The Pernicious Substitution of Suffering for Evil
"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
This is the most common form of the question of evil, and that points to a serious problem with our understanding of Christian morality. The question of evil is completely different and more important, but the answers to both questions shape our lives and relationships with God. In this post, I will refine the questions of suffering and evil, answer them, and discuss the ethical system that arises from the answers.
Phrasing the Questions
Suffering and evil are not the same thing. Although both are bad, with this name the question becomes misleading. Questions and answers rely on context for relevancy, and by putting the question of suffering in the wrong context we fail to understand its significance.
Let's hypothesize a group who asked what they called the question of crime in this way: "Why are people poor?" Obviously this is the question of poverty, not crime, but because they can see some relationship between the two the group confused them.
As valuable as the answers to the question as phrased could be toward understanding poverty, the context of crime could lead us to ask law enforcement to analyze and act on these answers. This would be a tragic misuse of resources and the likely result would be an improvement in neither crime nor poverty.
So let's define the terms to avoid this mistake and with it the risk of failed responses to both suffering and evil. Suffering is difficulty in life which includes pain, sorrow, discomfort, worry, guilt, and hunger. Evil is rejecting God's plan, which is called sin.
Good is, reasonably enough, following God's plan. Doing evil can result in suffering, but doing good can result in suffering as well. Doing good can alleviate suffering; doing evil can alleviate suffering.
For the most part suffering occurs without need of evil acts. Hurricane Katrina, cancer, car accidents, a recession--these things do not happen because someone somewhere makes a choice for evil. In my own life, my most painful moments can only rarely be attached to anything I did or had done to me.
Popular moral sensibility ties evil directly to suffering and good directly to the alleviation of suffering, particularly that suffering which is most immediate to the decision being made. There are real ethical mistakes made because of this error.
If good is avoiding suffering then the systemization of right conduct becomes primarily utilitarian. The best arbiter for ethical accountability would be a gigantic spreadsheet of suffering, where the pain inflicted by each choice could be tallied and optimizations could be performed using etho-mathematical functions.
In many ways, this would be ideal: it would place the development of ethics well within the grounds of statistics and even scientific inquiry if we could agree on how to quantify suffering. However, this kind of ideal is completely alien to the reality of good and evil in the world we know.
For example, if suffering is evil and not suffering is good, then unhindered access to abortion and euthanasia are good things. If death is not suffering in itself and we can establish that only those who are suffering can use them, then neither act can be seen as anything other than relieving suffering.
People try to talk about the other kinds of suffering created by these practices or specific practices that cause more suffering than others, but once we accept suffering as the grounds for right conduct we have already lost the argument. The illegitimacy of these acts is not due to suffering or the relief of suffering, but about life and death and God's plan for both.
Lest we see this substitution as only a liberal mistake, conservatives also use this sloppy ethical thinking when responding to systemic injustice. Their ideal response is private charity. If the immediate needs and problems of injustice are resolved, there is no need to deal with structural inequality and oppression. By this logic, the relief of immediate suffering makes the integration of greater justice unnecessary.
Judgment based on suffering also leads to incorrect justification for war and violence. If your primary goal is eliminating threats then military responses can be disproportionate and preventive so long as they eliminate that threat. You can even justify a response to a threat that is anticipated but not imminent. Proactive and overwhelming responses to potential threats are justified through the potential suffering they prevent.
In contrast to each of these conclusions where suffering is the primary justification, God's plan asks us to err on the side of life, justice, and peace. The proper ethical decision is to trust in God and follow His will, and not replace his guidance with our own judgment.
Because the conclusions change so dramatically depending on how we frame the question of evil, I think it's terribly important to clarify it. So let me lay out the two questions at hand:
The Question of Suffering:
Why do bad things happen to people?
The Question of Evil:
Why can people reject God's plan?
The Question of Suffering
The Bible gives two distinct answers to this question. The first is in Genesis. Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden due to their sin. God punishes them in this way:
To the woman he said: "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master."
To the man he said: "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return."
The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living. For the man and his wife the LORD God made leather garments, with which he clothed them.
Then the LORD God said: "See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus eat of it and live forever."
The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he had been taken. When he expelled the man, he settled him east of the garden of Eden; and he stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.
-Genesis 3, 16-24
Later in the book, the entire population of the earth less Noah and his family was drowned because of their evil. So in Genesis God causes suffering because of sin. But all of this ends with the Covenant of Noah:
God said to Noah and to his sons with him: "See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark. I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth."
God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.
-Genesis 9, 9-15
So God brings an end to suffering due to divine rage. But that's not the end of human suffering. There is a different example of suffering later in the Old Testament:
And the LORD said to Satan, "Whence do you come?" Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "From roaming the earth and patrolling it."
And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you noticed my servant Job, and that there is no one on earth like him, blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil?"
But Satan answered the LORD and said, "Is it for nothing that Job is God-fearing? Have you not surrounded him and his family and all that he has with your protection? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock are spread over the land. But now put forth your hand and touch anything that he has, and surely he will blaspheme you to your face."
And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand upon his person." So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
-Job 1, 7-12
I think we all know how things go from there.
