Pain and
the Purposes of God
Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks
fly upward .Job 5:7
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient
for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
Once again, I wonder about the wisdom of taking on one of the classic dilemma
of faith and philosophy.
The argument goes like this:
If God is all powerful and all good, then why does evil exist?
The existence of evil means that God is not all powerful or not all good,
or most likely, nonexistent.
The standard argument is free will. God give us free will to choose and our
choosing brings evil or good consequences.
But this puts the existence of evil on us, and that does not take into account
accidental tragedy or why there is the possibility of evil in the first place.
A theologian named Teilhard de Chardin1 writes of God's purposes
moving us forward to a completed state, and that suffering is just one component
of that process toward the Omega Man, as he calls him.
OK, but can't God do it without the amazing cruelty that is often shown in
life?
Others say you must account for the evil that comes into our world through
a spiritual enemy--Satan.
But why does God allow Satan?
Revelation says Satan will be destroyed eventually, but in the meantime there
is a battle underway for our loyalties.
And I think the real response, though not an answer to the original question,
is that in the cross of Christ, evil has its remedy--the love of God using
the evil of man to create something that overcomes evil and spells its end.
I cannot answer the question, why does God allow for evil, at least not in
any complete and satisfying way. I think all these responses reflect a part
of the truth. The cross of Christ is the final response, but is not a philosophical
response.
It is a faith response, which is maybe the real answer.
Evil requires faith to over come it.
Maybe that is why God permits it.
While this may not satisfy the rigid requirements of a water tight argument,
I think if you look at the alternative it is far and away the best answer.
In fact, taking God's love out of the equation leaves you with a much more
difficult conundrum.
If there is no loving and powerful creator redeemer in the picture, you still
have suffering and what we would call evil, but no way to deal with it ultimately.
If there is no purpose beyond the purposes we create, then finally nothing
has any real meaning.
If Darwin is right then the only constant is survival of the species. What
increases survival is good. What does not is irrelevant.
Except that survival of the species is good only for the species and at the
moment.
Ultimately there is no reason to suppose any of this will survive, or that
it should.
Millions of years ago a comet crashed into what we call the Yucatan peninsula
and the dinosaurs were extinct.
Was this evil?
No, it was just what happened. Not good, not bad.
And another comet may smash into the earth and all human life may be extinguished.
Is this good or bad. Without God's purposes it is neither. It is just what
happens.
In that context, the behavior of Hitler, Ghandi, or the Dali Lama are all
equal.
In fact, none of them matters.
If there is no greater purpose than survival and if survival is not even
a constant then the holocaust has no moral weight.
Peter Singer2, philosopher at Princeton is pressing those boundaries.
He says we have preferences, but ultimately you cannot say this or that is
good or bad.
In which case, evil is not even evil. It is just what is.
If from Hitler's point of view, gassing all the Jews increased the survivability
of his nation, then its just darwinism acted out...misguided maybe, but from
a certain point of view, understandable.
In fact a work of Leonardo da Vinci or the satisfaction of passing gas are
equal, as all are destined for extinction sooner or later.
There may come a time when all the works of humanity may be buried under
a hundred feet of lava or sediment.
Case closed.
The problem is none of us can live with the consequences of that being true.
The most rabid atheistic darwinist cannot help but make moral judgments about
global warming and hunting whales to extinction.
If none of this has a purpose beyond just being here, what does any of it
matter?
Except for the beholder in the moment of beholding, it doesn't.
And a day will come when the tree falls in the forest and no one hears and
that will be that.
So survival of whales or cruelty to babies is of no consequence at all except
for the self interest of those at the moment.
And the idea of living with that is a far more monstrous conundrum:
How do people who do have a sense of ethics and meaning make sense of a world
where ultimately nothing matters?
Where a Beethoven symphony is exactly equal to the carcass of a decaying
rat under a bush because both add up to the same zero sum.
Answer that one.
The writer of ecclesiastes comes very close to saying this.
He says, vanity of vanities, none of it matters. It is better to be a living
dog than a dead lion.
Eat drink and be merry before its too late and you cannot enjoy anything.
