A recent Barna Poll lists the top three barriers to faith among non-believers as (in order): the problem of suffering, the hypocrisy of Christians, and the fact that “science refutes too much of the Bible.” (Christianity Today, Mar. 2018, p. 16.) We have already spent several posts on specific objections to the Bible, Now let's deal with some more general accusations including those from some prominent philosophical atheists. Starting with the first barrier to faith, the problem of suffering has been around a long time and even has a technical term: theodicy.
Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived from 341 to 270 BC, explained it this way:
1. If God is good he would be willing to prevent suffering.
2. If he is all-powerful he would be able to do so.
3. But we do have suffering in the world so if God exists, He must either not be good or not be omnipotent.
Some unacceptable attempts to get around the problem (at least from a Christian viewpoint) are:
1. Deny the existence of evil; it is only an illusion. (Buddhism, Christian Science)
2. Deny the existence of God. (atheism)
3. Blame all the evil in the world on a second and equal deity, Satan. (Zoroastrianism)
4. Good and evil are aspects of the the same deity. (Hinduism)
5. God is powerless to relieve human suffering. (Rabbi Kushner)
6. God is uninvolved in the daily affairs on earth. (Deism)
Or we could agree with the classic Frank and Ernest cartoon which gave the following reason for pain and suffering in the world: “So we could have lyrics for country and western music.”
More acceptable approaches to the subject usually involve attacking both of the propositions in the above logical progression. Thus, Epicurus' Proposition 1 must take into account (a) the possibility that God might purposely limit His powers in certain situations to accomplish his will and (b) the fact that even God cannot do something that is logically impossible (i.e., make black = white) or that contradicts His own nature (an action that denies either his goodness or sense of justice, for example).
Similarly, Proposition 2 usually uses the word “suffering” or “evil” without defining it. The problem with this is that what is evil or bad in one person's mind might not be bad at all to another person (Some people really suffer in hot weather while others cannot get enough of it). And, of course, what seems bad to mankind, due to our limited perspective, may not at all be evil from God's long-range and all-knowing point of view.
Leibnitz
The classic philosophical formulation of an answer to this problem was given by Leibnitz in the 18th century. Leibnitz basically demonstrated logically that of all the possible worlds that God could have made, this is the best. Of course, Voltaire lampooned the phrase “the best of all possible worlds” in his novel Candide, prompted by the horrible destruction of Lisbon by an earthquake.
C.S. Lewis did a good job of updating Leibnitz's arguments in his very readable, book-length treatment The Problem of Pain. Lewis has individual chapters discussing the various types of “pain” or suffering in the world. I won't attempt to summarize all his arguments, but basically Lewis demonstrates that for God to eliminate every possible cause of pain and discomfort in the world, it would be necessary to formulate contradictory laws of nature and turn each and every human being into an automaton with no individual likes and dislikes, no independent thoughts or motives, and no ability to act on the consequences of their thoughts. In the absence of any of these controls, suffering would still exist.
Geisler's Variation
The above treatment may sound like God had to settle for the second best solution. Norman Geisler corrects this impression in his book The Philosophy of Christianity, which contains a 50-page chapter on theodicy. My own summary of his ideas, given below, shows it to be an interesting variation on Leibnitz's arguments.
God must do His best.
The best possible world would have the highest moral virtues and no evil.
This is presently not the best of all possible worlds.
Therefore, there must be a perfect world to come.
Free will is necessary for any moral virtues.
With freedom comes the possibility of evil.
The highest moral virtues must be learned in the presence of evil.
8 Permitting evil is the best way to produce the best possible world.
If you happen to find yourself in a conversation with someone for whom this is a real problem, one approach is simply to ask, “If you were God, how would you arrange the world differently so that there was absolutely no pain and no suffering, either physical or psychological?” One warning, however, is to keep in mind is that it is not a good idea to use any sort of logical approach with someone who happens to be in the middle of a real crisis; those people need comforting, not a lecture. C. S. Lewis said that it would be like explaining the physics of buoyancy to a person who is drowning. The time to prepare ourselves and others around us for future crises in our life is before they occur, not afterward.
One unexpectedly good resource on the question of theodicy is Jim Carrey's movie Bruce Almighty. He plays a character who has a series of tragedies happen around him and tells God (Morgan Freeman) that he could do a better job than God has been doing. God gives him the opportunity and he finds it isn't nearly as easy as he thought. There is actually some good theology in this movie.
Biblical Examples and Teachings
There are surprisingly few direct teachings on the subject in the Bible although the New Testament does mention some of the reasons a Christian might suffer in this world: to develop our faith, to learn obedience, to cultivate humility, to emulate the sufferings of Christ, as an example to the world of perseverance, to be able to empathize with others who suffer, etc. Some of the latter-listed reasons beg the question, however, as to why any suffering is needed in the world in the first place.
There are several examples in the Bible of people suffering, and occasionally the reason is given.
Adam and Eve are kicked out of a perfect world for disobeying a command; the hardships they will encounter away from the presence of God and even their eventual physical death are apparently designed to teach them the logical consequences of their actions and ultimately lead them back to God's presence as originally intended.
1. Job is allowed to suffer in order to demonstrate once and for all to the heavenly beings (including Satan) and to ourselves today that it is possible for man to worship and obey God for wholly altruistic motives. As a consequence of Job's “evil” experiences, his faith is increased greatly, he has more compassion on his enemies, and his family and worldly wealth increase.
2. Joseph is betrayed by his brothers due to their jealous nature and sold into slavery. Joseph ultimately prospers in Egypt and later states that although his brothers carried out their actions for evil motives, God intended it for the good of their whole family (providing for them during a time of widespread famine and giving them a home where they could multiply greatly).
3. Jesus' disciples ask him why a man they encounter was born blind. He replies that it had nothing to do with anyone's sin, but happened so that God could be glorified. He then proceeds to heal him, and everyone glorifies God.
4. The ultimate example of suffering is of course that of Jesus on the cross in order that the sins of the world might be forgiven and man united with God again.
Note that there are different direct causes of suffering in the cases above (birth defects, rebellion against God, family jealousy, Satan, etc.) and different godly (and good) reasons behind each type of suffering. Any attempt to answer the question of theodicy with one pat explanation is doomed to failure (see the arguments of Job's “friends,” for example).
The Ultimate Answer
The ultimate answer to the question of suffering in the world may not be a welcome or satisfactory one for most of us either, especially to one who is struggling with faith in God. At the end of the Book of Job, after he has been pleading with God to let him know why he is suffering so much, God at last speaks up in chapters 30 and 31. But the only answer He gives Job is really a non-answer, reminding him of his supreme ignorance regarding all the details of the physical world he lives in. The clear implication is that if mankind hasn't even mastered the details of the physical universe, what makes us think we can understand the motives behind God's deeper actions, even if God were to explain it to us? It would be like trying to explain calculus to a 3-year old. In Deuteronomy 29:29 it states, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law.” Thus, God revealed to humanity what was necessary for them to know, but reserved some secrets to himself. Our problem is that we want to know all His secrets, in essence making ourselves equal to Him, and that was Adam's sin.
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