The Normativity of the World; Thoughts on Heidegger

[Long and technical post alert!] One of the philosophers I enjoyed studying the past semester was Martin Heidegger — not the easiest philosopher, I probably understand maybe 20% of him, and certainly not the nicest guy in Christian or even secular terms either (he was a registered Nazi) but I found many valuable insights into the human condition in his seminal work, Being and Time. The chief insight I have gleaned from him and which I discuss in this blog post is this: one cannot give a purely descriptive account of the world, instead all our observations of the world are always shot through with normativity. Now, to understand the jargon I just said, some discussion needs to be made about the difference between description and normativity. I shall do that and then talk a bit about how Heidegger bridges the gap between description and normativity and then draw some implications from this. Hopefully in some future post (because I realise that this is already too darn long) I might engage more critically with some of these implications.

Is and Ought

The difference between a normative statement and a descriptive statement is that a descriptive statement tells you how the world is or describes a certain state of affairs in the world whereas a normative statement tells you how the world ought to be. For example, ‘The bible and a book of Platonic Dialogues is on my table’ is a descriptive statement whereas ‘I ought to read my bible more instead of Plato’ is a normative statement. One describes how the world actually is while the other tells me something that should be done.

Many times in ordinary speech, we derive normative claims straightforwardly from descriptive claims. For example we see that genocide results in thousands of deaths (a descriptive claim) and say that genocide should be stopped (a normative claim). However, philosophers have noted that we cannot make such a derivation straightforwardly. Why is this so? Such a move would fall foul of what is called Hume’s Is/Ought gap. The idea is that you cannot derive a normative claim (what you ought to do), from a purely descriptive claim (about what is going on in the world). This is because claims about what one ought to do are different in kind from claims about what states of affairs hold in the world.

To see this, consider the normative claim ‘We ought not commit genocide’. We cannot derive this simply from purely descriptive claims such as ‘genocide kills thousands of people’ or ‘genocide discriminates against a certain race’ — a normative claim needs to be established, such as ‘If x results in thousands of deaths, one ought not to do x’. Thus, to claim that ‘We ought not commit genocide’, we need to do more than make purely descriptive assertions of the states of affairs that would result from genocide, we need to establish some kind of claim that connects the normative with the descriptive. Such a claim, as ‘If x results in thousands of deaths, one ought not to do x’, is said to be able to bridge the Is/Ought gap and thus allow one to legitimately derive normative claims.

The problem is with deriving such a bridge principle. We all know where to get descriptive statements — we just get them from observation of the world around us. But a normative claim cannot be found anywhere in the world. A scientific account of the world providing say a description of genocide can tell you that it results in multitudes of deaths, that it disadvantages a certain race and that it ravages a nation in socio-economic terms— but why should these be reasons for us to prevent genocide? The scientific account is silent.

Philosophers have, of course, various ways of circumventing this problem, but this discussion is simply to flesh out the difference between descriptive and normative statements. Heidegger’s conception of human beings provides some resources into overcoming this and through him we shall see that in fact, a purely descriptive account of the world is impossible.

Being-in-the-world

In Being and Time, Heidegger attempts to give an existential analytic of the being of Dasein. Dasein is simply the type of being which we are ourselves, which Heidegger claims is ‘the being for whom its being is a question’. The thought is that for human beings to exist simply is for them to take a stand on the type of being they wish to be at every moment of their life — in other words, humans are the type of being that leads its life. For reasons that I will not go into, Heidegger calls this type of being Dasein (lit. being there) and his book attempts to analyse and give an account of Dasein.

Heidegger claims that philosophers since at least Descartes have an impoverished view of human beings because they have been attempting to explore the world as if we were spectators looking in from a detached viewpoint. This assumes that our human existence is one that is fundamentally isolated from the world. The world is as “a play staged before us; and the world of a play is one from which its audience is essentially excluded.” (Mulhall, 2005) However, Heidegger asserts that such a picture is mistaken. According to him, human existence cannot be comprehended apart from its being ‘in’ the world. Try to think about human beings without them existing in a world — it seems incoherent to call what you are still thinking of a human being at all. This reveals a tight conceptual connection between Dasein and the world, which Heidegger formulates as Being-in-the-world.

