Thats my opinion
Thats my opinion's JournalWhy is there evil and suffering?
The basic philosophical question is “why is there something and not nothing?”
The basic theological question is, “why is there evil, and how is God implicated?”
The dilemma goes like this:
If God is good he would will to stop evil.
If God is powerful he would be able to stop evil.
Evil exist, and therefore God is either not good or not powerful.
Theologians and many others have struggled unsuccessfully with that issue for centuries.
Some of the inadequate or partial answers:
Human ignorance.
Human sin.
Human freewill—as God stepped back
The fall of Adam. (“I have sinned,” said Adam originally.)
Human failure to prevent suffering (allowing people to starve by a failure to share food).
God is testing us to make us stronger.
God is the author of evil as well as good.
There is no evil outside our inaccurate perception.
All things will eventually turn out for good.
We continually violate God natural laws.
And there are others
The difficulty with all these answers lies in the notion that God is a big, powerful person who lives somewhere in the sky and controls what goes on here like a puppeteer who manipulates the strings of his dolls. We even refer to God as “he.” Perhaps God is not a super man, a grand King or a benevolent parent. What if God is that energy which enlivens all that is, which lures creation on, and is the creative power, which simply enlivens all creation? This does not suggest a pantheism in which God is the creation itself, but a panentheism in which God is within all creation as its source of energy. Thus God suffers with us—as a fellow sufferer. In Christian theology, that is the meaning of the cross. God therefore not only wills to overcome suffering and evil, but also is at work within everything to refine all of life. Thus all things are in a continual state of evolution, and the energy behind evolution is the evidence of God with us.
Modern theology is rapidly getting rid of this sky wizard notion of God, and increasingly seeing God as Doing and not Being. God is best understood as a verb, not a noun. Religion becomes, therefore, our human participation in all the creative processes of life, not a belief in someone up there.
If we are to have an intelligent conversation about science, we had better come to terms with the amazing new insights of modern scientists. If we are going to have an intelligent conversation about religion we had better come to terms with the amazing new insights of modern theologians. If the only thing I know about science comes from the dark ages, my ignorance would immediately be obvious.
"You will know them by their friuts"
Here are a few things I know about first hand and are not simply speculative or made up.
Question: A family faces hard times. The mother is a part-time house cleaner who earns less than minimum wage. The father hasn’t had a job for a year. In almost every community in the United States where can they go for some help for groceries?
Answer: Groups of churches have banded together to provide food supplies. In the community where I live, churches care for several hundred families every week. Most of the food is collected weekly from congregations. Nothing is sold.
Question: Children in scores of families are ashamed to go to school because they have no decent clothes. Where are clothes outlets where they can be cared for?
Answer: In every community I know anything about, churches or a collection of churches provide good clothing that is given away to anyone in need.
Question: Skid Rows across the nation are the homes for thousands of the forgotten. Where can these desperate people find a safe place to sleep?
Answer: in most of these communities the Salvation Army—a religious organization—as well as other church sponsored bodies offer places to escape the tyranny of the streets. In most cases there is no religious test and no compulsory church service.
Question: In blighted neighborhoods poor people are at the mercy of slumlords. Who offers the legal services necessary for them to secure their rights?
Answer: In the city I know best the poverty law center provides attorneys ready to advocate for the defenseless. This center was begun by a devout Catholic woman, herself an attorney.
Question: Where can the nobodies in our city find basic medical care?
Answer: The same organization that offers legal help now is staffed by a score of newly licensed MDs who want to work with the poor but cannot afford to do so because of medical school debts. This religious organization pays their educational expenses and offers placements in a series of clinics in the toughest parts of the city.
Question: What is the most effective organization working to free young men and women from the gangs?
Answer: It is called “Home Boy Industries” which was begun and is still led by a catholic priest.
This just a small sample of what is happening all across the country.
If we judge people by what they do, perhaps we need to celebrate and thank these and a multitude of other religious groups for their dedication. None of these groups use what they do for recruitment or doctrinal sales-pitches, but just because their faith demands compassionate action.
I don’t know what the non-religious do, but I would be wide-open to celebrating a similar list.
Religion--just like the rest of life, rests on things that cannot be "proved.
There are many things whose existence can be taken into a laboratory and “proved.”
There are other things that cannot be thusly “proved,” and therefore are said by some not to exist. And yet we all live with trust that both categories are essential. The belief that only the first, scientific, category has validity, is the dark side of a “scientism” which flows from absolutizing the Enlightenment.
Here are a few of the things we all—or at least most of us—believe by faith.
Life—my life—has meaning.
There are those we admire who live beautiful lives.
Every human must have some purpose which is a guiding principle for action.
Occasionally we are encountered by some vision, experience, notion before which we bow in awe.
