God, Suffering and Evil: Part Five and Conclusion

Part Five

The Future:  In this particular view  unjust suffering and evil are happening all the time. They are part of life and will always be a part of life.  But, this view asserts:  One day, in the future, God will come and defeat the power of evil.  When this will happen is known only to God.  In the Jewish tradition some Jews hold that a messiah (anointed one) will come to inaugurate a time of peace throughout the world.  They hope that time will be soon.  Until that time arrives we are called upon to do Torah each and every day and to wait with patient impatience for God to act.  For some, a part of this hope in the future is that while evil is real in our time, in the afterlife, that is in heaven and in hell, everyone will get what they deserve.  The advantage of this response to undeserved suffering/evil is that it gives people hope that the pain they are presently experiencing, regardless of what it is, will not last forever.  God is real and one day soon God will come and deliver his people and radically change the way the world works.  One day the people who have done evil will get their just rewards.

The problem with this view is that while God delays, people pay everyday with the hours and days of their lives.  The fact is, some will say, it is too late for Messiahs.  Too much unjustified, pain, suffering and evil has occurred in the past two thousand years.  These people argue that there is no such thing as a Messiah.  No one is coming to save us and waiting around for such a person is a waste of time.  Waiting for justice in the afterlife is wishful thinking.  We are each better off getting to work and doing what we can where we are to resist suffering and evil.  To the extent we do that, we will be the Messiah wherever we live.  I am reminded of a comment by Elie Wiesel when he visited Augustana some years ago, that the greatest enemy of the Jews in the concentration camps was hope.  They hoped that God would never allow them and their children to be burned in the ovens by the Nazis.  They were wrong.  The hope for the future works and it does not work.

Strength and Company:  This response asserts that unjust absurd suffering and evil are part of life.  There is moral and natural evil.  The first is caused by human beings. The latter is part of the nature of nature.  When God decided to create a world of matter, this world is what you get.  God is not able or willing to extricate us from the injustice of our situation.  And extrication or salvation is not what God does.  What does God do?  God gives us strength and courage to endure whatever life brings us.  Not only that, God accompanies us through all we have to go through.  We are not alone.  God is with us. Many people speak of having survived all sorts of suffering and evil because God gave them the wherewithal to walk through the pain and survive. To listen to these stories is to believe the sincerity of the tales.  To these people God is real and a present reality.  The problem with this view is that there are many persons who go through terrible tragic suffering and either do not survive, or are so damaged by what has happened to them that the rest of their lives are a tortured existence.  Many Jews in the concentration camps when asked how they happened to survive will testify that they survived by luck or chance alone.  These people even those who were religious, speak of experiencing the silence or hiddeness of God.  Many did not have the strength or courage to keep going and they did not feel accompanied.  In fact, they questioned and accused God of being indifferent.  It appears then that this experience of God is at best inconsistent for some mysterious reason or at worst,wishful thinking.  Either way, speaking of God in any reasonable way is problematic.  Being accompanied and strengthened by God works and does not work.

Conclusion

There are certainly many variations and modifications for each of these responses but none that has resolved the tension.  There are two temptations I struggle to avoid in this situation.  I diligently try not to retreat back into my religious tradition in order to hide from the questions.  The fact is: God has become problematic.  Maybe God was always problematic but we ought not run away from the truth.  Whatever God is about is the truth.  Faith, prayer and devotion are fine but they are not a medication that reduces the importance of the questions.  On the other hand, I am trying to not reject my tradition and capitulate to the cultural notion that there is no God. 
So, where to from here.?  From a Jewish perspective,  we will need to realize that all human language  is insufficient.  Why so?  Because the word, “God”  points to that which we cannot control or define.  Of course, we will use language but all our words, as the words of our various Bibles, are inevitably inadequate.  When we recognize this fact we will be eager to examine and listen to each other’s religious traditions  and explanations with humility, in the hope of gleaning some wisdom. 

Having said all this it needs to be asserted that for most people it is not easy to live in the tension between modernity and their religious tradition.  It has certainly not been easy for me. I have to admit that I continue to “hope against hope”  there is a God who in some way is monitoring and interacting with what happens on this earth.  And I ask myself why?  Why do you  so badly want there to be a God?  Maybe it is ultimately fear.  To think of the world as it is, with all its daily suffering, evil and craziness, being under the purposeful gaze of a God is frightening.  To think about such a world without a God is even more frightening. 