Now, if Dasein is essentially engaged in the world, it can never be a mere spectator and thus cannot give a detached, purely descriptive account of the world. Heidegger explains this by saying that objects in the world are primarily conceived as ready-to-hand as opposed to present-at-hand. A present-at-hand account of objects is one that simply observes and describes properties e.g. we give a present-at-hand account of a hammer by talking about its shape, material constitution etc. A ready-to-hand account, however, considers our engagement with objects as equipment; our actually using the hammer for a certain task. Heidegger notes:

“[H]ammering does not simply have knowledge about the hammer’s character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way that could not possibly be more suitable. . . . [T]he less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is – as equipment … The kind of Being which equipment possesses – in which it manifests itself in its own right – we call readiness-to-hand.” (BT 15:98)

A present-at-hand account of objects cannot exhaust the meaning of an object — I can describe the hammer and know how it functions, but I primarily encounter the hammer in the act of hammering. I do not fully understand the hammer if I just look at its properties until I start hammering. As noted above, Heidegger considers our engagement with objects as more primordial than our descriptive account of them. A more crucial point is this: we stop hammering and enter into a mode of exploring the properties of equipment only when it fails to serve its ready-to-hand function:

“If knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature of the present-at-hand by observing it, then there must first be a deficiency in our having-to-do [i.e. engagement] with the world concernfully …” (BT 13:88)

For example, we stop to examine the properties of the hammer in closer detail when it becomes unusable as a tool and we want to fix it. A descriptive enterprise is thus undertaken when a piece of equipment becomes unhandy for a larger task. This implies that the descriptive enterprise can never be purely descriptive, for its very undertaking is to the end of using the object as equipment for a larger project. All our present-at-hand accounts of knowing are always embedded within a larger picture of ready-to-hand engagement.

In other words, even though a scientist does experiments in the lab and makes the seemingly purely descriptive statement ‘The gravitational constant is 6.67408 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2’. This statement, as he makes it, has implications on his life and the lives of others because the scientist, as Being-in-the-world, can only make such a statement from the context of his own practical dealings with the world. Thus, the scientist’s analysis of a substance in the laboratory always happens in the context of other more practical human concerns. If Dasein is Being-in-the-World, any descriptive enterprise it undertakes can therefore never be one that is wholly detached from its engagement with the world.

Normativity in the World

And so any description that is given is always and inevitably shot through with normativity. Mulhall makes this point when he observes that “the utility of a tool presupposes something for which it is usable, an end product – a pen is an implement for writing letters, … This directedness is the ‘towards-which’ of equipment.” To encounter objects as ready-to-hand is to engage with equipment for a certain goal or purpose. The descriptive facts about the equipment which are derived from a present-at-hand analysis therefore contain normative implications, because they are derived in the context where the object is a piece of equipment ultimately for a certain goal that Dasein wishes to achieve. As Heidegger notes:

“[When dealing in a ready-to-hand manner with] ‘a hammer’, there is an involvement in hammering; with hammering there is an involvement in making something fast; with making something fast, there is an involvement in protection against bad weather; and this protection ‘is’ for the sake of providing shelter for Dasein — that is to say, for the sake of a possibility of Dasein’s Being” (BT, 18:116)

A conception of Dasein as Being-in-the-World is one where Dasein encounters the world primarily as equipment and thus where descriptions of objects in the world carry normative implications. Conceiving the relationship between Dasein and the world this way bridges the Is/Ought gap. We can derive normative implications from descriptive statements because those statements are never purely descriptive, they are made from within the context of active engagement.

I don’t think Christians can accept everything Heidegger says uncritically. For one, Heidegger’s view does not provide a set of objective norms (he ends up with a kind of ‘ethics of authenticity’) because he makes it seem as if the normativity of the world is derived primarily from the kind of being we are as opposed to there being some sort of independent standard. Nonetheless, I think that his conclusions are mainly right in elucidating our relationship with the world around us. Let me draw two implications that are important and right from a Christian point of view that I might reflect on in some future post:

1. Descriptive statements have normative implications. This is probably the main thing I have been talking about. Not just statements about the world, but any descriptive statement we make, about ourselves, about God will inevitably have normative implications on us because of the type of being we are. We must not talk about theology or even philosophy while imagining that these things have no impact on how we should live, for they will inevitably will have such an impact! Failure to think about these things will only mean that we are naive or uncritical about the normative implications that holding certain positions have on us already.
2. There is no neutral or presuppositionless position from which we observe and study in the world, instead even if we try to enter into a detached state in order to make empirical or philosophical observations, we still bring along with us our practical concerns. Indeed we can only enter into such a detached state by being extremely interested in something in the first place. All our descriptive inquiries are made in the context of practical concerns with their own presuppositions.

