Loading...I have started a short thread on why suffering is such a problem for many people when trying to understand the Christian faith – or many of the other faiths. If God is one who is active in the world, helping people, answering prayer, doing what is best for them – how can we explain the heart-wrenching pain and agony so many people experience, even those who believe deeply in God? We are not talking about pain being experienced by, say, a hundred people in the world. We’re talking in terms of millions. Billions. How do we explain that?
People do have explanations, and I do not want to discount any of them. All of us have to come to a resolution of the “Big Questions” in our own minds. And when it comes to matters of faith, it is very much a personal decision – and even inclination – of what seems right and natural to you.
In my next couple of posts I try to address the issue head on in what is for me one of its truly glaring and direct forms, by discussing one of the most powerful presentations of the problem in a truly great work of fiction, a passage that I have always found incredibly moving, thought provoking, and for me, at least, almost unanswerable. This is how I discuss it in God’s Problem.
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From the email I get, I realize that a lot of people think that the suffering experienced in this world is a mystery – that is, that it cannot be understood. As I’ve said before, this is a view that I resonate with. But many think, at the same time, that we will one day be able to understand it all and that it will all make sense. In other words, God ultimately has a plan that we cannot, at present, discern. But in the end we will see that what happened, even the most horrendous suffering experienced by the most innocent of people, was in the best interests of God, the world, the human race, and even of ourselves.
This is a comforting thought for many people, a kind of affirmation that God really is in control and really does know what he’s doing. And if it’s true, I suppose we’ll never know, until the end of all things. But I’m not sure that it’s a convincing point of view. It is a view that reminds me very much of an episode in one of the greatest novels ever written, The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The most famous chapter of this very long novel is entitled “The Grand Inquisitor.” This is a kind of parable, told by one of the main characters of the book, Ivan Karamazov, to his brother Alyosha, in which he imagines what would happen if Jesus were to return as a human to earth. In his parable Ivan argues that the leaders of the Christian church would have to arrange to have Jesus killed again, since …
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What do you think Jesus would have thought about the Prosperity Gospel? Personally I can think of few things that go as much against the message of the Gospels – particularly Luke (who has the “woe to the rich” quote and the story of Lazarus and the rich man).
He would have been flabbergasted.
I would imagine he would be irate. And not just about the so called prosperity gospel
What I find really horrible, distasteful, and ugly in Christianity, is that we are told some who suffer hideously in this life, like the victims of the Holocaust, go on to unimaginable suffering after death. For me, such a doctrine completely vitiates Christian thought and belief. The doctrine is rotten to the core. Absolutely foul and repulsive. No amount of apologetic squirming and BS can justify the ugliness of such a belief system. And any other systems that trade in eternal punishment are equally repulsive. They can take their abomination of a deity and… well, that’s just my opinion. I hope I didn’t express that opinion too strongly.
The tragedy of suffering isn’t just a child thing.
There are children who suffer and people who suffer who are slightly older than children, then people who suffer who are slightly older than those who suffer who are slightly older than children.
As a STH of two pro teams I get slightly irritated at the marketing of suffering children at times ( I know it’s wrong) when there are many sufferers out there. It’s all tragic. No matter the age.
Ivan’s inconsolable objections rely heavily on acts of atrocity weighting his arguments with emotion. I cringed and lamented at those stories of cruelty. What makes the cruelty of the Turkish soldier more painful than the cruelty of sudden infant death syndrome? What makes his cruelty more insidious than that of an elective abortion where infants are chopped and vacuumed out of the womb?
God stands accused of indifference. Apparent divine indifference in the face of egregious atrocity lends itself to doubting the existence of God. Yet Ivan will not assert the problem of evil as evidence against God’s existence. This then provides a far more serious accusation. I do not accuse you of not existing. I accuse you of existing and not caring. To not exist absolves God because that which is non existent is not responsible. Ivan, unlike Nietzsche, does not issue a death sentence, but rather keeps God alive to suffer everlasting guilt.
Ivan is bitter at God. But the question then becomes this: If there is a truth, a satisfying explanation, could a man ever begin to perceive it while holding on to his bitterness and superiority as he sits in judgement upon God? I doubt that.
What do you say to the fundamentalist Christian who explains suffering, even birth defects, by blaming Satan? It’s a reliable conversation stopper for some of them.
Fundamentalism like most coherent ways of thought is a closed system. If you are embedded in its logic, there is no disputing it. I know fundamentalists who believe that Satan also put the fossils in the geological record to lead us all astray. What can you say?
Hello — I’m new to your blog and am enjoying the posts. I came out of fundamentalist Christianity (born into it from both sides of my family…yay, me). The churches I belonged to were unequivocally cults in their socio-group functioning. This has caused a lot of trauma for me as a result of the spiritual abuse, and I am looking for avenues such as this blog for hearing alternative messages to fundamentalist doctrines.
