Posted by Mike O on: 07.31.2008 /
A few weeks ago, Rev. Dan mentioned that he has glaucoma, and made this statement:
According to the Bible God made all things and called all things “good.” Glaucoma is yet another example of “God’s good creation” which I have non-trivial issues with. Why did God create a disease which silently and permanently erodes one of the senses, negating possible joy and full experience of already short human lives? Doesn’t this show that God is incompetent or playing destructive games with humanity? It’s yet another example of why I think the whole story about God, especially the version of God described in the Bible, is a load of horsepuckey. If God has a “plan” or “purpose” for my life (which is something I’ve heard a majority of Christians assert at various points, and which the questions Mike posted above suggest), why does it involve so much seemingly unneeded suffering and misery… especially on a biological level? If God is “good” and all of “His creation” is good, then doesn’t this suggest that God himself is diseased and corrupt?
I’m not asking these things as purely rhetorical questions, I’d really like to hear what “Christians” or “Christ Followers” or “” have to say about this.
I’ll post a comment later, but I didn’t want the topic to become “my answer to Rev. Dan’s question.”
If you’re a Christian, how do you answer, and can you understand why it’s difficult for people like him to believe in your God?
If you’re not a Christian, how do you answer the Christian responses, and can you understand why it’s difficult for people like me to *not* believe in our God?
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Comment by: Ian
1 07/31/08 10:53 AM | Comment Link |Its the Problem of Evil isn’t it?
Nobody has ever come up with an entirely convincing theodicy, although various well-known forms are taught in churches. From the ‘all evil is caused by sin’ (even earthquakes, since the earth fell when humanity did), to ‘this is the best possible world’ (if God made things any other way there’d be a greater net amount of evil in it).
None of them really work, although some of them are powerful enough to allow Christians to hang their hat and not deal with the issues head-on.
In my Christian life the ‘all evil is caused by sin’ is the approach I favored. Our bodies decay and collapse under disease because our bodies are fallen, sinful and ultimately need to be completely destroyed for us to be raised to new life. So expect them to go wrong.
Seems simple, as long as you don’t look too closely.
Comment by: makarios
2 07/31/08 12:55 PM | Comment Link |Shoot. If I comment then I’m going to feel obligated to come back to see if there is a response to what I said and I hate feeling like that. Oh, actually we’re heading to the lake tomorrow so I won’t need to remember anything. ok, First of all, God said that everything that He’d made was good before the fall or before the entrance of sin or evil into Creation. That’s pretty important I think.
Second “seemingly” unneeded suffering and misery” is exactly the right way to describe the world in which we live. There are many possible explanations or examples of the good that can and does come out of tragedy and suffering. Even secular people describe how much stronger they are since such and such happened. As well, suffering separates those who are seeking God from those who are denying His existance. God will give you what you want and if you want to shun Him or ignore Him or hate Him, He will allow or even encourage you to go down that road.
The main thing, for Christians is found in Romans 8:28,29. There we find that the main good that God works in all things, for those who follow Jesus is to be transformed into the character of Jesus. Jesus came to earth with the expressed purpose of suffering and dying for us. If God was willing to do that for me / us / you, and if Jesus was able to learn “from what He suffered,” and if God was willing to enter fully into this life with all it’s suffering, rejection and pain, then perhaps it’s alright for us to suck it up and learn from our circumstances as well. Here ends my sermon.
Comment by: Mike O
3 07/31/08 1:15 PM | Comment Link |I think one thing we’re going to get stuck on is our presumptions concerning the supernatural. If there’s a God, I’m not sure how we could ever be sure we understand why He created/allowed/failed to eliminate pain and bad things from our life.
It seems that people who don’t believe in God at all presume that if God existed, he must be a failure for his inability to stop evil from happening - leaving them with two options. Either he doesn’t exist, or he’s not all he’s cracked up to be.
And I guess that makes some sense - I would think that, too, if I wasn’t already convinced that he *does* know what he’s doing, and whether he allowed it or caused it, this is somehow the way it need to work.
Rev. Dan, who’s not a Christian doesn’t deserve glaucoma (probably :) ). My friend, Chip, who is a Christian, doesn’t deserve Leukemia.
Still, I believe in a good God, yet both of these things happened. It’s a good question!
More to come … I’m still chewing on it :)
Comment by: Jason
4 07/31/08 5:51 PM | Comment Link |The question of evil, answer that satisfactorily and you’d probably have a few converts. Of course I don’t think that evil exists except as a comparative descriptor on how we treat one another. Disease isn’t evil, death isn’t evil, pain isn’t evil. They are unfortunate consequences or byproducts of complex life that has evolved on this planet.
