Questions from an atheist part 6

June 22, 9:12 AMSt. Louis Presbyterian ExaminerAlicia Donathan

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Job (1880) by Leon Bonnat

Q:  If there is a loving God, why does He permit--much less create--earthquakes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters which kill thousands of innocent men, women, and children each year?  

As previously noted,  the answer to this question is, "I don't know.  And neither does anyone else."   There is more to be said in conjunction with this, but nothing that follows will change that fundamental answer.  It will hopefully serve to enrich and clarify it.  

This question, though having formal logical aspects (i.e., Is it logically coherent to believe in a good God who allows natural disasters?), is ultimately a question of trust.  Can we trust a God who allows such things as natural disasters?  I will try to answer both the formal logical questions inherent to the query as well as the question of trust inevitably connected to it.  

First, a little background:  

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was created as a home for mankind.  God placed human beings, His images, on the earth to cultivate it, to rule it, to transform it and live in it.  The earth was made to receive man's efforts and be the place of his work, his play, and his rest.

However, mankind did not cooperate with God.  Adam and Eve rebelled, refusing to serve God in love and gratitude, instead choosing to seize authority for themselves, rejecting God's authority.  This is the meaning of the eating of the fruit in Eden.  When humanity rejected God as King, and vaunted themselves as the supreme authority, God responded.  He cursed the Serpent, Satan, who prompted their sin; He cursed the man and the woman with pain and hard, frustrated labor all their lives; He drove them from the Garden, into exile.  

Ok. So much for background.  It is important to keep this story in mind when hearing any Christian answer to a question, especially one carrying so much freight as this one.  All of our answers, and all of our interactions with God, are from the standpoint of creatures who have fallen out of a right relationship with Him, rejecting the true wisdom and authority which He gives, and seeking to seize authority for ourselves; in so doing, we have forfeited a large degree of true wisdom and stand as blind men in need of guidance, and as rebels in need of a dose of humility.  

Now, onward:  The answers to this question lie largely in the book of Job.  When Job suffered the loss of all his property to foreign raiders; his sons and daughters to natural disaster; and his quality of life to horrific disease, Job acknowledged that God had allowed all of this.  Job's response to God?  "Yahweh ['the LORD'] gave, and Yahweh has taken away; blessed be the name of Yahweh." (Job 1:21)  

Job recognized that God is the giver of life; therefore, as life's giver, God has the right to take the life He gave.  When God does so, it is not murder.  It is His prerogative.  Murder is the unlawful taking of human life.  While it is unlawful (immoral) for one human to take another human life, except under strict circumstances prescribed by law (see Ex. 21, Gen. 9:6), this is so because humans did not give life.  God did. So humans do not inherently have the right to take life away (again, except under strict circumstances prescribed by God Himself).  But God may lawfully take life again, when He sees fit.  No human has this prerogative, but God does.  

If I give my daughter a certain privilege, then later discover that this particular privilege is no longer in her best interest, I have the right to take the privilege away.  The difference, of course, is that we can usually discern the reasons why a parent would take something from his or her child; if there is no discernible reason for the parent to do so, then we say the parent is acting arbitrarily and this is wrong.  Sometimes the accusation of arbitrariness is likewise leveled at God.  If we, His children, cannot discern His parental reasons for the things He takes away, we are tempted to accuse Him of arbitrariness and hence, being in the wrong.  

However, this is a major category mistake, as Job and his friends learned.  The reason human parents can be found guilty of arbitrariness is because other adult humans (their peers) are competent to judge their motivations.  But a three-year-old is not (normally) competent to judge the motives of his father, and in ordinary civil society is not permitted to do so.  We, being but children to our Maker and Father God, are not competent to judge His motivations for what He does.  We are not His peers.  

Job's three friends thought they were competent to do so.  They thought they had an idea why God was doing what He was doing to Job.  But they were wrong, and received severe rebuke from God for it.  That is the great lesson of Job:  We creatures are not competent to judge the motives of our Creator.  

When God appeared to Job and his friends, He resoundingly declared His superior wisdom to Job, invoking the wonders of creation which no human mind can fully comprehend.  If, then, we are not competent to comprehend the behavior of bees, the formation of stars and black holes, the time-space continuum, let alone the full workings of a single cell, then how can we presume the competence to grasp God's motives for giving and taking life when He does?  Job had no answer; neither should we.  Job instead repented and trusted God, and lived without understanding why God did to him what He did.  This is Job's lesson: trust in God should not depend upon our ability to understand all He does.  

It seems that what lies behind this question (and several upcoming questions in Templeton's list) is a lurking assumption that if we humans cannot conceive of a motive that we can fit with God's love and justice, then God's love and justice are suspect.  If we cannot conceive of a good reason for God to do something, then some people have a tendency to declare that, therefore, there is no such reason possible.  If I can't conceive of a loving and just reason for God to take the lives of people on the shores of southeast Asia by a tsunami, then there is no loving or just reason.  It's simply senseless.  So the reasoning goes.  

But this is to make our own mental capacities the measure of what is possible.  And that is extreme pride.  Alvin Plantinga uses the following illustration:  Suppose we have a tent.  Suppose that someone tells you that there is a Saint Bernard in that tent.  If that is the case, you have the right to expect to be able to see the Saint Bernard upon peeking your head into the tent.  A Saint Bernard is that sort of a thing: an object we, in our unaided human capacities, ought to be able to discern.  Thus, if, upon poking your head in, you do not see one, you have the right to conclude that there isn't a Saint Bernard in the tent after all.  You've been had.  

However, suppose again we have a tent.  Now suppose someone tells you that there is a mosquito in that tent.  Now suppose you poked your head in and saw nothing.  In that case, despite seeing nothing, you would not be entitled to the conclusion that there is in fact no mosquito in the tent.  This is because a mosquito is not the sort of thing we, in our natural human capacities, ought to expect to detect (in this case) without being shown.  So your inability to detect any mosquito upon looking tells you nothing about whether a mosquito actually is there or not.  

So it is with God's reasons for His actions.  Not only does He not normally share them with us, but His reasons are the kind of thing that we should not expect to be able to discern with our natural abilities.  They belong to the class of things like the mosquito, not like the Saint Bernard.  Therefore, upon discovering that we cannot discern any loving or just reason for God's actions in a particular case, we are nevertheless not entitled to conclude that no such reason exists.  We are instead bound to conclude that we simply cannot see it, as we could not see the mosquito.  

Our trust in God's goodness (His love and His justice) is founded, therefore, not on our ability to discern all His motives in a given instance; it is founded, rather, on the abundant testimony He has given to His goodness, in creating us, providing for us all we need for life, and in His saving acts recorded in the Bible.  God is good; He cannot be otherwise.  Thus, we have ample reason to believe in His goodness, and no excuse for denying it.  Herman Bavinck said it well:  

“For us the will of God is often the final ground of things, and we have to acquiesce in it, even though we do not know why God acts thus and not otherwise. But in God that will always has those wise and holy reasons for His acting thus and not otherwise, for He never acts except in harmony with all His attributes, His love, wisdom, righteousness, and so on.” (Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3)