The Bible on Pain

This is the third installment in my series on the problem of pain. (It starts here and continues here.) In this post I will examine the Biblical story of the fall of man, which purports to explain how suffering became a part of the world God once called good.

The Bible tells us that God intended the world to be a sort of paradise. The description of this paradise is very helpful to a discussion of suffering and evil, because it serves as a vision of a perfect world - a world created by a loving and powerful God. If we accept this description as a part of the Biblical explanation for the existence of suffering, we need not further ponder or debate what a perfect world would look like, we need only determine whether the explanation of how this original paradise decayed into our present world is reasonable.

The Bible does not describe Eden in detail, but it does imply something about it that I find very interesting. As God goes through his creating process he repeatedly stops to remark that it's all very good. The last time he says this is after he has created everything, including plants, animals, and humans. But just before giving this final expression of approval, he tells man that all the plants on earth are his to eat. But they're not just his - they're for all the animals too. Presumably, God thought it would be best if animals weren't killed for food. I recently watched Jurassic Park, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Animals hunting and killing each other is a ghastly affair. The writer of Genesis, along with other Biblical authors, was clearly of the opinion that creating animals which eat each other alive would be inconsistent with the character of a loving God.

For the modern reader, who has at least heard of old earth, theistic evolution, etc., the obvious question is whether all animals really were herbivores before the fall. If animals hunted and killed other animals before humankind came into existence and sinned, I can't see how Adam's fall or subsequent human nature can possibly be blamed for all that suffering. (Of course there are other possible explanations, which I will discuss in subsequent posts.) But if you believe in a literal six-day creation, the Garden of Eden, universal vegetarianism and so forth, it still strikes me as exceedingly odd that God would create animals which are specifically and meticulously designed to be killing machines, since his intent was for them to remain herbivores forever. Isn't the incredibly adapted anatomy of living things the whole platform of creationism? If cheetahs and crocodiles and velociraptors sat around in the Garden and ate grass with cows and sheep, what does that say about their design?

I think the most obvious counterargument for young earthers is that predators were changed after the fall, in the same way that snakes and thorns and the pain of childbirth were changed. This is certainly possible. If there was no death before the fall (which presumably happened soon after the 7th day) there would be no fossil evidence of the pre-carnivorous versions of modern predators. But then the question arises of why man's downfall would have such a radical impact on the rest of nature - not only the physical alteration of innumerable species, but also (it would seem) the beginning of disease, natural disasters, and even death itself, throughout the whole world. Are all these great evils natural, cause-and-effect consequences of human sin? What happened when Adam and Eve bit into that fruit?

The forbidden fruit seemed to have an immediate effect on Adam and Eve - they realized they were naked, and felt ashamed. But what else happened at that moment? Apparently nothing worth recording. The kids weren't really in trouble until Dad got home. And what does God say when he finds his children have disobeyed him? Does he explain to them the natural consequences of their actions? Does he tell them how their disobedience has set in motion events that will destroy them and their world? Or does he curse them?

I don't know Hebrew, so I can't say this with any great authority, but I find the wording of the curses in Gen 3 very interesting. They read not as God listing the natural effects of sin, but as God listing his punishment for sin. God says "I will put", and "I will greatly increase", as if he were a judge handing down a sentence. He also banishes Adam and Eve from the garden. So it seems to me if we're going to take a Biblical view of the beginning of suffering, we ought not to say that suffering is a result of sin, but that suffering is God's punishment for sin. At least, some suffering is. I don't think instances of pain resulting from cruel or selfish human acts can be traced back to these divine curses (unless our sinful nature itself is a curse from God), but at the very least, toil and the pain of childbirth can be.

Which raises an interesting question about the exact relationship between the fall and suffering. Just how did the first sin make such a mess of the world that it even brought into existence diseases, natural disasters, and carnivores? I can't say this for certain, but such things (if indeed they can be associated with the fall) would seem to arise not as natural results of sin, but as the punishment of God on all of creation for human sins. God cursed the ground to make farming toilsome; it seems that he also cursed the water and the air to create tornados and tsunamis. God created thorns as punishment; it seems that he also created deadly viruses. God put enmity between humans and snakes; it seems that he also put enmity between wolves and lambs. Or am I wrong?

This is not to say that God is to blame for the fallen nature of the world, only that he seems to have caused it to fall as punishment for man's sin. I don't understand why he would do that, but it does seem consistent with other things God has done, such as commanding the Israelites to slaughter enemy tribes' livestock, in addition to all human members. Another example of this sort of blanket punishment would be sending a flood to destroy all life on earth. If God really wanted to wipe out every man, woman and child in the world (save for one family) because of their great sin, there are numerous ways this could have been done - plague, war, fire from heaven, or simply striking them all dead. But he chose to flood the earth, drowning not only every human, but every animal as well (again, except for 2-6 of every kind). Why?

There seems to be something inconsistent, to me, about the Biblical God's attitude towards animals. On one hand, scripture takes the position that a perfect world would not include violent death for any creatures. On the other hand, animals are routinely caught in the crossfire of God's punishment of humanity. I can't understand this.

I'm afraid I've stumbled back upon an old problem of mine: the Biblical portrayal of God's judgment, which is radically out of sync with my own intuitive understanding of justice. In the Bible nations are judged and destroyed as a whole, children are punished for their ancestor's sins, and (based on the above) animals are cursed for the disobedience of humans. Of course, in everyday life the consequences of misdeeds are commonly suffered by those who did not perpetrate them - children, families, nations, and animals. This is both a natural part of our world and a significant aspect of the problem of pain. Although we see it every day, we sense that something is wrong - very wrong - about innocents suffering as a result of other's sins. The Bible (at the least, this portion of the Bible) does not explain how God could allow undeserved suffering. On the contrary, it makes God a perpetrator of such suffering.

I want to be clear: I'm not trying to find fault with the Biblical God or tell him that he should to have acted differently. What I'm saying is that his actions, as I understand them, make no sense to me. I recognize that this is not a particularly persuasive argument against the existence of the Biblical God. Please understand, it's not intended to be. What I'm saying is that any explanation for the existence of suffering in God's creation that requires a literal interpretation of the Bible is extremely unsatisfactory to me. Unless my readers wish to change my mind, I will move on to other possible explanations for the existence of suffering.