As an unbeliever I gain a small amount of comfort from the thought that, as disease and death take the ones I love or make them suffer, it is not intentional or part of a plan. I think if I did believe that is was “caused” rather than “happened” then I’d hate the causer.
Even a god who had the power to cure illness and did not act would seem a monster to me, much like a doctor who refused to treat an illness without cause. An indifferent doctor thought may have some reasoning. They do not claim to love the person who is sick after all. They may have other patients to treat. They may have limits to their abilities. A doctor is neither infinite nor omnipotent.
The claim that God is both all loving and all powerful but allows or even causes suffering is a problem for me. I resolve the problem by removing gods from the equation. That simply leaves suffering as a biological byproduct that must be endured or fought against rather than an aspect of divine will. I am unable to balance this particular equation any other way. I suppose I could remove omnipotence or loving but then we fall into Epicurean paradoxes.
I suppose we could add a second, opposing being of evil to balance the force for good but that isn’t Christianity because the figure of Satan is reportedly significantly weaker than God. I could also allow that God is partially evil himself and point to the apparent disparity in character between Old and New Testament God. I think if I were a Christian I would have to allow for that. God being infinite he must contain evil as well as good. That opens up a whole other debate on the merits of worshipping a being of evil intent, even if only occasionally. I’d rather not believe than worship a tyrant. Besides which I’m sure any Christian would tell me that God is never evil.
Comment by: Ian
5 08/2/08 3:19 PM | Comment Link |Ahhh.. the ’suffering is a blessing that makes you stronger’ or Rom 8:28 theodicy.
An easy one to trot out, harder to believe if you’ve seen a 3 year old die from incredibly painful bone cancer.
God may work good things out of bad situations, but that just avoids the question: why does an all powerful God have to use suffering, distress and pain to create good results? Why not just engender the good results without the abject misery and suffering? Why kill a quarter million people in a tsunami to get some good result (whatever that might be)? Surely there must be a more efficient way to bestow blessings than to send a tidal wave to forcibly kill ten thousand babies in front of their parent’s eyes?
Quoting Rom 8:28 just moves the problem on, it doesn’t solve anything.
(incidentally, just subscribe to comments, then you don’t have to check back).
Comment by: Mike O
6 08/4/08 10:02 AM | Comment Link |I think that’s kind of simplistic - I mean, I don’t think it’s it’s a simple equation of bad things happening = good results. There are a zillion factors. I don’t personally believe that God sent the tidal wave “so that good may come.” In fact, I don’t think he sent it at all. But for some reason beyond me, he allowed it.
I’ve been thinking about this all weekend - I *do* believe that when God created the universe, that he created it perfect - no disease, no natural disasters, no whatever. And I also believe that somehow, sin changed all of that so now we do have all of those things. I don’t know how or why, but that’s how I think it started.
So at a really high, philosophical level, I guess I believe that if people were perfect, there would be no disease or storms. But we’re not, so that’s an unprovable premise that I can’t support - I admit that.
Now, the specifics of who gets what diseases for what reasons - I think that’s an entirely different question altogether. While I *do* believe that in general, sin is a part of the equation, I do *not* believe that if you get sick, it’s because you sinned - or if a tsunami comes it’s because a nation was sinful. I think somehow there’s this big swirling pot of imperfection, and one of the byproducts of that is the ugly things we’re talking about.
And on a different level, if there was no pain, could we really enjoy anything? Isn’t it the pains and sufferings of life that helps us to be grateful for, or at least aware of, the good things in life? SOmehow, I think that it’s all relative, and if there was no pain or bad things, we’d still be unsatisfied.
I’ve got another more spiritual angle on this, too, that I might write about tonight. But I’m at work and I need my bible.
Comment by: Mike O
7 08/4/08 10:14 AM | Comment Link |Makarios, nice sermon by the way!
The thing that’s interesting about this blog is that while I agree with you, I’m also cognizant of how it sounds to unbelievers now. That doesn’t make it wrong - just difficult to defend.
I think I understand it at a spiritual/supernatural level, and I can try to explain it at a natural level, but frankly, I doubt we can ever get it to make sense to an unspiritual audience.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that if I didn’t already believe it, I’m not sure what argument could make me believe it. But it’s a good exercize for us Christians to try to wrap our brains around what we believe and why we believe it, to help us understand why other people don’t just swallow it whole like we do. And maybe we shouldn’t??