Finally, I hope that despite the technical discussion you can see something wondrous from Heidegger’s conception of the self and the world. Our living in the world is dynamic and living instead of static and lifeless. We engage and interact with the world not from a detached perspective but as readily occupied in it. To use an analogy my professor constantly employed, we deal with the world not as one stares at a violin and examines its shape and material, but as one plays the violin along with the orchestra of a thousand instruments. The world is more an object of wondrous engagement than of detached observation.

Man in the Museum

A couple of days ago I visited the National Museum of Singapore. I actually meant to visit the National Gallery but was confused by the two… nonetheless a highlight there was the ‘Treasures of the World’ exhibit featuring artefacts from the British Museum. Relics were present from places spanning the entire globe, from Europe, Asia to Africa and so on. There was something about looking at millennia old artefacts that is arresting. Many of these artefacts were from cultures far removed from my own, but it seemed as if I was looking at the culture of my own forefathers; I was looking at the culture of Man.

There were certain commonalities in the objects on display; some where household items, a number were religious artefacts, there was even pornography and of course a large number of royal regalia. All reflected a still recognisable facet of man today. Why might the mere passage of time result in this universalisation of particular, otherwise ordinary, objects? I have no answer. Perhaps the everyday objects of every particular culture have always reflected the universal heritage of man, but it is only when they have been defamiliarised by the distance of a thousand years that we see them as they are.

Dust

What do these artefacts as a whole speak about Man? What first came to mind was our futility. This was evident especially as I observed many of the Royal Regalia. They were to be symbols of power, often divine or supernatural power, meant to inspire awe and terror. The objects are left limp in the museum, while their bearers themselves are gone. Man strives to leave a legacy, but their very legacy is but a testament to our vanity. Shelly notes in his famous poem about one such artefact:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Solomon himself claims:

“I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts … man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.” (Ecclesiastes 3:18-20)

Glory

And yet this cannot be all, for the very artefacts too are a testimony to the glory of Man. Many of the artefacts were beautiful — they were awash with colour and made with intricacy. There was a beautiful Chinese screen divider which depicted the four seasons and the sun and moon and a number of ritual masks that were as detailed and complex as they were terrifying. What sort of creature is this? The terror and subtlety of the artefacts surely reflect the strangeness and the glory of Man.

And I am then reminded of Lewis’ by now cliche remark:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

The artefacts in the museum are astounding and amazing, yet they testify not to themselves but to another more wondrous creature. Lewis calls us from Man and Culture as considered in the abstract to the people around us, and so should the artefacts in the museum lead us to see their makers afresh. The glory of civilisation is indeed the glory of man; the people around us whom we live with and hate and love — they are the more appropriate and deserving objects of our wonder than any object in the museum.

And so we are left with this odd paradox, Man the wretched accumulation of dust and Man the being of utter glory. What shall we make of this combination of our futility and yet our beauty? The bible says that we were made to reflect the very glory of God himself, and yet by choosing to turn away from the source of all life, our very existences became futile and transient. Our lives now express this duality — there is yet glory and goodness left in all of us but in the end all our strivings will be  in vain.

Behold, the Man

Another image in the Museum caught my attention — it was a painting of another kind of exhibition. A man wearing a robe and a crown of thorns was thrust before a large crowd to be put on display before them. The robe and the crown indicated that he was some sort a glorious king and yet they were clearly meant to mock him at this show trial. I lingered over this painting for a few moments before passing on. In reflection, I realise that this man represented us all — our glory and our shame mingled in a beautiful and wretched sight.

Jesus was the source of our glory, and yet he took upon himself our shame and futility that we might from thenceforth be free of it. What shall we say in response? There is no need to innovate,

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”
(Psalm 8:3-8)

The New True Meaning of Christmas

[This isn’t really a post about philosophy, but since its the Christmas period I feel obliged to write something related. What I plan to do here is to analyse our culture’s worldview by looking at my favourite non-Christian Christmas song (‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’). Unfortunately, my training in philosophy compels me to write a short summary in the introduction to the biblical framework of idolatry that I use for completeness sake — its largely just the understanding of idolatry from the reformed tradition. I have been much helped in my understanding of this by reading “For Their Rock is not as Our Rock” by Daniel Strange. (Which is really an update and summary of the thoughts of many earlier thinkers.)]

