Further thoughts on God and suffering

In earlier posts I've pondered on why God allows evil in the universe, and why he allows natural disasters and all the terrible suffering they bring. These are, I think, two very different questions. Suffering and evil are not the same things, nor are they even always part of the same problem.

Hurt versus harm

US psychologists Cloud and Townsend draw a useful distinction between 'hurt' and 'harm', or in other words suffering and evil. They use the example of eating sweets, which harms our teeth but doesn't initially hurt, compared to having a filling which hurts but doesn't harm. Suffering always hurts but it doesn't always harm - in fact, sometimes it's part of the healing process. Evil always harms but it doesn't always hurt.

Often pain and suffering are unavoidable though uncomfortable counterparts to liberation, maturation, transformation and healing. Indeed, it would be hard to envisage life outside of a padded cell that didn't involve them. Furthermore, all parents have to stand by and allow their children to experience some pain and difficulty without stepping in to fix it, otherwise those children would never become responsible adults. God too cannot merely bail us out and fix all our problems, and nor can he be held to blame for all the crap that happens in a universe full of free moral agents.

Nonetheless, the deliberate causing of pain and suffering, except in the context of healing, is generally sadistic and evil. So which category do natural disasters fall into?

Natural disasters and evil

An earthquake, hurricane or volcano, though terrible, is not inherently evil. But to deliberately cause or send one would surely be evil. The only time it might not be would be if it were to wipe out evil - say if a freak landslide had hit a Nazi rally in 1939. However, sending an earthquake that indiscriminately wipes out hundreds of thousands of average people, including children, would surely be an unspeakably evil act.

But what about allowing - rather than actively sending - natural disasters? This perhaps depends on the context and reason. If earthquakes and hurricanes are part of the vital systems and processes of the world's natural order, then to allow that order to run its course without intervention may not be evil. Especially if that natural order turns out to be the only means by which morally responsible, free and loving beings can evolve in the universe.

However, even if this is the case does the end justify the means? Another possibility, discussed in an earlier post, is that the natural order has been corrupted by evil which God allows to continue for the present while he ongoingly and painfully redeems the cosmos.

Suffering and redemption

It's important to note that in the Christian view, God both fully enters into and redeems our suffering - that is the central message of the cross and of Easter. Though suffering is not good in itself, it becomes the means of good. The enduring power of Christ's gospel is that it can transform evil into good, disaster into triumph, despair into hope.

Finally, you cannot have God without God's kingdom, the incoming realm in Christ in which wrongs are righted, harms healed, and love and justice made perfect. If this present order were all there is, then death and tragedy might be the strong arguments against belief in God that A.C. Grayling imagines. But if not, it is not only perfectly plausible to believe in God in the face of earthquakes and holocausts, it may actually be the only belief that has something better than nihilistic despair to offer.

Shades of Grayling - the dullness of philosophers

Woke up this morning (and this isn't the opening to a blues song) to the un-dulcet sound of humanist philosopher A.C. Grayling on Radio 4, dismissing belief in God as utterly illogical on the basis of the recent Haitian earthquake.

There's something about humanist philosophers that brings out the worst in me. They seem so smug, so utterly certain, and so unutterably dull; acknowledging no shades of grey, yet somehow sounding as grey as a November day. Grayling and his ilk are children of the enlightenment, modernists and positivists to the core and apparently unable to embrace the richer both/and insights of post-modernism; they mock at mystery and cannot live with paradox and untied ends.

Yes, it's hard to understand how there could be an all-loving, all-powerful God in the face of horrendous natural disasters - no-one's denying that. But for those of us who believe - who cannot but believe because of the whole experience and evidence of our lives and our hearts - these are problems we can live with, paradoxes we can embrace. There are of course many possible ways of trying to explain how God can be good and yet there can be natural disasters; maybe I'll explore them in another post but of course they are all partial and provisional, and personally I'm inclined not to bother too much over them. They may perhaps satisfy the intellect, but the heart has very different needs.

What makes me smile wryly is that for all Grayling's insistence on cold, hard logic, he then segues on without a blink to speak of how what really matters is responding to the disaster with compassion and kindness. I completely agree, but where's his logic in that? How on earth do kindness and compassion fit into his tight A+B=C conceptual framework? Nonetheless I'm very glad to find that his humanity is better than his philosophy. Love is greater than logic and maybe those who try to justify God but don't help their stricken fellow man are further from the kingdom than philosophers who reject God but feed their neighbour.