Rod Dreher, blogger at the American Conservative, has been reading the Iliad with his sons. The capricious nature of the gods as portrayed in that story causes him to wonder about the problem of theodicy: If God is all powerful and all good, why is there evil in the world? He writes:
“I know. I know. This is the question everybody has, and it is for me the only serious argument against the existence of God. But I do believe in Him. I just don’t understand why He does the things He does, or allows certain things. Did you read the story the other day about the couple, now both arrested, who conceived a child for the purpose of sexually abusing her? How does that happen? How does God allow people like that to live? How does God live with Himself knowing such people walk the earth?”
Every Christian has to make sense of this problem. Just the other day I prayed to God to give me a free parking space in a crowded lot. I found a space, thanked God, and went on with my day. Later I was reminded there are people all over the world suffering from violence, starvation and famine. I bet a large number of them pray to God everyday asking for deliverance but nothing seems to happen. Why does God let those people suffer but let me live such a comfortable existence? Saying that it is a mystery, part of the plan, or the preservation of free will is just not satisfying to many people.
However, while the existence for suffering is a stumbling block for many, it is also a great hint that the material world is not all there is. It is self-evident that an ideal world would be one where no one had to suffer needlessly. But when have we ever experienced or seen this ideal world? By and large, suffering is the normal state of the affairs in human life. Even the rich, comfortable, healthy and powerful will one day die. The fact that it will one day end spoils the pleasure to at least some degree. Yet somehow we have this idea that life should not be this way. Despite the fact that all we encounter is infirmity and suffering, we lament it. If this is all there is, lamenting suffering is absurd; there is no point objecting to something that cannot be otherwise. It would be about as useful to complain that gravity exists as it would be to complain about suffering.
What looks at first to be the one true argument to dispel faith actually shows us that human beings already have it. When we call suffering evil, we acknowledge there is more to life than this.
No comments yet
