Pain Revisited

Devout readers will remember my recent series on the problem of pain (parts I, II, III & IV), which is essentially the question of how gratuitous suffering can exist in a world governed by a powerful and loving God. In discussing this problem with Christians I've often been reminded that God cannot be judged by human standards. The Christian concept of God is a being so great in knowledge, power and love that his actions and motives cannot possibly be understood my mere mortals. Inevitably, any attempt to judge such a being by human criteria will be insufficient and inaccurate. "God has a reason we can't understand" is the answer to any unanswerable question, and no divine act is to (seemingly) monstrous to be excused by our ignorance. This is certainly a powerful defense, but what is it's price? Sam Harris (truthdig.com) makes the following observation (thanks to the Questioning Christian):

If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God's goodness in the first place.

I think he makes a good point. It doesn't seem possible to prove that a good God does not exist based on human experience, knowledge, and logic, but if theists wish to dismiss the argument on these grounds, they cannot then turn and offer their own empirical proofs in support of a good God.

But it seems that we do this all the time. Every week in my church people stand up and proclaim the goodness of God as it is evident in their personal life. No one qualifies these testimonials with the reminder that we don't understand God and it's quite possible that the things he does that seem good to us are actually evil. Nor should they.

I believe these experiences - apparent answers to prayer, encouraging thoughts, etc. - are good and valid, and I'm glad for the encouragement they seem to bring. But it's one thing to let your perspective and your experiences to encourage you; it's quite another to use them to persuade others of the validity of your beliefs. Debate and evangelism have their own set of rules.

We have a choice: either we can debate the existence of God using empirical evidence (recognizing that we cannot be certain about our conclusions) or we dismiss all such evidence. We cannot present our experiences as substantiation of God's goodness and not give credence to counterexamples.