What to Do?

Talking to a Calvinist acquaintance today. Mentioned the sixty thousand (and counting) deaths in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, etc. For the record, I didn't provoke the conversation; he did.

I asked: "What does a Calvinist do in the face of this situation? I mean, did God ordain this?"

"Yes," he answered. "But I don't believe that because I'm perverse. I believe it because I think that's obscenely Biblical."

"God ordained the death of sixty thousand people?"

"Yes. And He still maintains his infinite goodness."

May I say that this is the kind of religious thinking that is driving me toward atheism? Let's set aside the issue of natural evil as un-synthesizable in a theodic framework for now. Just parse that last statement. From the Calvinist perspective, God ordained this tsunami; He must, as He is absolutely sovereign. (I'm using He because my acquaintance did.) This guy would have me believe that epistemology and ethics are so slippery that God can simultaneously kill sixty thousand people and maintain an ontological standing called good. I find that an impossible reach.

As for natural evil, it's an issue I'm still struggling with. Why do these things happen? Before you post a comment about "the Fall" with capital letters and all, please know that I don't believe in a primordial fall from perfection. A Fall does not explain natural evil any more than original sin explains our guilt before God. Sorry. I believe in the goodness of God, so I try to let God off the hook for situations like the one in Asia, but how? How is God not culpable?

Comments

[Bruce]

Are you saying that God is at fault for creating a world that involves plate techtonics?

[greg]

Bruce,

That would seem to be a fair question. We could also ask if God is culpable for creating a world with tornados, hurricanes, landslides, etc. It is the system God created. If God was Ford at this point, we'd be suing him/her.

[Resident Atheist]

To be fair, I don't think a strict Calvinist conception of "good" would include human life anywhere, at least life in its "depraved" form; God alone is good. So in that sense, what your acquantance argues is at least internally consistent.

But then why use the word "good" at all, if it can only be applied to God and the unidentifiable elect? Does the word communicate anything? Buggered if I know.

[eddie]

I don't know much about goodness and that calvin guy, other than he pees a lot. My only thought is that if life is eternal and it doesn't end here then our "lives" are not much for God to worry about as a whole. If there is no true death then why would God see this as a bad thing. If I am understand the whole out look it would seem that God's bigger agenda for his kingdom is more important than a small step in the eternal exsistance of these people.

Like I said though. I don't know much about this junk and You know how I feel about what God can and can't do.

Eddie

[eddie]

P.S. If you want ansewers you should go to Kurt Camron's website. It has all the "Truth". He is better than that bible ansewer man you are always talking about.

There is a link from my blog to both that site and the "evidence bible" site.

Eddie

[Streak]

Good post. I am most concerned how American evangelicals will internalize this event as further proof of how much God prefers them over others.

[eddie jones]

You mean God doesn't love americans more than foriegners!!! That is news to me. I bet you are also going to tell me that santa clause doesn't exsist and the the tooth fairy didn't leave that money under my pillow.

Eddie

[Lorrie]

I'm just waiting to hear that this is yet another sign of the end times - where are those people???

[eddie]

Everyone knows that the end times already happend. We are living in those evil times were God has forsaken us. That is why this happened...

[nick]

oh dear.....
(nick)

[Fat Calbert]

In my estimation, the problem with Calvinism is the arbitrary choosing of the elect as opposed to the suffering or death of humanity (most theologies seem to struggle equally with the latter). Perhaps humanity deserves to die but if that is true why not kill us all? Why choose some and not others if all are equally guilty? Indeed, why not save us all if freedom can be nullified by God’s pertinacious gravity? It just doesn’t add up. If man ought to suffer/die then I say fine and good, but to be fair obliterate us all and let us quake before the throne of the all-powerful God in fairness on equal grounds of condemnation.

[Scott Jones]

It is for reasons like this that I became firmly anti-Calvinist when a college freshman. As I've said on here before, it is the one intellectual position for which I have no tolerance (I don't tolerate lots of non-intellectual positions as well).

At least this Calvinist friend had the balls to stick to the implication of his belief. But shouldn't the outcome of his line of reasoning compel him to reject the premises? Because the conclusion is pretty clearly evil to me.

As to natural evil. This event is probably going to have an impact similar to the Lisbon earthquake that got Modern & Enlightenment debate going about natural evil. My view is that any finite world has limitations and consequences for the way things interact. But part of the problem is that we have adopted Greek notions of perfect being and adapted them to God, which notions are not Judaeo-Christian in origin. Omnipotence and omniscience are not biblical concepts. I simply don't think God has the power to stop an event like this. Because if God does have that power and doesn't use it, then God is clearly evil.

[Adam]

Is anybody else here waiting for the first asshole to say that they had it coming because they were all pagans anyway? My guess is it will be Falwell again.

[Travis]

As morally repugnant as it is, the Calvinist position is logically consistent, but it is ridiculous for the Calvinist still to call her/his God good. Granted the existence of the evil of this world, any theology that holds that God is truly omnipotent and omniscient cannot escape the conclusion that God, if she/he/it exists, is an ogre. Hick, Plantinga, Swinuburne, Leibniz, Augustine, et al. have not, nor can anyone, solve the problem of evil without denying the traditional divine attributes of omnipotence and omniscience.