I think so, anyway.
Comment by: Ian
8 08/4/08 10:47 AM | Comment Link |Mike,
I agree. The ’sin caused the earth to fall into a cycle of pain-causing and natural disaster that in turn causes grief to humanity’ theodicy is far better than the ‘bad things cause good’ theodicy. I was replying specifically to makarios.
It is SO easy to make glib statements about why evil is around though, and until you have to face it, you don’t know what it is really like.
A friend of mine’s aunt was in the church, a born again, strong committed christian. She got cancer and received a word from God that she would be healed. As the cancer got worse, she still believed for a healing, eventually in permanent pain despite huge quantities of drugs and with only days to live, she renounces her faith - she just could not continue believing. It was a harrowing process, and nobody who went through it (all of whom are Christians) has the twee or pat Chrsitian answers to evil any more.
At the very least there is excess suffering in the world. This aunt could have died a million ways, she could have suffered to reinforce her faith. Instead, if God exists, he allowed her and two of her extended family to loose their faith. Far from not testing people with more than they can cope with.
The problem, of course, is only there when you then read the NT and listen to the preaching of some churches who proclaim that anything can be done in faith, that God loves you as a father (who would give his son a snake, after all?) and so on. That is simply not reconcilable with a whole generation of parents in one Thai village seeing their baby children being washed out to sea one morning.
God could have intervened, but didn’t. Too say that he wanted some good to come from it, is insulting to the idea of a loving God.
That depends on the model of God you have. There are two ways to conceive of God. 1. As being the author of all laws of nature, of logic and of reason, or 2. As being bound by them, and being subject to their demands.
Many people accept 2, in which case God can’t give you free will but you never sin, God can’t give you fulfillment without suffering, and so on. In this case theodicies become easier: the laws of nature are set up and God lets them play through, He is bound by them as much as we are. This also makes the crucifixion easier to understand: something had to die for your sin: so God gave his son. This was CS Lewis’ viewpoint (he calls it this beyond-God authority the Deep Magic in the Narnia books, theologians sometimes call it the Meta-Divine).
But most Christian churches teach 1, which is a problem, because if there is no conceivable way that you can be fulfilled without suffering, then you have to say that is because God made it that way. God gave his son to forgive you because he wanted it that way. He could have made the universe so the price of sin wasn’t death, but chose to make it this way.
—
We’re touching some deep issues, and the point in my very first comment to these threads are that they aren’t new. The problem of evil has not been resolved in 2000 years of theology, despite every major theologian having a go. If you think you have a simple answer, then you are almost certainly wrong. It is a deep problem that leads to some very complex other theological issues.
Comment by: Mike O
9 08/4/08 12:03 PM | Comment Link |On these really deep questions, people tend to come at them from one perspective or with a small handfull of factors in mind. Assuming there is a God, it’s incalculable all of the factors that could come into play.
People swallow whole the things they like. We all do it. But things like your friend’s aunt kind of throw a wrench into the works. I don’t like that story, but it’s reality and it must not be ignored. It doesn’t make anyone right or wrong, it just means we should chew before we swallow, and if there are things to spit out - then spit them out. I don’t know what to make of your friend’s aunt. it happened - now I need to consider how that fits into my theology - or better yet, how my theology fits into that reality.
Comment by: Jason
10 08/4/08 12:12 PM | Comment Link |Both the idea that ’sin caused the earth to fall into a cycle of pain-causing and natural disaster that in turn causes grief to humanity’ theodicy and the idea that the ‘bad things cause good’ theodicy seem to me, as an atheist outside of Christian doctrine, to be non-sequiturs. I just do not see how “sin” has any relationship to natural phenomena or how a bad event leads to a good event. I can see how human behaviour might be influenced by positive and negative events in our lives whether they be natural events like earthquakes or tsunami or interactions with other humans.
Can you show me the steps that I’m missing please.
Comment by: Ian
11 08/4/08 12:27 PM | Comment Link |Jason,
I agree from a rational, materialistic stand-point. There is no mechanism for sin to affect the world.
But theologically you aren’t limited to that. ‘Sin entered the world with the fall’ doesn’t need to be metaphoric: it could be intepreted as literal - corruption, evil, natural disaster, etc, all arrived in the world at the fall, because of human sinfulness.
I actually agree with you: I don’t think it is right, I just think it is theologically more successful than believing God is happy to allow the scale of suffering we see because some good will come out of it.
