Wednesday, September 21, 2005
How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?
I am more afraid that we are really rats in a trap. Or, worse still, rats in a laboratory. Someone said, I believe, ‘God always geometrizes.’ Supposing the truth were ‘God always vivisects’?—C. S. Lewis
With disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, people invariably ask, “Why did God let this happen?” All sorts of answers have been offered. For example, a Jewish rabbi said that God was punishing the U.S. for its support of the recent Gaza evacuation. And a Middle Eastern cleric argued that God is judging the U.S. for the Iraqi war and the killing of innocent civilians.
Then there’s the theory that since New Orleans was leveled two days before the annual “Southern Decadence” festival was to begin that God was bringing judgment on the city for allowing the supposedly gay festival. As the director of Repent America stated, “Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city.”
But all this begs the question. First of all, who are these people to be speaking for God? Moreover, why would those who had absolutely nothing to do with the destructive actions in the Middle East, for instance, suffer? After all, government officials who have perpetrated the crimes that God supposedly is persecuting the country for were left untouched. Is God simply a cosmic sadist or a monster who visits mayhem, destruction and death on innocent people?
The more likely answer is that weather catastrophes are merely the work of natural cycles. Weather stations track hurricanes and predict when and where they will land. And we cannot forget that while nature is awesome and beautiful, it acts, at times, as our enemy as well.
That aside, natural disasters have wreaked havoc on the planet since its beginning. But it must not be forgotten that all the pain people have had to endure has not come by way of so-called acts of God. People hurting people accounts for at least four-fifths of all the sufferings of humanity. It was men, not God, who produced the wars, the bombs, the guns, whips, racks, prisons, torture and so on. It was men, not God, who flew planes into the World Trade Center. It is men who pollute and destroy the ecological environment, thus helping to create more adverse weather patterns. And it is because of human avarice and human stupidity, not the workings of nature, that we have poverty and suffering.
Indeed, what led to the pain and suffering in places such as New Orleans was the failure of people in positions of leadership to prepare adequately for something that was naturally going to happen. For whatever reasons, the federal, state and local governments had not prepared New Orleans for a level 5 hurricane. Since the city of New Orleans sits in a bowl, the lack of a fortified levy that could withstand a level 5 hurricane spelled disaster.
Nonetheless, there remains much suffering that is not manmade. The question is why there is suffering of any kind. And why would a so-called “good” God allow suffering? Indeed, if there is a good God, according to theologian C. S. Lewis, then he is no less formidable than a cosmic monster. And the more we believe, as traditional Christians do, that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is little hope in avoiding the pains of life. “A cruel man might be bribed—might grow tired of his vile sport,” writes C. S. Lewis in his book A Grief Observed, “might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.”
Thus, if there is a good God, then pain and suffering are necessary. Indeed, if they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. And how do I (or anyone, for that matter) expect to escape the same? After all, God, according to Christian tradition, had his own son killed.
Likewise, disasters such as Katrina also show us that, in an age of cosmic alienation, we really do not understand God. “What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, ‘good’?” wrote Lewis. “Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite?”
Applying the word good to God is meaningless. Obviously, what God considers good—at least by the standards of some theologians—is radically different from our perception. In fact, maybe we are so intellectually and morally depraved that we cannot fathom what a good God is.
Clearly, we live lives that are a house of cards. The only way to make us realize the fact is to knock our illusionary houses down. And it only takes one blow for our house to collapse.
We are not the commanders of our fate. We are not gods. We are frail, vulnerable beings hoping (and praying) that somehow we can communicate to that one who made us and determines our future. So many questions remain. But as C. S. Lewis recognized: “When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’”
by John W. Whitehead
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute and author of the award-winning Grasping for the Wind.
He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
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