A theodicy usually works in one of two ways. It either attempts to explain away suffering by appealing to some overwhelming good which comes from it, which could not happen if suffering didn't exist, or it attempts to get God of the hook for suffering. If suffering is not such a bad thing, or if somehow God is not responsible for it, then perhaps our concept of God can be reconciled to the fact of suffering.
A particular kind of appeal to human free will is my favorite theodicy because it actually employs both methods at the same time. This theodicy advances two main arguments which work together to reconcile an unlimited and good God to the fact of suffering:
1. God is not responsible for suffering because suffering comes not from any act of God, but rather from the free actions of human beings. As such, suffering is a product of human freedom and not the will of God.
2. This human freedom was given by God because God did not desire that people serve God out of necessity, but rather by their free choice. This freedom is a good which overrides the harm done by the suffering which comes from it.
I was once very persuaded by this kind of argument. So persuaded, in fact, that I tried it out on one of my philosophy professors, who happened to be an atheist. "Wouldn't you," I argued, "rather be a free agent and experience a little bit of suffering than be a determined automaton who never suffered?"
He replied, very honestly and with much more regret than condescension, "No, I really wouldn't, and I don't think that anyone else would, either. Look at what happens every time we feel threatened, every time we feel unsafe. We voluntarily give up all of the liberties we claim to cherish if only some Big Man, the president or whomever, will give us back the illusion of safety."
This professor didn't want a God who exchanged suffering for freedom and called it a fair deal, and he didn't think that anyone else really wanted that, either. He saw the theodicy for what it might really be, an unintentional act of self-deception designed to preserve the integrity of beliefs we don't really hold anyway.
Theodicies fail in two very important ways. They fail philosophically, and they fail religiously.
They fail philosophically because the arguments they advance don't really work. They don't really let God off the hook for suffering, they just push it back a step. If suffering is, for instance, caused by human freedom rather than an act of God, who was it that made humans, and made them free? Who was it that put them in an environment in which they would have the ability and opportunity to cause and experience so much suffering? Who was it, if it was not God? And could not this God, who is described as being all knowing and all powerful, not have been able to see that giving humans this freedom and power would lead to suffering, and be able to do something about it? There is no escaping the fact that, if God truly is unlimited, then it is only the will of God which rules the universe. Everything which happens, however it happens, happens (if God is unlimited) according to God's will. Whatever happens, be it good or bad, is God's fault.
They fail religiously because they present us with a God who is more concerned about explaining suffering away than actually doing anything about it. This view of God reminds me of some of the criticisms leveled against the current American president and his administration, who spend more time doing PR than solving the problems created by their policies. This God, like the Bush administration, would rather have you believe that the suffering you experience is either a good thing or someone else's fault than to help solve the problems which have created the suffering in the first place. This may be an unfair criticism of both God and the administration, but it is a criticism made possible by those who would presume to speak for both.
The view of God provided by something known as Process Theology tries a different way of solving the problem of suffering. Rather than by trying to explain away the logic of this problem, it embraces the logic but says that some of the original premises are flawed. What if God were not unlimited? What if God were not all powerful or all knowing? Wouldn't that solve the logic of the problem without resorting to bad arguments or bad religion?
In process theology God is not unlimited, but God is good. And this good God is aware of the suffering in the created order, and is working within that created order to help alleviate the suffering there. This, of course, takes a great deal of time, because the problem is a large one, and God is not all powerful. But, rest assured, God is at work, and calls you to work, too.
This theology makes good use of the reconciling work of Christ. After all Christ represents God work in the world. In Christ, God doesn't just stand apart from the world, deaf to its cries. Rather, God enters into the world and does things to make the world a better place.
The main knock on process theology is that it diminished God. After all, process theology denies the traditional view of an unlimited God. Instead process theology presents us with a God who cannot do all things, a view which appears particularly limited when placed against the view of God's omnipotence. And, isn't placing certain limits on God at least insulting to the divine if not outright blasphemy?
This reminds me a bit of an argument in astrophysics. Is space infinite, or are there some boundaries at some point? This is a question which can probably never be answered. If there were limits on the size of space, how would we experience those limits? Could we go to the edge of space? Of course not. Space represents an expanse so large that we can't even comprehend it. In light of the vastness of space, whether or not space is infinite is a moot point. It is, at the very least, unfathomably large.
To say that there are theoretical limits on God is much like saying that there are theoretical limits on the size of space. To claim that God is not all powerful is not the same as claiming that God is weak any more than to claim that space is finite is to claim that space is roughly the size of my backyard. And since claiming that God is entirely without limits creates such serious logical problems for our theology, why should we cling to the human idea of an unlimited God?
But, to claim that the description of God which creates the logical problem of suffering is a bad description of God does not make the existential problem of suffering go away. It is that existential problem which is our real problem. We are bothered by suffering not because it creates logical problems but because we suffer, and we wish we didn't. What process theology does is place God inside the problem of suffering, working with us and for us to solve the problem not by explaining it away, but by working for the cessation of suffering.
That worship service was interesting, because while it was designed for young adults who wanted to break with some of the liturgy of the traditional worship service while updating the music, it also attracted a surprising number of senior citizens. Most of them came to the service because it was early in the morning, and they were up and ready to go to church, so they came to the worship service that we offered at that hour. [note: offering contemporary worship services as the early service is often counter-productive. You usually start a contemporary service to attract younger people, who are much more likely to sleep in. So the people you're trying to reach with the service won't go because they aren't up yet, and the people who are up and ready to go to church don't want all of the changes that, almost by definition, come with a contemporary worship service.] But some of the older people (notice, I didn't say "old" - I don't have the guts to toss that word around!) who came to the contemporary worship service were curious and wanted to connect with God in a new way.
