Why God

In the aftermath of last month’s catastrophic tsunami in south Asia and Africa, a lot of people find themselves asking questions. New York Times columnist William Safire perhaps phrased it best when he opened a column on the topic with the following: “Where was God? Why does a good and all-powerful deity permit such evil and grief to fall on so many thousands of innocents? What did these people do to deserve such suffering?”

Go ahead. Ask these questions. How can you hope to have any answers if you won’t ask the questions?

Some people, as in the case of one unfortunate letter writer to the Times, “wonder why they don't just accept the obvious conclusion that God does not exist.”

Oh really? Look at your body. Look at the incredibly complex system of systems that is a human being. Look at how it interacts with the various natural systems of our planet, and how our planet interacts with the universe. When you breathe, your lungs take in oxygen (and if you breathe through your nose, it passes through a hairy filter system to keep out impurities, meanwhile warming and moistening the air for comfort), and this oxygen is picked up by the circulatory system, which carries it to all the cells of your body, then picks up waste and carries it to the various organs that get rid of it. Your lungs expel carbon dioxide, which plants take in and convert to oxygen for us to breathe again.

This is an accident?

A mother’s body produces liquid food for newborn infants. This is an accident?

When you are hot, you produce sweat, which is not only a built-in cooling system, it’s part of your natural mechanism for expelling wastes and toxins. When you’re ill, you get a fever because the offending bacteria can’t survive at the higher temperature. This is an accident?

The gravitational pull of the moon affects the ocean’s tides, but it also demonstrably affects human behavior and women’s menstrual cycles. When women live together over a period of time, their cycles tend to synchronize. This is a coincidence?

Look at a rose. Or a tulip. Or a field of vibrant red Tuscan poppies. Or even a humble dandelion. A fresh strawberry. The sexual organs of plants. Human organs, too, bloom, grow and turn vibrant colors. One of the euphemisms for an orgasm is “seeing God.” Think about it.

Consider the origin of the planet. The conditions that are necessary to sustain life. Now look at Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. (You might even want to consider the marvelous, shimmering translucent marble of which the sculpture itself is made.) Consider the inspiration, the talent, the dedication necessary to make such an artifact. You would have me accept that all of this is the result of some geological, chemical and biological coincidence?

The plays of Shakespeare. The pyramids of Giza. The Apollo space missions. The music of Mozart. Think of all the individual instruments that make up an orchestra. Someone invented them. Someone else built them. Someone taught these musicians how to play. Somehow they all gather together to interpret a system of notation that reproduces a sound that Mozart heard in his mind. Listen to the silver voice of Kiri Te Kanawa singing “Dove sono.”

Have you ever been in love?

I could go on, and on, and on, and on.

And yet, if there is no God, then everything around us, every single thing that exists in the entire universe, you, and every person you know, is simply the product of random chance.

Frankly, that prospect is much more difficult for me to believe than the concept of an Almighty God.

So why, then, is there evil and suffering in the world?

I think this is beyond man’s capacity to understand. That is hard to accept. Man has an innate desire to understand his world and his surroundings, and to question things. If we didn’t, we’d still be in caves. (Though we wouldn’t even have primitive tools and cave paintings.) But if you accept that God designed the universe, from the vast complexity of galaxies and solar systems down to the iris of your eye which adjusts according to the light and helps you focus, then it’s not such a leap of faith to reach the conclusion that He knows what He’s doing.

A friend once explained it this way: have you ever seen needlepoint? When you look at it from the back – our perspective – it’s a big mess of knots, loose threads, loops and jumbled colors. It’s also backwards. But when you see it from the front – God’s perspective – the picture is perfectly clear.

But you know, if you accept this premise, you can spend some time staring at the jumbled, messy, backwards picture, and parts of it will begin to make sense.

So ask these questions. People who tell you not to question God have no faith. Really, they don’t. They don’t because they never asked the questions. They don’t know for themselves. They are afraid. They're afraid of being exposed as the self-righteous pontificating frauds they are.

It’s true that we use phrases like “putting the fear of God” into someone. In several places the Bible talks about the necessity of fearing God. But I don’t think living in quaking terror of the Divine is what is intended. I believe it’s more an issue of having respect for the ultimate power.

