Thor's Day: Everyone's question about God

If God exists, how....?

By Morris Dean

A news article earlier this week recognized the anniversary of an American soldier's arrival at a Nazi concentration camp:

If not Scooter, then whom?

So, you weren't surprised to learn that Bush had commuted Scooter's sentence? Neither was I. Nor should anyone have been. The handwriting was always there on the wall. But why should Scooter have been singled out anyway?

What about Cheenie himself (or "Himself" as he no doubt prefers, having arrogated unto Himself such Lordly powers as to be Untouchable)? What about the titularly head Bushevik himself? Georgie Porgie. Dubya. Shrub. The Twig.

But wait. What about the folks who should have known better but didn't and voted for Bush/Cheenie in 2000? Well...some of them didn't repeat that folly in 2004, so...what about the folks who voted for them in 2004? But...well, some of them regret it now, so...what about the folks who still approve of them?

And what about you and me, the ones who never voted for Bush/Cheenie once, having detected their true nature early on? What about our not having done much to oppose them? Maybe about all we've done is complain. Maybe made a few telephone calls to get out the Democratic vote in 2006? (To what end? we now wonder.) We haven't marched to Washington, haven't stood vigil outside the People's White House....

I joined a prayer group of unknown dimensions last night at 9 EDT. I had been invited the same day by an elderly cousin (not that I'm not practically "elderly" myself now) to pray "for the safety of the United States of America, our troops, our citizens, and for peace in the world." You can tell by the first three items in the list that this undertaking may have been inspired by our upcoming Independence Day celebration. Never mind.

At 9 o'clock, I found myself virtually drowned in my awareness of the vast array of creation that in some sense "needed" our prayers. I thought of my list of human attrocities posted Saturday. All of the attrocities have victims. And maybe the perpetrators of the attrocities are in need of prayer even more than the victims. And what could a prayer do? Surely God (be there a God, and be God "good") already knows all of this. None of our prayers would seem to be required to notify God. Could there, then, be some metaphysical force in prayer—in joined prayer—maybe a critical mass of prayerful awareness that could make some sort of difference, if its awareness were cast wide enough to include the potential victims of murder and mayhem in Iraq, and the violent men who massacre them, and the victims of the erosion of our Constitution, and the misguided men on Bush's Supreme Court who subvert it, and the indeterminate victims of Cheenie's arrogance, and Cheenie himself, and the teenagers in New York, and the police personnel who harrass them, and the wrongly convicted innocents, and the prosecutors who suppress evidence (and the oblivious jurors who allow themselves to forget about reasonable doubt), and the crowds of meek people facing genocide in Africa and other places, and the men who shoot, rape, and mutilate them, and journalists in Russia, and Putin's henchmen who murder them, and the disrespected women of the world, and the dark-minded people who "circumcise" them or stone them or imprison them in seraglios or burn them alive, and the children kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery, and those who kidnap and sell them, and those who pay to abuse them, and the children in American who have no health care insurance, and the politicians and insurers who ensure that they continue not to have it, and all of the unidentified victims, and their unidentified abusers, and ourselves who have done little to oppose their victimhood or the acts that make them victims...?

Morally superior to God?

The paradox of freedom at the core of Being (oh, so mysterious Being!) requires everything—that there be hunger as well as satiety, drought as well as rainfall, death as well as birth, deformity as well as perfection. The same paradox permits everything—that we murder as well as aid, rape as well as love, lie as well as say true, waste as well as conserve. Shall we, therefore, choose to do anything whatsoever? What is to stop us?

If indeed the world was "made by the Being his beings into Being prayed" (to quote Howard Nemerov's couplet on "The Myth of Creation on a Moebius Band"), perhaps His beings prayed Him into Being as much to protect them from themselves (and from others) as to be able to believe that they would live forever. Were they not sure enough of themselves to be good without the fear of punishment to keep them from being bad? (It's easy to see, certainly, that they might not have been sure enough of others if their choices weren't regulated by a fear of divine punishment.)

But since we are free to choose—at least to the extent that we are able to exercise the choice—I say let's choose to do good without being constrained to do it by fear of punishment. Why, just because everything is permitted, should we imitate God?

The leap of faith

I realized something at some point in the twenty-four hours since I wrote about the insoluble problem of the goodness and/or evilness of God (if God exists). I realized that I seem willy nilly to have placed myself in the very situation for which Søren Kierkegaard proposed a "leap of faith." That is, if the problem of evil—as it is known classically—is insoluble, then the only way to "solve" it is to abandon reason and take a leap of faith.

Am I willing to do that?

Another Jehovah's Witness, who signed his comment on yesterday's post as "Brandon," suggests that I may have a motive for not being willing. He says that

many people [of whom, he implies, I am one] refuse to believe in God not because of the evidence, but because they don't want to be accountable to a higher power's set of moral standards...also [they] don't want an answer to life's many "big questions"' because then they would be forced to act. However, if they allow themselves to be stuck in a state of "analysis paralysis"' then they can continue on with their life. People in general resist change. So it's no wonder that they ignore or disbelieve things that would cause them to change.

So, I'm trying to make it easy for myself, is that what I'm doing? Would someone who knows me a bit better than Brandon does (after a cursory look at a few of my posts) care to comment on this?

Brandon goes on to demonstrate that he himself has taken the leap. He adduces a number of proofs from the Bible that God isn't at all evil, it's man himself and Satan!

Why must God be evil? The Bible says that man has dominated man to his injury. (Ecclesiastes 8:9)

Also, if you remember the account of Job, it was Satan, not God, who did those evil things to Job. Also note what James 1:13 says: "When under trial, let no one say: 'I am being tried by God.' For with evil things God cannot be tried nor does he himself try anyone."

Brandon suggests that I could ask a better question:

Why does God permit evil, whether it be Satan or wicked people?

And he even supplies the answer:

The answer is that He will not let it continue indefinitely.

And just a little while longer, and the wicked one will be no more;
And you will certainly give attention to his place, and he will not be.

But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth,
And they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace. (Psalms 37:10-11)

The reason He is allowing it now is so that man can try to rule himself. Remember that in the Garden of Eden man and Satan challenged God's right to rule and [asked?] whether men can or should rule themselves. So He is permitting [men to rule themselves] so that that issue will be settled once and for all. Would it be just for God just to kill Adam and Eve and start over? Wouldn't God look like a tyrant then? Remember that there were angels watching this, and doing so would have just given Satan's claims weight.

Brandon asks me (with a straight face, I'm sure):

What do you think about all this?

Well, I really hesitate to say, but my muse offers a limerick:

There was a Bible-quoting J's Witness
Who indicted my faithful unfitness;
    "Open your eyes and read," pled he,
    "God's plan is there for all to see!
You paralyzed and lazy God's witless!"

"The problem of evil"

Evil is one of those embarrassing intellectual problems that philosophers and theologians have spent countless hours wrestling with over the millennia. I've read some of their thoughts about it. Today I had one of my own. Not a new thought, but very much my own:

If God exists, God is evil. Some people suffer terribly and may even have their lives snuffed out way, way short of having even a single opportunity to seek God. I was driving to the garbage dump, my dog Wally in the backseat as usual taking a ride in the car with Papa. And God's evil (if God exists) struck me with profound clarity, such that people's attempt to rationalize God's benevolence seemed to me the height of self-delusion.

Harold Bloom, the author of Jesus and Yahweh, said last year in an interview on PBS that he has nightmares about Yahweh. I wonder if I'll dream tonight?