Hard Evidence But...(The Problem of Pain - Part II)

"In the end we all get dropped,
We all get black and blue."
---Carly Simon

We were talking about theodicy, or in practical terms, why, if there is a God, does He permit suffering, evil and pain? On the macro side, why didn't God intervene to kill the SS Troops as they gathered the Jews to send to the concentration camps? Why did He not act to prevent 9/11? On the micro side, why does God permit a loved one to contract a terminal illness, suffer a debilitating stroke, or a child to be born with serious mental and physical impairments? If God is what He is cracked up to be, He could easily prevent evil and pain, both macro and micro. And for those who believe in Him, shouldn't we get a break? Shouldn't membership in the theist (God-believing) community "have its privileges?"

The rationale behind God's failure to prevent pain in this world has been debated for a long, long time. One can find complicated explanations of God's failure to act and more simple apologies. For example, in The Problem of Evil Blog, grad student David Wood proposes that God values men's free will so much that the evil springing therefrom is not worth God's zapping evil wherever it appears and in effect, humans becoming puppets to Him. In the story of Job, a story that predates the Old Testament's version of it, the explanation is that no mortal has the right to ask God to account for His behavior, because no human can ever hope to comprehend the mind of God. Further, God has no need to answer Job because God Himself is the answer.

But this is a tough concept to grasp intellectually and does nothing to assuage the pain that one might feel at this moment. So, as Job was tempted to do, we could curse God and die. Many have done just that, overtly or covertly, certainly the rational approach. The only problem with that course is that our idea of what is rational can hardly be the same as God's idea of what is rational. If, as Christians believe, God sacrificed His Son, how rational is that, God becoming flesh (in part) and then dying and not staying dead! And for the avowed purpose of giving our sorry souls enough worth to merit eternal life. Preposterous? We may have trouble accepting a mystery of this magnitude. But our lack of acceptance results from our human preoccupation with what can be seen, touched, balanced, drafted, nailed or browsed (hard evidence) and does not negate the mystery itself.

Frederick Buechner in his little book Whistling in the Dark perceptively views the problem of evil in the context of both the Old and New Testament:

"The Old Testament speaks of the elusive figure of the Suffering Servant who though 'despised and rejected of men' and brutally misused has nonetheless willingly 'borne our griefs and carried our sorrows' and thereby won an extraordinary victory in which we all somehow share (Isaiah 52:13-5312). The New Testament speaks of the Cross, part of whose meaning is that even out of the worst the world can do, God is still able to bring about the best."

This lawyer is without the ability to say it any better.

Thanks for blogging with me thus far, and Happy Easter!