| This is a conversation I had online with a friend of mine. I will not provide a name, but I think there are some very significant points to be made here about the nature of God, if He does indeed exist. I have intentionally changed the name of the girl I spoke with, for the sake of avoiding any embarassment to her. The grammar has also been corrected to make the exchange more legible.
Alicia: I think Jesus hates me, so I should stop trying. Me: What? Me: Jesus doesnt hate you. Alicia: It's not like I ever do anything too bad, but its like I'm in his blindspot. Me: And how do you know this? Alicia: Because nothing seems to go right unless I do it myself. Alicia: And even that screws up a lot. Alicia: I don't believe he's there and if he is, then he doesn't care. Me: Perhaps you just aren't sure what you ought to be asking Him for... Alicia: He's become apathetic like the rest of us nut jobs. Good times. Me: ... Me: That is kind of like saying He was just like any other human being. Alicia: I don't ask for anything. Just a wee bit of sanity here and there. Me: And that He is like every other human being these days. Me: Do you expect Him to be a great deal of help when you "dont believe he's there"? Alicia: I've learned not to expect much either way. Me: What im saying is, if you dont believe in Him, it is difficult to put any kind of meaning behind your prayers, requests, or whatever. It is also kind of a mistake to think that God exists to make life easy for you. Me: For anyone in fact. Alicia: Well if he's not there to make things bearable, then he has no purpose. Me: Oh really? Suppose He is there to serve as a way out from humanity, which has itself made things unbearable. Me: He does not exist to solve problems we ourselves have created. Me: He exists to provide a means of salvation for those who no longer wish to be a part of those problems. Alicia: This is all hypothetical. Nothing says that it's real. Nothing says that it isn't. Me: Okay, but I was simply responding to what you said, that He has no purpose unless he exists solely for our benefit. Alicia: I never said for our benefit. Me: Him existing merely to make things bearable indicates that His purpose is nothing more than to do something for us. Alicia: Well if people follow him blindly, then he should give some reason for it. Me: People who follow the Christian Godhead do not follow blindly...they believe He has given reason. Me: And also that the disgusting state of human nature speaks for itself as a reason for our needing to follow God. Alicia: I understand that god created free will. But I don't get why he had to create a choice of evil. Alicia: There can be two different sides of a problem but one doesnt have to be completely bad. Alicia: Why would a god create evil? Me: Because if there was no choice of evil, there would be no free will. We would be mindless automatons, following Him wherever He led. It would be much more meaningful for us to come to Him through our own choice, when given a more appealing alternative. Me: And also, he Himself did not create evil, He created the oppurtunity to do evil. His own creations are what caused evil to occur. Me: Especially if you believe in Satan, who willfully departed from the God who made him. Alicia: I don't believe in satan. Alicia: I believe that there is neither all good or all bad. Me: So we are all existing in some kind of morally neutral state, where we couldn't do good even if we wanted to? Alicia: No. Me: The argument over Satan is a completely different topic, but how do you suppose humanity would be imperfect unless it were misled? Common sense --not eating the apple of the forbidden tree--would easily override free will, unless a deciever presented a more appealing alternative. Me: But you said there is no all good, and no all bad. Alicia: There are acts that are part good and part bad. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Me: Yes, intentions...not acts. Alicia: I hate talking about religion. I feel like an asshole because people can talk to me until they are blue in the face and it doesnt change anything. Me: Yet if the thought of Satan is ridiculous, why isn't the thought of hell, or even God for that matter. And besides, if there is nothing wholly good or bad, how can we be condemned since we are apparently incapable of doing something that is 'totally bad'. Since all acts must have some degree of goodness in them to prevent them from being entirely bad. Alicia: I dont believe that there is a god or anything. I believe that when we die, we are dead. Nothing more. Me: Then why do you pray--or ask, or whatever you do--to some higher being so that it would "just give you a little sanity"? Alicia: I used to. Then I saw the absense of all that some good would do and I stopped. There are more important things to worry about than me. Me: Then why are you so upset that if there is a god, he hasnt given