The Jewish prisoners in the notorious and ghastly concentration camp in Auschwitz, soon realized that there was only sky over Auschwitz and no heaven. God’s supposedly chosen race had to reconcile with their horrendous fate that their prayers will never be answered. The irrevocable imprint of death and extermination were writ large on their race and six million would have perished by the end of World War II. Machine guns, gallows and gas chambers worked overtime to execute Hitler’s highly classified and euphemistic dossier, ‘The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem’. The Jewish inmates trembled not at the thought that there is a just God but were devastated at the rather impossible prospect that there is no just God. This was the worst of fears manifested for a pious race, its pervasiveness diffused into their psyche and eventually obliterated the faith of millions. The culmination of the inhuman horrors of the Holocaust, their utter despair, gruesome torture and endless agony found expression in an anonymous phrase, carved on the wall of a concentration camp by a Jewish prisoner, “If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness”.
Yahweh, the I am Who I am, the Deliverer who led their ancestors in the wilderness of Sinai from Egyptian slavery, guiding the Israelites as a cloud of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night to the ‘Promised Land’ was brutally silent even when Jewish babies were hideously tossed up in the air and used as targets by German machine guns. History repeats itself when heart rending cries of “Ommee” (mama) and “Abee” (papa) of Syrian and Palestinian children are drowned by the rumble of Israeli drones and ISIS machine guns. When the inconsolable parents bury the dismembered bodies of their children, will they resign their losses to Ar-Rahman (Omni-benevolent) Allah’s plan for welfare and not evil?
Crisis of faith and crisis in meaning are integral and inevitable part of a believer’s journey. This experience is tantamount to walking into the terrors of gloom, or backsliding uncontrollably into an uncharted territory of uncertainty and fear, deteriorating into a cyclical helplessness and caught in an inescapable labyrinth of enigma, anguish and pain. In those grueling epochs of fear and uncertainty, many a believer feels that trusting the light of reason a better proposition than the apparent darkness of faith. The problem of evil is often cited by atheists as the proof of non-existence of a benevolent God and such arguments dates back to antiquity. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus proposed a trilemma which was later propagated by atheistic philosopher David Hume which is expressed as follows:
1. If God is unable to prevent evil, he is not all-powerful.
2. If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
3. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
The above hypothesis has resonated throughout the history of human civilizations and rebuttals from theists centered on logical argument that an omnipotent and omniscient God, who is the Alpha and Omega has sufficient moral justifications in permitting evil in the world. One of the leading figures of the 20th century, Pope John Paul II has explored in his brilliant encyclical Salvifici Doloris (On the Christian meaning of human suffering) the rather difficult theme of evil and pain. He elucidates that God has manifold reasons to permit evil. It could range from charity where suffering is a prerequisite for manifesting a good or humility that helps an individual to eschew arrogance and pride, and abandon one of the most ancient deceptions of humans ever since their fall in the Garden of Eden, their desire to be God or be like Him. Jean Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher made a futile attempt to reorder the world when he wrote, “To be man is to reach toward being God. Or, if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God”. Pain and suffering humble man, exposes his weakness and fallibility and his place in the rightful order of the universe.
God also uses suffering and pain to transform human lives as with testimonies of the life of saints, in the likes of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Augustine and St. Ignatius of Loyola who were wretched and profligate men indulging in acts of debauchery spontaneously transformed by the love of God in the revelation of his salvific purpose. Human beings also suffer as punishment in the form of retributive justice meted out for their moral wrongs. C.S. Lewis, the famed British theologian proposes that God uses pain and evil to draw the attention of humans when they are deviant. He writes in his acclaimed essay, The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is his megaphone to rouse a dead world”. A similar theme is discussed in the Book of Hosea, 2:14, when Israel forsakes her righteous path, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her”. Because the chosen race has abandoned the true God in their prosperity, He is forced to lead them into a desert experience, far from joy and comfort of sinful pleasures so that at least they may listen. The Book of Job testifies that innocents do suffer when onlookers and friends try to universalize their suffering as consequence of sin and moral depravity. Often pious and faithful like Job have to endure epochs of gruesome trials and perseverance so that God’s glory will be manifested later.