Christmas is a time of celebration, and as a Christian what I celebrate is the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came into our broken world to identify with sinners and ultimately to die for their sin. But everyone celebrates during Christmas, and clearly not everyone is a Christian, so it begs the question: what exactly are they celebrating? Some Christians may immediately shoot back: “Materialism!” (i.e. the insatiable consumption of goods. Not to be confused with the metaphysical hypothesis of the same name.) Perhaps some really do see Christmas as an opportunity to satisfy their endless desire for consumer products, but when we see other non-Christians decrying the same materialistic strain during Christmas, we know that this cannot be the root of their celebration.

Man and Worship

The bible’s thesis about humans is that we are all worshippers — all of us have been made to know and to worship God and it is as we come to him that we find our deepest longings and needs met, when men reject God they do not cease to worship but the bible says that they begin to deify and idolise something in creation. Men “claiming to be wise, [have] became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:22-23) Idolatry is not confined simply to physical idols made of wood or stone — idols are whatever our hearts, the core of our beings, find rest, comfort, identity and indeed salvation in; they are whatever we long for and sacrifice and worship.

These idols are counterfeit gods — that they are counterfeit means two things: (1) they reveal something about the sinful hearts of men who created them (2) they reveal something about the God of which they are a counterfeit. To understand what one worships points us to the sin of man, but because we are made for God, even the idols we make resemble God as a cheap imitation. Christopher Wright thus notes:

“The fallen duplicity of man is that he simultaneously seeks after God his Maker and flees from God his Judge. Man’s religions, therefore, simultaneously manifest both these human tendencies.”

A New Christmas Liturgy

What we find in the modern celebration of Christmas is an almost literal exchange of the worship of God for the worship of other things. The best way to understand the new worship is to look at our new liturgy, one manifestation of which is the secular Christmas songs that are heard alongside the old hymns in shopping malls. Some songs are of course, utterly frivolous — ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Frosty the Snowman’ don’t really reveal any of the deep longings of humanity. Others, however, do reflect some kind of deep longing, such as ‘White Christmas’ and ’Last Christmas’. The song we will look at is ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. I confess this is partly because its my favourite non-Christian Christmas song — the tune is excellent and the lyrics are utterly poignant. But more importantly I do believe the song reflects something of the heart of modern Christmas. For those who don’t know the song or do not recognise the title:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
Next year all
Our troubles will be out of sight.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
Next year all
Our troubles will be miles away.

Once again as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more.

Someday soon, we all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow,
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

(These lyrics are from the original song sung in the movie “Meet Me in St. Louis”)

‘Once Again as in Olden Days’

The first two stanzas hint that we look to the Christmas holiday as an opportunity to rest, to escape from the myriad “troubles” that we face. The world is broken and messy — we are bogged down and exhausted by turmoil at work and relationships and there is the expectation that we will find rest at some place. I think many of us expect this rest to come during Christmas. Even secular people who bemoan the consumeristic materialism of our age and during Christmas as well seek rest from the spiritual exhaustion of chasing after the next flashy consumer product. But what exactly is the rest that we look forward too?

The heart of the song, I believe, lies in the third and fourth stanzas — here we see what we worship, what we long for during Christmas. There are two interconnected elements (1) a sense of nostalgia and (2) the warmth of family and friends. When we come to Christmas, we are overcome with nostalgia for the innocent times of our childhood, perhaps memories of when as children we looked forward to Christmas as the time when there would be parties with our families and all seemed rosy. If we never experienced this in our childhood, Christmas sells us the idea that we can recreate that experience which we never had. Consider the first line of another song, ‘White Christmas’: “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…”.

There is something sublime that we look for during Christmas, something intimate and precious. We think that we will have it by revisiting the olden days, by gathering our dear friends and family back again. It is to these that we have turned to seek and find our rest. Yet anyone who has been to any Christmas party since their adolescence knows that the hope of recreating what we thought we experienced is a lie — we are made to long for it, but it never finds its fulfilment as we attempt to recreate our past or gather our loved ones.

