help quite a bit, but there is no one explanation that seems to fully satisfy nor do they all add up to a comprehensive explanation.
That final year in Kentucky, I would shout out to God (silently) during prayer. During the pastoral prayers at Stonewall, I was silently screaming to God, begging for some sort of word that was definitively him. I even asked him to punish me somehow just so I would know he was there. I bought Hans Kung's huge book Does God Exist? As usual of course, it didn't hold my attention.
8. So the summer of 1994 seemed like a gut punch. First, there was Schindler's List. As Keller has pointed out, the real challenge is not your run of the mill suffering. Yes, that absolutely can keep us from becoming morally flabby--no pain no gain. It builds character. It shapes our moral muscles
But the Holocaust was "over the top" evil. It is "gratuitous suffering" that is the challenge. Six million Jews--how much character does that build? Yes, Hitler was defeated. But how many times in history were the Hitlers not defeated? How many times--so many times, maybe most of the time--did the "Hitler" in question win?
If that wasn't enough, Shadowlands came out later in the summer. This is the story of C. S. Lewis' struggle with the cancer and death of his wife. That story in itself wasn't so difficult to handle. It was that story as a follow up to Schindler's List that was forceful. It was a one-two punch.
Lewis looks foolish in the movie when he presents the problem of pain. The movie means to portray him that way. I love the look of complete puzzlement on one lady after he talks about suffering as God's chisel whose blows hurt so bad but make a fine sculpture out of us.
In the movie, Lewis is on a journey to knowledge. At the end of the movie, he still has faith, but he is much wiser than when he gave his lectures. He's sure God has his reasons, but he's still the vivisectionist. He shouts at a priest giving him the kinds of responses he himself has given in the past. The son, meanwhile, decides not to believe in God.
"Pain is the megaphone God uses to rouse a deaf world." I'm not sure I like that. Lewis, who accepted evolution most of the time and didn't necessarily see Adam as a literal human, mostly relied on the soul making argument to answer the problem of evil. Like most explanations, it helps a little but still leaves one wanting more.
9. I remember having some friends over to dinner in my flat that summer. One of the friends was an atheist, a PhD student in philosophy. "You know the best answer to the problem of evil and suffering is that God just doesn't exist to stop it." I told him I understood all his arguments.
"Then why do you still believe," he asked.
"I don't know," I responded. "I just do."
10. To me, most of the core questions about God have fairly easy, rational answers. The cosmological argument, the fine tuning argument--these make a lot of rational sense to me. The resurrection of Christ can be argued for on the basis of historical evidence.
To me, the problem of evil and suffering require more faith. God gave us a choice, so some are going to make the wrong choice. Makes sense. Makes a whole lot more sense than hyper-Calvinism, which makes God responsible for every last evil thing that has ever happened in the world.
Suffering gives us an opportunity to grow and express moral character. Yes, makes sense.
But there is a point where the suffering and evil are so great, that these explanations do not seem satisfying. That's when I have to press the mystery button. We have to believe God is in control. We have to believe that God loves us and is good. As the priest in Shadowlands says, "We see so little here."
We don't see the whole picture. That's the best we can do to fill in the gap between the explanations that make sense and what is left to mystery.
11. After decades of reflection on the question, two insights seem likely to me, although I welcome the Lord or someone else to show me otherwise. One is that death and suffering in themselves don't have any moral significance. Death is not bad. Suffering is not bad. Pain is not bad. The agents that cause them are what can make those events evil.
One of the biggest realizations I've had in the last five years is that not only in Genesis but likely in Paul as well, death was part of God's creation. It wasn't meant to be the end game, but it was the beginning. Eternal life was always a modification, an addition, to our natural state. The tree of life adds eternal life.
Death was not the intention for humanity, but it was our created state. That suggests that death is not bad in itself.
A second insight is that, while we can see God at work everywhere if we orient ourselves that way, it is highly unusual to receive direct and unambiguous words from him. Again, it is not that we cannot see and hear him continuously. It is that all of these moments could be taken differently. They are a matter of interpretation most of the time.
If you believe that God is speaking, you will hear him. But rarely will you have a speaking that is direct in an indisputable way. Faith is always involved in hearing God.
I can see God constantly at work in my life. Am I absolutely certain in each case that it is God? No. And that's ok. I'm thankful all the same.
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