For most
of her life, Jessica had been taught what she calls the “blueprint view” of why
God allows suffering. According to this understanding, God wills everything
that happens, history is a working out of his meticulous divine blueprint and
there’s a specific good behind even the most extreme suffering. She says this
theology is expressed in clichés such as ‘everything happens for a reason'.
Long
before Henry’s diagnosis, Jessica began to question this traditional view of
God’s role in suffering. As she listened to podcasts of Greg Boyd’s (Senior
pastor at Woodland Hills Church in Minnesota) sermons, she heard another view
expressed which she calls the ‘warfare view’. This theory posits that God is
not the only force in the universe and all evil originates in wills other than
God. Suffering is therefore ultimately caused by Satan, and not God.
Jessica
spent many months listening to and considering both of these positions. After a
two year period of wrestling with these opposing ideas and looking at relevant
biblical verses, she landed on the warfare view, explaining it made her mind
and heart line up with each other.
As
Jessica explains, “To think God isn’t designing my pain but rather doing
everything possible to maximise good and minimise evil within the constraints
of the world he created – that’s exciting!”
Jessica
had already adopted this warfare view before Henry’s health deteriorated. She
says it made a tremendous difference. It may have even saved her faith.
“It was
unbelievably freeing to walk through this nightmare and not say, ‘Am I being
tested, taught a lesson or punished?’ I didn’t have to think this person we
love and trust would cause a nightmare in our lives. I didn’t have to feel
betrayed by God in the midst of this horrible event. So my crisis wasn’t
compounded by a crisis of faith.
“It was
incredibly freeing to know when we saw beautiful things happen, when people
were coming to the house with casseroles and gifts – we could say, ‘This is
from God. God is doing everything possible to maximise good.’ And when we saw
our son suffer and the pain and death, I could say ‘this is not from God'. That
meant I could maintain a passionate faith in the midst of such terrible loss.”
As I read through this for the first time it looked to me as if it was going in the wrong direction; for at first it seemed as if Jessica was taking on board the old gnosto-dualist solution to the problem of pain. This solution envisages good and evil as opposite forces fighting it out, sometimes evenly matched. In classical Gnosticism evil is believed to be rooted in the material world from which an initiation into "gnosis" (that is, a kind of "inner light" experience) allows the believer to rise above this evil world and find salvation. In fact in classical Gnosticism the material world is thought to be the work of a dimiurge rather than God. Gnosticism of this kind side steps the difficult questions which arise if God is postulated to be a loving sovereign creator; for if God is sovereign creator why did he create a world with the propensity for suffering and evil in the first place? Why did he create sentient beings with the propensity to fall? But if as gnosticism maintains God didn't create the world He cannot then be held responsible for the imperfection which generates suffering and moral falleness; all of this can be blamed on the "free will" (sic) of demons and humans.
However, what saves the day for the above quote is that Jessica is reported as saying that God will "minimise evil within the constraints of the world he created ". That sounds like an acknowledgement of God's position as sovereign creator; but it leaves open the question of the inscrutable Divine purposes behind the perverse logic of this world (=constraints?) which, for unknown reasons, has been given divine permission to play out. At one level Jessica's solution may help: God is seen as a contender for good in a battle of good vs evil and where God has tied his hands behind his back. In effect God is playing by rules he has ordained in advance. One of those rules, presumably, is that God has chosen to create a world of personal agents with the propensity to defy divine morality and "fall". But as God is responsible for creating beings with this flawed propensity then on the higher level the problem of suffering and evil remains untouched; why did He create beings that so easily succumb to the temptations of sin? Surely omniscient omnipotence could do better?
As a rule I don't comment on the problem of suffering and evil - after all there have been many hundreds of years of deliberation on this subject and I don't think I'm going to make much impact on the problem. However, I will risk airing the following thoughts, thoughts which have been on my mind for many years.
Let us assume that a model cosmos can be represented as a string of characters; of course for any significant cosmos this string will be of enormous length, a length which we will quantify by L. If the string employs a character set of C characters then the number of possible strings which can be constructed will be CL. The quantity CL is enormous but finite. If we think of this string as a book, then the CL possibilities will contain all the books there can be of size L; that is, among the CL possibilities we will find the story of every possible cosmos. But as it stands these CL cosmic narratives don't exist outside the unreality of platonic space, a space of possibility and potential but not of reality. By far and away most of these unreal cosmoses will be random nonsense but many will tell of significant things. These significant, but materially non-existent cosmic stories, can only be reified by an omnipotent sovereign deity, perhaps in some corner of His infinite mind. But which cosmos will it be that comes up for reification?
