Recollections

My first serious struggle with faith came as an undergraduate, when my Introduction to Logic professor introduced me to the logical problem of evil. One of the many books I subsequently read about that (still troubling) subject was John Stackhouse’s Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evil.

Stackhouse’s slim volume doesn’t offer a theodicy per se, and I’m not sure what I would think of the book if I read it again today. But some of the book’s small asides have stuck with me over the last ten years. One is when Stackhouse addresses the unstated assumption that lurks behind all discussions of the problem of evil: that if God could offer a comprehensive, morally sufficient explanation for all the suffering in the world, we would be able to understand it. What that assumption exposes is the hubris that often motivates arguments about the problem of evil–the idea that even with our limited understanding, we can understand the basic ordering of the universe better than God can, so much so that we can demand of him an explanation for his actions.

That makes it sound like Stackhouse thinks it’s ridiculous for us to ask God for an explanation of evil, but he’s careful to avoid saying that. Indeed, one of the things that was most helpful for me when I read the books was its argument that God is not offended by our questions. Nonetheless, I think it’s useful every once in a while to recognize the ridiculousness of our posture when we, as human beings who know how frequently we are befuddled and mistaken, to pose dilemmas to God as if we were his intellectual equal.

In this vein, Stackhouse quotes a passage from philosopher Thomas Morris that has always stayed with me:

[Questioners of God are often] people who don’t have a clue as to what exactly they would do about the most pressing problems of their own city if they were mayor, or concerning the greatest difficulty facing their state if they were governor. They would probably be quite hesitant if asked how precisely they would solve the greatest national crises if they were president, but they have no hesitation whatsoever in venturing to declare how they would solve what may be the single most troubling cosmic religious problem if they were God. (p. 91-92)

That’s not anything like a knockdown argument for problem-of-evil questioners, because most of them aren’t saying they know what they would do to rid the cosmos of evil, but only that they assume God should, could, and would know what to do. Still, there’s a useful point being made here, or at least one that has proved useful to me.

This long-ago passage came back to me in a flash over the weekend. Yesterday I worked all day painting a piece of unfinished pine furniture that I bought last week. I had resolved to “distress” the furniture so that it would look antique. So first, I added four coats of milk paint. Then I added a top coat sealant. Next, I sanded the piece in “high-wear” places to make it look distressed. And finally, I added a rosewood wood stain to make the distressed spots stand out. That’s where things went awry. The rosewood stain turned out to be extremely red, and now the finished product looks almost purple–not at all what I had intended.

I know this is facile, but yesterday night as I was gnashing my teeth about all this, the thought did cross my mind: If I can’t even screw up a dresser right, maybe I should think twice before telling God how to run the universe.

“We lose our souls, and hazard our eternal salvation, if we will not accept the public responsibility which we assume when we become disciples of Jesus. It is more than doubtful whether we are doing this if our existence does not force those around us to take notice — with all the painful consequences this may involve for us. But they will not take notice, nor will they be disturbed or annoyed by our existence, if we do not come out into the open as who we are, doing what they do not do; if in our attitude to the given factors and orders and historical forces which they regard as absolute there is no difference between us and them, but only uniformity and conformity.”

— Karl Barth, from The Call to Discipleship

That quote pairs well with another goad I have recently read: the story of Victorinus, as told by St. Augustine.

“I was told that it was right and proper for me as a boy to pay attention to my teachers, so that I should do well at my study of grammar and get on in the world. This was the way to gain the respect of others and win for myself what passes for wealth in this world. So I was sent to school to learn to read. I was too small to understand what purpose it might serve and yet, if I was idle at my studies, I was beaten for it, because beating was favoured by tradition. …

“But we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as ‘business’, and even though boys’ games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders. No one pities either the boys or the men, though surely we deserved pity, for I cannot believe that a good judge would approve of the beatings I received as a boy on the ground that my games delayed my progress in studying subjects which would enable me to play a less creditable game later in life. Was the master who beat me himself very different from me? If he were worsted by a colleague in some petty argument, he would be convulsed with anger and envy, much more so than I was when a playmate beat me at a game of ball.”

— Saint Augustine, Confessions, I.ix, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin

For another translation, see the CCEL.

The questioning mind is a dictator satisfied with nothing less than a thousand-year reign. Why should it stop? Why relinquish its hold? It is inherent in the very nature of reflection to resist limitation. The more one tries to restrict it, the more power one gives it; for reflection is suspicious of nothing so much as attempts to quell it. It may lie low for a time, but will blaze back all the fiercer for having been suppressed.

Daniel Taylor, The Myth of Certainty, p. 19

“There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seeme a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once; Nay, the ordinary things in Nature, would be greater miracles, than the extraordinary which we admire most, if they were done but once; … though he glorifie himselfe sometimes, in doing a miracle, yet there is in every miracle, a silent chiding of the world, and a tacite reprehension of them, who require, or who need miracles.”

– John Donne (1627)