Is God To Blame?

The older I get the more I question things: suppositions, societal norms, doctors, "science", and yes, much of what I've learned from others and always believed about God. Life can have that effect. It alternately teaches and eviscerates. For some people their advancing years serve to calcify long held notions into petrified wood. These are the people that eschew anything new, be it music, fashion, politics, or an alternate view of theology. They are like iron stakes, immovable but prone to rust. I hope I never get like that. For others, life's long series of disappointments and broken trusts result in a kind of cynical skepticism - a resignation that leads to the unfortunate belief that nothing can be known with certainty and therefore everything is suspect. Since life cannot be understood why try. At the very least, people like this harbor a low grade fatalism. It is this latter frame of mind that I find myself having to guard against.

Where you land on this spectrum depends, I suppose, on your own peculiar life experience. Regardless, for people over forty who have lived long enough to experieince life's blows, an almost universal recognition is that this world is a mess. There is no denying it. Human life is broken.

This week I read that two young missing girls, ages nine and ten, were found dead in a field not far from their home, their bodies riddled with stab wounds, inflicted by one of the girl's father. In Iraq more suicide bombers killed dozens and blew the limbs of those that survived. In my little circle I talked to a friend today whose husband nearly died last Thursday night from a relapse with Lymphoma. He's been fighting it for two years. So much grief, and so numbingly unexplainable. Recently I read about a loving and God fearing woman who prayed for years that she might be granted a child, and rejoiced when after years of disappointment she was able to deliver a beautiful baby boy, only to face crushing despair when that same boy died suddenly of some rare infant disease. Of course this happened during a time while another woman, promiscuous and irresponsible, has had several children - all unwanted and all "aborted"...and on the it goes, injustice and misery, played out ten thousand times a day across this forlorn planet. Nothing seems to work as it should. Perfect joy is ephemeral, and suffering, with all its random cruelty, abounds.

For believers in God one question comes to dominate: WHY? If God is sovereign over the affairs of the universe why does he allow, or as many theologians have believed over the centuries, actually preside over if not orchestrate, so much suffering?

"For the Scripture says to pharaoh, 'For this very reason I raised you up, to demonstrate my power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. So then, He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires, You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who can resist His will?' On the contrary, who are you, O Man, who answers back to God?" (Rom 9:17-19).

Tough words, and not particularly satisfying.

So what are we to make of this world and the God who rules over it? As if it needed saying, there is no simple solution. Pat answers eventually run out of steam. I have pondered this question, studied it, prayed and meditated upon it for decades, and my dismay continues nearly unabated. "Nearly" I said, but not completely. For every now and then I am graced with a glimmer of insight that brings a ray of light into the darkness. Such was my experience after reading Gregory Boyd's: "Is God to Blame?: Beyond Pat Answers To The Problem Of Suffering".

Indeed, for those whose spiritual digestive systems are ready to move beyond milk, Boyd offers a diet of meat and potatoes. And while I strongly question, and may ultimately reject, some of Boyd's assertions, there is much here worth savoring. In sympathetic recognition of the despair and confusion many readers drawn to a book like this have fallen into, Boyd makes a strong argument right from the start that God is not the remote and angry Being many have regrettably come to believe in. Rather, if you want to know what God is really like, what He really thinks and feels, then look upon Jesus. He is the perfect and complete image of all that the Father is. Did Jesus show compassion to the woman taken in adultery, did he heal all who came to Him in faith, did he weep with those grieving over the death of a loved one, did He freely consent to die a terrible and humiliating death on a cross to pay a debt He did not owe? This image of unsurpassable love, Boyd writes, is the true image of the sovereign God. "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied. 'Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know Me? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say then, 'Show us the Father?" (John 14:8-9).

Following this Boyd launches into a penetrating analysis of the effect of free will, of both men and angels, on our current universe. He argues that, at least in this current economy, God has permitted this free will to run its course - though much of it results in sin and despair. He makes the point strongly that like intersecting vibrations forming multiple harmonics, or like ripples on the surface of the ocean the collide in ways that result in infinite repercussions, what appears to our finite minds as random suffering is in actuality the predictable result from the intersection of myriad wills playing themselves out on the earth's stage. Yes, God permits these cause and effect relationships, but that is far different from ordering them according to a grand "blueprint" God preordained before time began.

Boyd makes a strong argument, following the example of our Lord, that evil must be confronted. We are not to fall into fatalism. God has empowered us with choice and prayer that together wield a powerful and cosmic influence on the course of events.

Finally, Boyd challenges, one by one, conventional interpretations of the difficult Scriptures, like the one cited above in Romans 9.

"Is God to Blame" is not a perfect book. I do question some of his assertions and found fault with specific instances of reasoning. That said, I highly recommend it. If you've been angry at God or are looking for answers beyond the cliche, Boyd offers what could be a soothing balm, or at the very least, ideas worth considering.

Mark Schneider