Many people will point out that God did not cause this suffering--Satan did. But the person who unchains the attack dog has responsibility for the bite it inflicts, even if he did not order it to bite. At best this is negligence and at worst passive-aggressive hostility.
But the point of the story is that the suffering God allows Satan to inflict is not grounds for cursing God. God is above reproach in any decision He makes, because He is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. This is not to say he has the authority or right to define right and wrong; rather, God is right and His absence is wrong. It is impossible for his actions to be improper because all propriety has its origin in Him. This is not a question of applying rules of fairness or justice, it is instead a question of the nature of existence itself, beyond anyone's ability to justify or condemn--ontology rather than ethics.
God is left above reproach for the existence of suffering, but the reasons for suffering are left unknowable. Job's example foreshadows an even greater break from Genesis' punishment for wrongdoing and reward for loyalty. The perfect embodiment of God's will on earth has suffering as the final outcome of all His efforts:
Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed.
Then he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch."
He advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, "Abba, Father, 12 all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will."
-Mark 14, 32-36
God did not put Jesus to death, but God could stop it from happening. Despite Jesus' pleas, He allows His son to fall into the hands of His enemies. The time of reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience was over after the time of Noah. In the new order suffering is inflicted on the obedient as a consequence of their loyalty. Saints and martyrs have shown asceticism, penance, and calamity are part of a close relationship to God. If there is any trend, it is not reward and punishment but rather a correlation between holiness and suffering.
From scripture and our observations of our world we know that suffering in all its forms is and always has been part of God's plan for our lives. The natural world is the cause of most suffering that's not inflicted by other people, and this world was called wholly "good" by God. God didn't pick out the pleasant parts for His blessing.
Further, there is nothing in the Scripture which tells us the natural world was anything less than He wanted it to be. Humans fell from grace through disobedience, but nature never had free will to disobey, and the curse laid on mankind by God said nothing about the world being punished for humanity's sin.
The closest the curse comes to blackening the world due to man's fall is the curse of "thorns and thistles," but this references the development of work, specifically agriculture. The world did not grow darker--humanity's ambition became greater due to the stolen understanding of right and wrong and, with it, an understanding of prosperity and want.
The world as we know it now, in all its pain and beauty, is exactly what God had planned for us. The garden and the condition of humanity before they ate the fruit may have eased suffering--if only by limiting the scope of desire--but God blessed the entirety of His creation, not just the garden, and we live in the good world God so loved that He gave it His only begotten son.
So now we see the trends in suffering, but we still don't know why a God who loves us would create a world that includes suffering. If it's not some kind of punishment then how is it fair or loving to inflict suffering on us? And why are those who love God the most those who suffer the most?
Now we move entirely into the realm of speculation, guessing at the mind of God, but two guesses come to mind. The first is the instructional nature of suffering. Suffering teaches compassion and humility. It is also a reminder to avoid complacency or ingratitude Just as those who become holier can find they suffer more, those who suffer more can, sometimes, find that they become holier. Which is not to make suffering a guarantee of wisdom, but as with all experiences that break our routines--and perhaps a bit more than most--there are great opportunities for personal growth when we are in pain.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
-Matthew 5, 3-12
Without a sense of its benefits, we anticipate suffering as a much greater misfortune than it really is. When we're getting a shot, the worry about the shot is much worse than the shot itself. When endured with the correct attitude and perspective, suffering is not nearly as difficult as we sometimes think. For some reason, this is especially true of minor suffering. With major suffering (death, extreme poverty, subjugation) people tend to reach a point of resignation and endurance, but to avoid minor, temporary suffering (illness, hunger, injury) we go to absurd lengths.
Thus, my second answer is that the question is given more importance than it should have. Suffering exists for the same reasons as happiness, beauty, chaos, and dignity: it is part of the world in which we live which was made for us by God because he loved us. The experience of suffering is no more perplexing than those other experiences. Despite the temporal power it may appear to hold, suffering has no eternal consequences except those we give to it. At it is to the eternal we must look to find real good and evil.
The Question of Evil
God's plan for the universe is complete union with Him in eternity. Our individual actions cannot change His general plan, called Providence, but we can affect our participation in that plan in real and meaningful ways.
This participation allows us to change many temporal things such as whether we eat a sandwich or soup for lunch, but the only eternal thing we can change is our own relationship with God. We can influence other people's relationships with God, but we can't make the choice for them. Neither is God interested in making the choice for us.
This means that although God loves us and wants us to be with Him, he allows us the possibility of rejecting Him. The proof of this follows:
God is reasonable and is not deceptive. We know this because He loves us and wants to relate to us as best we can. If God were deceptive or chaotic he would make Himself impossible to relate to. From the covenant with Abraham to the message of Jesus, the message from all of Jewish and Christian religious history is that God loves us and desires a personal relationship with us. A deceptive or unreasonable relationship is inconsistent with this message, even if the full extent of His greatness is impossible for us to grasp.
We perceive within ourselves the struggle with right and wrong. In our hardest choices God's will is not immediately clear and we struggle to apply what we know of God's will to our specific situation. God's path for us is often difficult to walk and the temptation is strong to avoid it. We have the capacity to make the wrong choice and we all know what it is to sin.
