Loose Ends in the Problem of Evil

I figured that someone would bring animals into the picture at some point and ask why God allows animals to suffer.  I checked, and sure enough others have been thinking the same thing: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100623113934AAowmvt  Fine then; let’s answer that question.  But first, a preface:

To rescue someone from a burning building is better than to refuse to rescue an innocent person from a burning building.  To rescue someone from a burning building is also better than to do nothing, inasmuch as the word “nothing” is non-referential and any (real) thing is better than something (as it were) that does not exist.  The opportunity to rescue someone from a burning building is better--at least contingently so--than a lack of opportunity to rescue someone from a burning building.

Again, a world in which acts of self-sacrifice, heroism, altruism, mercy and salvation is either contingently or necessarily (I’m speaking conservatively here in using the foregoing disjunction) better than a world in which no one can be saved from a burning building because the latter world is one where there is no danger, there is no element of risk, there is no fear, there is no peril, there is no suffering of any sort, and there is no discomfort of any sort.  Even if ours were a world in which discomfort were minimal, if the teleological ends or goals of this discomfort are acts of goodness and virtue (e.g. Christ’s laying down his life for his people) which exist in addition to acts of the relatively few sorts that would exist in a painless, discomfortless world, then everyone should be able to admit that our world was superior to the painless, discomfortless world.  (I believe I referred to the latter world as “Whoville” in a previous post.)

To save and redeem is better and greater, by definition, than an absence of this.  A world with redemption is greater than a world without it.  Nevertheless, this idea will likely have its naysayers, and someone may ask rhetorically “So why not create a world where evil is never put to an end?  Why not create a world where acts of self-sacrifice, heroism, altruism, mercy and salvation in the face of evil become numerically greater over the course of time?  Why insist, as Christians do, that on some day pain and moral evil will come to an end?”*  In response, and for starters, let’s assume that evil is put to an end according to biblical or Christian doctrine and philosophy.  If one will stop to think about it, couldn’t it be that it is better to have a light at the end of the tunnel and to eventually reach that light at the end of the tunnel than otherwise?  In other words, there is not necessarily much to be said of a world in which people long and yearn for future days when evil and suffering have passed away; however, there is certainly something to be said of a world in which people eventually get this very thing that they have longed for.  It is perfectly plausible that a world in which evil is conquered is better than a world in which either evil will never have been found or evil never ends.

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With that said, let’s touch on one last issue as it relates to the problem of moral evil and circumstantial evil.  Christians can appreciate the idea, however rightly or wrongly, that all people have sinned through their forefather Adam** and that sinners qua sinners deserve no favor, protection or gifts from God--if you turn your back on God then you should lie in the bed you’ve made, which means going it alone from now on.  Even children are descendents of Adam and have sinned, so even the suffering of children is something that is believed to be right or just in view of these young people’s moral standing before God.  However, one wonders about the pain and suffering that is experienced in the animal kingdom.  Animals are not believed to be sinners, but the misery that befalls any animal that is hunted down and mauled, strangled or bitten by predators--to say nothing of animals that are abused by humans--is something that does matter; I think everyone can agree on this.***  So the unarticulated thought behind all this is How is it just that God allows animals to suffer?

If we really want a philosophical answer then the answer is found partly in Romans 9.  To which of God’s creations is he indebted?  What does the Creator owe to anyone or anything?  What rights does anyone or anything have that God has not given to them?  If animals are fashioned to play the role that they play in the grand theodical plan to realize the best of all possible worlds, who is anyone to disagree with this?  Notice immediately and in the meantime that all events and affairs on planet earth are observed or known from the heavens.  Where angels themselves do not take notice of things and consider them (Hebrews 1.14; 13.2; 1 Peter 1.10-12), there are three members of the Trinity who know of them and, I would think, will themselves be satisfied with the coming Day in which pain and suffering is experienced by neither human nor animal any longer.  With a view to Isaiah 65.17-25, Lamentations 3.31-39 and Revelation 21-22, it seems clear that everyone on high and on earth would like to see the day when all evil is a thing of the past.  Yet pain and moral evils are those things which make a better tomorrow just as discipline makes a better person or better athlete in spite its inherent discomfort (Hebrews 12.3-11).
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* However, it is not clear--to me at least--that evil will ever end as opposed to evil’s simply being marginalized and consigned to that place where people already, according to biblical doctrine, endure everlasting punishment for the wrongs that they have done.  Yes, every knee will bow at the Parousia, but it is not clear to me that the pains and misery of hellfire and utter darkness are enough to stifle the slightest bits of moral wrongdoing which come naturally to people who lived their lives in rebellion against God on account of their fallen nature.
** Again, personally I think that Original Sin makes most sense according to traducianism.
*** For instance, see Numbers 22:21-35 and Proverbs 12:10.

