There are no easy answers to that, but we explored this
BIG question and more together on zoom in January 2021.
Below is a transcript of the meeting.
If God exists, why doesn’t he come and sort this mess out ?
Welcome everyone. Thanks very much for logging in.
In different times, we would be in the same room and it would be an opportunity to discuss in person and to gather wisdom from each other. Sadly, that’s not possible today, but hopefully a little later there will be an opportunity for those of us who’d like to, to break into smaller groups to discuss and reflect a bit. Some of us I know will prefer just to listen and that’s fine, you’d be very welcome to just stay muted.
I should say, that it’s very possible that you’ll have more questions at the end of this that when you started. And actually, that’s a good thing, that’s healthy, that’s a sign of growth. I should also say, that there is no such thing as a stupid question. In the future we’d like to explore some of your other Questions, so, if you have any... feel free to put them in the chat at the end. On my laptop, when I screen share a PowerPoint, I can’t see chat and my experience is that it can distracting, so if you can, hold off until the end - that would be fantastic.
Hopefully we won’t go much over an hour tonight.
So, if you’re sitting comfortably...
‘If God exists, why doesn’t he come and sort this mess out?’
Now, I do need to start with a disclaimer/spoiler... I don’t know the answer, and anyone who says they do, be just a little bit suspicious, because I don’t believe there is a water-tight answer. We’re dealing with God here; the ultimate mystery. I’ve spent a good 40 years thinking about it off and on, so tonight will be a few thoughts and ideas and responses I’ve found helpful. And I’m sure some of you will add to the mix and that’s the great thing about learning together.
‘If God exists..’
So, the question presumes that there is a God, however we understand that word. You might be relieved to hear that I do believe that God exists! What I will say is that with time and experience my idea of God has changed a lot over the years. And it continues to so. So tonight, be warned, we might have to risk re-evaluating our own ideas about God.
I imagine among us there will be a spectrum of belief in the existence of God. Some of us will feel pretty certain, others less so. Maybe some of us fluctuate between the two depending on how life is treating us. If we’re honest it’s the messy times, the times when we can’t make sense of things or when we’re going through pain or hardship, or those close to us are, that we begin to doubt the goodness or the power or the existence of God.
It’s these hard times that show us just what kind of God we believe in. Because behind those question ‘where are you?’, or ‘why?’ is usually the idea that God has somehow guaranteed an easier life, or should be looking out for us; or should be stepping in to sort things out.
So, assuming God exists... why doesn’t he come and sort this mess out?
This is much more than a theoretical question. There will be times in our lives, perhaps none more so than these times, when a particular ‘mess’, or suffering will be at the forefront of our thoughts, so I want, before we properly get into the head stuff, just for a moment, to give a little space for the heart stuff. So a question - What particular mess, yours, others, the world’s is on your heart at this particular moment?
Just sit with that for a second.
Tonight, isn’t about trying to give tidy answers to the mess, or actually is it about letting God off the hook – some suffering I think is indefensible and the only proper response is to scream the heavens blue. We will not solve this but hopefully we might make some sense of it, create some scaffolding; a theology if you like, ideas that will help us hold the tensions and find some meaning or comfort within them.
The question itself ‘why doesn’t God come and sort this mess out?’ is, and I take comfort from this, one we find a lot in the Old Testament and in the raw honesty of the Psalms in particular. Isaiah 64 v 1 says ‘Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!’
This idea of God coming down and sorting things out is a big one in the Bible, and there are many examples there of God’s intervention in human history and individual lives. There’s also in some places almost this idea of karma; cause and effect; whatever goes around comes around; we reap what we sow. It’s what lies behind questions like ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’ I’ll stick my neck out here however and say I don’t believe that a good life shields us from bad things; and God doesn’t make those kinds of guarantees; we are all subject to the same fragile life and the same sheer bad luck. What God does promise however is to be with us in it. We’ll come back to that.
I’d like to outline three possible approaches to this question which together might help us form something of our own response.
The first is the idea of human freedom or free will.
God did not create human beings like robots, pre-programmed to do exactly what we are intended to do. Instead he took the biggest risk in giving us free will; freedom to make our own choices, to use our own power for good or for otherwise. This is essentially what makes us human. It is also if you think about it a pre-condition for love. Love cannot be manufactured or programmed. Neither can it be demanded or bought. For love to be love it must always be freely given. No freedom - no love and arguably love is what all this is about. The problem with freedom is that we can abuse it - Emotionally, physically, economically. And we all do. So much of the world’s mess and pain stems from the selfish and cruel or ignorant choices human beings make.