Since discernment and choice an internal experience only God or ourselves could be creating a false impression. If God is reasonable and honest then the experience of decision-making and, at times, choosing sin is not God's lie. Generally self-deception is used to avoid discomfort, but responsibility for sin and the weight of discernment are not pleasant. Therefore the experience must be real, and we can make a choice not to follow God's plan.
We know God does not seek to trick or trap us into evil because He is good and honest. Our part in Providence is not just the final, best choice, but it is continually the best experience of life. Following His path is cause for celebration in day-to-day life on earth, even if those choices lead to suffering, because service to God gives an immediate and perceptible spiritual reward despite and beyond suffering.
If following the plan is so good, why allow anyone to abandon their role in it? It must be that our freedom is the most loving choice He could have made about our natures. As much as the struggle with discernment and imperfection is painful and frustrating, our experience of the choice brings us even closer to God than we would be without it.
A plan outside of ourselves and the freedom to choose participation in that plan are both serious burdens, and the reasons for wishing them away are obvious. There is a certain defeat in rejecting either one: life is pointless or our choices are. The convergence of the plan and our choice brings the most meaning to our lives and how we live them, and it gives each moment an eternal consequence.
Combine this with the Christian principle of endless forgiveness and reconciliation and in every moment our reach is infinite. The responsibility is immense, but the aids we have to bear it are great as well. Among the most profound tools available to us are the many ways we can gain insight into Providence and our part in it.
The Ethical Consequences of the Answers
Thought it is more accurate, this construction of good and evil seems more confusing. Suffering could have been an objective measure. People argue about God's plan constantly. With all these voices how can we determine the general scope of Providence, let alone our own part?
It is important to address this problem, because if we can't systematize ethics then it's difficult to learn or teach it. We must be able to answer the question, "What is the right thing to do in this case?" If the answer to the question is, "Ask me, and I'll tell you what God says," then that opens up the potential for corruption and mistakes.
Fortunately, God wants a relationship with us, and He is reasonable, benevolent, and honest. Therefore it's unsurprising we have been provided with many ways to understand our part in Providence. None of them are completely certain in themselves, but when combined with wisdom we can learn what good and evil mean in a specific situation.
Conscience
Mencius was a Chinese philosopher of the Confucian school in the fourth century BC and he said this about conscience:
'When I say that all men have a mind which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others, my meaning may be illustrated thus:-- even now-a-days, if men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm and distress. They will feel so, not as a ground on which they may gain the favour of the child's parents, nor as a ground on which they may seek the praise of their neighbours and friends, nor from a dislike to the reputation of having been unmoved by such a thing.
'From this case we may perceive that the feeling of commiseration is essential to man, that the feeling of shame and dislike is essential to man, that the feeling of modesty and complaisance is essential to man, and that the feeling of approving and disapproving is essential to man.
'The feeling of commiseration is the principle of benevolence. The feeling of shame and dislike is the principle of righteousness. The feeling of modesty and complaisance is the principle of propriety. The feeling of approving and disapproving is the principle of knowledge.
-book 2, part 1, chapter 6; trans. by James Legge in 1895
As Mencius described, conscience is part of human nature, but it has a supernatural source--God gives us a conscience to guide us to the right path. Conscience is innate, but as with many innate abilities such as running or thinking it can improve or deteriorate over time due to good or bad habits. Lack of self-reflection can cause our consciences to atrophy; self-respect and humility can improve them.
Traumatic events or biological elements can twist conscience. People returning from war, those who are grieving for a loved one, or victims of long-term sexual molestation can have long-term damage to their conscience because when right and wrong are turned on their heads for so long, it is very difficult to walk away with unchanged feelings.
Drugs, bio-chemical imbalances, and physiological problems can interfere with judgment. These don't prevent the conscience from operating, but they can generate inappropriate responses to feelings of conscience.
A well-developed conscience is reasonable but not necessarily rational. Listening to our conscience means being aware of our feelings, but healthy conscience should be fairly consistent. We can probably explain why we feel a certain way about certain choices, but we can't reason ourselves into feeling a certain way just because it seems that we should.
Even a healthy conscience can be a problematic guide, however, because often all the options available to us trigger both positive or negative feelings. As powerful a guide as it may be, there are many pitfalls to avoid when using our conscience. Fortunately, there are other sources for information on God's plan.
Personal Revelation
God speaks to us through prayer and signs. These messages are rarely the "knock you off your horse" kind of experiences such as Paul experienced, so to hear God we need to have a practice of silence and attention to the present moment.
Sometimes revelation is very similar to conscience--it's simply a feeling like consolation or joy. Other times it is an event that carries more significance than it should. More rarely we might have a dream or catch a glimpse of something that should not be there.
The problem with personal revelation is that something could be trying to fool us, be it our imagination or an evil force. But as dangerous as it is to allow ourselves to be misled, it is just as bad to discard revelation, believing we are unworthy to have a relationship with God. Or, worse still, we can't imagine that God is interested in our specific situation.
We need to be cautious in this area, but living in fear of personal revelation is to reject an entire aspect of our spiritual life, even rejecting God Himself. Learning how to discern His broadcast from the static or pirated signals is essential to any spirituality.
