Is God Cruel?

Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, isn’t merely irritated that widespread belief in God continues to persist in the twenty-first century. He genuinely has it in for this Deity whom he is sure does not exist. In The God Delusion, Dawkins launches a broadside at the God portrayed in the Old Testament:

Arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Dawkins has argued that from an evolutionary point of view, religious faith is a form of mental illness, and that trusting God comes down to “believing not only without evidence, but in the teeth of the evidence.”

And we haven’t even gotten to what Richard Dawkins says before he gets his coffee on a really bad day.

The question of God’s existence has puzzled humanity from day one. What makes the question so edgy is that it cannot remain an abstract discussion item in a college classroom. This world reels with pain. How can human beings sustain belief in a good and gracious God in the face of the tragedy of Darfur, religiously motivated radicals flying jets into buildings, unjust courtrooms, epidemics, birth defects, and children abandoned by their parents? If God is there, how can he bear all the pain and suffering in the world? Because everyone alive has known some measure of loss, this question speaks directly to our deepest fears and frustrations.

The French poet Baudelaire mused darkly, “If there is a God, he is the devil.” Virtually everyone who has prayed fervently at one time or another, yet seen no immediate change in difficult circumstances, has had to ponder the possibility that God might be very real indeed – but embodies a character that inspires exasperation and anger instead of hope and trust amongst his followers.

The problem of pain is classically described by the word theodicy. That’s a term one is not likely to hear in conversation at the Friendly Tavern. As to how a pastor might know what is being discussed at the Friendly Tavern, well, that will require another column.

Theodicy derives from two Greek roots: Theos, which means God, and dikaios, which speaks of what is right or just. To put it simply, how can God be thought just in a world like ours? The task of theodicy is essentially to get God off the hook. Over the centuries, answers have been wide-ranging: from a denial of the reality of pain itself (Christian Science); to the assurance that God wants to help, but cannot intervene (Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen to Good People); to assertions that God is too busy running the universe to care about your minor league problems (the Deism of Thomas Jefferson and friends); and, in a case where the theological answers are almost certainly worse than the problems they are trying to solve, various preachers proclaim that you are hurting because it’s your own rotten fault for not trying harder or trusting God with sufficient faith.

The Bible, for its part, clearly makes four propositions: This is God’s world, not an accident or by-product of evolutionary trial and error. The world is essentially good; an Artist of mind-boggling skill crafted it with an eye for both beauty and function. The world however is broken; human disobedience, in a way we cannot fully understand, has corrupted and compromised God’s intentions for our history. But the world can be redeemed and made new. The promise of Scripture is that that has been God’s plan from the beginning, and it is being slowly worked out, even in the conversations, appointments, and decisions that await each of us today.

The mission of ancient Israel, and the ongoing mission of those who throw in their lot with Jesus of Nazareth (who sums up all of Israel’s deepest hopes and dreams), is to help bring about the redemption of God’s broken world, right here and right now. If this is a valid way to understand reality, why does God still allow so much hurt?

Dr. James Dobson once received a letter in which a young woman blurted out, “I’m pregnant and not married. How could God allow this to happen?” The answer to that is fairly straightforward: God pays us the courtesy of letting our decisions actually mean something. We remember the words that Jesus prayed on the night before his execution: “Thy will be done.” God returns the compliment to us. He says to those who are convinced that their ways are superior to his, “Thy will be done.” There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that God miraculously intervenes every time we make selfish, bone-headed, or misguided decisions.

But an Indian Ocean tsunami cannot be laid at the feet of its 300,000 victims. The Bible frankly does not tell us why a great deal of suffering takes place. What we learn is that God never wastes pain. God doesn’t comfort us by “beaming us up” to heaven so we don’t have to endure a fallen world, but rather extends his gift of unbroken care in the midst of the worst the world can possibly throw at us.

Is God cruel? David Seamands remembers the grueling daily ritual of twisting one of his son’s legs, which had been severely injured in an accident. His son screamed and begged for him to stop. But Seamands and his wife, despite aching hearts, remained committed to this doctor-ordered physical therapy – knowing that one day their son would eventually walk and play and run with a straight gait. The Bible is not bashful in saying that pain is one of God’s primary means to accomplish something far more important than our short-range comfort: that we would come to see every circumstance as an opportunity for us to strengthen our reliance on God – and conversely, to allow God to strengthen his grip on us.

Richard Dawkins finds it impossible to believe simultaneously in God and cancer. How can this so-called God bear all the pain that exists in the world? Ironically, that is precisely what Jesus did on the cross. God put himself on the hook on a hill just outside Jerusalem. The ultimate mystery is that what many would say was unbearably cruel – the death of God’s own Son – wound up becoming the assurance that our suffering isn’t random or meaningless. It connects us with the One who truly understands our pain.