God, Suffering and Evil: Part Four

The Test:  There are any number of texts that speak of God as someone who tests people’s faith by bringing suffering or evil into their lives to see how they will respond and/or to make their faith stronger.  This response is built on the notion that the true sign and strength of faith lies when it is challenged and perseveres despite.  As is said by so many, “No pain, no gain.” People who go through these tests of faith testify to how much their faith has been strengthened by having endured their pain and yet continued to believe.  Martyrs of the faith are seen by many as having endured suffering, evil and even death for the sake of maintaining their trust in God.  We must concur that for some people “the test” works.  But not for everyone.  First of all, how can we tell when we are being tested and when we are suffering for another reason?  And why is it that some who are tested do not come through well, but rather lose their faith?  Finally, why do some seem to be tested constantly while other s live most of their lives with very few if any tests? “The test” seems to be a contrived explanation that excuses God from taking care of indiscriminate  and unjustified suffering and evil.  The test works and it does not work.

The Plan:  This may be the most popular response given in the Biblical text.  The impression given is that everything that happens, happens for a reason.  It is part of the plan of God.  This response goes on to explain that we may not understand why a particular pain, suffering or evil is occurring but we should be assured that it is all part of God’s mysterious plan.  We are further assured that our thoughts are not God’s thoughts.  We cannot understand the greater, larger, deeper, more wonderful meaning  of the event but rest assured God is in control.  Many people believe in this response because they believe that God is a mystery and acts in mysterious ways that we, with our smaller minds, cannot understand.  We must admit that this response works for some.  Human beings are comforted by the sense that whatever is happening to them, be it cancer,  a heart attack, war, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc . . .is somehow  ordained by a mysterious deity and there is nothing they can  do.  They should surrender and endure because after all, it is the will of God and his will be done.  And the Biblical text itself seems to live in the tension between, on the one hand, depicting human beings as creatures with free will and at the very same time, depicting God as in control of history. 

The problem with “the plan” comforting as it may be,  is that it makes God into an arbitrary monster.  Under “the plan”  God sits in the sky handing out diseases and accidents of all sorts, wars, natural disasters, broken legs, and absurd suffering and evil.  God supposedly does this because God has the plan which supposedly will eventuate in some grand outcome we cannot perceive nor understand.   But, why should we worship a God who, as part of his plan, decides that millions of people must be killed?  A God who commits evil in the name of a secret plan no longer deserves our worship.

The far more serious problem with “the plan” is that ultimately it is not true to the Biblical text.  In the Bible, everything that happens is not the will of God.  God is pictured as fighting against evil and suffering.  God is pictured as being frustrated by human decisions.  God, sometimes, has to modify his plans because humans have made certain decisions.  Death, suffering and evil are part of life but they are, for the most part, not depicted as being the will of God.  People who are sick and suffering are healed of their diseases.  Yes, it may be that God has a purpose but he is not pictured as having planned out every bit of suffering and evil that befalls us.  The Plan works and it does not work.

God, Suffering and Evil: Part Three

Since I am a student of the Bible, I study  its texts for clues.  The Biblical texts provide a variety of responses to the question of the justice of God.  These responses work and do not work.  By “work” I mean that these explanations make sense to our experience.  Of course, this statement immediately raises the question, does it matter if it makes sense to our senses? But, let’s examine the responses anyway.  By the way, a new book just out from Fortress Press by Mark S. M. Scott, Pathways in Theodicy, does a nice job of covering the varying theodicies (theodicy=the justice of God, justifying God in the face of suffering and evil) including their strengths and weaknesses.