To reduce distractions we must practice silence, reflection, and attentiveness. Getting lost in thoughts or business makes it difficult to notice the subtle messages God is sending us. A definitive guide to contemplative prayer beyond this essay and, honestly, my own skill and experience--but there are a few Colorado resources I've heard of and of course contemporary books by Thomas Merton.
I have enough experience to know that there is one clear sign of misdirection: if spiritual experiences tell us what we want to hear we should be very skeptical. God seldom explicitly leads us down a comfortable path or in the way we way think we should go.
The practice of religion and spirituality are rarely comfortable pursuits, and personal revelation is one of the most uncomfortable parts. If God is going to speak directly, it will be a surprising and often troubling experience. Therefore, anything makes us feel self-satisfied or anything other than humbled is likely to have its source some other place than God.
While personal revelation is often unclear, an experience of confusion and uncertainty is no guarantee of the source of insight. So personal revelation is still, by itself, insufficient as a guide.
Tradition
Tradition is a culture's collected attempts to explain conscience, personal revelation, and communal revelation. The content of the first two is contextual, but the general phenomena are universal. It helps us understand our own situation when we learn the experiences and responses of others.
Still, God's plan is general, not only specific. The unique benefit of Tradition is communal revelation. This is God's revelation to the community as a whole and, through them, the human family throughout time and space. The Bible is the attempt of many authors over time to document the revelation God has given to Jewish and Christian peoples.
The Bible is not intended to depict personal revelation. Nothing the authors of Scripture wrote was surprising to their audience, even in their time, because the message was understood by the audience before the author picked up a pen. Sometimes the story was passed on by oral Tradition before it was written down; other times the structure was a new invention but the message behind it was well-known. The writing is a tool to pass along this information to students and future generations. The message of communal revelation is terribly important, as altogether it describes the general plan God has for the world and the people He created.
But Scripture can be confusing when encountered outside of the culture it serves. At my work, a document written last week by someone in San Francisco is read in many different ways, and these misunderstandings result in very real differences in our expectations. We have many advantages that people reading the Bible lack: we share a culture and native language with the author, we have heard the author speak and explain the document, and we can connect this document with a previous roadmap and product history. Yet even with all of these advantages, we cannot agree on the full meaning of a document without going back to the author to resolve differences.
If we read the Bible outside of the community of believers, we lack all of these advantages, so clearly it is foolish to believe we can absorb and live out the message well. Mistaken information assumed to be communal revelation is as frightening as mistaken personal revelation and has just as much of a chance of warping a person's attempts at following God's plan. Even if the text is objective, the meaning of a document can be warped by imagination, desire, and evil forces just as easily as personal experience.
So reading and listening to people's thoughts on God's plan is important, but we also need to live alongside people who are following that plan, who know how to do so because they in turn have been living alongside people who have followed that plan. Tradition is more strongly based on the transmission of lifestyles and habits than any document or research.
There are many voices and writings that make up Tradition, and many of them can conflict. We have to determine those that are consistent with each other across time and space. The trick is to filter out the cultural or personal flotsam that may have drifted alongside the bottle that contains the true message.
Those parts of the Tradition that are held as most sacred by the practitioners are the most likely to be universally meaningful. Revelation tends to be surprising and uncomfortable, so we should not ignore an unpleasant truth if it has been an important part of the community's habits or teaching.
Reason
All along I have emphasized the uncertainty that accompanies discerning our part in Providence. The most hopeful expression of this uncertainty is found in Merton's prayer from Thoughts in Solitude:
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
We are not omniscient and do not have the perspective of eternity, so we cannot hope to know Providence or even our role in it with absolute certainty. However, we can come closer when we use reason to triangulate between the three sources of information: conscience, personal revelation, and Tradition.
If reason tells us that all three agree on a course of action, then we can be as certain as possible that we are on the right path. When reason tells us that one or more of these is contrary to the others, then something has gone wrong. We need to look carefully at all of these sources as well as our line of reasoning and determine where the mistake was made. If nothing resolves itself after introspection, it may be time to turn to someone you trust for guidance.
It is a common mistake to discard too easily any one of these components. None of them trump the others enough to overcome dissension between them, although silence--particularly in personal revelation--should not be taken as a sign for or against the other sources.
It is easy to argue that inconsistency between these sources is fine because God's plan is inaccessible to reason. The response to this has already been made: God is reasonable and wants us to know and follow His plan. Therefore, none of the tools he has given us can lead us astray if we use them correctly. None of them in themselves completely fulfill our need for certain guidance, but taken together with the wisdom and insight God provides us through reason, we can find the right choices.
If this sounds easy, it's not meant to. Often it requires years of introspection, life experience, research, and meditation. But God's plan is accessible to us, and while we all have our own personal part to play in Providence, His plan is something in which we participate through community. Leaning on others to provide support, consolation, and guidances is not just permitted--the Christ we find in each other is necessary to the fulfillment of God's promise in each of us.
So as Christians we must replace the objective, utilitarian ethics of suffering with God's plan, which means trusting our feelings, experiences, relationships, and minds. The result is good which is contextual and personal, but it is also universal and communal.