C.S. Lewis gives an insightful analysis of this longing:

“Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

The last thing we see in the song is the bleakness of the secular worldview. The possibility of reunion is left to blind fate and until the next Christmas, we drag ourselves through the year. Some versions of the song have edited and changed the line “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow” and replaced it with the utterly facile “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough”. The original better reflects the sentiment of Christmas — it is the time we huddle as we peer over the dark precipice of the coming year of bustling emptiness. The final instruction is deeply poignant: “So”, in light of the muddle of our world, “have yourself a merry little Christmas now”. We must create and seek these precious moments now, before they are taken forever by the dead fates.

That Little Town of Bethlehem

No, this hopelessness cannot have the last word. The Israelites of old held in their hearts the promise of a day when those who walk in darkness will see a great light (Isaiah 9:2) but indeed this is the longing of all our hearts. We all long to cast off this sense of emptiness and dread and guilt that we feel and to be reconciled to something. Christmas reignites these longings, but we have been looking for this reconciliation in recreating our childhood, by being surrounded by our loved ones — soon we are alone again and the cave is even darker now that the small candle has gone out.

But the image of that town, that manger, draws me in again. The theological paradox which is the incarnation, God become Man, becomes strangely warm. In the still of that night, Christ was born. He was born into a life of labour and loneliness, ultimately dying forsaken — he would become one that men would shun and reject and spit on. But he holds a strange attraction to all who have known brokenness in some way both within themselves and without. Chesterton rightly said that this is “the place where God was homeless and all men are at home”. Christmas day comes and the same strange longing comes to me again as it does to everyone else, but as I think of Jesus it hits me afresh, ‘Ah! This was what I was celebrating all along.’ And then I sing:

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light.
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

The Problem of Good in the Problem of Evil

This post represents my attempt at exploring what has been known as the problem of evil as an argument against the theistic God and is an expansion of a short paper that I submitted a year ago on the same topic. The problem of evil and suffering in the world is no trivial topic, it represents a huge obstacle to belief in the God of the bible — pain and suffering is real, indeed the fact that Christ came to suffer with us is the greatest evidence for this. Here I do not pretend to have all the answers to why suffering exists or to answer the emotional objections that people may have and I wish in no way to trivialise suffering. My goal is to engage with the problem of evil philosophically, and argue that it is impotent against the true God, who reveals himself through the Word of God.

Formulation of the problem

The problem of evil is an argument against a specific conception of God, namely the theistic and biblical conception, where God is considered to have the attributes of:

1. Omnipotence
2. Omniscience
3. Moral perfection

Omnipotence and omniscience are (relatively) straightforward, simply put, they imply that God can do anything he wishes and that he knows everything. What about moral perfection? My argument in this article is that this attribute is misunderstood when one conceives of the biblical God. Nonetheless, the attribute is normally taken to imply that God wishes to create the world with the highest moral value and this seems to mean that he would want to prevent or evil and suffering, or at least all unnecessary evil and suffering. David Hume puts the problem thus:

“Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?”

Philosophers generally talk about two more specific ways of talking about the problem: (1) the logical problem of evil and (2) the evidential problem of evil. The logical problem of evil attempts to show that the existence of any evil whatsoever is logically inconsistent with the existence of God. The evidential problem of evil, on the other hand, argues that the presence of and the horrifying levels of evil and suffering that we see indicate that it is unlikely that God exists. It doesn’t really matter which problem one chooses, because both rely on a certain conception of God’s moral perfection which I will argue is mistaken.

The Problem of Good

The evidence of evil that is in our world that is usually offered is that of suffering on the part of humanity or some other creature. William Rowe’s famous example is that of “A fawn’s being horribly burned in a fire caused by lightning, and suffering terribly for five days before death ends its life.” The corresponding goodness that God is supposed to exhibit seems to be that he would prevent such suffering.

