Suffering
“Even if God had to create the possibility of
unlove (and suffering) in order to enable us to love, couldn’t He
situationally prevent some human evils by a little miracle,
or by a little conspiracy of providence? Couldn’t He have seen how awful Hitler
was going to be? Couldn’t He have, well, caused Hitler an early
demise by some means that at least looked natural? Couldn’t He
have anticipated the effect Stalin would have on history and allowed at least
one of those assassination attempts to ‘hit
home? And while I’m thinking about it, couldn’t He have also caused a car to
hit that man who kidnapped that little girl? And couldn’t He have prevented me
(in some very gentle way) from hurting that person who was my lifelong friend?
And while I’m at it…. I don’t expect God to make these interventions every day; just
on really urgent occasions.”
There can be little
doubt that God does intervene in our lives through the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit (in our own lives and the lives of people around us), in little and
great conspiracies of providence, and even in outright
miracles. But these occasions are rare – very rare – because they truly
represent interruptions in the free action of human beings.
If God interrupted occasions of unlove or evil every time we would like Him to,
none of us would have any sense about the efficacy of our actions (or anybody
else’s actions, for that matter). We would never know whether, on this
particular occasion that I am contemplating unlove, the bolt of lightening
would come from the sky in the form of an interruption – say, an inability to
speak, a sudden lapse of intellection, a pain in the heart, or getting hit by a
car. The whole world would be waiting for a sword of Damocles to
drop on them because the frequent occasions of God “stopping evil at the times
we would like Him to” would interrupt the flow of human action, and would cause
a fear of performing unloving actions. Needless to say, this last point would
not only interfere with the freedom for unlove, but also the freedom to love
which is inextricably tied to it (as seen above).
In this scenario, God
becomes the giant behavioristic conditioner in the sky. He so frequently lowers
the boom on anticipated evil that He conditions most people (out of fear or
desperation) to avoid evil. Unfortunately those people did not choose to avoid
it, but rather reacted to the continuous negative stimulus of attempting it. In
the end, God would only have succeeded in creating people who treat their boss
with respect even though they utterly hate him; or treat their coworkers with
respect out of fear of the dreaded boss. Whatever this is, it is not love. If
God wants us to choose love, He has to allow us the real possibility of unlove,
a real possibility which is not cloaked in fear, hindrance, and retribution.
But it may be
objected, “Well, okay, skip the idea of God preventing evil every time we want
Him to. Couldn’t He just make an exception for really terrible cases, like
Hitler and Stalin? Couldn’t He just have eradicated them?” Unfortunately, He
cannot. Because if Hitlers and Stalins always met an early demise, human beings
would eventually figure out that there was a line which cannot be crossed, and
an entire science would arise to predict where that line is. We would be like
frenzied lawyers attempting to find the precise point at which one crosses the
line from legal to illegal – locating excusability and deniability, mounting up
the case law to prove that one can go to the very edge without crossing it.
When does one become Hitler or Stalin? When does one become a tyrant? Aren’t
there many Hitlers and Stalins who just never had the right historical
opportunity to put their plans into practice? Or should God lobotomize only
those Hitlers and Stalins that do have historical opportunities? Would other
Hitlers and Stalins not follow in the old ones’ wakes?
And what about Hitler
and Stalin, themselves? Wouldn’t God want to hold out the possibility of their
redemption (even though their actions are evil and hateful)? If God’s love is
unconditional, then He could not reject even really terrible people if there
were even a glimmer of hope for conversion.
We may now draw a
general conclusion. The problem with God eradicating only some really terrible
people is that human ingenuity will discover it, and
when it is discovered, the process of conditioning (on the basis of fear) will
begin. People of common sense will not approach the line even though they
desire it; and the ones who would approach the line wouldn’t have a chance.
They’d be dead or rendered incapacitated before they knew what happened to them.
God must avoid this kind of behavioral conditioning in
all its forms; for it interferes with our freedom for unlove in all its forms,
which ultimately interferes with our freedom to love in all its forms.
God so loves the
world, and God so wants us to love one another, that He will respect our
freedom, and restrain Himself from interfering with that freedom, even in the
most egregious situations and with the most egregiously offensive people. The
price of love is not only the capacity for unlove, but the real possibility of
unlove.
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