The most popular reason why people become atheists or agnostics, including great minds like Bart Ehrman and Jon Stewart, is this question: How can there be a just and merciful God ruling the universe when there is so much pain and suffering in the world?
Each answer to this question is a “theodicy,” which Webster’s 9th Collegiate defines as a term that came into use around 1797 and means “a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.”
The Book of Job is a theodicy that rejects popular theodicies. The foremost being the one that says if something bad is happening to you, you must have done something wrong. You brought it on yourself because God (1) punishes the wicked, (2) ONLY punishes the wicked (3) God is just and merciful and wouldn’t do bad stuff to you unless you deserved it, or (4) in Job’s case, God made a bet with Satan that Job would never reject him no matter what evils were inflicted.
A note here: Satan in Hebrew means “the antagonist,” not the Devil, as in other religious traditions. Satan is an angel who holds Socratic dialogues with God, presumably to keep things honest by presenting the negative side of the story. Pronounced: sah tahn.
Why do I mention the Hebrew meaning of Satan? Because it shows that Hebrew Sc ripture portrays God as the single divine power of the universe. The natural conclusion, then, is that evil somehow comes from God.
The Coen Brothers’ movie A SERIOUS MAN is a modern commentary on the Book of Job. Instead of Job’s comforters, they give us rabbis of increasing status and uselessness. None of them can tell the hero why so much misfortune is heaped on him, from his wife’s infidelity and his son’s school troubles to his job uncertainty and moral questioning. The movie is as excellent as it is controversial. It’s also funny as hell.
Here are some other theodicies: (1) God set the world in motion, just as you would set a clock, and like a wound clock, it runs on its own. (2) Evil isn’t God’s fault; it is human kind’s. (3) God is good but not omnipotent. (See Kushner, WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE.) (4) Evil has to be part of creation so that humans may have free will. (5) God makes mistakes. (6) Without evil we wouldn’t appreciate the good. (7) Evil occurs when there is separation from God. (8) Human nature is sinful and causes evil. (9) Although humans are born good, they are susceptible to an evil inclination, which causes evil. (10) It’s a mystery.
What do you think?