Related to your post here, do you consider fundamentalism writ large to be cult-like in its functioning?
Is “closed system” a delicate way to put this, or do you mean something else?
I think a lot of fundamentalist groups are indeed cults or cultish; but I think the sociological description of a cult would make it difficult to explain such a large and expansive movement as a cult. By definition I think it needs to be a much smaller and coherent group. Cults do usually have closed systems, but by that I do not necessarily mean anything negative: only that the views and practices all interlock so that it is very difficult to break into it or to break it apart. Much of American political ideolgy is a closed system, but that doesn’t mean those who buy into it are necessarily in a cult.
All parallel lines on the earth’s surface meet within 7,000 miles.
“He admits that he thinks God exists (he’s not an atheist, as some interpreters have sometimes claimed), but he wants to have nothing to do with God”
What I understand from this is that according to Ivan God exists but he is not all-loving. So my question is: what differentiates you from Ivan, or in other words why are you not a theist who does not consider God to be all-loving? There must be something unrelated to suffering that made you lost faith in God.
I guess the reason must be the same for which you don’t buy gnostic christianity, but what is it?
My main point is that atheism or agnosticism are hard to justify only on the basis of suffering (for the record I am also an agnostic).
For my part, I don’t see any reason to think there is a God at all. That would have been harder conclusion to reach in Ivan’s context. I’m actually not arguing *for* agnosticism because of suffering. I’m arguing against tradition (mono)theism. Some small Hindu sect may have it right for all I know. But I”d have to have reasons for thinking so, and until I do, I’m AGnostic.
Ok thanks for the clarification. I feel this is a point that needs to be elaborated on more – why you have no reason to think there is a God at all.
THere’s not much to elaborate I’m afraid. My view is that if we want to think something, we should have a reason to think so. If we don’t have a reason, we simply don’t think so.
I have pondered this: suppose there is a wonderful future ahead for my grandchild, but to get there I personally would have to torture him for years. I could not do it. Especially if that better future is based on ancient promises, without any substantiation. As for The Brothers Karamazov, and Les Mis, and A Christmas Carol, and many other books, I find it interesting that I find more spirituality than in the cruel books of the Bible (after all, even the “good” NT promises torment for those who simply could not find the right doctrines to believe in!).
I could easily fill in Ivan’s shoes( skeptic). Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist , another who I admire very much, considers Dostoevsky one of the great writers of all time. I concur with the narrative that Ivan lays out,very graphic as well. People do the most cruel, outrages acts unimaginable to other human beings. Blaming animals is unjust to animals. Nietzsche once said,” Man is the cruelest animal”. Prof. Ehrman, when I read this story, I wish (hope) a God really existed and intervened. My skepticism finds it hard to imagine. But let’s for a moment put Theodicy aside. It is true we cannot control natural disasters, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanos and so on. Diseases like Cancer, heart attacks, dimentia we learn to accept grudgingly and never blame the medical profession for not coming up with a cure. Poverty can be controlled along with vaccinations for malaria and so forth. In essence, aren’t you describing human behaviour( throughout history) and how we are capable of doing the unimaginable to one another, including women and children and God remains undetectable in this environment ? If there is a plan as the Bible says, we must wait!
It’s fascinating how people reject Jesus’ doctrine concerning love, compassion for one another, praying for your enemies, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, not committing adultery and so on. AND THEN BLAME GOD for the human induced misery in the world. And if God IMPOSED these commandments upon people then people would hate God for taking away their freedoms. Go figure.
I certainly don’t blame God for a single thing, myself. I don’t believe there is a God, so I can’t blame him for anything.
If the god you believe in is indeed omnipotent and omniscient, he knew every outcome of every human action ahead of time and went with this world plan anyway. Given that I would say he cannot be omnibenevolent. If that is he exists. I’ve seen zero evidence that he does.
My belief in God is tied to the experiences of my life. The “gifts” I’ve received, the “breaks” in life I’ve had, vs. the very specific responsibilities and burdens that I’ve faced and been asked to take on throughout my life. Responsibilities and burdens tailor made to those “gifts.” My Dad told me “To whom much is given, much is expected.” My journey isn’t random.Yet I read your blog yesterday on suffering and it sunk in too. How can an “All Powerful God” allow such horror? Why do I get breaks and seem to have a guided path, when others do not? This actually kept me awake last night. A concept entered my mind this morning. What if God isn’t “All Powerful”? What if the “tweaks” I’ve gotten in my life is all that God is capable of? What if God doesn’t stop horror because God can’t? I Googled “God is Weak” and lo and behold, it’s an actual theology. “God is Love” vs. “God is Zeus/ Obi-wan Kenobi”. The weakness of God seems to match up well with the tone of Ecclesiastes. Where does this view stand in the Judeo-Christian traditions?