(I probably should say, for the record, in case I appear to be shifting my colors all the time, that I am a recent de-convert, I mostly identify myself as atheist [unless I have longer to nuance that a little]. I was previously involved in leading a church, and spent 20 years of being a pentecostal and more recently a baptist and I have an honors theology degree [where I specialized in biblical linguistics].)
Comment by: Mike O
12 08/4/08 2:08 PM | Comment Link |I was gonna ask …
And now that you’ve said it, what was it that drew you away? There are several here in your shoes, and that whole process fascinates me.
Comment by: Jason
13 08/4/08 2:28 PM | Comment Link |Well that falls apart when we gain some understanding of weather patterns, plate tectonics, tidal influences, volcanology, or a range of other scientific disciplines. I can understand a primitive post Iron Age people with little understanding of natural phenomena to make up such stories to explain the world but it’s the 21st century now. Surely we’ve evolved a little? If not physically then culturally.
Besides which if “sin” did cause natural disasters wouldn’t we expect “wicked” nations to suffer as a result? Wouldn’t peaceful and compassionate political systems prosper as their violent and oppressive neighbours crumbled under earthquakes and lightning from the sky? Or perhaps we are all equally wicked in God’s eyes so the disasters heaped upon us seem random.
Comment by: Ian
14 08/4/08 2:36 PM | Comment Link |Jason,
Not neccessarily. Sin entered the world, but is now a fully integrated part of it, in everything, influencing everything. So sin doesn’t have to be the proximal cause of disaster, just the first cause of the disaster (in this model).
Mike O,
Good question. There are many answers that I’m sure many share. Perhaps a more unusual one is that pastoring large numbers of people I got to see how few of them actually believe what they claim to believe. I don’t mean doubts, I mean people who feel guilty all the time because they’re not experiencing the Christian life others seem to be, or that they can’t seem to hear God, etc.. etc… I realized that the majority of people in the churches I had been in were in that category, and the hypocrasy and the attendant guilt kind of turned me off. That wasn’t the only reason, but it was a big part of me then having the courage to look at my own belief more honestly without feeling I had to give myself the ‘right’ answers.
Comment by: Joe
15 08/4/08 2:49 PM | Comment Link |Many folks may have heard this argument before, but here goes. Let’s think ‘meta’ for a bit. If we’re talking about things that are ostensibly bad or good–the OP implies that his glaucoma is bad–then what does that say about the world? Who’s to say what’s bad and what’s good?
As has been well said, I think we all can probably agree that torturing babies for fun is wrong. But why? There’s something in us, as basic to us as our DNA, that cries ‘foul’ to think of causing pain to the weakest humans just for mere amusement. Why is that?
The Christian argument (maybe some of you can name which one this is? IDK) is that our sense of right and wrong points to the existence of a metaphysical standard that applies to all of us, and that standard wouldn’t exist apart from a metaphysical Supreme Being.
IOW, when the objection is made that God allows or decrees evil, that begs the question What makes one thing evil and another thing good? What’s the standard we measure good and evil by? And why do we expect others to follow this standard to some degree (e.g., don’t cut in front of me at the grocery store checkout, don’t steal my stuff, don’t cut me off in traffic, etc.)? It can’t all just be social convention, can it? Isn’t it deeper than that in our souls? When someone makes a bad traffic move that affects me, I don’t think, man, he really should follow our common social conventions better. Instead, I’m thinking (like you may be), man, that was just plain wrong.
Comment by: Mike O
16 08/7/08 10:41 AM | Comment Link |I can’t speak to the glaucoma thing as I don’t have any physical condition that I battle hard. I do have some hearing loss and wear hearing aids, but like wearing glasses, they give me the ability to operate “normally.”
It’s hard for me to think of disease in terms of “good” or “bad,” since all disease is probably bad. But other circumstances, like job loss - now that’s a path I *did* look at the question of good vs bad.
I think the default logic for people in general, and Christians in particular, is that if something hurts or causes me stress or I don’t like it, then it’s bad. But if I like it (like me getting more money, or someone I don’t like going through difficulty), then it’s good.
I agree with where I think Joe is going. If we look at the concepts of “good” and “bad” from a higher spiritual level (God’s level), who am I to say something is bad just because I don’t like it? Who am I to say my layoff was “bad” or “lasted too long?” Almost by definition, circumstances beyond our control like that can often times be classified as good - as long as it wasn’t perpetrated with evil intent. But the random uncomfortable situation - neither good nor bad in my book. Just difficult.