Theodicy

Theodicy - Greek theos "god" + dike "justice" - is an attempt to answer the question of why God permits the manifestation of evil.

When people who are innocent of wrong-doing suffer, or when those who commit atrocities escape justice, humans doubt God's justice.  

Our God-talk, our theologies are incomplete because we generally stop listening when God is talking to us. We are busy working out what we want to say.  Let's revisit two moments of God's self-revelation, we only have to consider the human response. Moses sees the impossible, a burning bush that is not consumed by fire - and still worries that he will not be able to speak; the disciples encounter a crucified and risen Lord, who as he prepares to leave them, promises his Spirit will return to guide them, and they are concerned only with the restoration of Israel as an autonomous state.

We listen but do not hear. How often do we have an answer prepared before the other person has a chance to finish speaking? We don't even realize that we don't know all that they have said, because we have been lost in our own thoughts.

So acknowledging our unknowing is an important starting place.  

Mystics across the many faith traditions invite us to move from the head to the heart, they urge us to start in a place of compassion and love. 

In her essay The Love of God and Affliction from Waiting for God, Simone Weil writes:

God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself and the means to love. God created love in all its forms. God created beings capable of love from all possible distances.

Because no one else could do it, God … went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God that which is accursed.

 

This tearing apart, over which supreme love places the bond of the supreme union, echoes perpetually across the universe in the midst of the silence, like two notes, separate yet melting into one, like pure and heart-rending harmony. This is the Word of God. The whole creation is nothing but it's vibration.

 

This image of the God who goes the infinite distance (this image of the Lover who risks profound pain) and the notion that all of creation is this Word's continuing vibration, invite me into a new understanding of suffering and pain ...

This new understanding invites to me to imagine a tree where the goodness and the pain (aka evil)* of creating the universe is held in equilibrium.  It's reality is there, contained, until the fruit is plucked, and then evil and goodness are loosed throughout the world.  

Perhaps there are no surprises for the Creator - only the enduring intention to be lovingly present with the Creature. 

Our experiences of evil are more painful when we endure them alone, believing them to be unjust or thinking that they are a punishment - but if we believe that our suffering is held, has always been held by the One who created us, it can become sacramental -- that is, it can teach us something of the character of our Creator, it can draw us into closer relationship with our God. 

What happens to our experiences of suffering if we come to understand that each one of us embodies some aspect of God's own creative suffering? 

* I would suggest that unhealed / unaddressed suffering can degenerate into evil.  But please note the Biblical use of the word "evil" for disastrous events -- evil and suffering were used interchangeably at times. I would suggest we need to reexamine how these words have been used ...