In one sense the platonic existence of the CL worlds gives them a kind of independence from God. Those worlds are to God as the story in a book is to its author; the author of a book is bringing forth something that has always existed in the platonic realm and the author is sovereign over all that appears in the book. God, like an author, is a sovereign facilitator whose job entails reifying the particular cosmos which emerges from platonic space into material reality. This cosmos, in having an an independent platonic existence may well have its own logic which has features contrary to the nature of God himself, just as a human author may introduce features and characters in his story which do not reflect his nature. We perhaps can glimpse in this something of that good vs evil contention which Jessica is talking of: God has chosen to be contender in one of these cosmic stories.
But in spite of all that, at the highest level the question of suffering and evil remains intact: Why would divine omnipotence translate suffering and evil from the platonic world to material reality? If we are theists who believe in the absolute creative sovereignty of a loving God this remains a mystery. We may even feel that mysterious divine motives for reifying our particular world could never justify some of the suffering and evil we see. After all, it is one thing to write a book of pure symbols about a wayward world, as does a human author. but it is yet another thing to "write" this book using the qualia of real actors, actors who have a conscious experience of this world; best leave it in the unrealized spaces of the platonic realm, it may be felt.
Do we say "Yes" or "No" to our cosmic story given the suffering and evil we see (and experience) around us? I'm personally left with a dilemma. My existence is organically and inseparably joined to the cosmic story; if this world of suffering and evil didn't exist then neither would I. So, do I consider my existence worthwhile in spite of the pain and evil of this world? Because of this dilemma I bulk at the thought of saying "No" to life; I'd rather exist than not exist, pain or no pain. But it easy for me to say that: My life, by all accounts, has been comfortable and privileged, so I'm hardly a qualified person to say "Yes" to a cosmos of suffering and evil on the basis of this dilemma alone; all I can do is leave it as a mouth stopping dilemma. Hence, I avoid pronouncing on the subject.
There are two types of suffering: Firstly there is suffering which may be the a result of impersonal forces such as natural disasters and instabilities in socio-economic systems over which no one has full control. Secondly, there is suffering brought about by intentional sentient beings whose willful and culpable actions cause suffering. Frequently, fundamentalist Christians ignore the serpent of Genesis 3 and trace back all suffering, whether of personal and impersonal forces, as consequences of the culpability of Adam and Eve. In fact, sometimes this Adamic culpability is proposed as a theodicy: "Suffering is due to man and not God"*. This solution not only fails because it ignores the serpent but also ignores the question of why a loving sovereign God should permit the emergence from the platonic realm of beings with the propensity to sin; for He is no doubt capable of bringing out of those huge platonic spaces responsible beings who do not choose to sin; but this He hasn't done.
One of my favorite quips is "Sin is the word with the 'I' in the middle"; that is, sin is a state of being which puts priority on self at the expense of other sentient beings; serve self first and hang the consequences to others. That's sin in a nutshell and we all indulge in it from time to time. Rebellion against God is a consequence of sin - see Genesis 3; man predicated himself first and then in order to maintain this predication necessarily rebelled. Many fundamentalists see sin expressing itself as highly organised covert conspiracies of many agents (i.e. Conspiracy theorism - e.g. Tim LaHaye). I suggest that in maintaining such ideas they don't really understand the disrupting effects of sin: Sin decentralizes and disconnects desire and motive from its surroundings. In consequence it leads not to highly organised movements of agents (which would requite too much selfless morality) but exactly the opposite - it leads to chaos and randomness. A universal perception of this understanding may perhaps be found in the chaoskampf mythology. This mythology depicts the fight with evil as a struggle with chaos (or chaoskampf), often symbolised by the leviathan from the deep; it is a mythology that is hinted at in both the Bible and other cultures. Evil degrades cooperation in favor of self and thereby leads to chaos, randomness and ultimately meaninglessness. So in the final analysis the problem of evil boils down to a struggle with the void of meaninglessness and emptiness. It is the war with the chaos beast which is the most general form of the struggle between good and evil. (I discuss this matter further in the introduction and epilogue of my book on randomness)
.
Further study.