Whenever an angel appears in the Bible, his greeting is not, “Hey, how are ya?” but rather, “Fear not!” God himself uses this salutation. A quick search on an internet concordance reveals the phrase “fear not” occurs 139 times in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

The problem is that many people have expectations of God. That’s a little arrogant, don’t you think? Rather, He has expectations of us. We ask a question, and expect a quick, clear answer, as if by sometime this afternoon there will be an email from God@heaven.com, subject heading “re: Inquiry 943,302,524,239,120,873,320B-4” that begins, “Dear Supplicant, thank you for your recent inquiry regarding…”

Sometimes people don’t like the answers they get. But if you asked me, “Does this dress make my butt look fat?” and you don’t like my answer, you don’t doubt my existence.

People of many faiths spend their entire lives in prayer and meditation in an effort to achieve enlightenment. Many answers can be revealed. But I don’t think any mortal has ever comprehended the secret of the universe. When Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to receive God’s law, he was gone for forty days! And still there was a lot of ground that didn’t get covered.

Additionally, God has a tendency to refrain from speaking literally. Or literally speaking. Notice how Jesus communicated almost exclusively through parables. It’s not a sin to build your house on sand, it’s just not a very good idea. He also tended not to explain many of these parables; He left them for us to consider the lessons hidden within.

Incidentally, this is why I think one of the lessons of the parables is to caution against taking the Bible too literally. Jesus wasn’t really talking about fig trees. I am one of the people, like Galileo condemned by the church for heresy, that believes that science – theory of evolution included – is not at all in opposition to the idea of an all-powerful Creator. The fact that I don’t accept parts of Genesis as literally true does not mean that the contents are not, in some way, truthful. The Bible says God created Adam from the dust of the earth. Darwin says we are descended from monkeys. (Pardon the gross oversimplification.) But literally, what is your body? Carbon and water. So is a monkey’s. I don’t see that the two theories are mutually exclusive.

People who are afraid of the theory of evolution fear it because they have not bothered to ask God about it.

But let’s get back to the troubling, eternal question before us. If God is all powerful, if God is all-knowing, if God is Love, then why do pain and suffering exist? Wherefore tragedy?

Again, we come back to the unsatisfying answer that we mere mortals cannot see God’s full purpose. But if you check back with the Bible, you will see no mention anywhere that earthly existence is supposed to be free of suffering, free of loss, free of doubt. In fact, that is earthly existence. God does not owe you anything beyond what He has already abundantly provided you in His magnificent creation. He makes no promises to you regarding your time on earth. His promises concern your immortal soul. Stick with Him through this painful life, trust that you are in His hands, trust that He loves you, recognize His role in your life, and your eternal reward, like God Himself, will be beyond man’s capacity for understanding.

Look at Jesus’ life. He was poor. He was persecuted. He suffered a horrible death. His time on earth wasn’t all that great. Why should we expect our earthly lives to be any different?

Time out for a parable: twelve years ago, when I visited New York City for the first time, I had a turbaned Sikh cab driver take me Kennedy airport for my flight back to Oregon. He was chatty and I told him this was my first trip. He said, “Oh, and how do you like it?” I said, “Well…there’s a lot of really great things, and there’s some stuff that’s not so great, either.” He chuckled and said, “A coin that doesn’t have two sides isn’t worth anything.”

I think we, as humans, have this idea that our lives are the product of good things that happened in the past. You know, your parents met, fell in love, and here you are. Aw. But somewhere in your ancestral past, I am confident, there is horrible tragedy. War. Murder. Sickness. Natural catastrophe.

Say for example, you are Italian. Your family origins can be traced to the Tuscan hillside fortress-city of Siena. In the years between 1340 and 1350, statistics show that over 1,000 people a year died from bubonic plague. Somewhere in history, a distant relative of yours lost his entire family, everyone he knew, everyone he loved. Gone. “Perche, Signor?” he wailed. “Quanta miseria, sono solo nel mondo, ahime!” Hoping to escape from despair, he left the walled city and moved to a smaller rural hamlet. There he met a beautiful young woman and started a family. Seven-hundred years later, here you are.

Your mother’s family is from England. In the early 1700s a pretty young maiden was betrothed to a handsome admiral from a good family. Unfortunately, he was lost at sea in a terrible storm. She was devastated and heartbroken. For years she remained inconsolable. But then as fate would have it, one day she met another fine man who fell in love with her. They married, and it’s part of his DNA that you carry, not the drowned admiral’s.

You see, we are mostly unaware of the forces in the world that shape our lives. They are not always kind. They are not always gentle. The repercussions of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, stretch out over years, decades, centuries, and eons. The theory goes that an asteroid caused the death of the dinosaurs. Imagine for a second that that never happened. What chance would early humans have had in this world trying to co-exist with the T-Rex? We’ll never know.