Most of the values which make life meaningful cannot be “proved” as existing.
To live without hope is to live in despair, therefore we must live in hope.
To trust anyone or anything is to live by faith.
The universe has a built-in struggle for refinement. In science we call it evolution. In philosophy we call it the élan vital.
A hunger to be accepted means we long for some human relationship.
There is a spiritual hunger build into most of our lives. There is that to which we can only point that gives meaning and hope.
We live by affirming that behind all value is that reality which has lured people in every culture and time.
Most of life involves believing things we cannot see, let alone prove.
This beyondness is the core and instigator of religion and thus the quest for God, whose existence—like all these other things—cannot be proved.
Hawking and the theory of everything
Stephen Hawking embodies probably the most respected scientific-philosophical perspective of anyone alive. Despite his ravaged body, his mind has never stopped generating approaches to the greatest of all Mysteries, which is “a theory of everything.” He has been claimed by both theists and atheists as representing their quite divergent positions. He deliberately comes down in neither camp. That probably means he is on to something.
While never claiming any particular religious conviction, Hawking continually uses the word GOD, which stands for one of his core affirmations. As far back as 1988 he posited that to come up with a theory explaining everything is to “know the mind of God.” God is not just a throwaway clever word. He defined God as “the embodiment of all the laws of physics,” This comes very close to the increasingly popular “process theology” which is now near the center of America’s great seminaries.
Science begins with questions, and hopes to discover clues to ways of approaching the thus far unanswerable. Religion seeks to hear those same clues. One cannot find in Hawking absolutist positions even on God’s existence or non-existence. Fundamentalists in both theistic and atheistic camps, who make claims to the contrary, are simply parading their arrogance. Hawking looks at the universe and suggests that there are ultimate questions that at this point can neither rule God in or rule God out. Not a bad way to approach the great Mystery which lies at the heart of everything.
Religious liberals are increasingly concerned about the slaughter of Americans by firearms.
Several weeks back we were met with the spectacle of a seriously disoriented young man who easily purchased an assault weapon with a 100-bullet clip. Every year thousands of Americans are shot with legally purchased guns. Why anybody outside a war zone needs an assault weapon boggles the mind. Any number of them can be picked up on the Internet or in gun shows. Consider the suggestion that if those in that theater audience had been equally armed, the slaughter would have been prevented. Really? Thousands of bullets whizzing around a closed theater is hardly a sane scenario. The recent shooting in New York resulted in the death of the culprit and the wounding of nine bystanders---all from police bullet fragments!!
If the gun control issue is to be seriously addressed, who is going to do it? While the issue is buried somewhere in the Democratic platform, only Dianne Feinstein has been willing to raise as much as a whisper. How come? The Republicans are cuddled up with the NRA, the Democrats are scared to death of this organization, and the majority of Americans don’t seem to care.
Increasingly the liberal church is taking up the issue. Recent articles in The Christian Century (the widest read ecumenical journal), America (a national forum produced by the Jesuits), Christianity Today (a widely read evangelical publication) and a series of releases by Religion News Service have brought the matter to the attention of millions of America’s religionists. The Jesuit, Fr. James Martin, calls gun control “a pro-life issue.” Fr Frank Pavone, head of “Priests for Life” has said, “Anyone concerned about protecting human life has to be concerned about the misuse of guns.”
Other than these faint efforts coming from the religious left, where else is there much active concern? What non-religious groups, or even prominent persons are taking it up? In the meantime we will continue to see thousands of Americans gunned down every year—five times more firearm deaths than in the rest of the world put together.
A significant slice of American religion has always been and is now dedicate to peace
Foremost are historic "peace churches" such as The Church of the Brethren, Quakers and Mennonites.
In addition, the ecumenical councils that represent the broad scope of main-line Christianity, have been deeply involved in the anti-war movement. Over the years, any significant peace protest has seen deeply embedded in it a preponderance of those there for religious reasons, joining those of non-religious persuasions as colleagues in the effort.
At the opening of our Democratic Campaign headquarters this afternoon, almost one half of the crowd were probably in some church this morning.
Every Friday afternoon since the beginning of the Afghanistan war, a score of religiously motivated people have stood with protest signs at a major intersection near us.
Many denominations have long-since issued statements against war and have backed up these statements with action. Here is one from a major denomination issued in 1936.
"We believe war to be morally and ethically wrong and a direct contradiction to the teachings of Jesus Christ. We therefore disassociate ourselves from the war system and serve notice upon all whom it may concern that we will not support future wars not will we as a religious body permit our co-operative agencies to be used either directly or indirectly for such purpose."
-1936 Disciples of Christ International Convention held in Kansas City-
To call for the prohibition of religion in public life--in this case war and violence--would be to seriously injure the peace movement and violate the "free exercise" clause of the First Amendment.
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