The following links, which I have yet to study closely, look as though they might contain some useful material.
https://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/defending-the-problem-of-evil/
https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/cosmos-and-chaos-understanding-the-bibles-description-of-creation/#more-139
Footnote:
* The fundamentalist over-statement of the consequences of the fall is probably down to a confluence of causes: Viz: Fundamentalism selects for personalities which favour a paranoiac perspective of an elite religious remnant locked into an embattled and belligerent sectarianism. This perspective may in part be down to the social marginalization of fundamentalists; they seek a satisfying rationale to engage in forthright condemnation of the world that has rejected them and which they therefore hate with deep hatred. Their spiritual pride is such that they identify the slight against them as a slight against the Almighty. They therefore have little trouble in seeing the world which has rejected their message as utterly evil and wicked. They also have a small minded view of the cosmos and its profound mystery of purpose; simplification of the cosmic narrative in gnosto-dualist terms suits the anti-intellectual culture of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism's obsession with hell as the destination for the wicked world actually exacerbates the problem of suffering and evil; it also renders void any attempt to use Romans 8:18 as the basis of a theodicy. In the fundamentalist view suffering this side of the grave (unless you're one of them - i.e a small remnant) is just a prelude to something even worse - the eternal suffering of hell. Since fundamentalist communities are small it follows that in their view the overwhelming majority of people are destined for hell (even Christians such as myself!). This view makes the creation seem even more pointless than ever: For, according to fundamentalists, the life of the large majority of the world's inhabitants has been reified by the Almighty only to have them eventually sent into eternal suffering; their sin?; rejection of the highly proprietary doctrines of the minority fundamentalist sect! Of course, this is no problem to the vindictive fundamentalist mind because it hates the world and sees its rejection of their message of salvation as evidence of a world that is utterly evil, full of wickedness and therefore deserving of eternal punishment. That's the fundamentalist mindset for you!
As a rule I don't comment on the problem of suffering and evil - after all there have been many hundreds of years of deliberation on this subject and I don't think I'm going to make much impact on the problem. However, I will risk airing the following thoughts, thoughts which have been on my mind for many years.
Let us assume that a model cosmos can be represented as a string of characters; of course for any significant cosmos this string will be of enormous length, a length which we will quantify by L. If the string employs a character set of C characters then the number of possible strings which can be constructed will be CL. The quantity CL is enormous but finite. If we think of this string as a book, then the CL possibilities will contain all the books there can be of size L; that is, among the CL possibilities we will find the story of every possible cosmos. But as it stands these CL cosmic narratives don't exist outside the unreality of platonic space, a space of possibility and potential but not of reality. By far and away most of these unreal cosmoses will be random nonsense but many will tell of significant things. These significant, but materially non-existent cosmic stories, can only be reified by an omnipotent sovereign deity, perhaps in some corner of His infinite mind. But which cosmos will it be that comes up for reification?
In one sense the platonic existence of the CL worlds gives them a kind of independence from God. Those worlds are to God as the story in a book is to its author; the author of a book is bringing forth something that has always existed in the platonic realm and the author is sovereign over all that appears in the book. God, like an author, is a sovereign facilitator whose job entails reifying the particular cosmos which emerges from platonic space into material reality. This cosmos, in having an an independent platonic existence may well have its own logic which has features contrary to the nature of God himself, just as a human author may introduce features and characters in his story which do not reflect his nature. We perhaps can glimpse in this something of that good vs evil contention which Jessica is talking of: God has chosen to be contender in one of these cosmic stories.
But in spite of all that, at the highest level the question of suffering and evil remains intact: Why would divine omnipotence translate suffering and evil from the platonic world to material reality? If we are theists who believe in the absolute creative sovereignty of a loving God this remains a mystery. We may even feel that mysterious divine motives for reifying our particular world could never justify some of the suffering and evil we see. After all, it is one thing to write a book of pure symbols about a wayward world, as does a human author. but it is yet another thing to "write" this book using the qualia of real actors, actors who have a conscious experience of this world; best leave it in the unrealized spaces of the platonic realm, it may be felt.
Do we say "Yes" or "No" to our cosmic story given the suffering and evil we see (and experience) around us? I'm personally left with a dilemma. My existence is organically and inseparably joined to the cosmic story; if this world of suffering and evil didn't exist then neither would I. So, do I consider my existence worthwhile in spite of the pain and evil of this world? Because of this dilemma I bulk at the thought of saying "No" to life; I'd rather exist than not exist, pain or no pain. But it easy for me to say that: My life, by all accounts, has been comfortable and privileged, so I'm hardly a qualified person to say "Yes" to a cosmos of suffering and evil on the basis of this dilemma alone; all I can do is leave it as a mouth stopping dilemma. Hence, I avoid pronouncing on the subject.