This, inconveniently, brings us to the issue of predestination vs. free will. If everything is preordained, then we have no choice in our lives. And yet we know we do have choice. Still, if you go back to the top of this commentary, it’s hard to dismiss the concept of a divine blueprint for the universe. This conundrum, like so many other things, exceeds man’s capacity for conscious understanding, because human logic is not God’s logic. But I believe in the dimension in which God exists they are interrelated.

Jesus’ passion and death was the fulfillment of ancient Hebrew prophecies: predestination. And yet Judas chose to betray Him. Peter chose to deny Him. The crowd chose to release the murderer Barabbas. Pilate chose to acquiesce to the mob. In the Bible, destiny and free will are not in conflict.

What role does God play in our daily lives? This is a topic for heated debate. The Old Testament refers constantly to a city-smiting, flood-causing God whose habit of summary judgment had people dropping dead left and right and changing into pillars of salt. Punishment.

But then Jesus came. Show me a passage in the Bible where Jesus punished anyone. He criticized, he rebuked. He even got angry, when he chased the moneychangers out of the temple. He was God. He could restore a severed ear with the gentle touch of his hand, cure leprosy and blindness, and raise from the dead. One would assume he could also have pointed his finger and reduced sinners to a smoking heap. He never did. Jesus spoke of forgiveness.

Jesus cautioned us against storing up treasures for ourselves on earth. He taught that it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter into Heaven. The plan could have called for him to be born to a wealthy and powerful family – the son of a king, perhaps. What tremendous influence He might have had then! But no, Jesus walked the earth as a poor man, relying on the charity of others for food and shelter.

Yet many people mistake wealth and earthly influence or success as signs of divine favor. If Jesus did not punish us while we lived, then neither did He reward us. There is one judgment, and one alone, and it comes at the end of days. (By the way, a note to Tim LaHaye and his ilk: St. Mark tells us, “No man knows the hour or the day,” chapter 13, verse 32.)

I do accept that God provides us with many opportunities to do His will, and that probably includes bringing us at times to places and positions of influence. Perhaps some people are, in fact, destined to lead. But they are still responsible for the decisions they make, as the lessons of Christ’s passion teach us.

In the wake of the 2004 election, many conservatives viewed Bush’s victory as a sign of God’s approval. Bob Jones wrote, “God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.” But if you accept this argument, you must also accept that God wanted Bill Clinton in charge for eight years. For that matter, God must have put Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq for a while and chose Hitler to lead Germany. He must have brought Osama bin Laden to the position of extraordinary influence that he exerts in the middle east. An uncomfortable thought, yes? Why would He do that? Well, why last month’s tsunami? Why the San Francisco earthquake of 1906? Why cancer? Why aren't deluxe bacon cheeseburgers healthy?

I don’t know. You’ll have to ask God. Just be prepared to wait a millennium or so for the answer to become clear.

Personally, though, I don’t believe God needs to rig elections for His candidate to win. Just sayin’, is all.

And so we are called upon to stare tragedy in the face, and see what good we can make of it. This is our great task. The Lord asks of us to maintain faith, to not give in to despair, to trust His will, and to trust that when our motives are pure, that He will assist us in doing His work.

I turn now to the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Mere words cannot describe the agony of those hours. Why? How?

But in the few short days that followed, while the ruins still lay burning, a miracle manifested itself in plain sight. Can you think of any time in earth’s history when the entire planet was more united in an expression of grief, sympathy and solidarity? The whole world was convulsed in horror at the brutality and carnage. Billions grieved for the loss of strangers they could never have known. Here was a golden opportunity, such has come, truly, only once in the history of mankind. Yes, that is how singular that day was.

Christ commands us to reach out to our enemies. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44) Or, “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27) “Do not resist one who is evil; if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the left also.” (Matthew 5:39) “To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your shirt.” (Luke 6:29)

Now, that’s hard. That’s just very, very hard. Is it smart foreign policy? I don’t know, you’ll have to ask God. But for a President who claims to be guided by his Christian faith – and I freely confess I am in no position to doubt him nor have I authority to judge him – what Bush did next is hard to justify on a Scriptural basis. He chose war. Was that wise? Can any good come of it? Well, we’ll just have to wait, pray, trust and see.

Our daily lives are filled with miracles; we must just open our eyes to see them. Our daily lives are also filled with sorrow. Why?

You’ll have to ask God.