This is the most common form of the question of evil, and that points to a serious problem with our understanding of Christian morality. The question of evil is completely different and more important, but the answers to both questions shape our lives and relationships with God. In this post, I will refine the questions of suffering and evil, answer them, and discuss the ethical system that arises from the answers.
Phrasing the Questions
Suffering and evil are not the same thing. Although both are bad, with this name the question becomes misleading. Questions and answers rely on context for relevancy, and by putting the question of suffering in the wrong context we fail to understand its significance.
Let's hypothesize a group who asked what they called the question of crime in this way: "Why are people poor?" Obviously this is the question of poverty, not crime, but because they can see some relationship between the two the group confused them.
As valuable as the answers to the question as phrased could be toward understanding poverty, the context of crime could lead us to ask law enforcement to analyze and act on these answers. This would be a tragic misuse of resources and the likely result would be an improvement in neither crime nor poverty.
So let's define the terms to avoid this mistake and with it the risk of failed responses to both suffering and evil. Suffering is difficulty in life which includes pain, sorrow, discomfort, worry, guilt, and hunger. Evil is rejecting God's plan, which is called sin.
Good is, reasonably enough, following God's plan. Doing evil can result in suffering, but doing good can result in suffering as well. Doing good can alleviate suffering; doing evil can alleviate suffering.
For the most part suffering occurs without need of evil acts. Hurricane Katrina, cancer, car accidents, a recession--these things do not happen because someone somewhere makes a choice for evil. In my own life, my most painful moments can only rarely be attached to anything I did or had done to me.
Popular moral sensibility ties evil directly to suffering and good directly to the alleviation of suffering, particularly that suffering which is most immediate to the decision being made. There are real ethical mistakes made because of this error.
If good is avoiding suffering then the systemization of right conduct becomes primarily utilitarian. The best arbiter for ethical accountability would be a gigantic spreadsheet of suffering, where the pain inflicted by each choice could be tallied and optimizations could be performed using etho-mathematical functions.
In many ways, this would be ideal: it would place the development of ethics well within the grounds of statistics and even scientific inquiry if we could agree on how to quantify suffering. However, this kind of ideal is completely alien to the reality of good and evil in the world we know.
For example, if suffering is evil and not suffering is good, then unhindered access to abortion and euthanasia are good things. If death is not suffering in itself and we can establish that only those who are suffering can use them, then neither act can be seen as anything other than relieving suffering.
People try to talk about the other kinds of suffering created by these practices or specific practices that cause more suffering than others, but once we accept suffering as the grounds for right conduct we have already lost the argument. The illegitimacy of these acts is not due to suffering or the relief of suffering, but about life and death and God's plan for both.
Lest we see this substitution as only a liberal mistake, conservatives also use this sloppy ethical thinking when responding to systemic injustice. Their ideal response is private charity. If the immediate needs and problems of injustice are resolved, there is no need to deal with structural inequality and oppression. By this logic, the relief of immediate suffering makes the integration of greater justice unnecessary.
Judgment based on suffering also leads to incorrect justification for war and violence. If your primary goal is eliminating threats then military responses can be disproportionate and preventive so long as they eliminate that threat. You can even justify a response to a threat that is anticipated but not imminent. Proactive and overwhelming responses to potential threats are justified through the potential suffering they prevent.
In contrast to each of these conclusions where suffering is the primary justification, God's plan asks us to err on the side of life, justice, and peace. The proper ethical decision is to trust in God and follow His will, and not replace his guidance with our own judgment.
Because the conclusions change so dramatically depending on how we frame the question of evil, I think it's terribly important to clarify it. So let me lay out the two questions at hand:
The Question of Suffering:
Why do bad things happen to people?
The Question of Evil:
Why can people reject God's plan?
The Question of Suffering
The Bible gives two distinct answers to this question. The first is in Genesis. Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden due to their sin. God punishes them in this way:
To the woman he said: "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master."
To the man he said: "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return."
The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living. For the man and his wife the LORD God made leather garments, with which he clothed them.
Then the LORD God said: "See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus eat of it and live forever."
The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he had been taken. When he expelled the man, he settled him east of the garden of Eden; and he stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.
-Genesis 3, 16-24
Later in the book, the entire population of the earth less Noah and his family was drowned because of their evil. So in Genesis God causes suffering because of sin. But all of this ends with the Covenant of Noah:
God said to Noah and to his sons with him: "See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark. I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth."
God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.
-Genesis 9, 9-15
So God brings an end to suffering due to divine rage. But that's not the end of human suffering. There is a different example of suffering later in the Old Testament:
And the LORD said to Satan, "Whence do you come?" Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "From roaming the earth and patrolling it."
And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you noticed my servant Job, and that there is no one on earth like him, blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil?"
But Satan answered the LORD and said, "Is it for nothing that Job is God-fearing? Have you not surrounded him and his family and all that he has with your protection? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock are spread over the land. But now put forth your hand and touch anything that he has, and surely he will blaspheme you to your face."
And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand upon his person." So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
-Job 1, 7-12
I think we all know how things go from there.