One of these curious souls was a man named Al, who quickly befriended my wife and I. Al was a seeker who never gave up his search for a better understanding of the nature of God and a closer relationship with God. I learned a great deal from him. He was, in fact, the last person I visited as a staff member of that church, right before I accepted an appointment to pastor my own church. He was very sick, but he gave my wife and I more fresh vegetables from his garden than we could have ever hoped to eat. Delighted, we ate what we could and gave the rest away.
A few months later, while preparing to lead worship at my own church, I read in the newsletter of our former church that Al had died. I shared this with my wife, who cried a great deal, and expressed many regrets that we hadn't taken the time to go back and visit with him again. We made the usual mistake of thinking that he would last forever, so we could go see him again when the craziness in our lives had died down. Life, or death, had other plans.
This past weekend I got a phone call from a dear friend of mine. He told me that his grandmother, whom we had been thinking about and praying for for quite some time, had finally passed away. He was grieving his loss, but had come to terms with it. She had been in a great deal of pain, and that pain, he reasoned, was now over. She was in a better place.
These deaths, and the grief that accompanied them, forced themselves upon me as I watched my child go through his own grief. Then it hit me. Through this terribly tumultuous time, I haven't allowed myself to grieve. I haven't given myself the time or permission needed to properly mourn the loss of who I thought I was and what I thought I was supposed to do.
One of the most important doctrines in Buddhism (and, I know that it is misleading to say that Buddhism has doctrines, but that's going to have to wait for another time) concerns impermanence. The Buddha, in his critique of the Hindu system with which he was raised, taught that there is no permanent self, no atman. This teaching has troubled Western minds, because our whole way of thinking assumes a permanent self which we call the "soul." But, while this teaching has troubled us, we stand to learn a great deal from it.
There are two obvious respects in which we are not permanent, and it is important to come to terms with both of these:
1. We all die. While the truth of this statement should be obvious, we don't want to admit that it holds true for us or the ones we love. As such we are so often taken by surprise when someone dies, and are incapable of dealing with it. We need to grant ourselves and the ones we love permission to be mortal. Not, of course, that we or they need permission in order to be mortal. Mortality imposes itself, with or without permission. But as we give ourselves and others permission to, at some point, die, we come to terms with our mortal nature.
2. We are all in a constant state of change. I am not who I was yesterday, nor am I now who I will be tomorrow. This fact is imposing itself on me as I transition from one stage in life to the next. Right now I am dealing with this in terms of vocation. I was once a minister, now I don't know who or what I am. Earlier there were other obvious changes. It was a big jump to move from being single to be married - and living with my wife, constantly trying to accommodate myself to her desires as she accommodates herself to my desires, was a real mechanism for change. It was similarly big jump to become the parent of a small child.
Even within these apparently fixed categories I am constantly changing. I am not the husband I was earlier in our marriage, nor am I the father I was earlier in the life of my son. He is not the same either. He is most obviously in a constant state of change. When we go back to look at old pictures of him we almost can't recognize him. Could that tiny creature possibly be the same being who currently eats us out of house and home.
But there are still subtler changes which happen every day, and each of those changes come with a degree of grief. Every time we make a decision we choose one path over many others, and so lose all of the potential paths we could have taken. In gaining the finite actual we lose the infinite potential, and in doing so we grieve the loss of all of our possible choices. I was in the bookstore the other day, and I had enough money to get one book. But, there were two books that I wanted. In choosing the book I did, I may have gained a book, but I lost another book, and there was (as silly as it may seem) a time of unconscious mourning for the book I didn't buy. In fact, I was a bit surly for a couple of hours until I figured this out.
So what? Why do I bring all of this up? Because, I think that we need to become aware of our every day griefs, and give ourselves permission to experience them. So often we experience an inarticulatable sense of loss, like what my son experienced when I dropped him off this morning. We don't know why we feel the way we do, and we don't like the loss of control that comes with it. But Ecclesiastes, the great Jewish book of wisdom, reminds us that there is a time for everything. We should not feel bad because we experience everything in its time.
1. "George W. Bush is my man, John Kerry is Osama bin Laden's man" - This had the guts to say outright what Republican operatives had been trying to imply the entire campaign.
2. "We're making enemies faster than we can kill them." - This is a statement with far more truth than most of us are comfortable admitting. It cuts right to the heart of the problem with declaring war on something like terrorism. You don't wage war against ideas, you wage war against people. And how you treat people profoundly affects the ideas they have about you.
[note: my best friend is a former Marine who fought in the war in Iraq. I am glad that he and many of his fellow soldiers can appreciate the difference between protesting against the war they fought in and protesting against them. I hope that others who, like me, oppose this war, can make the same distiction]
I can see why someone, particularly someone who, despite protests to the contrary, opposes free speech, might want to rip these statements off the back of a car. They are polarizing and inflammatory at best, potentially offensive at worst. But I wouldn't exactly put my Autism Awareness magnetic ribbon in the same category. For the life of me I can't figure out why someone or something would bother to remove it from my car. I simply have no theories.
Here is my desperate plea: Help me solve the (Hardy Boys-esque) Mystery of the Missing Magnetic Ribbon. If you have any ideas, plausible or downright crazy, please either post them as a comment on this blog, or send them to me in an email.
