Does a Good and Loving God Really Permit Evil?

"Why does a good and loving God permit evil?" "How can one whom we sometimes describe as a loving parent allow the innocent to suffer?" These and similar questions have plagued humankind for centuries. But we need not go back centuries to find examples of suffering. We have only to remember the unbelievable atrocities done to Jewish children, women and men during the Holocaust of a generation ago, or to reflect on similar acts which have been reported in our own time in places like Yugoslavia, Romania, El Salvador and other troubled spots of the world. We need not even leave our own country or state or city to see the immense suffering of the homeless and the poor, the pain of those caught up in unjust social, economic, political systems. And, even if we try to assuage our anger at God by saying that this suffering was caused by these unjust systems, or by evil persons, we are still confronted with natural disasters, illness, death. Invariably we return to that key question, "Why do the good, the innocent suffer? Why does a good God let these things happen." Isaac B. Singer in Love and Exile seems almost despairing when he says, "How can great wisdom care so little about the torments of innocent creatures? This question, which began to agonize me when I was six or seven years old, still haunts me today. I still cannot accept the restlessness of nature, God, the absolute . . . How can a merciful God allow all this to happen and keep silent?" Can we, as Christians, find a less hopeless, a more faith-filled answer to that question? The following reflections may help us to find at least a partial answer.

Fr. John Ostdiek, OFM, a retreat director and former hospital chaplain, responds to a direct question about a loving God permitting the rape/murder of three nuns and a lay missioner in El Salvador by saying:

Admittedly, this is a most important issue. The problem of reconciling a good and loving God with what seems like unspeakable evils surfaces in every generation. We see much suffering and anguish in our world, neighborhoods, and even in our own families. And at the same time, we believe in a kind, caring and loving God. How can we accept both? It's not easy. In fact, I don't think we can ever expect to reach a complete understanding and acceptance of the issue because we are dealing with mystery. As a hospital chaplain, teacher, retreat director, I have heard the question phrased in many ways, such as "Why me? What's God got against me? Why this baby? Why...?" 1

One response comes from noted moral theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas sees suffering as a basic and fundamental condition of human existence. He says that "the morally interesting question is not whether we are asked to suffer, but how and for what we are asked to suffer."2 He believes there is a moral significance to human suffering not simply because suffering cannot be avoided but because our inability to suffer would diminish our humanness. Hauerwas' questions are: "Why should we assume that existence is only valuable when it is free of suffering? Why should we assume that we should always try to spare the other suffering when we know that often the good we do comes only because we were willing to endure pain."3 We want to emphasize Hauerwas does not see suffering as an inherent good, but he is suggesting "that though suffering is not to be sought, neither must we assume that it should always be avoided."4 Suffering is a part of what it means to be human and to be alive, albeit a difficult part. Hauerwas is not saying all suffering must be transformed into benefit. Indeed, he clearly recognizes that there are certain forms of suffering such as the Holocaust that must be acknowledged and cannot be transformed.

If suffering is a part of being human, and God has made us to be human, does it follow then that God wills suffering. James Martin responds to this when he says, "Suffering is not the will of God in the sense that God decrees that a particular tragedy shall happen at a particular time. God has made a world in which the possibility of suffering exists and when that possibility becomes a reality God normally allows it, not because God wills it so but because the constitution of the world demands it."5 Martin sees a part of suffering as traceable to our own folly, to our own misuse of free will. But he points out that "some belongs entirely to the realm of the world as it is and the laws that govern it. The world as it is, with its law and order and humanity's possession of free will--carrying with them, as they do, the risk of suffering--is, we believe, the best possible world for God's loving purpose, our salvation." 6

While John Ostdiek says suffering is a mystery, Alasdair MacIntyre's interpretation seems more in line with James Martin's. He considers evil (suffering) as punishment, discipline, education, a consequence of free will and mystery and yet he nevertheless finds all five of these unsatisfactory. He concludes that evil occurs because God has created the world as a place for self-determining agents to exercise responsible choices. In assessing this argument, MacIntyre endorses it, albeit, critically. He believes that with it "we can see in outline how the facts of evil have their place in the Christian scheme and how we are not faced by a stark contradiction at this point."7

All of these arguments provide some rationale for suffering and all are far removed from a belief that suffering is directly and intentionally sent by God. However, in one form or another, that belief has been held by many for centuries. It appeared in Old Testament times in the form of the theory of retribution: God rewards the good and punishes the wicked. That theory has not been completely put to rest, even in our own times.

