The Slacktivist on the topic of real suffering vs. theodicy. That is, the painful and perplexing experiences that people have vs. the theological reasoning we use to explain them. Why would a “good God” allow people to go through hunger, war, and disease?
These are not, primarily, metaphysical puzzles for us to ponder. Such puzzles are also significant, but they mustn’t ever be confused for the most important, most urgent, or most obvious response to human suffering. Human suffering is cause for action — for individual and institutional and structural steps to relieve it and to prevent it.
. . . When it came to human suffering, Jesus always kept his eye on the ball. “For I was hungry and you gave me food,” he said. Not, “For I was hungry, and you gave me an explanation as to how the existence of hunger could be reconciled, philosophically, with belief in an all-powerful and all-loving God.” The latter gift is unlikely to be appreciated unless it accompanies the former.
The fact that human suffering exists gives us an imperative to relieve human suffering. So Slack is suggesting the order in which we should apply ourselves to these questions is “What do we do about suffering?” and then only later “Why does suffering exist?” I like that framing. “What does a ‘good person’ do in this situation?” takes precedence over “How did we get in this situation?” Or, to put it in the words of the songwriter David Wilcox, “The question is not why is there rain. The question is how do we sail through the storm.”
I’m taking liberties below by mixing up some of the other paragraphs in Slack’s article in a way that suits me. It better illustrates how his argument came together in my head while I was reading it. I still encourage you to read the whole thing at the link below.
This, I think, is where that Bad Catholic post goes astray. It frames the matter of human suffering as primarily something to be explained, rather than as something to be addressed. And it goes one step further into abstraction by framing the matter as something to be explained to atheists.
[. . . But . . .] This business of theodicy isn’t important for Christians because it may come up in the next debate with Richard Dawkins. It is important because when we encounter people going through misery, horror and pain, we don’t want to add insult to injury by responding with something glib or shallow or stupid.
That Bad Catholic post is not glib, shallow or stupid, and yet, like every primarily metaphysical response to suffering, it still is inadequate. Because, again, suffering is never primarily or exclusively metaphysical.
Hungry people want food. That is the meaning of hunger.
via The meaning of human suffering is not The Meaning of Human Suffering.