Some (more) thoughts on God and Suffering
My friend recently raised the question of why God let the Israelites suffer in slavery for 400 years before rescuing them. God did tell Abraham basically what would happen, but I don't think that means there were no other reasons. My immediate suggestion would be that the text indicates that the Israelites didn't cry out to God till then, since it says when they cried out he heard them and answered. But that's sort of skirting the issue, because there are plenty of times in scripture where an explanation like that isn't available.
So I wanted to suggest some reasons why sometimes God lets stuff happen that seems really really crappy to us. One is to bring his people back to Him. I suppose there's a sense in which this could sound narcissistic, but I don't think so. I think that creating people who could choose him or not was the most selfless thing a loving God could do, and then to pursue them after they had rebelled and try to win them back, knowing what he created them for and what is good and not good for them, once again seems selfless to me. There are plenty of times in Israel's history that God allowed Israel to go through hardships in hopes that they would cry out to him. It is clear enough that this wasn't the way God wanted things to be; ultimately he wanted know him and understand what is good and bad and desire to obey rather than returning to God when they were in trouble. But you have to start somewhere.
This leads me to an extended analogy. It seems to me that we can understand a lot of this in terms of a relationship between good parents and several children. I want to make several suggestions along these lines. First, good parents have to set up boundaries and discipline their children to teach them to be able to function in a world where consequences for simply doing what you feel like can be much more deadly than a spanking. In the same way, it makes sense to me to understand that God, knowing that there are ultimately worse fates than slavery and worse fates than death.
In general the difference in perspective between parents and children leads to a lot of perceived injustice. For example, when there is an argument between two children and the parents become involved, they parents are generally more concerned with mending the children's relationship and teaching them to treat each other right than they are with figuring out the details of who was right and who was wrong. The parents know that the kids' relationships with each other are far more important in the long run than whose turn it really was to sit in the front or push the button the elevator. The children perceive this as grossly unjust because they simply don't have the perspective to understand. In the same way, I can imagine that a God with eternity as his perspective sometimes has a different perspective on justice and what would be best for us.
Good parents generally love the offending child much more and in a much different way than any of the other children can understand. We have to remember that God loves the worst of us more than we can know. Sometimes it seems like a perfect God judged by *us* would mete out justice a lot more quickly, but it seems to me that if that were the case then none of us would be here.
Last, the Scriptures claim that God's justice can operate on an eternal timescale. Clearly not everything will be punished in this life, but just as clearly, God is ultimately just.
So that's my response. Please don't take this as a claim that any reason I suggested is why any particular even happened. I just want to suggest a way of looking at these things that perhaps answer the question that most interests me, which is what kind of faith and understanding must a people have had to worship a God who had allowed their people to live in slavery for so long? I think the answers are concrete and must be lived to be understood, but I think we can see a glimpse of them along these lines of understanding God as father and ourselves as his children.
So I wanted to suggest some reasons why sometimes God lets stuff happen that seems really really crappy to us. One is to bring his people back to Him. I suppose there's a sense in which this could sound narcissistic, but I don't think so. I think that creating people who could choose him or not was the most selfless thing a loving God could do, and then to pursue them after they had rebelled and try to win them back, knowing what he created them for and what is good and not good for them, once again seems selfless to me. There are plenty of times in Israel's history that God allowed Israel to go through hardships in hopes that they would cry out to him. It is clear enough that this wasn't the way God wanted things to be; ultimately he wanted know him and understand what is good and bad and desire to obey rather than returning to God when they were in trouble. But you have to start somewhere.
This leads me to an extended analogy. It seems to me that we can understand a lot of this in terms of a relationship between good parents and several children. I want to make several suggestions along these lines. First, good parents have to set up boundaries and discipline their children to teach them to be able to function in a world where consequences for simply doing what you feel like can be much more deadly than a spanking. In the same way, it makes sense to me to understand that God, knowing that there are ultimately worse fates than slavery and worse fates than death.
In general the difference in perspective between parents and children leads to a lot of perceived injustice. For example, when there is an argument between two children and the parents become involved, they parents are generally more concerned with mending the children's relationship and teaching them to treat each other right than they are with figuring out the details of who was right and who was wrong. The parents know that the kids' relationships with each other are far more important in the long run than whose turn it really was to sit in the front or push the button the elevator. The children perceive this as grossly unjust because they simply don't have the perspective to understand. In the same way, I can imagine that a God with eternity as his perspective sometimes has a different perspective on justice and what would be best for us.
Good parents generally love the offending child much more and in a much different way than any of the other children can understand. We have to remember that God loves the worst of us more than we can know. Sometimes it seems like a perfect God judged by *us* would mete out justice a lot more quickly, but it seems to me that if that were the case then none of us would be here.
Last, the Scriptures claim that God's justice can operate on an eternal timescale. Clearly not everything will be punished in this life, but just as clearly, God is ultimately just.
So that's my response. Please don't take this as a claim that any reason I suggested is why any particular even happened. I just want to suggest a way of looking at these things that perhaps answer the question that most interests me, which is what kind of faith and understanding must a people have had to worship a God who had allowed their people to live in slavery for so long? I think the answers are concrete and must be lived to be understood, but I think we can see a glimpse of them along these lines of understanding God as father and ourselves as his children.