Theodicy

This article from Rob Rosenbaum, a religious columnist for the New York Observer outlines the current debate in religious circles over the question of God's role in the tsunami tragedy.

As with any question of theodicy (the attempt to reconcile the notion of an all-powerful, all-good God who intervenes in the world with the unquestionable existence of evil), the argument basically goes like this:

If God is all-powerful, ever-loving, and willing to intervene in the world, why does he allow bad things to happen, especially to good people? This question has been approached in several ways (such as Job, where the answer is basically that God is inscrutable), but it is a terribly difficult question to address. Of course there are pat answers: "God is unknowable," "these people are better off in heaven," "God doesn't exist, so the whole thing is irrelevant," "God is punishing mankind for their sins," and so on. But the point has not been addressed: God made the mess, so God owns the mess. Even if we don't make God responsible for the mess (Deism), God is still the one who fubared the world.

Anyway, read Rosenbaum because I don't feel like going over this stuff in detail. I didn't like, though, the fact that his article lacked a real conclusion. His only real point was that 1) there are no good, easy answers to the question of theodicy, 2) the need so many people have to exonerate their conception of God from connection with the any form of evil belies their own doubt and incomprehension, 3) attempting to resolve the question of evil in the world is pointless. Or so it seemed to me.

In my opinion, this dilemma arises from a limited conception of deity. By conceiving of God basically as a super-parent, we are continuously confronted with the limitations of our own understanding. Why isn't our super-parent taking care of us?! we wail every time something bad happens.

But why do we experience such suffering? Satan? The Four Noble Truths? No good without evil? Can there be universe without deity? I mean, really, what kind of fucked up, Descartian worldview do we have that compares the universe to a watch? We need a new myth, really a very old myth (read the Upanishads), a biological myth for a biotech age: You, me, and everything are all manifestations of god's being. The universe isn't a machine, it's an organism. The tsunami, in a sense, was God scratching himself. This is a perspective that says "this individual life is not destroyed, but instead becomes another part of God," where such micro-level considerations as the individual life are less theologically problematic.

Of course, the need to discount the individual ego as the priviledged perspective arises, which the Hindus realized long ago. If one child is abused, does that child's suffering count for naught? The child is Brahman, we might say, and what it perceives is illusion related to its misconception that it is an individual, whereas it truly is all things. But I know this metaphor isn't complete. It might be partially valid, but it seems too callous. I would like to think that the experiences of individuals are of some account, but maybe this is wishful thinking.

Another minor gripe about this article: Rosenbaum quotes another author, who quotes the Dalai Lama. Asked about the suffering of a parent who has lost a child, the Lama replies that when you lose a child, you are constantly thinking of the child in your imagination. Rosenbaum thinks this means the parent is comforted by the child's memory, but I think he means something much more practical but cold. When you lose a child, that child is no more. It has no reality. The child exists only in your imagination, and your suffering is tied to what is essentially a phatasm, a figment of your imagination. If you recognize the nonexistence of the cause of your suffering, you can be freed from it. If this is what he meant, I can see why he might be ambiguous about how he says it. This is not the kind of thing you want to tell a grieving parent, however true it might be. If it's not what he meant, well, what a callous boy am I!