The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part II

In Part I of this series, I spoke of suffering, of evil and death; of the Holocaust. I discussed the problem of evil, that the existence of evil proves that God is weak, mean, or both; and that for many people the best conclusion drawn from the harsh realities of suffering is that there is no God at all.

I added my own thoughts on the problem of evil as classically defined, arguing that the problem ignores the obvious assumption in our definition of God, that God is omniscient. As an omniscient Being, God might know that the only way to eradicate evil and suffering from the cosmos is exactly the way we see events unfolding in our lives: omniscience IS at work in every tragedy and in every joy. In other words, God IS doing something, the very thing an all-wise God can only do; and it looks like Life. And it might very well be the case that God was not silent at all during the Holocaust. His voice may indeed have been quite strong. In fact, I have even heard it suggested that had Hitler not been distracted by the Jews in Germany, Poland, France; had Hitler instead ignored them and turned the German machinery of death, destruction and warfare on his enemies, he would have won World War II and far more than 6,000,000 Jews would have been killed. The suggestion posits a heroic idea, that the Jews were something of a glorious sacrifice that saved us all from Nazi tyranny: the Jews were freedom fighters even in their alleged weakness. It was the Jews who destroyed Hitler. Churchill and Roosevelt had nothing to do with it.

This is not an attempt on my part to palliate the evils of the Holocaust, nor am I trying to cheer up the surviving victims of Germany's death camps. I am making a point that God may have indeed been very much at work in profoundly effective and yet strange ways, which is what one would expect of an omniscient God. Omniscience, in fact, may behave in utterly bizarre and contradictory ways; and it may act in obscurity.

A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a spat with a local shop owner about suffering, God, justice. He followed me out to the sidewalk and, in the heat of debate said, "I've done more for the suffering of starving Africans than God ever has." I must say that I understand the sentiment behind this conceit, but I do not understand the conceit. God appears not to be doing anything most of the time; He does not seem to even care. But one of the real problems associated with evil is not that God doesn't care, it's that there is sweepingly broad empirical evidence that most humans don't care either.

About 15 years ago I received a phone call from an old friend grieving about the sad death of a young mother we both knew. My friend was angry at God, for God had let not only Penny (the dead woman) down, He let lots of others down, too. My friend wondered how God could choose not to heed the prayers of Penny and her son, or the prayers of countless people surrounding that tragedy. Even Penny believed that she would be healed! How could God not honor that? How could He be content with yet another motherless child?

After awhile I shared with my friend something that hit my conscience hard. I said that in all of the time that Penny was living, all 26 years of her life, not once had anyone called me to proclaim how glad they were that Penny existed. No one called to praise Penny's smile, her laughter, her sweet goodness. No one called me to praise God for His wonderful creation which was Penny in all her simple glory. No one called to complain that there was not MORE of Penny everywhere; and no one ever said that God was too kind to us all to have created such a wonderful woman in the first place. And yet, in spite of all this silence, people were now mad that God had taken Penny away. Before, there was no gladness around Penny, but after her death there was nothing but madness. No one praised God yesterday, and yet now people were poised to curse Him today.

My friend agreed, and I believe we were both changed during that phone call.

***

I am reminded of something G. K. Chesterton once said. He imagined a rather randy man complaining to God about women and matrimony. "Explain to me God why I can't be with all women?" the man might have asked. To which God replied, "If it comes to that, explain to me why you can be with even one woman?" Chesterton went further, suggesting that Adam and Eve, given the entire cosmos and yet prevented from having just one thing -- an apple -- might have asked God something similar: "Explain to us why we can keep everything we have if we don't have just one thing? Explain why we can't have the apple, too?" God's reply? "Well, if it comes to that, explain the apple."

I am reminded of all this because we often expect an explanation for something taken from us without ever asking ourselves how we were given the thing to begin with. A man may be mad at God when his son is killed in a car wreck; but was he ever grateful to God that he even had a son who would, eventually, die?

What has come to surprise me about many reactions to death and suffering is that people respond with such surprise. When a child dies of a brain tumor or a woman is raped and murdered, one would think that such a thing had never before happened, judging by many survivors' reactions, particularly their reactions toward God. God is to blame, it seems, even though few people take the responsibility for suffering themselves. Like the shopkeeper who thinks he does more to alleviate sorrow than even God, many forget that they are perhaps the reason there is suffering at all. For surely each of us who has had a child knew about rape, murder, disease, fire, pestilence, earthquake, pedophilia, and car crashes BEFORE we had children; surely there is NO ONE on this planet choosing to have children who did not know about these things. And yet, AND YET, knowing this, knowing that death occurs every day; knowing that there are murderers and rapists and wars and droughts and suicides and divorce and cannibals and cancers, and that we nonetheless still choose to have children; all of this should lead us to one question, and one question only: When it comes to suffering and evil, who among us is NOT to blame?

Please note: I am responsible for every bit of suffering my child experiences in life, every bit. Why? Because I knew beforehand that dreadful things MAY happen; I might even have known that they WILL happen, and yet I (not anyone else) CHOSE to bring a child into this world. I am the source of suffering. If there was at least ONE thing I knew before reproducing a child, it was the simple fact that that child will someday DIE.

Interestingly, as I may be responsible for my child's sorrow, I cannot say that I am responsible for my child's joys. And this for the simple reason that before having a child I had no certainty that joy would come his or her way; but I was indeed certain that death MUST come. Life does not guarantee joy, and there is no proof that it ever did, or ever could, or ever will. But every graveyard is proof that even if there is joy, joy, eventually, falls into the ground. With family planning the only guarantee one has is death.

But since sorrow is one of life's guarantees, we can be glad that joy, should it come, is one of life's infinitely wonderful privileges. After all, there is no joy if one is entitled to it; there is no bliss if bliss is one's guaranteed right. Joy can only come in the form of a surprise or it is not joy. Hence, we take a gamble with every breath and in every birth. We hope, we pray; we throw our chance into the hand of omniscience. Surely we cannot blame God when things go wrong, particularly when we don't "blame" Him when things go remarkably right. But when things do go right, surely we are out there thanking God for the privilege of simple existence.

Well, one can only hope.

More tomorrow. [Part III begins here.]

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

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