If you haven’t heard, the tsunami has brought a wave of theologians into the public eye, all struggling hard to answer the big question that has puzzled mankind since it was soulful enough to wonder: Why would a good and omnipotent God allow such a bad thing to happen?
Their answers and their shortfalls are bandied about nicely in a January 6th article in the New York Observer by Ron Rosenbaum. Although Rosenbaum attempts to be fair, he directly or indirectly condemns as “odious banalities” and “vague evasions” the traditional answers: “It's part of a divine plan,” “It will allow good to manifest itself in the hearts of the survivors,” “We live in a fallen world,” “The dead are better off in heaven,” “God's counsels are inscrutable,” “Such things mysteriously serve God's good ends.” Rosenbaum's piece didn't even get into the issue of demonology (which is probably just as well, since such a diversion eventually leads back to the same “vague evasions”).
Anti-theologians and unbelievers are having fun with the tsunami, it would appear, taking pleasure in Jim Holt's observation that the evidence suggests that “the world is not presided over by a deity who is all-good and all-powerful, but rather by one who is 100 percent malevolent but only 80 percent effective.” That's clever enough to make all the Schophenhauers this side of the Rhine River gleeful.
I have no good answer for the anti-theologians, but I have a question for them:
What would your god do differently?
Would your god eliminate death? Most believers will tell you this has already been done, albeit only for the soul (until the Resurrection).
Would your god eliminate mortality for the body as well, leaving the soul there forever? All the Viagra and Prozac in the Wal-Mart pharmacies wouldn't be enough to counter the ennui.
Would your god never allow an ounce of suffering? Would he then be indicted every time some minor thing goes wrong: your football team loses the opening coin toss, you don't make the green light, you misplace a five-dollar bill?
Maybe your god would only allow suffering to affect bad people. That would be a swell arrangement: “There’s Donald Trump. He must be an awfully good and saintly man. And there goes Francis of Assisi with his begging bowl. He must be wicked.” God rewarding virtue with money and punishing the vice-ridden with poverty. It’s the type of scenario we can scarcely imagine because it cuts against everything we know.
Or maybe you'd opt for one of those interventionalist-like gods, one that judges each case and tempers it properly. “All right, there's gonna be a tsunami, but only 50 will be killed.” If you're the orphaned child or the husbandless mother that results, will you think the intervening god tempered it enough? Perhaps he should make sure only 50 people with no family are killed, but then…
This thing would go on forever. No answer would satisfy. Some form of the Question would continue to dog us, no matter whose God, or demon, or demiurge, or big bang created this oddity we call earth.
Because here's the thing: It all ultimately leads to a paradox: a reality that embodies two statements that are both true, but that absolutely contradict one another. Existence — this world, our ensouled bodies — has a contradiction stamped on its foundation, and it gives rise to contradictions that inundate our lives and the world. The existential paradox and the resulting contradictions can't be fully squared by reason because paradox defies reason.
Any explanation for the Question must involve a paradox, and it won't satisfy those persons who aren't aware of the existential paradox or refuse to accept it, opting instead to rely solely on their limited reason. To them, all such explanations will continue to be “odious banalities” and “vague evasions.”
To my way of thinking, the paradox of a good and omnipotent God who allows bad things to happen makes a certain amount of paradoxical sense. It kinda rings true.
And so does the idea of a God who Himself bowed down before that existential paradox by allowing an excruciatingly bad thing happen to Himself, in the form of His Son, on an instrument of torture with crossing beams.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Wednesday Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine. You can view his work at a www.ericscheske.com .