His most profound theological statement is there is nothing better than enjoying
your work and living humbly before God.
In other words, enjoy what you can when you can because there is a time coming
when you will not.
Pretty thin encouragement to someone with a chronic disability.
For that person, life is simply a wager lost.
Job says the lot of man is pain as surely as sparks fly upward from the fire.
Pain and suffering are the common lot of all mankind.
Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for us all in our due time.
How gloomy.
If that were the end of the matter, it would be.
But Paul of Tarsus, who says he met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus
has a different take on it.
His take was profound enough he was prepared to endure endless hardships...hunger,
beatings, imprisonments, abuse of all sorts, because he saw at the end of
the matter something of far greater worth.
He says that God has purposes for humanity and in fact for the creation itself.
But in the meantime it is in a kind of bondage waiting to be released.
And while we wait we deal with the pain and suffering of life.
In what we call his second letter to the church in Corinth, he speaks of
something in his own life. He doesn't tell what it is, other than to say
it was a thorn in the flesh, like a messenger from Satan, sent to torment
him.
It could have been a physical ailment, a group of people who followed him
around and made life difficult or some emotional state he had to deal with.
I am glad he was not specific. We all understand what it means to be tormented
by some affliction we cannot shake loose.
He says he prayed earnestly for God to take it away from him.
This is the man who could pray the dead back to life, heal the sick with
a touch, cast out demons with a word.
But his prayers for himself were totally ineffective.
He says that God's message to him was simple.
"My grace is sufficient for you. My power is perfected in your weakness."
There is your answer.
Why does God allow suffering in your life?
So you have the chance to know that it is not your strength getting you through.
So that you can know at the end of your strength that his love for you is
all you really need.
Is that a good enough answer?
It is for me especially when I consider the alternative, which is that there
is no answer and no justice.
If you go to Vancouver's B.C. place stadium and go to the main gates, there
is a plaza out front.
In the plaza is a statue of a young man with tousled hair. He has one
good leg and one artificial leg and he seems to be running. He is of course,
Terry Fox3, who lost his leg to cancer at age 19 and purposed
to run across Canada to raise funds for cancer research. Anyone in this country
has seen the footage of a solo young man with his characteristic hip, hop,
jogging down a long deserted stretch of highway.
He didn't make it all the way. His cancer returned half way through his run
and he was airlifted back home to Vancouver where he died.
Now let me ask you...did that life have any meaning, or was it essentially
purposeless?
He raised some money and became a hero, but if we are all going to die anyway
and he is destined to be forgotten some day, who cares?
I will tell you who cares.
I don't know what Terry Fox's next sights were the moment after he died.
But extrapolating from what others have told me about their glimpses of what
follows, I have my own version which I think may be close to the reality.
If I were directing the movie, here is how I would portray it:
Terry Fox breathes his last breath in this life and then his spirit is transported
beyond, suddenly to a beautiful green field and a city beyond it. Between
him and this glorious city is a man with a huge smile on his face.
He beckons him onward.
At first Terry jogs that familiar hip hop jog of one good leg and one artificial
leg, for a few meters.
Then he notices he is running normally, and there is no pain.
He looks down and he has two strong legs, stronger than he could ever imagine.
He leans forward and begins to really stride out toward the One he now recognizes.
As he draws closer, the waiting figure; instead of opening his arms and saying,
"well done good and faithful servant", the man of All Ages, turns away from
Terry and begins moving toward the city.
But as he does, he turns his head and over His shoulder, calls out, "Race
you there!"
And Paul says, "I do not consider the worst of our sufferings here to be
even worthy to be compared to the glory of what waits for us there."
Preached June 28, 2009
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1. For a brief introduction to the work of Chardin, a
French Jesuit, go to http://www.survivalofmankind.com/ or Amazon.com for
his books
2. For a critique of Dr. Singer's views read Dinesh D'Souza's article in Christianity Today. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/march/22.60.html
3. Read about Terry Fox's life. Wikipedia has a good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Fox
To view some inspirational videos of this remarkable young
man http://www.terryfoxrun.org/english/resource/video/default.asp?s=1
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