[net.religion] again to Lord Firth

david@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood) (03/20/85)

In reply to a reply:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: reply to Lord Firth
Message-ID: <764@trwatf.UUCP>
Date: 19 Mar 85 00:42:28 GMT

[Lord Frith]

Starving thousands of helpless people in remote third-world countries
seems to test little.  If we are to believe that God is just and
merciful we should see it in everyday life... yet reality provides
glaring contradicitions.  How can we love a God that allows (or
according to your reasoning CREATES) such suffering when it seems
to serve no useful purpose?  If anything, reality provides a
great deal of evidence that God is not merciful or just.

[David Harwood]

> Pascal, the famous apologist for Christianity, said that
> the heart has its reasons which reason cannot understand. My feeling 
> is that everyone who sincerely wants to know whether there is a God 
> will be given sufficient reason for faith, but that not everyone is 
> sincere. You have only to look around to see that many lord it over 
> the others -- in their hearts, they would presume the place of God. 
> They hardly want to find out that they were wrong.
>
> If there is God, then we may believe that we are created
> in the image of God, so that if there is suffering, then we may
> therefore believe that the knowledge of good and evil, of what
> gives life or destroys it, may be a reflection of the nature of God.
> For, without suffering, and consciousness of the causes of suffering,
> we would not be moral beings, since good and evil, as we ordinarily
> understand them, would simply have no meaning.
>
> I am not saying that that our creation is fulfilled; we are
> certainly not what we should be. But, as Paul says, we do not 
> know what we shall become, but we know that we shall be like Him.
>
> There is a very old Jewish commentary on the "tree of
> knowledge" of Genesis, whose fruit was said to awaken mankind's
> moral self-consciousness, and to make them like gods. The comment
> is that they were become like gods in having knowledge to create and
> destroy worlds. Today, we certainly have the fruits of a very 
> powerful and dangerous technology; but what shall we do with it?
>
> You say, "Why is there suffering?" Then you would say that 
> this "reality provides evidence that God is not merciful or just."
> But I would say, with John, that if a man possesses more than
> enough, but turns his heart against his brother in need, then how
> is God's love in him? Or, with the Gospel, how does it benefit
> a man to gain everything of the world, but to lose his very soul?
> No, the existence of suffering is largely witness against us, that 
> we are not merciful, and are not yet justified. However, we shall
> be justified by following the example of Christ.

Lord F:
This may sound plausible to philosophers sitting in the confort
of their drawing rooms, but intellectual arguments such as this
will not convince the thousands dieing of starvation every day.
Is their purpose in life only to convince we who might learn from their
example?  Somehow I doubt that.  What kind of God would create
someone who's sole (soul?) purpose were to experience nothing but
a slow and painful death for the benefit of others?

David:
	I am replying to you, not as a comfortable philosopher, but
as a someone who is personally acquainted with the misery of some
of those of our nation who are poor, uneducated, handicapped, criminal, 
mentally and physically ill or addicted. While there was a time when 
I lived among these, I've never lived among the greater misery
of those who are dying in Africa. I am replying as one who understands 
that God has been merciful to him. 
	My reply is not simply to someone's skepticism about the
existence or nature of God; it is a reply to the one's accusation
against God, in order to justify the nature of our own moral existence.
Implicitly, the accusation is that God should not exist if we ourselves
are morally corrupt.
	However, it is we who are overwhelmingly responsible for the 
suffering of mankind. Even if God was not with us, this is still so.
But the very charity that is shown the miserable is the spirit of God
working through us -- the spirit that has become known all over the world
through the message of the life of Christ. The cults and barbarians and
emporers and inquisitors were not overcome by the sword, although 
that's what the history books say -- they were overcome by the popular
acceptance of greater faithfulness to the truth of the Gospel. Even so,
we still have a physical and ideological inheritance which is still
very self-destructive, although it possesses a technology which could
virtually eliminate suffering if only we also possessed steadfast, 
unselfish good will.
	All of us will die, and many of us will experience some great
suffering in life. But I did not say that anyone lives, with the single
purpose of God, to die miserably for the benefit or enlightenment of
others. It would be better for us to live for their benefit, instead
of ignoring them. It says in Genesis that mankind was placed in the
garden so to take care of it; and that mankind might eat of all the trees
so long as it did not presume the place of God. Pretty sound advice.
If this is the intended purpose of life -- caretaking and enjoyment --
then why is it our purpose to deny this obvious purpose of our creation 
by God? Why do we deny this life to those who are suffering on this
one world we share with them?

Lord F:
The existance of suffering may be witness against us, but how does it
spiritually benefit those that must suffer and have no way to
intellectualise it?  Especially if they know nothing of your God?
People are struggling in pain every day who have no concept of your God
or who will be unable (not unwilling but unable) to positively benefit
from such experiences.

