“Theodicy”

        My father was in the Canadian Navy during World War 2, and one of the men he respected as a seaman and officer was Lieutenant-Commander Nicholas Monsarrat, the author of The Cruel Sea, H.M.Corvette, The Tribe That Lost Its Head, and other books. Monsarrat lived and worked in Ottawa for fourteen years after the war, then returned to England. Maclean’s Magazine interviewed him in December, 1966, and I was very disappointed to read, “I haven’t believed in God for 35 years.” His reason? “It doesn’t make sense to me, with the world in such a mess, that there can be any planning person or planning entity behind the direction of the world.”

        Then I remembered reading a similar interview with Stephen Fry, from February, 2015: “Asked what he would say if he was confronted by God at the pearly gates of heaven, Fry replied: “I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right…”

        From a Christian viewpoint, “the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil” is “theodicy”.

        Obviously Monsarrat and Fry are not convinced and, after all these years, what new arguments might come up?

        Two recent books seem to give the best presentations. The first is Christianity: Opium or Truth?, by David Gooding and John Lennox. They divide the discussion into two main areas: (1) the problem of evil and (2) the problem of pain.

        Gooding and Lennox relate the first to free will. Why doesn’t God stop and judge the Hitlers, Stalins and Pol Pots of the world? “Well suppose he did…Where in fairness would he stop?...What would God have to say to each one of us?” Because all have sinned (Romans 3:23)        With regard to the problem of pain (the other source of suffering), these authors give a long list: “earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves…congenital deformities and personality-destroying diseases…for which…man is not immediately responsible”. As Gooding and Lennox say, “intellectual answers to the problem of pain are necessary and helpful. But the thing that soothes the heart of believers and gives them the courage themselves to face whatever sufferings God may allow them to encounter is the fact that God has not remained aloof…the Son of God has himself suffered…God has given his Son to die.”

        The answer, in the end, is simply, “Jesus”. This is not simplistic; this is not a cop-out. Everything that Jesus is and does, he pours into his own people. “He learned obedience from what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8).

        We have found no better answer. Looking back at freedom of choice, it will, if given free reign, lead to every imaginable wrong. Likewise, a free, unrestricted universe will “do its thing” and assuredly result in so-called natural disasters, disease and pain. Certainly, this aspect of pain is the hardest to accept—pain and suffering in innocent people, especially the child with cancer, as Fry cries out.

        To proceed further with Fry’s great problem, look at The Case for Faith, by Lee Strobel. He investigates “theodicy” in an interview with Peter Kreeft (p.70), a philosopher and theologian at Boston University. This professor comes to the same conclusion as Gooding and Lennox—words and intellectual explanations are never enough for someone in the depths of suffering and pain. Let his dialog with Strobel finish our discussion:—

     “The answer, then, to suffering,” I said in trying to sum up where we’ve come, “is not an answer at all.”

     “Correct,” he emphasized, leaning forward as he pleaded his case. “It’s the Answerer. It’s Jesus himself. It’s not a bunch of words, it’s the Word. It’s not a tightly woven philosophical argument; it’s a person. The Person. The answer to suffering cannot just be an abstract idea, because this isn’t an abstract issue; it’s a personal issue. It requires a personal response. The answer must be someone, not just something, because the issue involves someone—God, where are you?”

     That question almost echoed in his small office. It demanded a response. To Kreeft, there is one—a very real one. A living One.

     “Jesus is there, sitting beside us in the lowest places of our lives,” he said. “Are we broken? He was broken, like bread, for us. Are we despised? He was despised and rejected of men…Does he descend into all of our hells? Yes, he does.”