Many people will point out that God did not cause this suffering--Satan did. But the person who unchains the attack dog has responsibility for the bite it inflicts, even if he did not order it to bite. At best this is negligence and at worst passive-aggressive hostility.
But the point of the story is that the suffering God allows Satan to inflict is not grounds for cursing God. God is above reproach in any decision He makes, because He is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. This is not to say he has the authority or right to define right and wrong; rather, God is right and His absence is wrong. It is impossible for his actions to be improper because all propriety has its origin in Him. This is not a question of applying rules of fairness or justice, it is instead a question of the nature of existence itself, beyond anyone's ability to justify or condemn--ontology rather than ethics.
God is left above reproach for the existence of suffering, but the reasons for suffering are left unknowable. Job's example foreshadows an even greater break from Genesis' punishment for wrongdoing and reward for loyalty. The perfect embodiment of God's will on earth has suffering as the final outcome of all His efforts:
Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed.
Then he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch."
He advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, "Abba, Father, 12 all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will."
-Mark 14, 32-36
God did not put Jesus to death, but God could stop it from happening. Despite Jesus' pleas, He allows His son to fall into the hands of His enemies. The time of reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience was over after the time of Noah. In the new order suffering is inflicted on the obedient as a consequence of their loyalty. Saints and martyrs have shown asceticism, penance, and calamity are part of a close relationship to God. If there is any trend, it is not reward and punishment but rather a correlation between holiness and suffering.
From scripture and our observations of our world we know that suffering in all its forms is and always has been part of God's plan for our lives. The natural world is the cause of most suffering that's not inflicted by other people, and this world was called wholly "good" by God. God didn't pick out the pleasant parts for His blessing.
Further, there is nothing in the Scripture which tells us the natural world was anything less than He wanted it to be. Humans fell from grace through disobedience, but nature never had free will to disobey, and the curse laid on mankind by God said nothing about the world being punished for humanity's sin.
The closest the curse comes to blackening the world due to man's fall is the curse of "thorns and thistles," but this references the development of work, specifically agriculture. The world did not grow darker--humanity's ambition became greater due to the stolen understanding of right and wrong and, with it, an understanding of prosperity and want.
The world as we know it now, in all its pain and beauty, is exactly what God had planned for us. The garden and the condition of humanity before they ate the fruit may have eased suffering--if only by limiting the scope of desire--but God blessed the entirety of His creation, not just the garden, and we live in the good world God so loved that He gave it His only begotten son.
So now we see the trends in suffering, but we still don't know why a God who loves us would create a world that includes suffering. If it's not some kind of punishment then how is it fair or loving to inflict suffering on us? And why are those who love God the most those who suffer the most?
Now we move entirely into the realm of speculation, guessing at the mind of God, but two guesses come to mind. The first is the instructional nature of suffering. Suffering teaches compassion and humility. It is also a reminder to avoid complacency or ingratitude Just as those who become holier can find they suffer more, those who suffer more can, sometimes, find that they become holier. Which is not to make suffering a guarantee of wisdom, but as with all experiences that break our routines--and perhaps a bit more than most--there are great opportunities for personal growth when we are in pain.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
-Matthew 5, 3-12
Without a sense of its benefits, we anticipate suffering as a much greater misfortune than it really is. When we're getting a shot, the worry about the shot is much worse than the shot itself. When endured with the correct attitude and perspective, suffering is not nearly as difficult as we sometimes think. For some reason, this is especially true of minor suffering. With major suffering (death, extreme poverty, subjugation) people tend to reach a point of resignation and endurance, but to avoid minor, temporary suffering (illness, hunger, injury) we go to absurd lengths.
Thus, my second answer is that the question is given more importance than it should have. Suffering exists for the same reasons as happiness, beauty, chaos, and dignity: it is part of the world in which we live which was made for us by God because he loved us. The experience of suffering is no more perplexing than those other experiences. Despite the temporal power it may appear to hold, suffering has no eternal consequences except those we give to it. At it is to the eternal we must look to find real good and evil.
The Question of Evil
God's plan for the universe is complete union with Him in eternity. Our individual actions cannot change His general plan, called Providence, but we can affect our participation in that plan in real and meaningful ways.
This participation allows us to change many temporal things such as whether we eat a sandwich or soup for lunch, but the only eternal thing we can change is our own relationship with God. We can influence other people's relationships with God, but we can't make the choice for them. Neither is God interested in making the choice for us.
This means that although God loves us and wants us to be with Him, he allows us the possibility of rejecting Him. The proof of this follows:
God is reasonable and is not deceptive. We know this because He loves us and wants to relate to us as best we can. If God were deceptive or chaotic he would make Himself impossible to relate to. From the covenant with Abraham to the message of Jesus, the message from all of Jewish and Christian religious history is that God loves us and desires a personal relationship with us. A deceptive or unreasonable relationship is inconsistent with this message, even if the full extent of His greatness is impossible for us to grasp.
We perceive within ourselves the struggle with right and wrong. In our hardest choices God's will is not immediately clear and we struggle to apply what we know of God's will to our specific situation. God's path for us is often difficult to walk and the temptation is strong to avoid it. We have the capacity to make the wrong choice and we all know what it is to sin.