Beyond the crude facts of homosexuality

This more or less dovetails a post that DB recently pasted; I’ve only now managed to organize my thoughts enough to post them, plus I have a new perspective on them.

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I don’t often divulge details of my personal life, but I’ll be painfully candid in this case for illustrative purposes.  For a host of reasons that I cannot get into, I do not like most people.  (Notice that I did not say that I dislike most people, but rather that I do not like most people, at least not as much as most people like other people.)  Now, there is a girl at work whom I do like, perhaps both platonically and otherwise; this person is also physically well-endowed, flaunts it, flirts...and already has a BF.  So, faced with the choice of either leading a tortured existence every day at work or making the problem go away, what’s a guy to do?  Whether figuratively or literally, the easiest thing to do is to just hurry up, get a hotel room and be done with it; or the easiest thing is to attempt to just push the other guy completely out of the picture in a way that brings about unnecessary strife or rifts between the boyfriend and this girl who still likes him anyhow.  However, what I know of Christ’s teachings on sexuality (cf. John 14.25-26, John 16.12-15, 2 Peter 3.15-16, 1 Corinthians 7.8-9, Mark 7.20-23) and what I know of the Golden Rule both have an impact on my decision-making processes: thus I choose the tortured existence.

Where there is fuel there is fire, which is why a day at work can be miserable in ways to which I already alluded.  But where there is not fuel there is also trouble.  In the absence of this person, or of a significant other in general, I am left to realize my solitary existence and what a solitary existence means.  I’m not a part of one of these happy couples that you see at the restaurant, theater, park, club, or whatever.  Instead, whenever I see these couples I am sadly made aware of that which I do not have but others do have.  (Sadness of this kind is only intensified in those cases where one realizes that his odds at finding someone with whom they have chemistry and a shot at becoming part of a lasting couple are one in a billion; because those who are not easy on the eyes or are unlikable are by definition unattrative.  With that said, there is also a word that denotes what is experienced when he or she deals with such a thing, and that word is “grief.”)

As if it were not enough to have sadness and grief piled upon pain of other sorts, let’s also throw loneliness into the mix.  If someone is used to a solitary existence then they can, in God’s grace, adapt or otherwise erstwhile have the fortitude to flourish to some degree in their solitary existence.  However, if one is forced to taste of what life is like for most people on this earth, but later has that respite from solitude taken away, one must now deal with a new problem and a new sorrow: loneliness.

So there it is: a continual, daily, or weekly grind of loneliness piled upon grief piled upon sadness piled upon the experience of being teased.  Sounds great, right?  But this is exactly the sort of thing that Christians who hold fast to biblical teachings expect of gays and lesbians who either profess or do not profess to be disciples of Christ, is it not?  Of course, I do not criticize Christians on this matter, because they rightly acknowledge the fact that the Creator himself expects all people to be on the winning side of the war between the will of God vs. the desires of fallen, post-Edenic human nature (cf. 1 Peter 2.11); nonetheless, I think that people would do well to consider some of the pastoral and existential implications of contemporary culture wars as they pertain to homosexuality.  Why do I think that people should consider such things?  This is because if we as Christians counsel sinners with the words “Go and sin no more” or “Take up your cross daily and follow,” then both parties should know what they are getting themselves into in the entire process.

Unregenerate man, in large part, hasn’t the will or the interest to follow the exhortation “Take up your cross daily and follow.”  In fact, unless the meaning of the phrase and the means by which the phrase can be obeyed are explained, the person who attempts to counsel others with these words runs the serious risk of appearing to have no grip on reality or on what kinds of issues people actually deal with in life.  So I claim that such a would-be counselor should carefully consider and analyze his actions in advance, because Christianity ought not be more offensive than it already is, as one can glean from Titus 2.9-10, 1 Timothy 6.1-2, and 1 Peter 2.12.

