What a fine world this would be
“patheos” is one of numerous email newsletters I receive periodically, usually scan and sometimes read, depending on the issue’s topic. The outlook I receive is “Progressive Christianity” - - of which writer and thinker Michael Distefano offers several - - Buddhism, Catholic, Contemplative, Evangelical, General Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Latter-day Saint, Muslim, New Visions, Progressive Christian. Distefano, whose official site is allsetfree.com, which although I’ve not looked there the name signifies, also offers podcasts Heretic Happy Hour, Apostates Anonymous, and The Bonfire Sessions.
“patheos” is free and I subscribe because, while I do not regard myself as an apostate or heretic, if I’m going to read religious material, unless I’m involved in trying to sort out and rationalize the Nicene Creed, I prefer open thinking to Christian spiritual writing or apologia. Most spiritual writing bores me to tears, sleep & death, and virtually all apologetics are/is pathetic, a self-knighted hero trying to defend God, who is old enough and big enough to defend Himself.
But “patheos” - - I like Distefano because he identifies with Tolkien and the Hobbits, and his idea of Heaven seems to be finally going to live in Hobbiton; and because the Christianity he writes about makes loving common sense instead of doctrine or dogma - - quite different but very much like Franciscan priest and monk Fr Richard Rohr.
At any event, yesterday on “patheos” a short essay on a favorite subject, Theodicy, which means vindication of God. Theodicy seeks to answer the question If God is all powerful and all loving, why is there suffering and evil in the world, why does a good God permit the manifestation of evil?
The essay is titled “A Humble Theodicy (Or, “How Can A Good God Exist In A World Full of Evil and Suffering?”)". Distefano doesn’t conclude and close the topic, but what he offers (scroll down) makes sense for contemplation, and I like his premise that without Evil we could not recognize, appreciate, love, and choose Good.
It doesn’t “justify” Evil, nor does it get God off the hook for including haNachash in the Garden, but it adds greatly to the conversation and to appreciating that without Evil we wouldn’t have a very interesting and challenging world and life; we surely wouldn't have all the wonderful stories, not only good old Sunday school Bible stories, but history, and most fiction, including all time favorites “Harry Potter” or C S Lewis and “The Chronicles of Narnia” and especially Tolkien’s astonishing Legendarium and his trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”
Right now I’m remembering my beloved students those years at Holy Nativity Episcopal School, their delicious anxiety and fear as Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took barely evade the cloaked Ringwraiths in the Nazgul attack at Bree. (image above)
Does the perfection of Creation (God looked at all that he had made, and behold it was very good) fully justify the Lord God’s including הַנָּחָ֑שׁ in the Garden? Justify to whom, to God's creatures? Think about it: first, if we feel God should meet our expectations, then we have created God in our image, not He us in His; second, if ha-Adam the Earthling (us) had not disobeyed and eaten the forbidden fruit, we'd never know about Evil in the first place; and third, without ha-Nachash the serpent, what a boring existence for ha-Adam the Earthling, Eve, and their progeny forever: human imagination and self-awareness would never have developed; no stories - - we’d never have had David & Goliath, Joseph and His Technicolor Dreamcoat, Moses & Pharaoh, the letters of Paul, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Sauron, Jadis the White Witch, Queen Lucy, High King Peter, "Evil in the Nature of Things" as a friend liked to term tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the like; or even King George III, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. And never, never ever to justify Das Dritte Reich, mindful that sans Hitler many people alive this morning would never have seen the light of Life.
Nor would Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter ever have happened for us.
Ostensibly, we'd either still be Either living in the trees, Or simpleton Earthlings tending the Garden.
