This is the Fourth in a series of articles that examine nine “scientific facts” that require a new theological response.

Read First Article: What we can Know about the Universe
Read Second Article: Homo Sapiens, God, and the Evolving Universe
Read Third Article: From the Very Big to the Very Small
 
Reflection Number 4: Undeserved Suffering

Undeserved suffering surrounds us. Natural disasters strike unsuspecting victims, disease incapacitates infants, refugees flee violence of others’ making….the list is endless and heart-breaking. From a purely secular perspective, the suffering can be analyzed, diced and spliced, and some sort of explanation can emerge.

But from a theological point of view, no explanation suffices. The so-called “problem of evil” challenges the strongest faith. How can a loving god permit the horror? Bart Ehrmann, a prominent New Testament scholar, traded his faith for agnosticism because of this problem. Evil in the world becomes a theological problem if you 1) believe in a god, and also 2) believe that this god is both omnipotent and good. If god is good, willing good for all creation, and if god is also all-powerful, then why does god permit life-destroying hurricanes, cancer, tornadoes, etc?

There are a variety of solutions offered. God is testing you. God has a plan that we cannot see. And so on. One answer is to say that, although it may seem that the person in question is innocently suffering, in fact that person is deserving of what happens to them because of something they did in a prior life. Bad karma. It is on the basis of this theory that a society can accept the poverty of a whole class of its citizens. India, to be exact. It was a variation of this theme that was presented to the biblical character of Job by one of his friends. Inasmuch as the Hebrews accepted the idea that the sins of one generation could bring dire consequences to later generations, the friend thought that Job was suffering the impact of an ancestor’s wrongdoing, an explanation that Job vehemently refused to accept.

I love Job- the image of him shaking his fist at an unjust god captures the rage we feel when we see undeserved suffering. It reminds of my own mother who couldn’t wait to see god face to face so she could give him a piece of her mind. In the movie “Open Range”, Robert Duvall plays the role of a cowboy boss. When one of his men is murdered and another asks Duvall at the grave if he wants to say a few words to god, he answers “I don’t want anything to do with that son of a bitch.”

A few words about Job. The book in the Bible has a prologue and epilogue, with a long poem sandwiched in between. The poem is where the real theological analysis takes place. The beginning and end, the wager between god and the devil, is a later setting inserted by a theologically weaker mind. The poem, on the other hand, struggles with the question of why Job suffers, seemingly without justification.

The prologue has the devil wagering that Job is faithful to god only because god treats him so well, and if the devil were allowed to cause Job to suffer, he would deny god. The bet is on, Job suffers but remains faithful, and he is rewarded tenfold. End of story.

The poem, however, has quite another narrative: the stricken man shakes his fist at god, demanding that he come down and justify his (god’s) actions. The only answer that Job receives – and it is dramatic – is god’s voice coming to him from out of a whirlwind, demanding “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?” Or, “Who the hell do you think you are?” Or, if we acknowledge that the voice in the whirlwind is a literary device used by the author, and not a literal voice, Job’s conclusion is that he has no answer to the question. Why do good people suffer? How can an omnipotent god allow innocent suffering? I have no idea, says Job, I have no idea.

There is another approach. From the Christian faith perspective, there is another way to look at the problem. If we believe Jesus reveals to us who god is, as I do, then we better look there, and not come to the issue with a preconceived notion of what god must be like. And what do we find in Jesus?

Above all else we find a god who loves. And we find a god who does not accomplish the divine will by brute force. There are no thunderbolts from heaven. Jesus presented to his disciples a god who is weak in this world, who accomplishes her will by persuasion and personal sacrifice, love and compassion, invitation and reward. This necessitates, of course, that anthropomorphic descriptions of god found in the Hebrew scriptures must be recognized as metaphorical rather than literal, just as the nature miracles attributed to Jesus (walking on water, etc) must also be recognized as metaphorical rather than literal. God does not act by overt force.

And what of the resurrection of Jesus? Is not that an overt display of divine power and brute force? Only if the event is seen as the resuscitation of a corpse, and that is not what the disciples experienced. They experienced a new kind of spiritual presence, they believed that even though Jesus had been crucified he was yet alive in their midst. And they were so convinced that they were willing to face death themselves in order to tell their story. The empty tomb and the appearance stories are metaphors to describe this reality. So, once again, the god we find in Jesus is not a god who intervenes with brute force, but one who works in, with and under the given physical reality.

Once we surrender the idea that god is omnipotent, the problem of evil dissipates. If we must believe that god is all-powerful, let us say that in her omnipotence, god decided not to be omnipotent, respecting the freedom not only of human beings, but also the freedom of the natural world to be as it is, tornadoes and all. Or if conceiving of god as thinking person is unacceptable, then we can think of god as Being Itself, the Ground of Being (to borrow terms from 20th century theologian Paul Tillich), a transcendental dimension of all reality- and a god that cannot, by definition, interfere with the reality that is. In either case, whether as Person or as Being, god works with what is, and is not omnipotent.

I believe that when evil befalls anyone, god cries just as we do. The divine compassion knows no limit. God suffers when we suffer. The final word, however, is that god is good. And unjust suffering will not be the last word. This also is at the heart of the Jesus story: the crucifixion was followed by the resurrection. The power of evil manifest so brutally on Good Friday, is not the final determination. The resurrection is. The conclusion is that somehow, beyond our comprehension, god’s love wins, and we all return to god. Our suffering may be unjust, but in the end god makes it right. The alternative is the morally neutral universe offered by cosmology and evolution, which I cannot accept.
 
Read Fifth Article: The World We Create
Read Sixth Article: A Zone by Any Other Name
Read Seventh Article: How Other Persons Affect Us
Read Eighth Article: Who am I?