We’re all very aware that the way we choose to live for example impacts the environment – which impacts everything. If you saw David Attenborough’s Extinction programme you’ll also know that humanity is trespassing into ecosystems with terrible consequences not just for the earth and the animals but also for us... it’s thought for instance that Covid 19 and other viruses can be traced back to trespassing where we shouldn’t.
Lots of us would like a God who regularly intervenes. If we had power to prevent our own child being hurt we would use it. Why then shouldn’t God parachute in and do something?
The question is where does God draw the line? If we expect God to curb someone else’s free will then we should also expect him to curb ours. And to step in every single time a human being makes a wrong choice would that not be to defeat the purpose of life and indeed love? Maybe our second approach will help us think this through a little more.
Our second approach could be summed up in some words by the poet John Keats who described the world as a vale or place of soul-making. What he seems to be saying is that only a world containing the possibility of suffering and hardship would allow us to truly grow and develop as people.
Think about that…
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If there was no danger in the world, then there would be no such thing as courage
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If the world contained an abundance of everything, there would be no such thing as generosity or selflessness
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And if there were no challenges or setbacks in life, there would be no opportunities to develop perseverance and character because it is largely as we know our failures and setbacks and yes our sufferings that make us who we are
Let me share with you a story I heard many years ago…
A young child was watching a chrysalis and inside she could see the butterfly struggling to get free. Thinking she could help she found a scalpel and very carefully, very gently opened the chrysalis to release the butterfly. Because the butterfly however had not had the experience of fighting and strengthening its wings, it did not have the strength to fly
What seemed like a kindness was in fact a disservice.
All that we value about humanity would be unrecognizable without the chrysalis of hardship. We would lose whole layers of meaning and depth from our lives. If there were no hardships and challenges, or if God always intervened to sweep our difficulties aside or to cut us free, then human life would be of a totally different order, we would not become who we were created to be; we would never grow up.
This has even led some Christian writers to suggest that God’s world is good in a highly specific sense. It is good in the sense that it is fit for a very important purpose. It is the right sort of environment for soul-making – for giving people the opportunity to grow and develop and become. There are undoubtedly some important insights within this but some suffering is so damned awful, so inexcusable, so crushing that it is very hard to see it as part of some Masterplan.
Reflect on this idea… does God ever intend or cause suffering? My own personal belief is that although the conditions for life and love can be traced back to the Creator, the God I believe in, never intentionally causes or sends suffering to test or better us.
The first approach focused on the mess caused through human wrongdoing. The second on the character of suffering and on the complex and profound part it plays in human becoming. The third approach focuses on the way in which God creates.
Think about the workings of a clock. It’s an incredible piece of craftsmanship and engineering, made to operate in one pre-set, pre-determined way. Creation however isn’t like a clock. God created the material world with the capacity to develop in its own way – so that it wouldn’t just be a rigid extension of himself. We do not live in a world where every aspect of existence, where every change and development in the natural order has been wholly pre-determined from the outset. If the material world genuinely possesses some degree of potential, some capacity to develop in its own way, then it must also possess some potential to develop elements of disorder.
Evolution shouldn’t be a dirty word to Christians – it’s not asking the same questions that Genesis for example is trying to grapple with. Nor does it negate the need for a Creator. Evolution gives us some very helpful insights into how things evolve and mutate, and helps explain perhaps why diseases and other dysfunctions emerge. Sickness and suffering are part of the cycle of life; from the insect to the mountain everything is subject to that process, even stars are born, they live and they die. If there is to be new life, then the old must die - our planet cannot sustain us all. And we all die from something; so disease regrettably is necessary. That’s cold comfort I know when someone we love is taken far too early.
Going to pause there to go into smaller groups to chat for about ten minutes max. Please don’t feel you need to say anything – keep yourself muted and people will know not to ask. If you do want to chat remember to unmute yourself. You might want to take a screen shot of these questions
There is as I said at the beginning no watertight answer to this question. I personally believe that rather than asking God to come and sort this mess out, God has asked us, wherever we are and with what choices and power we have, to do everything we can to sort this mess out. That’s in my experience, how God works most of the time... through you and me; God needs us.
