Is God indifferent?

...THE SKIES OVER AUSCHWITZ WERE SILENT THERE HAVE been questions about the mystery of evil and the goodness of God ever since Job and before, and some philosophers have separated the types of evil into "natural" and "human" evil: natural evil is the suffering caused by earthquakes, cancer, and death...

...But I can't believe that...

...The husband was treated for Hodgkins disease...

...The tacked-on ending to Job has been maligned for restoring Job's fortunes and for trying to turn Job into a book with a happy ending, but the belief that Job's anguished questions were appropriate is also underscored here, and it is essential...

...JOHN GARVEY SEVERAL COLUMNS ago I quoted a Harper's article by Christopher Hitchens in which Mr.Hitchens said, among other things, that atheism is intellectually superior to belief, and he accused several people, among them columnist George Will, of believing that religion is good for the masses although they themselves are not believers...

...He had just been engaged when the disease returned...

...An infant's growth in understanding is part of the same physical world which sees the death of other infants...

...But if the power of God is at one with God's love, it may be reflected in those instances of love which suffering reveals...

...That makes the suffering of children all right, then...

...A few weeks ago we had dinner with a couple who have been through an extraordinary amount of suffering...

...George Will sent a letter of correction to Harper's editor Michael Kinsley and was kind enough to send me a copy...

...He is a sign of the goodness which is part of the world we suffer in...

...For his information (not that he seems interested in information) I am a communicant at St...

...A debilitating round of chemotherapy treatments fought the disease off again, and he has been in remission for, I think, about ten years...

...Kinsley: I will take Christopher Hitchens' word for it that he is my intellectual superior, but permit me a small complaint about his journalism...

...That's the stronger temptation...

...In a way it serves more to reveal human than divine evil - which only postpones the question: why were we made capable of such things...

...a pious quote from the psalms, and a reproach to his crucifiers...

...Can we imagine any explanation which would allow us to say, "Ah...

...The same physical laws which can make undertow murderous and sink ships are also at work in the logarithmic spiral which makes the shell of the chambered nautilus as beautiful as anything Bach ever wrote...

...Finally nothing can solve the problem of evil...

...I remember from childhood a pious attempt to make Jesus's words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me...

...if God is good he is not God...

...One couple I know suffered through the slow death of their child...

...It is tempting to think of God as utterly indifferent to humanity, it is tempting to try to echo in our own hearts what Camus called "the sublime indifference of the universe...

...I can't love the beauty of the chambered nautilus (or of Bach's Brandenburg concertos) and believe that the God who created the universe in which such things can happen is deranged...

...Or rather, it can be taken lightly or considered of academic interest until it comes close, and then it becomes important in a visceral way...

...In his article he laid down the law about (among other things) my religious beliefs, ascribing to me the attitude that religion is good for others, but I am too good for it...

...Recently we have encountered one example of suffering after another...

...Suffering and love are connected somewhere too deep for us to see...

...He's a glorious kid in his own right, but this loving willingness, the love and hope he represents, the good news that he is in a family which has known such suffering, makes him a kind of miracle baby...

...This is what has happened: my friend was told that as a result of radiation treatment he might not be able to father a normal child...

...My youngest sister's first child died in her womb only days before it was to have been delivered...

...There are too many other things true about the world...

...She was treated successfully and has been well for a couple of years...

...Stars moved through them and clouds made lovely patterns...

...It is impossible sometimes not to be angry at the way the world is, which means at the very least that we direct some tough questions towards God - or if not towards God, towards our ordinary beliefs about God...

...But indifferent...

...Hitchens is wrong, but that is not surprising, considering that he never favored me with an inquiry...

...Our endless questioning and even our anger at God make more sense than easy attempts to deal with something as terrible as human affliction...

...Their response was a staggering generosity to other suffering children and their parents...

...There are times when suffering makes us believe that if God can be said to love human beings, it isn't a love which bears any relationship to what human beings call love...

...but that argument is offered easily too often...

...Since Harper's has not yet seen fit to print it and since I may have helped spread some confusion by quoting Hitchens, here is Mr...

...Better to be hurt than to be impervious to the pain love will inevitably bring us to...

...During that period his youngest brother died in an accident, and his wife developed malignant melanoma...

...But Auschwitz was something human beings did to other human beings...

...No one can take the question lightly...

...No approach to suffering is worse than the one which tries to make suffering less than it is...

...Columba's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C...

...To detach yourself from pain is possible and tempting, but the price is terrible...

...She said nothing about the account of his agony at Gethsemane, where we are told his soul "was filled with dismay and dread," and his prayer that he be spared suffering was (as several writers have pointed out) the only prayer in the New Testament which was not granted...

...human evil is involved in un-kindness, war, and the horror of concentration camps...

...Will's letter: Dear Mr...

...This would be enough to crush anyone...

...At the end of the book of Job, God reproaches Job for his questions...

...We think of power as manipulation, force, coercion, and the imposition of authority...

...God" here means some omnipotent being who arranges everything that happens...

...Sorry I didn't catch on sooner...

...Friendship is as possible as war, and happens more often...

...The skies over Auschwitz were silent...

...But in the epilogue, which is thought to be of later composition, God reproaches Job's comforters for their easy attempts to explain away Job's questions: "You have not spoken truthfully about me as my servant Job has done...

...Loving other people hurts us, because we must witness them being hurt and finally dying...

...We know that if we love people we will suffer, but if we refuse to love them we are dead on our feet, animate corpses...

...And we can hope for the faith which can believe that the love revealed there is stronger and more enduring than the horrible suffering which makes it apparent...

...Sincerely, GEORGE F. WILL...

...The teacher who offered this explanation was at pains to assure us that Jesus did not really feel abandoned...

...He and his wife waited until tests showed that everything seemed to be all right, and they now have a child...

...The brother of one of my closest friends - his only living relative - was paralyzed in a swimming accident and is alive only because of surgery, a pacemaker, and a respirator...

...The existence of such a horror moves us to despair of any goodness - if not of God's, certainly of humanity's...

...There is something to the argument that we are not free unless we are free even to be demonic...

...This makes sense, but it might be more to the point to say that if God is all-powerful, it is not power as human beings understand it...

...There are times when love shows itself in suffering, and is revealed in a way we don't see in other places...

...After radiation treatment the illness abated for nearly five years...

...The argument against God has been put succinctly: If God is God he is not good...

...It is easy to have some sympathy for those gnostics who believed that the God who created the physical universe is deranged or evil, and the good God is somewhere else...

...in those days they called five years a cure...

...he will spend what is left of his life that way...