There are two types of suffering: Firstly there is suffering which may be the a result of impersonal forces such as natural disasters and instabilities in socio-economic systems over which no one has full control. Secondly, there is suffering brought about by intentional sentient beings whose willful and culpable actions cause suffering. Frequently, fundamentalist Christians ignore the serpent of Genesis 3 and trace back all suffering, whether of personal and impersonal forces, as consequences of the culpability of Adam and Eve. In fact, sometimes this Adamic culpability is proposed as a theodicy: "Suffering is due to man and not God"*. This solution not only fails because it ignores the serpent but also ignores the question of why a loving sovereign God should permit the emergence from the platonic realm of beings with the propensity to sin; for He is no doubt capable of bringing out of those huge platonic spaces responsible beings who do not choose to sin; but this He hasn't done.
One of my favorite quips is "Sin is the word with the 'I' in the middle"; that is, sin is a state of being which puts priority on self at the expense of other sentient beings; serve self first and hang the consequences to others. That's sin in a nutshell and we all indulge in it from time to time. Rebellion against God is a consequence of sin - see Genesis 3; man predicated himself first and then in order to maintain this predication necessarily rebelled. Many fundamentalists see sin expressing itself as highly organised covert conspiracies of many agents (i.e. Conspiracy theorism - e.g. Tim LaHaye). I suggest that in maintaining such ideas they don't really understand the disrupting effects of sin: Sin decentralizes and disconnects desire and motive from its surroundings. In consequence it leads not to highly organised movements of agents (which would requite too much selfless morality) but exactly the opposite - it leads to chaos and randomness. A universal perception of this understanding may perhaps be found in the chaoskampf mythology. This mythology depicts the fight with evil as a struggle with chaos (or chaoskampf), often symbolised by the leviathan from the deep; it is a mythology that is hinted at in both the Bible and other cultures. Evil degrades cooperation in favor of self and thereby leads to chaos, randomness and ultimately meaninglessness. So in the final analysis the problem of evil boils down to a struggle with the void of meaninglessness and emptiness. It is the war with the chaos beast which is the most general form of the struggle between good and evil. (I discuss this matter further in the introduction and epilogue of my book on randomness)
The search for meaning in darkness. Who would have anticipated the
incarnation? See Philippians 2:6-11
incarnation? See Philippians 2:6-11
God has an inside experience of suffering
.
Further study.
The following links, which I have yet to study closely, look as though they might contain some useful material.
https://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/defending-the-problem-of-evil/
https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/cosmos-and-chaos-understanding-the-bibles-description-of-creation/#more-139
Footnote:
* The fundamentalist over-statement of the consequences of the fall is probably down to a confluence of causes: Viz: Fundamentalism selects for personalities which favour a paranoiac perspective of an elite religious remnant locked into an embattled and belligerent sectarianism. This perspective may in part be down to the social marginalization of fundamentalists; they seek a satisfying rationale to engage in forthright condemnation of the world that has rejected them and which they therefore hate with deep hatred. Their spiritual pride is such that they identify the slight against them as a slight against the Almighty. They therefore have little trouble in seeing the world which has rejected their message as utterly evil and wicked. They also have a small minded view of the cosmos and its profound mystery of purpose; simplification of the cosmic narrative in gnosto-dualist terms suits the anti-intellectual culture of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism's obsession with hell as the destination for the wicked world actually exacerbates the problem of suffering and evil; it also renders void any attempt to use Romans 8:18 as the basis of a theodicy. In the fundamentalist view suffering this side of the grave (unless you're one of them - i.e a small remnant) is just a prelude to something even worse - the eternal suffering of hell. Since fundamentalist communities are small it follows that in their view the overwhelming majority of people are destined for hell (even Christians such as myself!). This view makes the creation seem even more pointless than ever: For, according to fundamentalists, the life of the large majority of the world's inhabitants has been reified by the Almighty only to have them eventually sent into eternal suffering; their sin?; rejection of the highly proprietary doctrines of the minority fundamentalist sect! Of course, this is no problem to the vindictive fundamentalist mind because it hates the world and sees its rejection of their message of salvation as evidence of a world that is utterly evil, full of wickedness and therefore deserving of eternal punishment. That's the fundamentalist mindset for you!
