On Suffering, a review of Bart D. Ehrman s book God s Problem:

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1 On Suffering, a review of Bart D. Ehrman s book God s Problem: If I were to be asked the question why don t you believe in God? and if I knew that my questioner was honestly interested in my response (which can rarely be assumed,) I must say my initial answer would be well, how long do you have? The list of reasons for one to rationally doubt as a default position and for one to not make erroneous claims about the unknowable is a particularly extensive list. To detail all the reasons that just I, let alone others have for applying objective skepticism (in not just examining the evidence for celestial dictators but in all things), would most certainly escape the bounds of any brief discussion. However, if I was really forced to pick one biggie, one trump card from the long laundry list of reasons why I am not a believer, for me there is one undeniable facet of reality, one giant irreconcilable reason that for me supersedes all others. My strongest reason for doubt is in the contemplation of the degree of suffering in this world and how such suffering relates to the nature of, the praiseworthiness of, and ultimately the likelihood for the existence of an interventionist God. Make no mistake; the question of suffering and evil is not a new question. A wide variety of authors, theologians, and philosophers have tackled this subject for thousands of years. One of the latest to do so is world renowned Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman with his book: God s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question Why We Suffer. I highly recommend this book. It is an exceedingly accessible and easy read. Even those who might find themselves easily offended, the type who might be turned off by some anti-theists that they consider to be too strident or shrill would be hardpressed to be off-put by Ehrman s even-handed approach to this subject. I should add that I take one small issue with the book s subtitle. I think it should read How the Bible fails to RESOLVE Our Most Important Question for Bible does indeed offer a variety of answers, which is what primarily what God s Problem chronicles, but that in the end I, much like the author, find the answers it provides to be at best feeble, deficient, and unconvincing. The profound injustice of suffering in this world bothered Ehrman continually for decades, as he relates in this very personal book. Ehrman had a minor epiphany during his seminary training when an honest analysis of the Bible (and the conclusions that such analysis lead to) forced him to stop taking the Bible literally. However, it wasn't this insight ultimately caused him to lose his faith. In the end it was the irreconcilable problem with suffering that did it, although he admits that he, unlike I, went kicking and screaming from the Christian faith. If one presumes a benevolent, all powerful creator, then suffering becomes the most contradictory of realities that humanity faces. The degree and extent that suffering exists in this world stands in stark contrast with the idea of an all-loving, all powerful God overseeing life as we know it. The Greek philosopher Epicurus is generally credited with having first questioned suffering and the problem of evil, but it was the philosopher David Hume in his treatise Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that posed the question most succinctly: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? Most of God s Problem details the specifics of how and where the Bible s ham-fistedly attempts to address the problem of suffering. The first (and main) rationale offered to explain suffering is in the beginning of the Old Testament with God's punishment for sin, starting right away with the widely familiar characters of Adam and Eve. God makes His people suffer when they don't obey his commands. The major and minor prophets - and most of the other Old Testament books - spend a lot of time

