Another mass
shooting has occurred; this time at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut. Twenty children—all
six and seven years old—and six adult teachers and staff, dead. I didn’t watch
the televised memorial services. Personally I don’t care for the media frenzy
that follows these events; I find it unseemly, to put it mildly. But I did hear
a little bit of a speech made by a minister, and he seemed to be struggling to
express himself. I think his problem was that he was paralyzed by a basic
problem of most theologies, what is known in philosophy as “theodicy”: how can you
reconcile a loving God with human suffering?
I love this word,
theodicy, because to me it sounds like the combination of “theology” and
“idiocy”; many religious people come across as idiotic when they try to explain
how God could allow something horrible to happen, like last week’s senseless
slaughter of children.
Twenty years
ago, my husband Arthur and I published a book called The Game of God. Theodicy
is the starting point; the book’s introduction begins with this passage:
A friend recently told us that, of all the funerals
he had ever attended, he had yet to hear a minister satisfactorily answer the
question, “Why did God create death?” He went on to say that, in fact, he had
yet to hear a minister (priest, rabbi, etc.) make any sense of why God had
created anything at all. Our friend concluded that the most sensible
explanation for this dangerous and mysterious universe is simply that there is
no God.
We live on a tiny planet lost in a huge and
seemingly indifferent universe. Life is a continuous struggle which inevitably
ends with death. Life is a terminal disease.
What kind of universe is this anyway? Does
life have any meaning or purpose? If there is a “God,” why did God create the
universe?
Many religions have tried to explain God’s
motives for creating the universe—a universe filled with suffering and
death—but these theologies are often illogical and filled with contradictions,
and thus fail to provide comfort when a true test arises: when real disaster
strikes.
A minister once told us that, in his
experience, the death of a child was particularly difficult to “explain,” and
has often resulted in expressions of hatred for God by the parents, and even
the abandonment of their faith.