However, if God has perfect moral character, this must mean that he has to pursue that which leads to the greatest intrinsic good. However, if God is God, it seems to follow that God himself is the highest good! The often used term ‘omnibenevolence’ is thus somewhat misleading in this regard, for it seems to imply that for God to be good, he must necessarily be benevolent to his creation. But the good that God necessarily has to pursue is (in Christian terms) his own glory. This is simply the straightforward view of biblical Christianity, consider:

“Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.” (Ezekiel 36:22)

“For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David” (2 Kings 19:34)

If creation (including humanity) is not of the highest or intrinsic value, then suffering on the part of creation is not intrinsically evil. Nonetheless, the problem may still remain. For example, the suffering of creation seems to imply a deficiency on the part of the creator. A proper reply to the problem of evil (these are called theodicies) must thus seek to explain how God’s glory is not diminished because of creaturely suffering. The theodicies more popularly regarded as promising, however, seem concerned with righting the wrongs of humanity in exchange for the seemingly pointless suffering we endure. John Hick’s soul making theodicy and the free will defence seem to fall into this category – suffering is the price to pay for either the spiritual improvement or the freedom of the will of humanity. They struggle to succeed because it seems intuitive and inescapable that human suffering, especially the more extreme kinds we see today, will always be on balance bad for humanity. The goods that suffering produces cannot ultimately and (as I have noted) should not be traced back to humanity but rather to God.

Suffering and God’s Word

Let us note that the bible itself presents countless examples of sufferings and records of the saints of old doubting and crying out to God amidst these sufferings. However, consider that because they understand God’s character rightly, the way they formulate the ‘problem of evil’ is vastly different from how our contemporaries do so. For example, the Israelites saw national disaster as evidence against the LORD because God had said that he would put his name in the city; Israel was called by God’s name and the destruction of the city and especially the temple was an insult to God. Which is why the agonising cries of the Psalmists always tend towards, “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?” (Psalm 74:10) Job doubted the moral perfection of God’s character not simply because of his suffering because his situation was one of great injustice despite his reliance on God.

Note also that the fact that these accounts and these agonised cries are in the bible indicates that God answers them. Scripture is God’s revealed word and it is woven with suffering. The answers to specific sufferings are varied, some are dark and sublime as in Job, and others indicate that suffering leads us toward glory as in the New Testament (e.g. Romans 8:17). My memory fails me as to where I have read this, but someone once remarked that it was amazing that suffering, something many early christians considered to be a mark of their discipleship of Jesus (cf Matthew 10:25, 1 Peter 4:12,13 et al.) would now be turned into evidence against God’s existence!

Finally, the bible also provides a specific reason as to why there is suffering on a global scale and it traces the problem to the fall of mankind in the garden. Because our first ancestors sinned and rebelled against God, God justly plunged the world into suffering and sin. As such, suffering and death in general vindicate God in justice over guilty humanity.

Now, I have no doubt that these theodicies and such a formulation of God are sure to outrage modern moral sensibilities, and a number of philosophers might simply chafe and dismiss these with a handwaving reply. Nonetheless, an atheistic argument cannot simply target the straw man of a God that fits modern sensibilities, but must contend with this biblical view of God if it is to convince. The god that fits our moral sensibilities is unlikely to exist, for it would be an idol that we have created. Anyway it should not be surprising to us that God and the bible always offends and challenges our ideas of Him, we are sinners after all, and a quick survey of the gospels reveals that Jesus offended the sensibilities of half of Israel. I shall have more to say in the conclusion, but if the ‘problem of evil’ uses an unbiblical formulation of God’s attributes, then it is utterly impotent. We must stare in the face of who God reveals himself in the bible, one who reveals himself amidst a world of suffering and who finally took on suffering himself. Such a God is compatible with— no, is necessary, in our world of grief.

Final Thoughts

Earlier this year I went on a mission trip to Myanmar to teach a bible overview module for some leadership training along with a few others from my church. As we were teaching them about God’s curse on the land from Genesis 3, my friend asked them if they had heard the (seemingly) ubiquitous objection to Christianity that God cannot be good because there is suffering in the world. Their reply was a resounding silence. This was an entirely novel objection to them; how could it be? Might it really be that the problem of suffering is only a problem for people who are not really suffering? This made me realise afresh that the problem of suffering is not an apparent logical contradiction in the Christian conception of God. Rather it is simply an emotional and irrational objection which is the result not of logical reflection but a sense of entitlement that comes from holding the worldview of the privileged. That God is good does not immediately translate to mean that suffering should not exist. After all, God’s being good does not immediately imply that he must be good to us. It is precisely because he has no necessary or intrinsic obligation to be good to us and yet he is immensely so that is the sublime greatness and scandal of the cross of Christ. We will not have this if we audaciously continue to hold a sense of entitlement towards God.