Yes indeed, it’s long been thought. It’s the principle thesis of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s best selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
It’s isn’t ‘blame’ but ‘belief’ in your case. You set conditions to your belief – you cannot square the idea of a God with suffering but you are fine with a universe without cause or reason.
My view is that everyone has conditions for belief. No one is *born* with belief: there is a reason for what you believe (you were raised that way, something convinced you, it was the path of least resistance, it helps you get through the day, whatever). Some of us are intent on considering the reasons and seeing if we find them satisfctory.
I still get confused with your stand on atheism and agnosticism. I thought you were an atheist as to Christianity, but an agnostic as to whether some kind of supreme being (could be God, I guess) exists. In your reply to Poohbear, you say you don’t believe in God. What gives?
Yeah, it’s kind of confusing because my definitions of agnostic and atheist are different from most people’s. If you search for “agnostic” or “atheist” on the blog, you’ll see some posts on it. But the basic thing is this. I think “agnostic” means “I don’t know.” (That literally is what it means in the Greek, from which we get the word) If someone asks me if I think there is some kind of supreme spiritual being in the universe, I say, “I don’t know” (and my view is that no one else does either). Even though I clearly don’t adn can’t know, I really don’t *believe* there is. I think the term “atheism” has to do not with what we *know* but what we *believe*. And so if someone asks me (instead) if I *believe* in a superior spiritual being in the universe, I say No, absolutely not. So I”m both an agnostic (I don’t “know) and an atheist (I don’t “believe”)
Is not religion itself the reason for so much of man’s inhumanity to man? I have not read the Quran, which I am assuming the Turkish soldiers in Dostoevsky’s novel were adherents of, but I do know that rape and killing and enslavement of “the other group” is advocated in the Old Testament. I mean, if God was against killing children there would be no passover, right?
If you want to eliminate much of man’s inhumanity to man, you have to eliminate the justification for it. Support of dictators (Nazi Germany, North Korea, other current examples much closer to home but which remain unnamed here to not upset people, etc.) being a form of religion where the dear leader is perfect and unquestioning devotion and service to the dear leader is required. Now that is a recipe for inhuman action.
Although I don’t find the Theodicy Problem as insoluble and dispositive as you, wickets certainly don’t get much stickier. So it seems to me that the best starting point is to (as atheist, Ayn Rand, incessantly preached) “Check your premises.”
Personally, I find something compelling in the deist rejection of the idea that “God is one who is active in the world.” This supposition is inherently problematic — beginning, but not ending, with the Theodicy contradiction.
Though perhaps not sufficient, it is definitely necessary to examine the implications of your insightful qualifier: “IF…” (In fact this is an excellent opportunity to borrow from your colleagues in the math department and make that: “IFF…”)
Perhaps God merely sets up the board and then leaves it entirely to us to play the game. In fact wouldn’t both justice and morality require that? I suspect Beth Harmon would have been pretty peeved to discover that Borgov could importune the Chief Arbiter to reset only his clock.
The theological consequences of eliminating the premise that God actively intervenes in the world are, of course, profound and broad. Objections to the corollary reverberations will be deafeningly loud and just as broad.
OTOH&FWIW… the Theodicy Problem goes away.
The Problem of Evil, aka “Theodicy,” that you have said is what eventuated in your conversion to agnosticism/atheism is generally framed in two contexts.
There are, of course, the often capricious conditions through which we tread this mortal coil — both uniquely human disasters (famines, plagues, etc.) and pervasive ones (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) — that undeniably “fall on the just and the unjust alike.”
As I suggested above, the deist rejection of the premise that “God is one who is active in the world,” disposes (albeit heretically) of this one. If God merely provides the arena, leaving it entirely up to us how to wage the contest, life might be nicely epitomized in the Chinese symbol that represents both opportunity and danger. A game without challenge or risk isn’t worth playing. Likewise, one where the referee can be importuned by some players to occasionally intervene and temporarily change the rules on their behalf.
More daunting IMHO is the Free Will issue, i.e., allowing both honest players and cheaters to compete.
You apparently find Jesus’ answer to this one in Mt 13: 24-30//Th 97 (the independent attestation making a strong case for authenticity) unpersuasive. How is it unsatisfactory?
There is suffering on the earth because God is not present.
Simple but true.
We can say “there is no God” because until God makes himself known there is no God, no God present with us.
Why does God allow suffering merely because he is not present with mankind? Because it is the presence of God ITSELF that removes suffering.
If God should come tomorrow, August 4, 2021, how many people around the world would welcome his coming, his presence? His telling people what they can and cannot do?
Most would say: “what WE want is for God to fix everything WE want him to fix and then to get out of the way and let us live as WE want to live.” Keeping the greed and everything that goes along with it.
It is almost impossible to return to what we once believed especially after deconstructing our belief/trust in the Bible as well as you have. I know, I walked that road myself though not as well educated about the subject as you are.
We each take our own steps.
Best to you.