2 documenting droughts, pestilence, war, famine, and destruction brought on as a direct result of disobeying God s will. God evidently punishes His people for disobedience. The second Biblical rationale for suffering is also from the Old Testament. It also pertains to sin, but this time due to man's inhumane behavior toward man specifically suffering caused by man's sinful nature. Good behavior naturally produces good consequences; cavorting and sinful behavior naturally causes bad consequences, but with plenty of collateral damage. God doesn't inflict this one personally, but he allows it to happen, despite many prayers and supplications to let this cup pass from our hands. The third Biblical rationale is that suffering can be liberating - for some Biblical authors suffering has a positive and redemptive aspect to it; the Bible implies that suffering builds character. Sometimes God brings good out of evil, such as in the compelling story of Joseph who is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. At the end of Genesis, through Joseph's suffering, God saves His people. The fourth Biblical rationale is suffering can be inflicted by God as a test of your faith. Job is the prime example of this precept. Satan and God have a disagreement as to whether or not Job can keep his faith in the event of personal catastrophes. In the story of Job, God allowed multiple rounds of suffering as a test of faith. Satan eventually destroyed all Job's property, killed his 10 children, sent three "friends" over to relentlessly tell Job how sinful he had been and had therefore been asking for it ; then Satan afflicted Job with torturously painful sores all over his body - all over a bet. As God himself acknowledged, Job was innocent and didn't deserve the treatment, but rebuked Job when Job dared to question Him. In the end, God rewarded Job's faithfulness by restoring what Job had lost, including seven new children (but not his 10 original children, as that of course would be crazy.) One can ill-conceive of a more ghastly, obnoxious concept than that of the idea that one s murdered children could blithely be replaced by a batch of new, different children. The fifth Biblical rationale for suffering, the apocalyptic approach, was popular during Jesus' day and in fact, Jesus and John the Baptist were both cut from this mold. Suffering is caused by the forces of evil and God is not responsible. When the end comes, the tables will turn, God will make things right, and the meek will inherit the earth. In the end Ehrman doesn't buy any of these tenuous justifications for the horrors in this world, and nor do I. Logical fallacies within Biblical explanations aside, as exploring those would entail an entirely different discussion, the Bible wholly fails to provide justification for the world as it is. A world stricken with natural disasters, disease, and starvation to say nothing of a perpetual history of inhumanity between mankind simply is not adequately addressed by any religionist s, including a Christian s handy fallback explanation handbook. The God of the Bible explicitly and implicitly endorses slavery. Was God simply trying to teach those who have suffered the yoke of slavery throughout mankind s history some sort of ghastly lesson? If so, does that mean the God of the Bible can be presumed to be all good or all loving? Is there some supposedly over-arching, noble purpose behind the extent, scope, and scale of suffering that exists? If there is, I don t think the amount of suffering in this world can be justified by any conceivable answer. I feel much the same on this question as did the character Ivan Karamozov in the classic novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. God s Problem spends a large portion of one its chapters

3 referencing a story from The Brothers Karamazov which is another book I highly recommend (though not for the faint of heart or casual reader as it checks in at over 800 pages.) Where God s Problem references The Brothers Karamozov closely parallels my own thoughts on the matter (and provides a nice summary of and commentary upon the relevant passages within The Brothers Karamazov): From the s I get, I realize that a lot of people think that the suffering experienced in this world is a mystery that is, that it cannot be understood. As I ve said before, this is a view that I resonate with. But many think, at the same time, that one day we will be able to understand and that it will make sense. In other words, God ultimately has a plan that we cannot, at present, discern. But in the end we will see that what happened, even the most horrendous suffering experienced by the most innocent of people, was in the best interests of God, the world, the human race, and even of ourselves. This is a comforting thought for many people, a kind of affirmation that God really is in control and really does know what he s doing. And if it s true, I suppose we ll never know, until the end of all things. But I m not sure that it s a convincing point of view. The most famous chapter of this very long novel is entitled The Grand Inquisitor. It is a kind of parable, told by one of the book s main characters, Ivan Karamazov, to his brother Alyosha, in which he imagines what would happen if Jesus were to return to earth as a human being. In his parable Ivan argues that the leaders of the Christian church would have to arrange to have Jesus killed again, since what people want is not the freedom that Christ brings but the authoritarian structures and answers that the church provides. I think the leaders of our world s mega-churches should sit up and take notice leaders who much prefer providing the certainty of right answers to guiding people to ask difficult questions. In any event, even though the chapter on the Grand Inquisitor is the novel s best-known chapter, it is the two chapters immediately before it that I have always found the most compelling. In these chapters it is again Ivan and Alyosha who are talking. Alyosha is a bright but inexperienced young novice at the local monastery; he is deeply religious but still displays some (at times delightful) naïveté. Ivan, his older brother, is an intellectual and a skeptic. Ivan admits that he thinks God exists (he is not an atheist, as interpreters have sometimes claimed), but he wants nothing to do with God. The pain and suffering in the world are too great, and ultimately God is at fault. Even if God were to reveal at the end of time the secret that made sense of all that had happened here on earth, it would not be enough. Ivan wants no part of it. As Ivan says: It s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept (page 235). He does not accept the world because even if God were to reveal at the end the one thing that made sense of it all, Ivan would still find the suffering in the world too horrible. Ivan likens his rejection of the world to a mathematical problem. The ancient Greek mathematician Euclid indicated that two parallel lines cannot meet (otherwise they would not be parallel). But Ivan notes that there are some geometers and philosophers who think that this rule applies only in the realm of finite space, that somewhere in infinity in fact the two parallel lines do meet. Ivan doesn t deny that this might be true, but he rejects it his mind can t grasp it and so he refuses to believe it. It is like that with suffering for him. If in the end God showed that it all served some greater, nobler purpose, it still would not be enough to justify it. As Ivan says: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, and... that ultimately, at the world s finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened.... Let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Let the parallel lines even meet before my own eyes: I shall look and say, yes, they meet, and still I will not accept it. (page 236) This then launches Ivan into a discussion of his view of suffering, in the key chapter of the book, called Rebellion. In it he explains that, for him, the suffering of innocent children cannot be explained, and that if an explanation from the Almighty ever is forthcoming, he simply won t accept it (that s why the chapter is called Rebellion for his pious brother Alyosha, this kind of attitude toward God is rebellious).