David:
	Our suffering makes us less hard-hearted, more compassionate of
others; it cause us to reexamine ourselves, to turn to others and to
God for help, to be more charitible. We become less arrogant, knowing
that there is no justice in suffering, although there is often neglect.
All this without rationalization -- it is a matter of affection and attitude.
	This change also occurs without religious beliefs. But I imagine
that one who suffers will come to find greater truth in the Gospel, through
identification with the life of Jesus (which itself parallels that of the 
suffering servant of Isaiah). Regardless of one's previous religious beliefs,
the Gospel is psychologically compelling and gains popular acceptance among
those who have suffered.
	I said that we often have a change of heart for the better
with our experience of suffering, our own or that of others. I did not
say that we would not die or that the suffering would end, except in
death. Both are given facts of our existence. But I asked you what
are we to do about the suffering of others? Even if it is too late for 
the dying, what are we the living to do? Accuse God?

Lord F:
You might claim that without evil we will not understand what true
good is.  My response to that is, "Without good, the evil is
also meaningless."  Many will never experience a merciful end to
their sufferings.  Thus that suffering is meaningless.

David:
	This is not what I intended. I was saying that the existence
of suffering, and the knowledge of what causes suffering, is the basis
of our commonly understood status as autonomous moral beings. Our common
understanding of good and evil is with respect to our experience of
suffering.
	If by merciful end, you mean that God stops their suffering --
well, do you understand that God is working through mankind? Or would
you attribute the suffering and neglect to God, but the good will to us?
(I suppose you would attribute both to a godless accident, with some
peculiar "moral" notions. But my point is that the problem of suffering
is ours, while the argument from suffering against God is nothing more
than a shirking accusation.)
	Or would you prefer something more dramatic, maybe even a 
totally different creation without pain or death? What can I say? 
Is this creation finished? It may someday be that there is no suffering 
or death, at least, what is consequence of inherited human destructiveness.
Otherwise, if God intervened objectively to stop suffering, how would
we be responsible as autonomous moral beings? And if the universe were
without suffering altogether, then how would we exist as anything
like human personalities?

> The Lord said to Job, "Are you to accuse me in order to 
> justify yourself?" Here, the meaning is not that Job was a "sinner", 
> as such, but that Job presumed, as also did his "friends", wrongly 
> against God that our suffering should be related to our notion of 
> His justice. But as Jesus said about the man who was blind from birth,
> this suffering did not originate with his sins, or even those of his
> parents, but so that the nature of God might come to be known 
> through him, as was in the case of Job, and also of Jesus himself.

You haven't grasped the point.  God is slaughtering thousands for the
intellectual and spiritual sake of a few.  I'm sure that makes the
childern of Ethiopia feel real good:  "Yes kids, God really loves you...
you aren't being judged at all!  Your deaths really DO have meaning!"

Problem is:  They'll never know this (somewhat contrived) philosophy.
They pay the price... and we, the pampered few, will benefit from it...
maybe.

David:
	What I grasp is that we do not care very much for others --
that is the principal reason they suffer; nevertheless, their deaths 
do have meaning to anyone that knows about their suffering, who has
a change of heart, or comes to help others because of them. Am I
recommending a philosophy, or simply observing the obvious? A really
contrived "philosophy" would try to prove that our moral corruption
demonstrates that God does not exist, or He is unmerciful, when it is
obvious that we are the culprits who might be otherwise be banished 
(by self-extinction).
	Do you imagine that those who are dying in Africa are
worrying about the existence of God, or about the existence of charity?
Are they crying for mercy, that of anyone who will hear them? Who does
hear? If you take a survey of those charitable agencies who did first
answer the need and made known the suffering to the world, and who
marshalled the political authorities, what will you discover except 
that they are almost all motivated by what they call the spirit of God? 
Who has shown mercy? (You believe, perhaps, it is some merciful dupes.)

> While the wisdom of this is not very explicitly clear to us, 
> it is intuitively clear to most adults that somehow we are made better
> moral beings, by our experience of suffering, our own as well as that
> of others. Something this obvious is generally overlooked, especially
> something about our own common psychological nature, but my point is 
> that, whether or not we understand this, through suffering, we are 
> made a new creation, I would say, more nearly the image of God.

Lord F:
And I contend that this sort of argument is still in the realm of
comforting drawing-room philosophy.  It is hardly comforting to
think that a few thousand people are about to starve to death so
that I may pick up the paper and read about it.  Am I REALLY made
better by someone elses suffering?  Not likely.  It would be more
beneficial to spare those thousand people their painful deaths
than for me to read of their demise in "The Washington Post."

This sort of explanation hardly displays the "perfect wisdom of a
divine creator."  Some will claim that such suffering is caused by
man's original sin.  Others will claim that it is Saten's handywork.
Some try to reconcile evil into the overall "divine plan" as you have.
All in all, I don't think that the above argument provides a
satisfactory answer to the problem of evil.
-- 
UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!trwatf!root	- Lord Frith
ARPA: trwatf!root@SEISMO

"And Frith made the world"


David:
	Without suffering, there would be no knowledge of suffering,
so that we would have no moral existence. Someday we will remember
what we have done, and change. No one will be neglected, since all
will share the spirit of Christ, who also did not turn away from us.
	It will certainly not benefit those who are suffering
if you hear about them but do nothing. But if you do something, 
then it will have benefited you as well. You can let us know whether
not these things are hypothetical, in your case, as you "contend"
with them.

					

laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/21/85)

Even if it were true that we are largely responsible for other people's
suffering, this does not explain why people suffered and starved in
remote places (such as North America) long before any Christians ever
even thought that they existed...not to mention those that starved
before the time of Abraham.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura