The Great Connundrum

Of all the questions that I get asked that are relevant to my work as a chaplain, the most common is something along the lines of "Why is this happening to me?" Oh, there are variations of the question to be sure - most contain an expletive or three - but the issue is the same. "Why did (issue, problem or situation X) have to happen? Why me?"

In technical, theological gobbley-gook, the issue is called theodicy and is worded something like this: how can an all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and ever present God allow all these lousy things to happen? Yesterday, during the chaplains' case presentation / educational time, theodicy again raised its ugly head, just as it does every week in one fashion or another.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out two points of fact: One, that things are not right in the world. There are murders, natural disasters, genocides, totalitarian governments, and too much reality programming on television.

Two, most of the world worships a divine being who is, in one way or another, supposed to love and take care of us. For, according to the stories of the religions of the world, we are the children of this divine being in one sense or another.

The issue, therefore is reconciling those two points of fact. Bad stuff is happening, and good God cannot / does not / will not take care of it for us. And for the entire length and breadth of human history, we have been trying to come to a conclusion that satisfies that discrepancy. We have been trying to solve the great dilemma. The problem is, none of the answers are fully satisfactory, and most are downright insulting.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are two main themes in the scriptures. The first is found in the books of Deuteronomy and Proverbs. This answer states that if you are truly good and obey all of God's laws and rules and such, then good things will happen to you. If you are evil and do not, then God's wrath will be upon you and all sorts of nastiness will come your way. In this lifetime, I might add. The scriptures are specific that any reward or punishment comes pre-death and whatever awaits us post-mortem.

This wisdom, which is often perverted into the prosperity gospel message that is so popular among televangelists, falls apart because we all know evil people who are doing quite well in life. We also know, or maybe are, good people who aren't doing so well. It only takes a moment of reading the newspaper and asking the question, "What did that person ever do to deserve that?" to see how this argument isn't worth much.

The second theme is found in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. At the end of Job, when God shows up in the form of a whirlwind, Job asks God the big question, "Why did all this happen?" God essentially says, "Who are you to ask me anything? Where were you when I set up the universe to run the way it runs?" Not very satisfying, though God does set everything right - again, in this life, not the afterlife - by restoring everything that was taken away from Job. Though I must admit this is small comfort for all Job's children, servants, and livestock who were killed at the beginning of the book!

Ecclesiastes doesn't even attempt to answer the question, really. Rather, it just says, "Life often sucks. Deal." I'll be honest right here. I love Ecclesiastes for that directness. Often things don't go right. Life at times seems meaningless and full of suffering. No one knows why, except for God, and God's not talking. So our best bet is to learn how to cope as best we can.

So that's the scriptural take coming out of the Bible - in a very, very basic form, mind you. I have to run and teach my class now. I'll write more during my lunch break, hoping to cover some of the more modern ideas, post-modern ideas, and my own pirate chaplain thoughts.

Get yourself some coffee; some of this stuff may get pretty boring at times! But it's important. Otherwise I wouldn't write it! : )