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A: This question leads us to THE great paradox of monotheistic religion:
How can a God who is All-Powerful and All-Knowing also be, by
definition, a just and loving God, given the existence of undeserved
suffering the world? For we all know examples of good people who
suffered greatly or died before their time, and we know of terrible
people who lived long lives and died peacefully. The world is
not fair, and God doesn't seem to be doing much about it.
Think about it: if God knows about evil and suffering, but chooses
not to do anything about it, it's hard to understand how we can
say God is just and good. If God knows about evil and suffering,
and can't do anything about it, then God is not powerful, and
who wants to worship such a wimpy God? If God could do something
about evil, but doesn't know about it, then how can we have any
connection to Judaism at all, which is based on the very idea
that God heard our cries in Egypt and took us out of slavery?
A God who doesn't know what's going on in Her world is too far
away, too distant, to feel much passion for.
All of this is made even more complex by the theology presented
in much of the Bible which says in a fairly direct way that if
we do God's commandments, we will be rewarded and protected. For
example, Deuteronomy 11, which many communities recite as the
second paragraph of the Shema, says
If you will earnestly heed the commandments that I give you this
day, to love the Lord your God and serve God with all your heart
and all your soul, then I will favor your land with rain at the
proper season, rain in autumn and rain in spring, and you will
have an ample harvest of grain and wine and oil. . . (Deut. 11:13-14)
This is not a new problem in the history of theology: the Bible
itself has voices within it that ask the same question. Kohelet,
also known as Ecclesiastes, says: "In my own brief span of life,
I have seen both these things: sometimes a good man perishes in
spite of his goodness, and sometimes a wicked one endures in spite
of his wickedness." (Kohelet 7:15) Kohelet's answer to the problems
seems to be that one should not expect too much fairness in the
world, but instead find your legitimate pleasures where you can,
and let go of the rest.
The rabbis of the Talmud, in the post-Biblical period, even had
a name for the paradox we're discussing:
tzaddik ve' ra lo, literally, "the righteous one and it's bad for him." The Talmud
being the Talmud, there is no consensual answer to the problem,
but some of the possibilities discussed (in Talmud Brachot, pages
4-7) include:
- that a person who suffers did some secret sin that even the sufferer
might not know about
- that a person is being rewarded or punished for good deeds or
sins of their parents
- that that God rewards goodness and punishes sin not in this world,
but in the afterlife
- and finally, here's a twist, based on the idea that a good person
must have done at least a few little sins, and a bad person must
have done at least a few little good deeds: in this world, God
grants the reward to a bad person and the punishment to a good
person, and vice versa in the afterlife. Therefore, if a good
person is suffering, you KNOW they are good person, because they
are getting their punishment now, and will get all kinds of heavenly
reward later. A bad person, on the other hand, get a good life
now, but oh boy are they gonna get it later! This even leads to
the idea that suffering is given to those whom God especially
loves, as a kind of test or opportunity to show faith.
Obviously, the ancient rabbis were struggling to make sense of
our basic paradox as described above- by moving the realm of reward
and punishment to the next life, they could preserve an idea of
God as both Just and Powerful. However, if you're like me, and
still struggling to make sense of God's justice, these answers
might leave you unsatisfied. If, on the other hand, you have a
strong sense that God does indeed keep Heavenly promises in a
very tangible way, these theologies might work for you, and that's
perfectly acceptable within traditional Jewish thought.
In our day, some thinkers, such as Mordecai Kaplan and Harold
Kushner, resolve the paradox by having us rethink our image of
God. For them, God is not a conscious Being who makes choices,
but more like a spiritual presence or force that comforts and
strengthens humans in hard times, and enables people to grow and
evolve. Kaplan basically gives up on the idea that God is All-Knowing,
preferring to think of God as "The Power that Makes for Salvation,"
(understood as a state of freedom and creativity.)
Kushner, on the other hand, in his powerful and wonderful book
on the topic, When Bad Things Happen To Good People, says that God is not All-Powerful; God does not act to do good
things for one person and bad for another, but instead suffers
with the suffering, acting in empathy rather than history. In
fact, I heard Harold Kushner make the quip (quoting Mordecai Kaplan,
actually) that "expecting the universe to treat you fairly because
you're a good person is like expecting the bull not to gore you
because you're a vegetarian."
Those answers help many, and have great merit, but also leave
me a bit unsatisfied. A final piece that helps me put things in
perspective is the answer at the end of the book of Job, in the
Bible. The story of Job, some of you may remember, is that he
had terrible sufferings brought onto him by a prosecuting angel,
who wanted to prove to God that the righteous (like Job) only
do good in good times, but would reject God in bad times. Most
of the book is taken up with a philosophical debate among Job
and his friends, who come to "comfort" him, by telling him that
since he's suffering, he must have sinned. Job rejects that idea,
refusing to admit that he deserved his suffering, but cleaving
to the idea of God's justice. Finally, towards the end, the Holy
One Godself enters the argument, speaking "out of the whirlwind,"
challenging the premise of the whole discussion:
Where were you when I laid the Earth's foundations?
Speak if you have understanding. Do you know who fixed the Earth's
dimensions, or Who measured it with a line? Onto what were its
bases sunk? Who set its cornerstone when the morning stars sang
together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
(Job 38:4-7)
For the next four chapters, the story has God repeating in great
detail the same basic theme: God is God, and we're not. We don't
ultimately know how the universe operates, or why it came to be
one way rather than another. That's God's job, and God is just
in ways that we can't apparently always understand.
Now, this answer might be just as unsatisfying to others as some
of the previous ones were to me, but the reason I find the end
of the book of Job so comforting is that I read it as relieving
me of the responsibility to have all the answers. I find some
measure of peace in the humbleness of saying, "well, I just don't
know, in the end." In the end, there is a mystery in our ability
to have faith in a crazy world. Please note, I'm not saying we
shouldn't keep challenging hard texts and struggling to achieve
religious wisdom- I'm saying that there are somethings which I
can't know, and I, personally, want to spend more time figuring
out some other questions.
Maybe I don't understand in the end why some people suffer, but
I have no less of a responsibility to do my part to prevent what
suffering I can prevent and comfort those near me. Rabbi Akiva
once quipped that if it wasn't for the poor, we wouldn't have
the opportunity to do the mitzvah of tzedakah, and the Rabbi of
Kotzk once said that even atheism is holy, because if you believe
there is no God, then you'd have to believe it's all up to you
to help those in need. My point is that the paradox of Divine
Justice is in God's realm; the problem of human justice and suffering
is in ours.
NJL |
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