4 Much of the chapter involves Ivan agonizing over the suffering of the innocent. He talks about the violence of Turkish soldiers in the wars in Bulgaria who burn, kill, rape women and children, [and] nail prisoners by the ears to fences and leave them like that until morning, and in the morning they hang them. He objects to anyone calling this animal behavior, because that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, who could never behave with this kind of cruelty. He continues: These Turks, among other things, have also taken a delight in torturing children, starting with cutting them out of their mothers wombs with a dagger, and ending with tossing nursing infants up in the air and catching them on their bayonets before their mothers eyes. The main delight comes from doing it before their mothers eyes. (page 238) He then comes up with another horrible scenario: Imagine a nursing infant in the arms of its trembling mother, surrounded by Turks. They ve thought up an amusing trick: they fondle the baby, they laugh to make it laugh, and they succeed the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk aims a pistol at it, four inches from its face. The baby laughs gleefully, reaches out its little hands to grab the pistol, and suddenly the artist pulls the trigger right in its face and shatters its little head.... Artistic, isn t it? (pages ) Ivan s stories are not just about wartime atrocities. They involve the everyday. And what is frightening is that they ring true to real-life experiences. He is obsessed with the torture of young children, even among welleducated, civilized people living in Europe: They have a great love of torturing children. They even love children in that sense. It is precisely the defenselessness of these creatures that tempts the torturers, the angelic trustfulness of the child, who has nowhere to turn and no one to turnto that is what enflames the vile blood of the torturer. (page 240) He tells then the story of a five-year-old girl who was tormented by her parents and severely punished for wetting her bed (a story that Dostoevsky based on an actual court case): These educated parents subjected the poor five-year-old girl to every possible torture. They beat her, flogged her, kicked her, not knowing why themselves, until her whole body was nothing but bruises; finally they attained the height of finesse: in the freezing cold, they locked her all night in the outhouse, because she wouldn t ask to get up and go in the middle of the nights (as if a fiveyear-old child sleeping its sound angelic sleep could have learned to ask by that age) for that they smeared her face with her excrement and made her eat the excrement, and it was her mother, her mother who made her! (page 242) Ivan notes that some people have claimed that evil is necessary so that we human beings can recognize what is good. With the five year-old girl with excrement on her face in mind, he rejects this view. With some verve he asks Alyosha: Can you understand such nonsense [i.e., such evil acts], my friend and my brother, my godly and humble novice, can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? (page 242) For Ivan, the price is too high. He rejects the idea that there can ever be a divine resolution that will make all the suffering worthwhile, a final answer given in the sky by-and-by that will justify the cruelty done to children (not to mention others; he restricts himself to children just to keep the argument simple): Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children to do with it? (page 244). Ivan takes his stand in the here and now to say that whatever is revealed later, whatever can bring ultimate harmony to this chaotic world of evil and suffering, he rejects it, in solidarity with the suffering children:

5 While there s still time, I hasten to defend myself against it, and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to dear God in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! (page 245) In a sense Ivan is reacting against the old Enlightenment view of Leibniz, that despite all its pain and misery, this is the best of all possible worlds. The only way one could recognize that this is the best world is if what happens in it is finally explained and justified. But for Ivan, nothing can justify it. He prefers to stand in solidarity with the suffering children rather than to be granted a divine resolution at the end that provides harmony to the world that is, a sense of why all things worked together for the good purposes of God and all humanity. I d rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong. Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can t afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket. And it is my duty, if only as an honest man, to return it as far ahead of time as possible. Which is what I am doing. It s not that I don t accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket. (page 245) Here Ivan likens the final act of history, in which God reveals why all innocent suffering was necessary for the greater good the harmony of all things to a stage play, wherein the conflicts of the plot are resolved in the end. Ivan admits that the conflicts may be resolved, but he is not interested in seeing the play. The conflicts are too real and damning. And so he returns his ticket. And so, I too return mine.