In these times of Covid for instance; God I believe is the one who inspires the compassion that drives the ICU staff, who inspires the wisdom and the expertise that has led to the development of vaccines; who inspires a neighbour to do the shopping for someone shielding; who inspires you and me to observe hands, face, space.
Christianity believes that God is not passive in the face of all this suffering. Christians believe that in Jesus God entered wholesale into the reality of being human. He shared all of our experience; the highs and the hell of being human. On the cross he took the full force of our cruelty and inhumanity, he absorbed all that our free will could throw at him. He hung in solidarity with all those who have and still suffer and finally he faced the agony of that great disorder, death.
So God understands from personal experience what suffering is. And he waits with us and walks with us and weeps with us in the midst of it. But the death of Jesus is not the end of the story of course; Christians believe in resurrection; this idea that God takes the broken pieces of life and crafts them into something called hope; that deep, certain knowledge that goodness is always stronger than evil, that light is stronger than darkness, that love is stronger even than death. In the end love wins. God will make all things new; will heal even the most broken heart, will dry every eye red with weeping. That is a promise.
As professor Hans Kung says ‘God’s kingdom is creation healed’. And that kingdom comes, through us; the ways we use our freedom to alleviate the suffering of others, to bring healing with our words and our presence and our expertise and our choices.
I’m indebted to the vicar of St Martins in the Fields Sam Wells who offers three ways of praying within suffering – some of the St A and St M folk have heard this. He asks us to imagine a moment after church over coffee when we begin chatting to someone and just as we are about to break off the conversation, that person touches our arm and says ‘say a prayer for my dad will you, he’s not himself, the dementia’s getting worse, he’s disappearing before my eyes’. And at that moment you realise you are standing on holy ground, looking into the fear and heartbreak of your friend’s soul. And instinctively you say ‘of course, of course I’ll pray’ But where do you start, how do we pray about such a slow burning tragedy?
Sam suggests that usually we pray in one of two ways:
The first he calls the prayer of resurrection; ‘God fix this, override the rules of this world, step in and make possible the impossible. Reverse this disease’. After all resurrection isn’t this what our faith is built on?. Should we not expect the miraculous? Isn’t it a question of just having enough faith? And a big part of us wants to pray like this but we’re afraid; afraid that we don’t have enough faith; afraid of our hopes getting trashed.
The second prayer he calls the prayer of Incarnation; ’God in Jesus you shared our pain and sorrow and sheer bad luck. Jesus you were broken and desolate and alone with no guarantees. Visit my friend now and sit with them, hold their hand and give them patience and hope to get them through the day and send companions to show you care’
It’s a prayer I find myself praying often. It’s usually as far as my faith can stretch. I cannot bring myself to offer hope that may prove to be false. I trust that the simple knowledge that my friend is not alone might be enough. And in praying of course for companions I must be prepared myself to be part of that answer.
There is a third prayer however, one Sam calls the prayer of transfiguration:
‘God in your son’s transfiguration we see a whole new reality within, beneath and beyond what we thought we understood. In their times of bewilderment and confusion show my friend and her father that they may find a deeper truth to their life than they ever knew, make firmer friends than they ever had, find reasons for living beyond what they ever imagined and be folded into your grace like never before. Peel back the beauty and strength of their true humanity, transform and transfigure from this chaos and pain something new, something good, something of life’. There are I think few prayers as powerful as the prayer of transfiguration. It’s not the prayer of fix this and take it off my desk nor be with me and share this struggle. It’s a prayer which asks God to take us up the mountain, upstairs even if just for a moment so that we can see beyond and know a deeper reality
To end a prayer of transfiguration for any of us going through tough times;
‘Make this trial and tragedy, this problem and pain a glimpse of your glory, a window into your world, where I can see you face, sense the mystery in all things, and walk with angels and saints. Bring me closer to you in this crisis than I have ever been in calmer times. Make this a moment of truth and when I cower in fear and feel alone, touch me and raise me and make me alive like never before…’
Thank you all very much for coming and contributing and bringing your own story and your own wisdom.
Just to say, that if there’s anything you’d value chatting through in person, we’re still allowed to go for a walk with one other – so drop me a line – my email is on the screen.