Likewise, the phrase “Go and sin no more” does not strike me, for one, as a comforting set of words or the sort of things that good pep talks are made of: simple words and advice probably won’t be very useful to those people who are called upon to leave their same-sex significant others along with their incorrect sexual desires.  Keep in mind that in daily struggles against the flesh sometimes even the best of us apparently just give up and decide to stop fighting, which not too long ago seemed to be the case with Amy Grant and Gary Chapman (http://assets.baptiststandard.com/archived/1999/12_8/pages/grant.html) vis-à-vis the Difficult Teachings of Matthew 5, 19 and 1 Corinthians 7.  So I claim that any would-be biblical counselor should carefully consider and analyze his actions in advance and act accordingly, because sheer head knowledge of moral rights and wrongs is no guarantee that any of us will do the right thing and continue to do the right thing.

So any believer who is ready to stand up and begin to push back against the contemporary social forces that are encouraging everyone and every institution to sanction homosexuality should consider the pastoral and existential implications of their own deeds in advance; they should consider them and act accordingly for moral reasons and reasons of practicality.  Meanwhile, of course, I state the above not merely as a matter of brute facts and logic but also as a matter of someone who to some degree can begin to relate to what others might be going through.  With that said, I would urge any would-be counselor on this issue to choose his words wisely according to the time, place, person and circumstance.  For example, I think that Christ proves himself worldly-wise with regard to his words about eunuchs and the Difficult Teaching in Matthew 19 and I also find concepts and biblical teaching about theodical character-building to be somewhat comforting: these are the sorts of things that I would like to hear, somewhat, if someone were exhorting me not to choose the easy/evil solution to my own problems.  Of course, other people may respond differently to such words on an emotional or rational level, so other appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos may be helpful with other people.

But just as one’s own heterosexual affects and emotions are not activated and deactivated as easily as the flick of switch, so it is with gays and lesbians who need to leave behind whatever sin they need to leave behind but, yes, may still have to lead their lives in the meantime amid the same temptations and same strong urges, desires and drives of the flesh which they had before, because struggles in life do not necessarily go away when someone repents.  Let everyone remember this.

Sound Theology vs. Feelings in Times of Suffering

Sound theology and right thinking about God is a tremendous help when we are not feeling like things are going well. Phil Johnson explains.

This excerpt is from the blog back in August 2011.  Phil uses the example of Job to show the vital importance of sound theology (as opposed to feelings and emotions) in times of suffering.

Job, by God's own testimony, was a righteous man, "blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil" (1:1)—"none like him on the earth" (v.8).

But even the most righteous people on earth sometimes feel God is obscured by the darkness of grief and suffering. Job in particular suffered the loss of all his children and all his earthly possessions in a single day, after which his entire body was reduced to a festering mass of sores, and he was left without any earthly comfort whatsoever—while being besieged with bad counsel.

In the wake of so many unimaginable, crushing, life-destroying tragedies and plagues, Job felt abandoned by God. He feltoverwhelmed by grief and personal loss.

I imagine it would be pretty hard for any of us to understand how he felt, how much it hurt, and how bitter the whole experience tasted.

But I'll tell you this: What Job suffered was no easier for him emotionally than it would be for you and me, no matter how righteous he was. He still felt the same kind of pain, with the same intensity, that you and I would feel if we suffered this way.

Job 2:13 says his friends "sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great."

Human emotions don't help us make sense of these things. If you want to sort through the problem of evil, you have to think sensibly, and theologically, and biblically, and not let your emotions rule your mind.

Job was a wise enough man than to know better than to respond by reflex on the basis of his feelings. If he had responded according to what he felt like, he might have cursed God. If he had just given vent to his feelings, he could easily been consumed with bitterness, self-pity, anger, and frustration—and he might have been tempted to take his wife's advice: "Curse God and die!"

But Job's very first response was the response of someone who knows something about God: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21).

Job had filtered his feelings through his theology. It still did not make sense to him why he had to suffer like this (and that is why Job is 42 chapters long; because it records the dialogue Job had with his friends as he tried to sort this out). But even though it made no sense to him, even though he was overwhelmed with painful feelings, his immediate response made no mention of those feelings.

He doesn't focus on any doubt or confusion he might have been struggling with. Instead, his very first response was a bold affirmation of what he knew to be true about God.

Faced with the darkness of pain and loss, he didn't go chasing his emotions or wallowing in his uncertainty; he stood firm and clung to what he knew for sure. He anchored his soul on theological truths he was certain of, rather than setting himself adrift on a sea of confusion and doubt.

This cannot be stressed too much: It was sound theology, not his feelings, that enabled Job to weather the immediate shock of the news that his children and everything he owned were gone forever. This is why sound theology is so important—and so intensely practical.