They say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Wise advice but we get it, Suzanne is hurting. Some hurts are due to our own making, and some seem to come from nowhere, like cancer. Having not had to face the undeserved hurts, this friend and admitted fool can only offer an uninformed opinion about the problem of evil, a problem that has vexed God believers from the get-go.
Why would a
good and loving God put together a world such as ours? There are no safe
places, risk is everywhere, the tables are constantly being turned, and our world
is seemly being terrorized by this good and loving God. Why? When cancer strikes,
we scream it out, why God?
Some say
evil is among us to give God the opportunity to do miracles. Miracles happen
but mostly they do not happen and when they do, their happening has nothing to
do with the God status of those involved. Some say we humans deserve our fate
because somehow, we have earned it, if not personally then through the Bible bedtime
story of Adam and the tree of good and evil. Weight this opinion how you will but
does it offer a remedy to the individual when cancer strikes? Do we not still scream,
why me?
This is where
the issue sits in traditional theology. To some of us the problem of evil is
largely up in the air. Let’s ask another question, did our good and loving God
put together this world to raise good chickens? This is also traditional
theology. Our world is God’s henhouse. This seemingly simple solution to the
problem of evil crumbles as it does not stack up against our life experience.
The writer of
Ecclesiastes tells us that life is a gamble, life is a blessing and a curse,
our individual fortunes are impossible to predict. The people trashed Job as
evil overtook his life. “You must have done some evil to deserve your
misfortune, God is punishing you! Repent before it is too late!” Most of us
cannot maintain our innocence as Job did as he bucked the popular theological opinionates.
Some curses we bring to our own lives while some are the consequence of just
being alive. We all deal with both.
Around and
around the theologians go to please an audience. Some very few of us believe
that God so built this world to teach us, almost to force us, to understand and
walk in freedom. God is the greatest free being who insists that we mirror the
free life. Free from every tyranny this world dumps upon us, including every
hurt imaginable. When it hurts, it is God doing God’s thing.
Eternity will
be total freedom.
G. "BoBo" Goslaw
Landers, Ca.