Free will defense:  The Biblical stories give us the impression that human beings were created by God with the freedom to make moral choices,  to obey or disobey the commandments of God.  Not only do people have this freedom, but they use it to do what they want to do and what they think is right.  If they do what is wrong, that is certainly not God’s fault.  When they do what is wrong, humans are the responsible party since they have free will.  Parts of this response make some sense to our modern ears.  Each and every day we see people make choices and by the choices they make they decide what their lives will be about.  If an automobile driver has been drinking too much, crashes his vehicle into another car, killing a number of people, we think this is tragic but we certainly would not blame God.  We understand that the man driving drunk is responsible.  He had free will and chose to drink and drive.  On the other hand, the young student at the beginning of this essay, who concluded that his life was not worth living also made a choice.  But was it a free choice?  Was he completely free or in some way mentally ill?  Given his tortured state of mind, wasn’t God morally obligated to interfere despite God’s commitment to free will?  Another problematic example:  A mother is walking with her seven year old child on the street.  She has brought up the child to be independent and responsible.  She believes that every child has free will.  As they are walking on the street one day, some boys are playing ball and the child sees the ball fall into the street.  Instinctively, the child darts into the street to retrieve the ball.  The mother quickly notices that the child is about to be hit by a passing car.  What should she do?  Should she say, I see that my child is about to be hit by that car but I believe in free and responsible will , so I cannot interfere?  Or does she run into the street and save her child?  Most of us know what she should do.  Free will is fine but is it a legitimate reason that should  prevent God from acting in the world?  To my mind, limited and self serving as it is, God is morally obligated to act on behalf of those incapable of acting on their own. The free will defense of God works and does not work.

Retribution:  The Biblical text, particularly in the Book of Deuteronomy declares that those that follow the commandments of God will prosper and those who do not obey God’s laws will be cursed.  This response or explanation of the way God works in the world seems to be true.  You shall reap what you sow.  What goes around comes around.  Indeed it seems today to be true that many who do wrong are found out and visited by punishment in all sorts of forms.   And those who do right succeed in life.   This response seems to work.  But, it is not always so.  And the Biblical text in the Book of Job argues with this retribution explanation.  Job is an innocent man who is made to suffer terrible calamities.  He protests, questions and accuses his God of wrongdoing.  Job is eventually told by that God that he is right to question and accuse and his religious friends are wrong to defend their notion of retribution.  The fact is: there are many in the world who suffer evil who have not done anything to merit the pain and suffering they are forced to undergo.  In point of fact there are many innocent victims throughout history that bear witness to the inadequacy of the retribution response.  Retribution works and  it does not work.

God, Suffering and Evil: Part Two

As a Jew, I am certainly not alone in my wrestling with and about God.   Thousands of years ago the writers of the Jewish Bible also wrestled with these questions.  I studied these stories: Abraham questioning the justice of  God, Jacob wrestling with the God in the middle of the night, Moses puzzled about God’s methodology, Job questioning and accusing God of wrongdoing, Jeremiah disputing with God about the ethics of his calling. I immersed myself in the laments of the Psalter.  Over one third of these prayers are  made up of questions addressed to God.  I even wrote a doctoral dissertation on these laments.  But there was a difference  For all of their questions, the biblical writers would not or could not conclude that there was no God.  As the text asserts, “The fool says in his heart there is no God.” (Psalm 14:1) The writers of the Bible looked at and experienced  the nature of the world and trusted in God despite. And right there was the real difference.  They experienced the world and trusted despite.  So many Rabbis throughout Jewish tradition were able to trust God despite, in spite and even to spite God.  

I experience the world today as a modern person  and sometimes conclude that there is no God.  Am I wise or a fool?  

News!

There are three new things on my blog this morning. To the right there is a link to subscribe my email if you wish. At the top is a new tab called 'Ask Dr. Haar' where I invite you to post your burning questions about  religious topics and I will respond to the best of my ability. There is also a new post below, which is the first in a five part series about God, Suffering and Evil. As always, I welcome your comments and questions. Thanks for reading and thinking with me. Stay sane out there!

God, Suffering and Evil: Part One

Today I'm posting the first of a five part series on God, Suffering and Evil. As always, I welcome your comments and questions. 

As I write these words on a December afternoon in 2014, I am aware that one of my students has committed suicide this morning.  This has happened before and it is always very sad.  A student overdoses, drinks too much, becomes so overwhelmed with his life, his mind, his memories, his depression, and decides there is no other way out.  It is sad indeed.  As a religious person who wants to believe that there is a God, I wonder what goes on inside the divine mind when a young man so full of promise kills himself.  I know all about the free will defense of God (how God has given people free will and so can no longer interfere in their decisions).  But I still cannot help but ask: How can a God, who in any shape, way or form speaks about loving his people, not be moved to act?

Growing up in New York, my parents always encouraged me to be a good Jew and a good American.  But they did not tell me how to do that.  Today, as a 66 year old man I continue to wrestle with their admonition, particularly when it comes to God. When I was 10 years old, I attended YMHA (Young Mens Hebrew Association) day camp.  On the bus ride to the camp in New Jersey we heartily sang the song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”   I close my eyes today and I am on the bus, going to camp singing the song.  I was Jewish and American and it all held together quite well. But today, that is  no longer true.

