One
of the most difficult topics Christians deal with is suffering; how can God be
good and allow suffering? Many times we
find the answers lacking. We rationalize
human suffering using free will arguments, man’s sin, and acknowledging that we live in a broken world, but a frequent
question that comes up is why would God allow animal suffering when the animals
don’t sin, don’t have free will, and have done nothing to cause their suffering? Here is an example of such a question that
was asked on Reddit and I’d like to share what I found to be a very eloquent answer.
“Why did God's original design for the world
include millions of years of suffering and death through the brutal process of
evolution by natural selection? Why did God call this original design
"very good"? Note that you cannot say that the fall of man caused
death and suffering, because death and suffering existed before the fall.”
The
person giving the answer is Daniel Hedin, who goes by /u/EsquilaxHortensis on
Reddit. He is hired by businesses to use his falcons to
scare off pests that eat crops, attack customers, and/or clog up airplane
turbines. I don’t know him; he doesn’t
know me. He gave me permission to
publish this.
I'd like to share
some thoughts on this. You can skip down a ways to a more direct answer, since
first I want to ruminate a bit on the subjective experience of death.
First I want to establish my
credentials. See, I hunt animals with birds of prey, both for sport and
professionally. I kill a lot of things, and almost always with my bare hands.
Doing it humanely is of paramount importance to me, so typically I aim for a
knock to the head to stun, followed by decapitation, though different animals
have better deaths with other techniques. And, sometimes, the death is just ugly
no matter how I handle it. So, I know something about violent death from the
dealing side.
From the receiving side, too; when I
was about 15 I was riding an ATV in the desert and one way or another managed
to flip it over such that it rolled back onto me. I was pinned beneath it, the
wind knocked out of me and my lungs pressed so hard that I couldn't draw
breath. The scalding-hot metal of the machinery was pressed into me; I have
scars still on my left hand and leg from where I was branded. There were others
with me, but a little too far away, and even had I been able to cry out, which
was just physically impossible, they likely wouldn't have been able to hear me.
I was, myself, stunned. My mind felt
as jammed up and immobile as my body. I was aware that I was in a great deal of
pain, but wasn't really experiencing it. I was also aware that I could not
survive long in that position and that unless something happened I would be
dead soon. Moments like that aren't made for philosophy; I remembered that I'd
thought about such a moment in the past and had certain things I wanted to
think about when the time came. Those thoughts were not accessible. There was
only the terrible, grinding, stupefying present. Thankfully, I couldn't really
feel fear, either. I managed to whisper "God..." but I can't quite
call it a prayer in the normal sense, as I wasn't capable of entering into a
prayer-state. It was at most a pointer toward the things I wished I could think
and say.
I remember the moment very clearly,
yet somehow can't remember who came to get the vehicle off of me. Don't get me
wrong; I'm sure it was one of the people who was out riding that day and not
divine intervention. The point is that I know something about violent death on
the receiving end, too.
And as an observer. I work with
animals. They die sometimes despite my best efforts, and it's always
heartbreaking. Some raptors are very intelligent in terms of relationships and
planning and tactics. One thing I have learned, though, is that death just
isn't real for them. One falcon that I hand-raised, who sees me as her parent
and who used to snuggle in bed with me when she was very little, almost choked
to death at one point. She had been in the process, very barely drawing breath
for almost half an hour before I arrived and was able to help her. What I found
was that her eyes were wide open in stark terror, her little frame shaking,
pain and confusion in every line of her body. Thankfully I had a multi-tool and
was able to pull the blockage out of her throat. Less than a minute later, she
was eating again as though nothing had happened. To her, perhaps, nothing had.
There was no recognition that she almost ended permanently, only some
unpleasant stimuli that were no longer troubling her.
Between her experience and mine is
where I find almost all of the prey I dispatch. They are pumped on adrenaline and/or
in shock, stunned and almost entirely insensate. They'll escape if they can,
instinctually, but for the most part I think that the experience can be
described as stressful more than anything else. And that stress is over
the moment I can end it. And when I do, all they lose is the moment. Not their
past, not their future; they are not aware of these things. They have no
concept of death or loss. Most animals with what we'd call a consciousness live
in the moment, and most of their moments are good enough. Adding another year
to a cat's life doesn't make their subjective experience happier, just longer.