Since discernment and choice an internal experience only God or ourselves could be creating a false impression. If God is reasonable and honest then the experience of decision-making and, at times, choosing sin is not God's lie. Generally self-deception is used to avoid discomfort, but responsibility for sin and the weight of discernment are not pleasant. Therefore the experience must be real, and we can make a choice not to follow God's plan.
We know God does not seek to trick or trap us into evil because He is good and honest. Our part in Providence is not just the final, best choice, but it is continually the best experience of life. Following His path is cause for celebration in day-to-day life on earth, even if those choices lead to suffering, because service to God gives an immediate and perceptible spiritual reward despite and beyond suffering.
If following the plan is so good, why allow anyone to abandon their role in it? It must be that our freedom is the most loving choice He could have made about our natures. As much as the struggle with discernment and imperfection is painful and frustrating, our experience of the choice brings us even closer to God than we would be without it.
A plan outside of ourselves and the freedom to choose participation in that plan are both serious burdens, and the reasons for wishing them away are obvious. There is a certain defeat in rejecting either one: life is pointless or our choices are. The convergence of the plan and our choice brings the most meaning to our lives and how we live them, and it gives each moment an eternal consequence.
Combine this with the Christian principle of endless forgiveness and reconciliation and in every moment our reach is infinite. The responsibility is immense, but the aids we have to bear it are great as well. Among the most profound tools available to us are the many ways we can gain insight into Providence and our part in it.
The Ethical Consequences of the Answers
Thought it is more accurate, this construction of good and evil seems more confusing. Suffering could have been an objective measure. People argue about God's plan constantly. With all these voices how can we determine the general scope of Providence, let alone our own part?
It is important to address this problem, because if we can't systematize ethics then it's difficult to learn or teach it. We must be able to answer the question, "What is the right thing to do in this case?" If the answer to the question is, "Ask me, and I'll tell you what God says," then that opens up the potential for corruption and mistakes.
Fortunately, God wants a relationship with us, and He is reasonable, benevolent, and honest. Therefore it's unsurprising we have been provided with many ways to understand our part in Providence. None of them are completely certain in themselves, but when combined with wisdom we can learn what good and evil mean in a specific situation.
Conscience
Mencius was a Chinese philosopher of the Confucian school in the fourth century BC and he said this about conscience:
'When I say that all men have a mind which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others, my meaning may be illustrated thus:-- even now-a-days, if men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm and distress. They will feel so, not as a ground on which they may gain the favour of the child's parents, nor as a ground on which they may seek the praise of their neighbours and friends, nor from a dislike to the reputation of having been unmoved by such a thing.
'From this case we may perceive that the feeling of commiseration is essential to man, that the feeling of shame and dislike is essential to man, that the feeling of modesty and complaisance is essential to man, and that the feeling of approving and disapproving is essential to man.
'The feeling of commiseration is the principle of benevolence. The feeling of shame and dislike is the principle of righteousness. The feeling of modesty and complaisance is the principle of propriety. The feeling of approving and disapproving is the principle of knowledge.
-book 2, part 1, chapter 6; trans. by James Legge in 1895
As Mencius described, conscience is part of human nature, but it has a supernatural source--God gives us a conscience to guide us to the right path. Conscience is innate, but as with many innate abilities such as running or thinking it can improve or deteriorate over time due to good or bad habits. Lack of self-reflection can cause our consciences to atrophy; self-respect and humility can improve them.
Traumatic events or biological elements can twist conscience. People returning from war, those who are grieving for a loved one, or victims of long-term sexual molestation can have long-term damage to their conscience because when right and wrong are turned on their heads for so long, it is very difficult to walk away with unchanged feelings.
Drugs, bio-chemical imbalances, and physiological problems can interfere with judgment. These don't prevent the conscience from operating, but they can generate inappropriate responses to feelings of conscience.
A well-developed conscience is reasonable but not necessarily rational. Listening to our conscience means being aware of our feelings, but healthy conscience should be fairly consistent. We can probably explain why we feel a certain way about certain choices, but we can't reason ourselves into feeling a certain way just because it seems that we should.
Even a healthy conscience can be a problematic guide, however, because often all the options available to us trigger both positive or negative feelings. As powerful a guide as it may be, there are many pitfalls to avoid when using our conscience. Fortunately, there are other sources for information on God's plan.
Personal Revelation
God speaks to us through prayer and signs. These messages are rarely the "knock you off your horse" kind of experiences such as Paul experienced, so to hear God we need to have a practice of silence and attention to the present moment.
Sometimes revelation is very similar to conscience--it's simply a feeling like consolation or joy. Other times it is an event that carries more significance than it should. More rarely we might have a dream or catch a glimpse of something that should not be there.
The problem with personal revelation is that something could be trying to fool us, be it our imagination or an evil force. But as dangerous as it is to allow ourselves to be misled, it is just as bad to discard revelation, believing we are unworthy to have a relationship with God. Or, worse still, we can't imagine that God is interested in our specific situation.
We need to be cautious in this area, but living in fear of personal revelation is to reject an entire aspect of our spiritual life, even rejecting God Himself. Learning how to discern His broadcast from the static or pirated signals is essential to any spirituality.