I understand myself to be a modern Jew.  What that means is that I am immersed in both the traditions of modernity and Judaism and trying to figure out what that means.  As a modern person, I primarily see and hear myself as an “I” who walks around with my own reason deciding day in and day out what I think is true and right and what is false and wrong.  As an American,  I believe that I have the right to think as I would like and do what I think is right within the bounds of the law.  And as a thinking modern individual, a part of my brain has concluded that God does not seem to be a reality in my life or in the world.  I experience daily all sorts of joys and pains, no less, no more than anyone else.  

My parents, both Holocaust survivors, died of pancreatic cancer with all the pain and misery that goes with that.  If there is a God at work in my life, it is difficult to discern where and how that God operates.  The word coincidence easily trumps or explains away any notions of divine design. in my own life  Religious traditions seem to be human creations or constructions that speak more about human hopes and fantasies than any real divine reality. I am encouraged to think this way by my education, my technological and scientific culture, my historical study of events, particularly the Holocaust and my own day to day experience of the world.  I am a walking and floating “I” alone in an absurd, random and meaningless world or so it seems.

But, I also understand myself to be a Jew who lives in the modern world.  As a boy, for about six years, I attended a Yeshiva (Jewish parochial school) where I was taught God is real and becomes real to us through the Torah.  I was also taught that Jews are not merely individuals, but they are part of a community, the Jewish people.  When I was 13 years old I became a Bar-Mitzvah, a son of the commandment, a responsible member of the community.  I was taught that “we do not know who God is but we do know what God wants.”  And God wants us to follow the laws of the Torah.  God was pictured to us in Yeshiva as a holy mystery whose name was so mysterious that it could not even be spoken out loud.  In fact, my Rabbis called him Ha Shem, the Name.  We could not say much about who he was in himself but we could and did study and argue about how to best live out God’s laws.  God was beyond human comprehension.  God was the mystery of mysteries.  God inscrutably worked in human history.  The main message was: God is God and  you are not!  Obey the Torah and you will be doing what God wants you to do.

It was only a matter of time before there was a collision between these two ways of looking at the world.   For me the collision came when I first read Elie Wiesel’s book, Night.  Here was a religious Jew who captured the spiritual madness or craziness of being modern and religious.  Wiesel was a young boy in a Nazi concentration camp who believed that God was the protector of the Jewish people.  Soon, he hoped, God would come to vanquish the Nazis.  Soon, God would remember his promises to the Jewish people.  In a few moments the Jewish children would be set free from the camps.  But it was not to be.  And Wiesel courageously, I thought, raised  his voice with terrible and frightening questions I had not heard in my synagogue or my yeshiva.  Wiesel’s questions became my questions.  His questions were the right questions.  If God was real and had promised to care for the Jewish people, where was he now?  Why had he remained silent or absent?  What was one to make of the hiddeness of God?  My Jewish world was crumbling and I prayed everyday to God with questions.  But God remained silent.  I became a college teacher of Religion and Jewish studies.  I studied and taught my  Christian students about the Holocaust.  I traveled to Israel, visited and spoke at a conference at Yad Vashem.  I read and I read and I struggled with God.  And the more I studied, the more the collision between being modern and being Jewish became a terrible tension from which I have not be able to escape to this day.  At a certain point I even became a Christian, entered deeply into that faith for a number of years and studied their responses to the problem of evil, but that tradition could not answer my questions nor stop my struggle.  The Christian scripture and tradition does recognize that even after Jesus the world remains a dangerous and uncertain place.  It asserts that regardless of what suffering, pain or evil we are living through, “nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  I understood and tried to believe what they were saying: we are accompanied through our experience, and as Jesus died and was raised so we too would die and be raised.  Some even asserted that justice would be taken care of in the afterlife.  But it seemed and seems terribly insufficient given all the suffering and evil of this world.   And I called to mind the haunting words of Rabbi Irving Greenberg :  No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.

Notes from The Door

The door to my office at Augustana is covered with quotes, sayings, poems and an assortment of other things I find helpful, interesting or meaningful. Throughout the years, a number of you have mentioned how these quotes have been helpful, interesting or meaningful to you as well. So, once a week or so, I will be posting something from my door on this blog in the section entitled "Notes from The Door."   Stay sane out there!