What does it matter to my cat if he lives another ten days or another ten
years? A higher quantity of moments mostly like the ones he has already experienced?
And if he dies poorly, has that devalued the life that he has lived? What is
the value of the life that he has lived?
Indeed, what is the value, the point,
of any experience? Taking an atheist view, all life is qualitatively the same
as a breaking wave or a falling stone: particles behaving as they must in
probabilistic patterns. We happen to be more complex than most, leading to such
things as emergent consciousness, but other than our feelings, why is a
duck trying to avoid a falcon any different from a plant growing toward the
light? We attach a lot of importance to the subjective experience of pain, but
all that is is a mechanism by which self-replicators avoid damage that might
cause them to not spam their environments with self-replicas as well. Of course
pain is unpleasant; that's the point! Pain is good for the replicator in most
cases or it wouldn't happen. And in the case of death it's usually over quickly
at least. Those cases where the intentions of the system go awry and lead to
prolonged suffering are exceptions and should be regarded as such.
Now to actually respond to you
The larger question, of course, is
whether or not this system of reality is worth it, given the
"problem of pain". I have two responses to this. One is logically sound
and satisfies intellectual objections, but feels rather unsatisfying on its
own. The other satisfies the shortcomings of the first, for me at least.
So then,
The intellectual answer to the Problem
of Evil
Well, this is very simple, actually.
No one has ever shown there to be a "Logical Problem of Evil". The
argument is usually framed like this:
P1.
If an omnipotent, loving God exists, needless suffering would not exist.
P2.
Needless suffering exists.C. Therefore, an omnipotent, loving God does not exist.
The problem, of course, is premise 2.
Simply put, we cannot evaluate whether needless suffering exists. We do not
know the underlying framework of our reality, the ultimate fate of our
universe, the truth about an afterlife, or the consequences of our actions or
experience.
Some will object that an
"omnipotent" God could have done things completely differently, but
this doesn't stand to reason. Even an omnipotent being does not act except in
accordance with its own nature. If a deity decides, for one reason or another,
that this is the best way of doing things, that our suffering will be
worthwhile, who are we to object? We're talking here about a transhumanly
intelligent entity with access to information and wisdom that we cannot begin
to comprehend. The idea that we somehow know better and have room to criticize
is absurd.
This answer sucks, though, because all
it does is refute an argument and give the impression of some lofty, detached
deity with inscrutable goals who does not deign to consider the suffering of
those trapped in his nightmarish matrix. And that's not what the Christian God
looks like at all.
My Christian response to the emotional
problem of suffering
This deity cared enough about us to
intervene. That alone speaks volumes, but the way that it went about doing so
is what's truly amazing. This incomprehensibly vast, powerful entity decided to
experience our reality as we do, as one of us, in the person of Jesus. Jesus,
who knew hunger, who knew subjugation, who knew hard work with too little
sleep, who knew the loss of loved ones, who knew the most painful, humiliating
means of execution that all the Powers of the world could give. We cannot speak
of a detached deity who does not care about our pain. He knows.
He came into a world where the idea of
a "good man" looked something like Tony Stark, cold and selfish,
where the standard mode of regarding the people in the next country over was as
potential slaves, where unwanted infants were thrown into dung hills to die of
exposure, where there was no concept of a charitable hospital, where those who
wronged you were to be wronged in return, where it was normal and expected that
the strong would do what they could and the weak would suffer what they must.
And he turned that whole world on its
head. He taught that the rich should give what they had to the poor, that the
hungry should be fed, the sick healed, and one's enemies -- not just one's
neighbors -- should be loved even unto the point of self-sacrifice. That the
infant matters as much as the parent, that the slave matters as much as the
emperor. He suffered with us and taught us to ease each other's suffering. He
calls us to fix the world and make all as it should be. And he says that what's
coming is going to make all of our pain worthwhile.
Today, when people find the idea of
murdering infants to be detestable, that's because of Jesus. When we have the
idea that leaders should be humble, that's because of Jesus. When we have the
idea that rich people are almost obligated to give to charity, that's
because of Jesus. When we have the idea that forgiveness is healthy and not
just an occasional political necessity, that's because of Jesus.
In Jesus we see revealed the face of
the deity who ordered things as they are ordered. The only question is one of
trust. When I look to him I find that I'm not just willing to base my
life on a positive response, but ecstatic to. This is a chance worth taking,
sister.