To reduce distractions we must practice silence, reflection, and attentiveness. Getting lost in thoughts or business makes it difficult to notice the subtle messages God is sending us. A definitive guide to contemplative prayer beyond this essay and, honestly, my own skill and experience--but there are a few Colorado resources I've heard of and of course contemporary books by Thomas Merton.
I have enough experience to know that there is one clear sign of misdirection: if spiritual experiences tell us what we want to hear we should be very skeptical. God seldom explicitly leads us down a comfortable path or in the way we way think we should go.
The practice of religion and spirituality are rarely comfortable pursuits, and personal revelation is one of the most uncomfortable parts. If God is going to speak directly, it will be a surprising and often troubling experience. Therefore, anything makes us feel self-satisfied or anything other than humbled is likely to have its source some other place than God.
While personal revelation is often unclear, an experience of confusion and uncertainty is no guarantee of the source of insight. So personal revelation is still, by itself, insufficient as a guide.
Tradition
Tradition is a culture's collected attempts to explain conscience, personal revelation, and communal revelation. The content of the first two is contextual, but the general phenomena are universal. It helps us understand our own situation when we learn the experiences and responses of others.
Still, God's plan is general, not only specific. The unique benefit of Tradition is communal revelation. This is God's revelation to the community as a whole and, through them, the human family throughout time and space. The Bible is the attempt of many authors over time to document the revelation God has given to Jewish and Christian peoples.
The Bible is not intended to depict personal revelation. Nothing the authors of Scripture wrote was surprising to their audience, even in their time, because the message was understood by the audience before the author picked up a pen. Sometimes the story was passed on by oral Tradition before it was written down; other times the structure was a new invention but the message behind it was well-known. The writing is a tool to pass along this information to students and future generations. The message of communal revelation is terribly important, as altogether it describes the general plan God has for the world and the people He created.
But Scripture can be confusing when encountered outside of the culture it serves. At my work, a document written last week by someone in San Francisco is read in many different ways, and these misunderstandings result in very real differences in our expectations. We have many advantages that people reading the Bible lack: we share a culture and native language with the author, we have heard the author speak and explain the document, and we can connect this document with a previous roadmap and product history. Yet even with all of these advantages, we cannot agree on the full meaning of a document without going back to the author to resolve differences.
If we read the Bible outside of the community of believers, we lack all of these advantages, so clearly it is foolish to believe we can absorb and live out the message well. Mistaken information assumed to be communal revelation is as frightening as mistaken personal revelation and has just as much of a chance of warping a person's attempts at following God's plan. Even if the text is objective, the meaning of a document can be warped by imagination, desire, and evil forces just as easily as personal experience.
So reading and listening to people's thoughts on God's plan is important, but we also need to live alongside people who are following that plan, who know how to do so because they in turn have been living alongside people who have followed that plan. Tradition is more strongly based on the transmission of lifestyles and habits than any document or research.
There are many voices and writings that make up Tradition, and many of them can conflict. We have to determine those that are consistent with each other across time and space. The trick is to filter out the cultural or personal flotsam that may have drifted alongside the bottle that contains the true message.
Those parts of the Tradition that are held as most sacred by the practitioners are the most likely to be universally meaningful. Revelation tends to be surprising and uncomfortable, so we should not ignore an unpleasant truth if it has been an important part of the community's habits or teaching.
Reason
All along I have emphasized the uncertainty that accompanies discerning our part in Providence. The most hopeful expression of this uncertainty is found in Merton's prayer from Thoughts in Solitude:
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
We are not omniscient and do not have the perspective of eternity, so we cannot hope to know Providence or even our role in it with absolute certainty. However, we can come closer when we use reason to triangulate between the three sources of information: conscience, personal revelation, and Tradition.
If reason tells us that all three agree on a course of action, then we can be as certain as possible that we are on the right path. When reason tells us that one or more of these is contrary to the others, then something has gone wrong. We need to look carefully at all of these sources as well as our line of reasoning and determine where the mistake was made. If nothing resolves itself after introspection, it may be time to turn to someone you trust for guidance.
It is a common mistake to discard too easily any one of these components. None of them trump the others enough to overcome dissension between them, although silence--particularly in personal revelation--should not be taken as a sign for or against the other sources.
It is easy to argue that inconsistency between these sources is fine because God's plan is inaccessible to reason. The response to this has already been made: God is reasonable and wants us to know and follow His plan. Therefore, none of the tools he has given us can lead us astray if we use them correctly. None of them in themselves completely fulfill our need for certain guidance, but taken together with the wisdom and insight God provides us through reason, we can find the right choices.
If this sounds easy, it's not meant to. Often it requires years of introspection, life experience, research, and meditation. But God's plan is accessible to us, and while we all have our own personal part to play in Providence, His plan is something in which we participate through community. Leaning on others to provide support, consolation, and guidances is not just permitted--the Christ we find in each other is necessary to the fulfillment of God's promise in each of us.
So as Christians we must replace the objective, utilitarian ethics of suffering with God's plan, which means trusting our feelings, experiences, relationships, and minds. The result is good which is contextual and personal, but it is also universal and communal.