There is no universally acceptable Answer to the Question of Theodicy. My longtime view is that the question logically answers itself (i.e., the basic faith premise is faulty: God is not what we imagine and image God to be but whoever and whatever God says God is, ehYeh ahSher ehYeh), but now I especially appreciate what Distefano offers in “patheos”
Without sin, naughtiness and Evil, what a strange world this would be.
and I'm thinking of a song we used to sing in class at Cove School - -
Reuben, Reuben I've been thinking
What a fine world this would be
If the men were all transported
Far beyond the northern sea
Oh, my goodness, gracious Rachel
What a strange world this would be
If the men were all transported
Far beyond the northern sea
Reuben, Reuben I've been thinking
What a great life girls would lead
If they had no men about them
None to tease them, none to heed
Rachel, Rachel I've been thinking
Life would be so easy then
What a lovely world this would be
If you'd leave it to the men
Reuben, Reuben stop your teasing
If you've any love for me
I was only just a-fooling
As I thought, of course, you'd see
Rachel, if you'll not transport us
I will take you for my wife
And I'll split with you my money
Every pay day of my life!
++++++++++
Think about a world and life without stories and songs. Without the serpent and Eve and Adam and the forbidden fruit, we'd still be the same as all the other animals!
++++++++++
Anyway, here’s Distefano’s essay:
A Humble Theodicy (Or, “How Can A Good God Exist In A World Full of Evil and Suffering?”)
DECEMBER 10, 2022 BY MATTHEW DISTEFANO
Evil exists. Or, put more accurately (since a strong case can be made that evil is really the privation of “the good”), evil is experienced by people. Or, put even more precisely yet, people suffer because of whatever evil happens to be, even if evil is some abstract concept to be debated over by the philosophers and theologians among us.
So, where does that leave us, if we are to believe in a God that is any semblance of good?
Well, that’s been the million-dollar question for a very long time, and not one that will be fully answered any time soon (if ever).
And yet, I’d still like to offer my thoughts (by of course using The Lord of the Rings as an example).
In my forthcoming book, The Wisdom of Hobbits: Unearthing Our Humanity at 3 Bagshot Row, I put forth the following thought experiment:
The answer I’m inclined to provide, while simple, seems the most accurate: without evil, we never get The Lord of the Rings. As it pertains to Hobbits, perhaps we get some gardening tips, a recipe for roasted conies, and a how-to guide for blowing smoke rings. A very fine read, but not an adventure that continues to stand the test of time (p. 125).
What I mean by this is clear: without evil, we simply don’t have adventurous literature. We have no hero’s journey. We have no need for pity, forgiveness, or mercy. We have no struggle, no toiling, no overcoming inner demons for the sake of “the good.” Or, at minimum, if we have these things, they are not written or appreciated by us, as we haven’t experienced them in order to tell the story in the first place.
I continue:
Of course, in the face of suffering, an answer like this hardly suffices. But be honest! Does any answer suffice? Of course not. The best we can do—Tolkien included—is to dare to hope that in spite of evil and suffering, a good tale can be spun on our way to redemption (pp. 125-26).
This is why I call this a humble theodicy. In the face of suffering, it should be acknowledged that no answer suffices. In fact, the only true answer—if we can even call it one—is to suffer together. That’s why friendship and fellowship are so crucial (as testified to by Tolkien throughout his tales). In the face of suffering, all that can be done is to suffer alongside others. That, and hope for something different in the future.
And perhaps that’s the key—we approach the suffering experienced in Middle-earth from the end looking back. The end of The Lord of the Rings is a happy one. All fairy tales are. But even more than that, and as we discussed earlier, there is strong evidence throughout Tolkien’s Legendarium of a fully restored and redeemed Arda (represented by a Second Music of the Ainur) that comes prior to the end of time. And so, any current suffering, no matter how small or how horrific, eventually gets redeemed by Ilúvatar, and that should at least bring us some comfort (p. 126).
Again, I can’t stress this enough: this humble answer hardly suffices in the face of suffering. Suffering is the absurd reality we are all faced with, and some will experience it more than others. But two things can remain true in the face of it: 1) we can hope that there is a finality to suffering (that’s why I’m a universalist) and 2) that without it, we would have no great literature, for all great literature has complex characters that must overcome something.
We are those complex characters.
So, let me leave you with something from the Postscript to The Wisdom of Hobbits. May it bring you comfort in the face of your own personal suffering:
So, have hope that like our Hobbit friends, though your life may be wrought with peril, though it may be imbued with suffering, though it may seem like it’s too often well out of your control, there may come a day where, like Sam, you can come home to your comfy chair and say, “Well, I’m back.”
That’s my hope anyway; may it also be yours.
Until next time.