you what you have asked for? Me: Dont forget...humans are the source of all our problems in the world. Me: God wouldn't stop humans from doing bad. Me: This would interrupt free will. Alicia: I'm not upset. I'm content that when I die, I will not be here. I won't have to deal with good decisions or bad. I'll just be one minute, and the next I won't. Me: So now you dont believe in God...for certain? Me: Earlier you were kind of saying that you hadn't made up your mind. Alicia: Nothing is ever 100%. Alicia: You should know that. Alicia: Could we cut the religion stuff? Me: Ah, but if you are a Christian, this is not true. I have seen what God has done in my life, and I do not have doubts in His existence any longer. Me: I used to be as questioning as you. Me: But yes, we can cut the religion stuff. Commentary on this Discussion To begin, I would like to say that I have nothing against my friend. I like her quite a lot, I enjoy her company, and I find her to be a very kind person. My only wish is to describe the flaws in the argument 'Alicia' provides, against the backdrop of modern culture. So if anyone out there reading this happens to know with whom I was speaking, or if 'Alicia' herself should ever stumble onto this page, I wish to tell you that I care about her a great deal, and that she is and will continue to be in my prayers. 1. Suffering This discussion is initiated by the timeless subject of pain and suffering. Why, many wonder, would any kind of loving God ever put humanity through the pain that it must endure in its lifetime? If God is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-good, then how can evil exist? The answer to this lies in the example of human nature before the Fall, when mankind lived in a utopian state (whether you believe it to be the Garden of Eden or not) in which they had continual, direct contact with God. All was well. The needs of humanity were provided for. Man was in the exact state biologically that it is today--Homo Sapiens Sapiens, (or Latin "Man with Discernment"). It possessed free will, the ability to make its own decisions, to follow God or to disobey Him. And yet it did not disobey; it believed in and respected His power and authority. What Went Wrong? - To be frank, nothing would have gone wrong, had it not been for the Deceiver of the World. There are two important terms to know here: sin and sins. While at first these may seem completely the same, they are in fact distinct from one another. The importance of sin is that it is an underlying influence, like a cancer of the spirit, which corrupts our ability to choose between right and wrong. It is the continual, omnipresent influence of the devil in the human heart, which is ultimately the source of our pain. Sins are merely the outward actions, the symptoms of the cancer, which mark us as having that evil nature. Now it is important to ask: what is free will? Which of these two traits does it govern? Certainly not sin. Giving a man free will but instructing him to do a specific thing a certain way (as opposed to doing it differently) would not be the equivalent of giving him a mind to disobey you. Providing the oppurtunity is meaningless unless some kind of appealing alternative is presented. The God who loved His creation gave them free will, but it was not until the deceit of Satan that evil human nature emerged. Remeber that God is incapable of being evil. He is instead the pinnacle of goodness, because He is goodness. Evil is being apart from God, and being apart from His wishes. But why would one want to be? Humanity was told by God (figuratively or literally, depending on your belief about evolution & creationism) that it could not eat the fruit of the fobidden tree, for if it did it would surely die. This was fine for humanity, until the snake informed humanity that in fact it would not die, but rather that it's eyes would be opened and that humanity would have the knowledge of God. Humanity did not doubt the God that sustained it until a deceiver with a mind to fuddle it arrived. And so it is through the activity of an agent of sinfulness that we suffer. It is through the work of the devil that humans, in their corrupted state, harm each other, covet, lie, steal, murder, and so on. One cannot blame God for the problems humanity created. For an applicable example of this, see The New Man, one of our very own stories. By Christian definition, humanity is given a way out of this rut--Christ. The free will that it (humanity) has been given--which is what most, as seen in this conversation, tend to blame sinfulness on--actually allows it to make a choice. To succumb to the temptation to do wrong or to resist such desires and follow God. The notion you will have from reading up to this point is that I am blaming the world's problems on a defective humanity. And for what I mentioned above, namely, lying, stealing, coveting, murdering, etc.