Are we therefore, hapless beings condemned to the slavery of our Free Will, received as a gift from God? Is God therefore a deist due to this very reason-who doesn’t intervene morally in the world of human beings- as suggested by preeminent historical figures like Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke and Thomas Paine? Have we inhabited a fallen world, a corrupted system, nemesis of the abuse of our Free Will? The amoral, naturalistic process of the ‘Dance of the DNA’ is a proposition (though morally flawed) made by atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his ‘Selfish Gene Theory’ to negate purpose, meaning and design in the universe. Apparently, every human being at some point of time in his transient life feels that life is meaningless when his prayers are unanswered and the silence of God is overwhelming. And to decipher its meaning by our embodied and limited intellect is tantamount to the ‘Absurd’, a philosophical position maintained by the French philosopher Albert Camus. Deuteronomy 29:29 warns and at once comforts us in our existential plight, “The secret things belong to the Lord, but revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law”.
Perhaps God is beyond the anthropomorphic interpretations of good and evil so that pain and long suffering are equally good and necessary in His eyes. Maybe humans should learn to rejoice in pain as much as pleasure as it is the right response. Book of James asserts this truth, however unpalatable in chapter 1 verse 2, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds”. As a consequence of non-renewal of our minds to the above verse, we are afflicted by stress induced psychosomatic ailments and many die a premature death. The irrefutable truth is that pain and suffering are the matrix of human existence and its equilibrium only occasionally disrupted by bursts of joy and happiness.
A fatalist would aver that people’s destiny is subjected to the mercy of chance events of cyclical planetary configurations as elucidated by the pseudo-science of astrology in Eastern and Babylonian religions. Humans are prisoners of fate according to ancient Chinese concept of Yin and Yang (symbolizing light and darkness which, are opposite and contrary forces), also known as the wheel of life set in motion by the principle of dualism. Interestingly, Yin and Yang in Taoism/Daoism is complementary and not adversarial. Both good and bad are good and neither represents evil since both are required for a harmonious balance in life.
A similar tenet is espoused in ‘Bhagavad Gita’, that states everything happens for a reason in the past, present and future which, invariably will consummate in an auspicious ending. The Stoic philosophers of ancient Hellenic (Greece) exhort mankind to restrain emotions and accept the present, however hostile and unfavorable. Stoic philosophers Seneca and Epictetus emphasized that training the mind to be indifferent to pleasure and pain develops virtue that would redirect one’s steps onto the path of Eudaimonia (happiness). Wilhelm Hegel, the German philosopher proposed a method of discourse similar to Yin and Yang called ‘Dialectics’ where opposite forces of thesis and antithesis create a new reality and world order through the synthesis of the tension between them.
The human condition and existential angst of the most intelligent and dominant species on the planet, is best summarized by Shakespeare in his iconic Sonnet XXIX “I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries”. Elie Wiesel, the Jewish Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate narrates in his poignant book, “The Night”, when a young boy was sentenced to the gallows in Auschwitz concentration camp, accused of collaborating against the Nazis. Because of his light weight, he didn’t die immediately but was convulsing and writhing in agony for well over 20 minutes, lingering between life and death. Elie Wiesel heard a fellow Jewish inmate muttering in devastation, “For God’s sake, where is God?”. After a moment of silence, a voice answered within the soul of Elie Wiesel, “Where is He? This is where (He is)- hanging here from these gallows...”
The Christian message of crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the ‘Logos’, God incarnate and the Word that became flesh is distinct from other world religions and uniquely deals with the problem of evil and suffering. Good Friday symbolizes not the absence of God, but His presence. Jesus hanging on a cross on Mt. Calvary denotes that God is not detached to human pain and suffering but He is part of it. For Christians, the cross is the true measure of God’s unconditional love (Agape) for all mankind and the risen Christ, the culmination of our intended glory. His conquest of evil, suffering, death and destruction is the singular reason why he invites all in Matthew 4:19, “Come follow me”.
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