If you want your God to be all powerful, then you should accept the consquence that God is not wholly good--at least not good in the sense in which English speakers use the term, and if God is good in only some esoteric, analogical sense, then why call God good at all?

If God exists and is omnipotent, then God could have spared all those lives in Asia. Thus, if an omnipotent God exists, it is the duty of every moral person to raise her/his fist in protest and to say, "To hell with you, vile fiend. I'll burn in hell forever before I'll bow my knee before a monster like you." What was it that Satan said in Milton's Paradise Lost? "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

[cheek]

I find it rather interesting that no one has really attempted any sort of systematic theodicy in response to your request, Greg. I think that it probably suggests that the only real answer to your question or Dostoyevsky's question about little girls having shit smeared all over their bodies by their fathers is that we don't know. In the face of such truly evil events we are forced, as Christians, to make a faith statement that there is an explanation that we don't have. Every fleshed-out Christian attempt at theodicy that I have seen has been an implied mockery of the pain of those who suffer. I think about this theological issue probably more than any other, but my general conclusion is that it's better just to try to make personal peace with the issue (though I'd warn against too comfortable a peace) and leave it to everyone else to find similar peace on their own. That way you don't run the almost certain risk of saying truly horrible things about God while trying to defend her.

[Bruce]

How's this for a theodicy:

What's the difference between saying that,

"a perfect God should give us a perfect Bible"

and saying,

"a perfect God should create a perfect world?"

[greg]

Bruce,

I think the primary difference is a perfect Bible doesn't prevent natural evil and the lack of a perfect Bible doesn't make God morally culpable for millions of deaths. A perfect Bible is subject to the vagaries of humanity. Natural disasters occurred before we showed up on the planet. A "perfect" world, which is not what I'm asking for, would make it necessary for the deaths of tens of thousands of people to be done at the hands of free, evil people not at the hands of dispassionate, natural disasters. A perfect world would imply that either people always chose good or people didn't have a choice. I'm not asking for either. I'm simply saying: in a world where people are capable of great evil, wouldn't it be nice if God had created in such a way that tsunamis didn't add to the mix?

[*Christopher]

These are disturbing theological reflections. But many folks from traditions other than Calvinism might offer similiar thoughts. Questions of theodicy continue to remain questions for me.

I wouldn't worry to much about atheism, Greg. In your case it sounds more like you're letting go of images of G-d no longer viable as you reflect upon the mystery of Christ. A good thing in the course of maturing in Christ IMHO.

But in the midst of all of this reflection on evil and suffering, what looms as most important in my own mind is: How have I been of assistance to brothers and sisters suffering and in pain?

["Prof" Marty]

Natural "evil." It's funny what we label as "evil" when it may just be "Nature."

I am always surprised when *we* are surprised when Nature acts like Nature has always acted.

I'm not dismissing the death of thousands, but the cataclysmic forces that operate in the world aren't categorically different from the cataclysmic forces that have always operated in the world.

Without waxing eloquent in these quick comments - it's ironic to me that there is a certain theological coherence to "natural evil" and Babel in Genesis 11.

What happens in nature we perceive as "evil" because we have "built towers" and "gathered together" against, perhaps, God's command of Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 9:1 "be fruitful" and seemingly implied spread out and "fill the earth".

Instead, with our megapolis, ports of commerce the forces of nature, appear to us as "evil." Btu we've not embodied God's order for creation.

And while I don't mean and do not make a direct connection to Genesis 6 and the recent water-tsunami . . . it's interesting that what "they" (the bible people) viewed as God's force of judgment was a water-catastrophe of nature.

Anyway.

[Resident Atheist]

Nature and evil aren't exclusive. It's tempting to define evil in terms of rebellious acts deriving from a corrupted will, but when push comes to shove, with disasters as large as this earthquake/tsunami we seem to care more about the effects than we do the causes. I have yet to see anyone in blogspace wrestling with the problem of why God would let nature proceed according to the laws he himself purportedly created and made binding. (This, as best I can tell, is why the handful of deists I know consider the event theologically irrelevant.)

I've used these examples here before, but I have no problem calling the effects of vancomycin-resistant staph bacteria, ebola, and AIDS evil. This is partially because I reject the usual Western metaphysical baggage that comes along with the term 'evil', and partially because I think, well, if those things aren't evil, what is? Seriously. These little critters induce just as much physical, emotional and (whatever this term means) spiritual suffering as any act of wickedness with malice aforethought; and like all suffering, some people do conquer it, but others are conquered by it and left broken.

[cheek]

Prof Marty,
The problem with what you are suggesting is that if you believe God is at all morally culpable for the outcome of his creative act, then all the individual deaths caused by natural phenomena would necessarily be open to moral argument. Wide-scale disasters like this one make the existence of such evil painfully evident to everyone, but even if we were spread out over all the earth, natural disasters would still kill people. So it seems that there must still be some moral answer for why God created a world that behaves like this.

[Suzy]

Well, humm I dont think God caused these things myself you see it is simple logic God Created this earth (yes?)Adam and Eve ate of the tree that was forbidden (yes?) Then think what did God do He turned the earth over to no one other then who humm satin i believe so you see there for satian in in control of earth for a few years or more Right? hum then maybe all the bad things are caused by evil satin after all isnt the earth controld by him ????

[greg]

Suzy,

umm, no. I don't believe in a demigod named Satan. Sorry.