38.40 Theodicy

Introduction

But, before we can begin a discussion of God’s goodness in the face of evil, we need to take a closer look at three concepts:

In
polytheism, dysfunctional relationships between deities explain why bad
things befall good people. For example, if your farm got flooded, it
might be explained that the God of rain was upset at the God of the
harvest for some reason outside of your control and you were just an
innocent casualty of their feud.

This
isn’t so with monotheism – the notion that there is only one God. If
that God is the one God of the whole world then all calamities must
originate with that deity – there’s no one else to blame.

N.B.
The early sections of the Bible are rooted in polytheism – 1) the Bible
makes multiple references to the existence of other Gods.
2) The one God of the Bible might originally have been conceived of as
more than one God and were later unified. This would explain why God
has different names, why each name has different attributes, why the
names are in the plural, and why, for example, Genesis records two
stories of the creation of humanity – each favoring a different name of
God.

2. But God can’t be bad!

British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein
used the term “splitting” to describe a phenomenon that can happen when
humans experience a heightened state of anxiety. Klein observed that
while we may be aware that in good there is bad and in bad there is
good – we nonetheless try to manage our discomfort by splitting our
feelings, assigning the good ones to ourselves while projecting the bad
ones onto other objects and people. This emotional “splitting” also
explains why we commonly view God as “all good” while eschewing
anything that may be perceived as negative.

3. Evil

What is evil? Well, as it turns out, evil is relative.

Things are only evil based
on comparison to other things. Evil is not an absolute – just as there
is no absolute hot, absolute comfortable, or absolute sweet. (Still, it
is fun to put the adjective “absolute” in front of the word evil to
describe something you really, really, really don’t like – but it makes
about as much sense as saying that your car is absolute fast.)

The greatest
evil has to be viewed in relation to what is considered the greatest
good. So, if you consider the preservation of all life to be good, then
you will probably define the extinction of any life as evil.

Evil is often defined as the absence of good. This is known as the privative theory of evil and is attributed to Augustine of Hippo.  Privative means
the indication of the absence or negation of. But there is a problem
with the privative theory of evil (as with most any privative theory):
a lack of something does not necessarily mean that the opposite exists.
An individual without the strength of a lion is not necessarily a
weakling. Not being or having good does not mean being or having evil.

For our purposes, we will use the word evil as a placeholder for those things of greatest repugnance.

God and Evil.

Back to the question:

The classical answers to the problem of theodicy are:

Classically,
the answer that God made evil is explained as follows: God made evil so
that God can test humanity’s freedom of will. Of course, this presents
a bit of a problem because freedom of will ignores God’s omnipotence
and omniscience. After all, how can God be all-powerful and control
everything if we have freedom of will? Moreover, how can God be
all-knowing if we have the ability to choose our own future?

Regardless, the notion that God – assumed to be all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing – made evil isn’t a satisfactory answer.

Although
this line of reasoning might explain why there is evil in the world, it
does not fit the definition of theodicy: “an argument in defense of
God’s benevolence despite the existence of evil.” Therefore, we have to
move on.

(I know, really unsatisfying.)

This
answer also implies that the things we experience as bad aren’t really
bad from God’s point of view. Being informed that we don’t know enough
to recognize evil is disconcerting at best.

There
is also a non-deistic, metaphysical version of this answer. It tells us
that human perception is the only thing that makes something evil. In Hamlet,
Act 2, Scene 2, William Shakespeare gives voice to this seemingly Zen
line of thinking: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so.” In other words, only an all-good, all-powerful, and all
knowing God can see the world as it truly is – it is beyond human
thought and understanding.

Although
somewhat disturbing and mainly unsatisfying, this line of reasoning is
in fact the best argument in defense of God’s benevolence, omnipotence,
and omniscience despite the existence of evil. Yikes!

This
answer is a wonderful call to social action and encourages humanity to
take part in repairing the world, but this philosophy blatantly ignores
the premise of God’s omnipotence, so it doesn’t fit as an answer to
theodicy. (Again, sorry.)

This answer fails with regard to the notion of God that God is in control of everything. So it doesn’t work for our purposes.

Rabbi Brian’s Thoughts

I don’t have a waterproof philosophical argument in defense of God’s goodness despite the existence of evil.

What I do know is that nothing is solely good and nothing is purely evil. An ancient rabbinic commentary on the Bible
says, “There is no absolute good without some evil in its midst.” This
is true. There is no good without bad and no bad without good.

Nonetheless,
I want: I want to be comforted when I’m scared. I know it’s juvenile,
but I still want God to be an idealized parent – all good, all
powerful, and nurturing me.

My
life, like yours, can be scary – I will never be able to control enough
of my world to feel completely safe and I will never know when a
tragedy is going to befall me.

In conclusion

Is
there an answer to the question of theodicy? Why do bad things happen?
I think it has to do with our being attached to a specific outcome of
reality and the future.

The
simple truth is, things that fall outside of our sense of control and
how we think the world should be will always be what we deem to be
“evil.”