Evil/Suffering

About 12 years ago I engaged in some lengthy dialogue with a fellow graduate student who had abandoned his Christian faith upon reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Below is one of the emails I sent to “Oleg” (not his real name).

Dear “Oleg”

Please allow me to begin by first expressing my profoundest sorrow over the terrible experiences you have been through. I cannot possibly understand the hurt and anguish these things have caused you. I can only say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and that I hope that in spite of it all, you are able to clearly distinguish between the wickedness of the persons that took advantage of you and the goodness of the God they so poorly represented in your case. My heart truly ached within me when I read your email. I know these words of mine may not mean that much, and certainly they can’t erase your personal history or the present feelings that history may yet arouse within you, but please know that I truly and deeply hurt for you because of this. 

I also want to apologize for taking so long to send a response to your last two emails. Despite the passage of so much time, I still, regrettably, have no elaborate treatise to offer you in defense of my position. I have no knock-down argument to give to you. And truthfully, my suspicion is that given the rather lofty standard of evidence you have raised for justifiable belief in God (namely, a theophany), there is not much I can say that you will likely find especially compelling. Nevertheless, I will try. 

Much of what passes for objections to the Christian faith can be summarized under what is known as the “problem of evil.” When it comes right down to it, this might be at the core of most objections to the existence of God: How can God and evil co-exist? How could a good and powerful God allow so much suffering? These are real, heart-felt questions that Christians should take seriously and seek to answer. 

The argument can be put in terms similar to this:

1. If God is all good, he would destroy evil

2. If God is all powerful, he could destroy evil

3. But evil is not destroyed

4. Therefore, there is no such God.

The problem of evil is really two-fold. First, it is a PHILOSOPHICAL problem: How do we reconcile the existence of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent God with the existence of evil? Second, the problem of evil is an EXISTENTIAL problem. Most of us have personally dealt with some really tough situations in life, situations in which there seems to be no irredeemable quality to the evil that we encountered.  When a person is going through intense suffering, they are usually not looking for a philosophical treatise but are more in need of pastoral care. Again, this is the difference between the intellectual and emotional responses to evil. The focus here will be on the intellectual or philosophical response to the problem, an exercise that can be conducted even in abstraction from real life evils suffered in the real world.

Can your theology survive a tragedy? Should terrible difficulties and irreversible losses come into your life, will your theology – your understanding of God – be able to withstand the existential reality of suffering and pain? Even grow stronger and fuller? Or will you abandon God, or perhaps be forced to “reinvent” God because the theology you held to previously could not now withstand the present adversity. 

Rabbi Harold Kushner is an example of the latter, one who reinvented God because of tragic suffering.  The author of the popular book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner had a son who suffered a rare disease which caused him to rapidly age, dying in his teenage years with the body of an old man. Kushner surmised that while God was indeed good, he lacked the power to prevent bad things. He wants to help us but can’t. He thus concluded: “There are some things God does not control…Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect?… Can you learn to love and forgive him despite His limitations?” In another place, Kushner writes, “faced with evil, God has his powerlessness as his excuse. He aims, intends, seeks, works and ‘tries his best’ to overcome evil: rather than blame, he deserves sympathy, even pity.” Quite obviously, Kushner’s theology could not survive a tragedy.

Another leading Jewish theologian, Richard Rubenstein, has argued that in a post-Holocaust era, Jews can no longer believe in an omnipotent, omni-benevolent Creator. Rubenstein’s theology could not survive the unforgettable tragedy of the Holocaust. And while his view does not represent the views all post-Holocaust Jewish theologians, his reinvention of God as less than all-powerful and all-good certainly fits well with the majority viewpoint.  Similar examples could be provided from Christian theologians, many of whom, on the basis of the so-called “problem of evil,” have likewise abandoned resolute belief in the classical divine attributes, such as God’s omnipotence and/or omnibenevolence.