--this is true. However there is more to it than this. Our friend 'Alicia' said that she stopped believing in God when she "saw the absense of all that some good would do." This is referring to more than just a defective humanity. This statement encompasses all good and bad. In light of the recent tsunami that occured in the Indian Ocean leaving some 220,000 dead (with many more still unaccounted for), I have felt it necessary to address this other matter. Why Do Humans Suffer Faultlessly? This is a matter heavily debated even among Christians. How, if all the worlds problems are on the back of a fallen humanity, do we explain natural disasters, poor economic circumstance, and freak accidents? How does the responsibility, for a massive wall of water carrying thousands of innocents out to sea to drown and be washed back, rest on humans? The answer is, it still does rest on humans, but not in the same way. Most Christians believe that God created the heavens and the earth, and that he made all the creatures living in it, and that on the sixth day he made humanity and rested on the seventh. And then he saw that it was good. This means that in God's original plan for humans and the earth he gave them, there was no suffering. There were no natural disasters, no plagues, draughts, and so on. Creation was good. But like Tolkien's white tower of Ecthelion, the glittering stone has become dull and wasted by the hell of war. In our case, however, it is the hell of a fallen world. When humanity ate of the tree, the world fell with them. God's physical creation was revealed as a place where Satan lived and carried out his ministry, trying to deceive us with the hopes of making humanity stumble. He has temporarily succeeded. And in succeeding, he was condemned to crawl on his belly and be accursed, and humanity was condemned to labor and suffer in all that it does. And so the world was changed so that all the things God had made, while still beauteous and awe-inspiring (and at times, terror-inspiring) were now capable of inflicting immense pain and suffering upon the humans that inhabited creation. This suffering includes the things that humanity has no control over, events like the tsunami that raped the pacific islands and coastal nations. Suffering as a Gift Many will call me a lunatic, but I consider suffering to be one of God's greatest gifts. Many Christians scoff at me when I say this (most of them my own age) without even thinking about the implications of suffering as one of God's gifts. Pain is seen by so many as an impediment to religious faith, when I believe it is justification for that faith. I shall attempt to clarify this by illustrating an example. Imagine a world with no suffering. Imagine a utopian paradise in which the needs of every man and woman were immediately provided for, in which they did not have desires (because all in this world would be fulfilled), in which no one harmed anyone else. A world in which, ultimately, there could be no such thing as death. Would our religion look so much better? I propose that it would not. In this blanket of security from physical harm, suffering through desire, and suffering through other circumstance, we would essentially be in a perpetually drunken state. A way of life in which nothing ultimately meant anything, because we could have anything we wanted. Desire would be meaningless, because by definition desire arises partially from an uncertainty that the thing desired may be received. Compassion would not exist, because compassion arises from a sympathy towards those who suffer. And finally, God would be unimportant, because he would be unnecessary. The source of humanity's desire for God springs forth from a desire that we might one day achieve something better than what we have now. I follow God because he offers me salvation and a new life, apart from this fallen world in which people murder people in mass numbers, in which natural disasters destroy or displace millions of souls, in which we live in constant concern for the future and security of our own lives. I recall hearing a Randy Newman song, in which he explained that if there is a god, he must be an evil one, to create such pain and agony in the world. Let us stop and look at this for a moment. Who created such pain and agony in the world? The first thing we must realize is that God did not create our deficient and desperate situation out of a sadistic desire to see us hurt. He condemned us to struggling and suffering all the days of our lives because he loves us, and because he realizes that pain is one of the most efficient indicators to his existence. C.S. Lewis said that there must be something to drive us out of our nursery, out into the world toward god--and that something is suffering. As he called it in The Problem of Pain, suffering is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Commentary to be Continued Soon. |