Fr. Ostdiek points out that "The Book of Job challenges such a view. Job maintained that he had not sinned. His 'explanation' expressed a mystery: 'God gives; God takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' Job did not solve the mystery; he simply kept believing in God. What he did was to separate guilt from suffering, a most important insight."8 Again, we see Fr. Ostdiek focusing on suffering as mystery.

Yet his ultimate conclusion is not a question of mystery so much as a revelation of a God who suffers with us. He says, "Strangely enough, the answer is not a word (as in a thought) but in the word of God."9 It is the same Word who not only was put to death on Calvary but also the one who continues to suffer with God's people throughout the centuries, including the countless victims of violence everywhere.

We have briefly examined suffering as part of being human, as mystery, as a result of our own free will and the law and order of the universe, and as a consequence of being self-determining agents, with the capability of doing good and doing evil. We have considered the theory of retribution, Job's repudiation of it, and, finally, the stark hope that the answer to our question may be found in Jesus. While we justifiably could focus on each of these, it is fitting and proper that we focus on the relationship to Jesus because one of the purposes for establishing Stauros was to relate the sufferings of Jesus to the evil, pain and suffering of our own time. Dorothy Soelle provides us with a bridge between Job and Jesus when she says, "Job's call for the advocate, the redeemer. . . is to be understood only as the unanswered cry of the pre-Christian world which finds its answer in Christ. Job is stronger than God. Not the one who causes suffering but only the one who suffers can answer Job. Not the hunter but the quarry."10

Soelle reinforces this when she says that "Jesus' death has not ended. He continues to die before our eyes."11 Her reflections on suffering lead her to a radical Christ-centered theology which emphasizes solidarity with the powerless Jesus, the suffering Jesus. She develops this further when she says, "The story of Jesus' passion is a narrative about suffering. . . . It is the story of a man whose goal is shattered. But this despair over his own cause would be incomplete--and below the level of other human suffering--without the physical and social experience the story describes. Without blood, sweat, and tears, without the threat and experience of torture, it would remain on a purely spiritual level. . . . It is impossible to distinguish Jesus' suffering from that of other people as though Jesus alone awaited God's help. The scream of suffering contains all the despair of which a person is capable, and in this sense every scream is a scream for God."12 Soelle believes that one way that we can experience God is in the powerlessness and suffering of Jesus. She sees the God of Jesus as the "Abba," not an omnipotent Father who ordains the suffering of Jesus; rather, this God is a loving God who does not avoid the suffering connected to such love. The God of Jesus Christ is a compassionate God who has the ability to feel the other's pain.

This becomes very real in Elie Wiesel's Night, where the harsh reality of suffering does not even escape God. The following excerpt is an account of a firsthand experience in Auschwitz It is both a frightening and symbolic illustration.

One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains--and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel.

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him.

This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him. The three victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. "Long live liberty!," cried the two adults.

But the child was silent.

"Where is God? Where is God?," someone asked.

At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

"Bare your heads!" yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping.

"Cover your heads!"

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive. .

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "Where is God now?"

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

"Where is he? Here He is–

He is hanging here on this gallows..." 13

Dorothy Soelle interprets this story from both the Jewish and Christian perspectives. She says, "Within Jewish religious thinking the answer given here is understood in terms of the shekinah, 'the indwelling presence of God in the world. . .' God does not forsake the suffering world. . . in God's emptied, abased form God shares the suffering of God's people in exile, in prison . . . God, in the form of shekinah, hangs on the gallows at Auschwitz and waits . . .

