It's occurred to me that there is no way that I can cover 2,000 years of thought regarding the problem of evil. So, in order to keep me sane (and you reading this post!), I've decided to break down responses to the problem in terms of statements I've heard - or have been told to me by other chaplains - during my ministerial career. Then I'll finish up with my own thoughts. Hopefully something in here will make sense!
We've already covered the idea that the experience of evil in the world is the result of one's own sinful actions. While that sometimes is true - if I commit a crime and am later arrested, odds are that I'm going to experience evil and unpleasant things inside a prison - in the case of other experiences, it is absolutely false.
When the Gulf Coast flooded following Katrina and Rita, I had patients and staff alike telling me that was the result of God's anger lashing out on such a sinful city. If that's the case, though, why was it that the 9th Ward - a residential area - flooded and Bourbon Street, known for its wild parties and Mardis Gras parades, did not? In fact, the areas most connected with sin around the world, as understood by evangelical Christians and Orthodox peoples of other faith traditions, are still standing while tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters have leveled regular neighborhoods like the ones you and I live in. Why hasn't Las Vegas been taken out, if God is into smiting sinners that way? What about San Francisco's Haight - Ashbury district back in the 60's? Surely China would have been given a beating following Tienamen Square or what's going on in Tibet. And where's the punishment due those who are sinning in Iraq right now? Where's the divine wrath that should be smacking people around in the Middle East?
You get the idea. God just doesn't work that way, no matter what Pat Robertson, et al. said before they retracted their statements.
Another explanation is that there is a malevolent force (could it be . . . Satan?!?) at work in the world. This is very popular here in the Bible Belt, where I often here from Staff and patient alike, "The Devil is working me over today!" This places the blame for everything inconvenient, wrong, or evil squarely on the shoulders of a fallen angel who has nothing better to do than set individuals up and knock them down.
There's a couple of problems with this line of thinking, too. For starters, any belief in a force of this magnitude - just a little weaker than God - limits the power of God. If God is ALL-powerful, ALL-knowing, and OMNI-present, as most people believe, than it is a contradiction to say that there is something else out there that is so powerful that struggles with God over people's souls take place. All powerful means that God has control, and nothing can resist that force.
Also, if one looks at representations of Satan in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, one will find that it's not the same creature that we commonly think of when we imagine Satan or The Devil. For starters, the name Satan, comes from the Hebrew "Ha-Satan" which means, "The Accuser." It's not a name, it's the title of a position of a court official - the prosecuting attorney who tests people to determine guilt or innocence. In this view - and it's the one presented in the book of Job - the character of Satan is more an employee of God rather than being an "anti-God."
So where do all those ideas of Satan come from? Two places, actually: Milton's Paradise Lost and The Inferno section of Dante's Divine Comedy. That's right, most of our culture's popular beliefs come not from any religious text or theological work, but from works of pure fiction. It's the same as basing a Sunday sermon on The DaVinci Code - presenting it as if the events in the book really happened.
If you're still awake at this point, I'm ecstatic. Really! And I'd love to conclude this discussion with my own views, but my boss just walked in and is now at his desk. So I have to go out and pretend to work. : ) I'll post more later on this afternoon. Going to be a late evening here, and as I've been able to keep up with my paperwork today, I'll have time to finish this post.
Until then.
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