Reflections on Theology

My thoughts on the question of pain.

In my personal experience of pain, I have found it impossible to believe rationally that God is good. Yet I cannot live as if a good God does not exist. Through my personal reading of Scripture and experience of the Christian God, whom I believe, this is as much I can offer in terms of an answer; in terms of reconciling my intellect to the feeling in my bones.

It is my impression upon reading the Bible that God’s aim in relation with mankind is not primarily to prove Himself powerful or to overwhelm all skeptics, but to love. I cannot explain His actions in any other way. His continual redemption of the world, unto the voluntary sacrifice of His Son, would make no sense unless He really loved us and yearned for our response. Now it is utterly mysterious to me that the God of the universe should seek my love. My love for God can die if my professor hands out a pop-quiz. Yet it is His sovereign choice. He offers no explanation and, as God, He does not have to.

Loving God is it not all joy and roses on our side either.

Love cannot be coerced by power, and God must have known this, for He limited His power to allow for love. He created man free- gave him the space and the right to choose his own kind of life and whether he would love Him. This freedom of choice is often a good thing. It allows for things like joy, and pleasure, and any love worth having. It also introduces a certain amount of chaos and a great deal of pain. It is important here to realize one thing: this pain/chaos is allowed by God for His own reasons, but it is not necessarily a product of His explicit intent. In other words, it is not necessarily something He made to happen. C. S. Lewis explains it this way:

‘Anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another. It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, “I’m not going to go and make you tidy the school room every night. You’ve got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.” Then she goes up one night and finds Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible. . .it is probably the same in the universe.’

No doubt you noticed that probably.
Well. We are limited. We cannot grasp every thing pertaining to nature let alone all things pertaining to God. And though we think we have a few bones to pick in relation to the supernatural, ‘there is a difficulty’, as Lewis says, ‘in arguing with God . . . when you are arguing against Him, you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all’, and you may just get your brain cells singed in the process. Or you may die. Just saying.

What I am saying is that life in this world is unfair and painful. But this world is not God. It is inextricably bound up in our free will, and the evil that happens is a product of man’s will gone awry, not God’s will devising it for our torment. I cannot live as if this last were true, and that is as much certainty as anyone can get in this world.

There is this last thing also. We are not alone in our experience of evil. God Himself experienced it at our hands. The cross is our reminder that God personally understands our condition, and what it means to live in this solitary, nasty, brutish world. It is the place where the ultimate Innocent suffered the greatest pain, and come to think of it, why am I still searching for proof that God loves? There is always the cross.