"To interpret this story within the framework of the Christian tradition, it is Christ who suffers and dies here. . . . In Jesus' passion history a decisive change occurs, the change from the prayer (in Gethsemane) to be spared to the dreadfully clear awareness that this would not happen. . . .The essence of (this) history is the assertion that this one whom God forsook himself becomes God. Precisely those who in suffering experience the strength of the weak, who incorporate the suffering into their lives, for whom coming through free of suffering is no longer the highest goal, they are there for the others who, with no choice in the matter, are crucified in lives of senseless suffering."14 Concluding Reflection

"Why do the innocent suffer? Why does a loving God permit suffering?" We have examined several responses to these questions. Each of these has presented us with a particular perspective, a conviction appropriate to the theology of the author. While each of these deserves our attention and our reflection, we believe that it is germane to the mission of Stauros that we focus on the suffering and death of Jesus as a paradigm for all suffering. E. Schillebeeckx says, "The servant is not greater than the Lord. Just as Jesus did, the Christian takes the risk of entrusting him/herself and the vindication of his/her living to God; the Christian is prepared to receive the vindication where Jesus did: beyond death."15 "(The Christian) believes that the message and mission of Christ were not to snatch us off the road of life with all the evil that it entails, but rather to join us on that road. . . . Because of what the Christian believes about evil the Christian finds within him/herself the power to look up, to look beyond evil, to look on down the road and to see the light and warmth at its end. For the Christian walks with and through in the Christ whose name he/she bears."16 The closing words of the Stauros Mission Statement tell us that "Christian spirituality is not a spirituality of suffering; rather it is a spirituality focused on the following of Jesus. That is not an easy road to take, but it is a road that inaugurated the Kingdom of God, a road that leads to Life and to the Resurrection." 17

Footnotes

1. John Ostdiek, "Question Parade," East Tennessee Catholic, 6 September, 1992.
2. Stanley Hauerwas, Suffering Presence. Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped and the Church (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 25.
3. Ibid., 28.
4. Ibid., 168.
5. James Martin, Suffering Man, Loving God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 21.
6. Ibid., 22.
7. Alasdair MacIntyre, Difficulties in Christian Belief (London: SCM Press, 1959), 41.
8. John Ostdiek, "Question Parade."
9. Ibid.
10. Dorothy Soelle, Suffering (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975) 119.
11. Ibid., 140.
12. Ibid., 16, 85.
13. Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1982) 61-62.
14. Soelle, Suffering, 145-147.
15. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1979) 643.
16. Timothy O'Connell, What a Modern Catholic Believes about Suffering and Evil (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1972) 93.
17. Stauros, U.S.A., Mission Statement, 1990

Acknowledgment

We are grateful to Fr. John Ostdiek, OFM and to the East Tennesee Catholic, 417 Erin Drive, Knoxville, TN, for permission to quote at length from an article that appeared in the September 6, 1992 issue of the paper. We are also grateful to Dennis Gehrlein, C.P., for his assistance in preparing this article.

Announcement

It is with deep regret that we tell you that Judy Benson has discontinued her volunteer work at Stauros. Judy Benson has been a part of Stauros, USA for so long that it is difficult to conceive of Stauros without her. As many of you know, shortly after the Stauros offices moved from New Jersey to Chicago, Fr. Flavian met Judy, and convinced her to volunteer in the Stauros offices. That was 12 years ago.

To state that Judy knows all the inner workings of these offices is an understatement. She has been closely associated with every activity Stauros has sponsored. Each issue of the Notebook bears her signature in some form or other. She just about knows the mail list by heart, and also knows when and why most of the people on it became associated with Stauros.

Judy has only been gone a month, and she is already missed very much. She is missed, not only because of her efficiency, her knowledge, and all her inside information, but she is missed because of who she is--Judy is not just a volunteer, but she is also a very good friend, a loving support, a generous, kind, and enthusiastic co-worker. We wish her the very best of all things as she now moves on to a new chapter in her life.