The Impossible Problem

When Jarred Cinman wrote an opinion piece for his blog in 2015 entitled “The five best reasons not to believe in God”, I doubt he imagined he was breaking new ground in the ongoing debate over whether the world would be better off without religion. He couldn’t have. After all, he quoted Stephen Fry, whose own swipes at God have prompted the occasional comment in this space.

Unbelief is hardly a novel concept.

Drawing conclusions about God from the bad things that happen to people is certainly well trodden territory for philosophers and theologians, but not everyone who thought hard about suffering and death came to the conclusion that God either does not exist or is not the sort of God you’d like to be acquainted with.

The Innocent and Devout

Here’s Jarred’s best shot on the subject:

“The existence of suffering is an impossible problem for believers in an all-good, caring God to solve. Even if they use the wiggle room to argue that without some suffering there can be no charity; or that people who do wrong are punished, they cannot account for the suffering of innocent children and animals, or worse, the devout believers in their faith.”

“But a God who was benevolent and loving … would never create the world we live in. Believing in him requires either shuttering yourself off from the carnage all around you; or crafting frankly ridiculous excuses (God works in mysterious ways?).”

I’ve never liked “God works in mysterious ways” as an answer to the problem of pain. Unbelievers should expect better from us than cliches. So suffering becomes an “impossible problem” for Jarred Cinman. But not for everybody.

The Same Event Happens to All

The great philosopher King Solomon considered the same question framed slightly differently:

“It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all.”

Now, I think Solomon was writing specifically about death when he refers to “the same event” that happens to both the righteous and the wicked, the innocent and devout, but he will consider the problem of the righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and the wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing at some length in Ecclesiastes, along with all the other apparent unfairness of the individual lot in the world, suffering included.

Like death, suffering is a feature of human existence that afflicts the righteous and wicked alike, often in the most unexpected ways and at the most unexpected times. Solomon concludes that’s an evil thing, as Cinman does, but his dearth of solid information about the whys and wherefores never shakes his personal conviction that God exists or that he is worth knowing. In fact, Ecclesiastes ends with God: “All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

Not only does the fallen-ness of the world and the inevitability of suffering and death not stop Solomon in his tracks, but he also recommends humble obedience as the best course of action in the face of it.

Agreeing and Amplifying

Isn’t it interesting that the word of God doesn’t shy away from difficult questions that test our faith? Over 3,000 years ago, great minds were already batting these issues around, and the Holy Spirit of God did not see fit to gloss them over with trite bromides or pat answers, but rather to preserve all such expressions of perplexity, frustration and confusion for us today. Clearly, neither Solomon nor the Lord himself were terribly concerned that either the ubiquity of death or the perceived unfairness of random and/or deliberate suffering in the lives of the innocent and devout constitute major barriers to belief. In fact, Solomon’s strategy is not to run from hard questions, but to agree with the skeptic and amplify his objections. Ecclesiastes is twelve whole chapters of this, raising additional questions about the meaning of human existence that neither Stephen Fry nor Jarred Cinman have stopped to consider.

Every “conclusive” objection to God’s existence and goodness trumpeted by the skeptics was anticipated and confronted head on by the Holy Spirit long, long ago. I find that remarkable, and very confirming. That does not mean the answers to the big questions are easy, but it does suggest they exist if we are willing to approach them in the right way.