Why Did God Let That Happen?

If God is Absolute good, why does evil and suffering exist in the world? Was the mass shooting of children in Newtown, Connecticut, part of a master plan?

From: TL, Kansas City, Missouri

Dear TL:

I am resisting the urge to take refuge in comforting thoughts about God having everything under control, or to make sense out of senseless, obscene violence by pretending it harbors a secret good. Don’t misunderstand—I totally believe good can come of this, or any circumstance, regardless of how horrific. Yet events themselves do not have to be good in order for good to come about. Easter was not a good experience for Jesus, but the disciples turned the suffering and death of their Lord into a symbol of triumph and life. They were unable to end crucifixions in their lifetimes, but the power of inclusive love the Christ-message released into the world brought inner peace to untold millions in the centuries to come.

Jesus is a special case; we reflect on his tragedy 2,000 years later. Will we remember the children of Newtown in six months, a year? Will it bring us closer to the ones we love, finally enable us to engage in meaningful dialogue about violence in our society?

Meanwhile, I will stand under the sky and whisper, “I believe … help Thou my unbelief …”

How can people like you so confidently believe that God is Absolute Good when so much suffering and evil exist in the world? Would a good God allow children to die from horrible diseases; where was God when the Nazis gassed six million Jews?

From: K.M., New Mexico (no city provided)

Dear K.M.:

How to explain “evil” if God is 1) all powerful and 2) all good? Historically, the argument has looked like this: If God cannot prevent bad things from happening, then God is not all powerful. And if God will not prevent evil, God is not all good.

The problem is known as theodicy, and theologians have traditionally offered three types of solutions to the two horns of this dilemma:

God is not all powerful. God is limited in some ways, and there are some things He/She/It cannot do in an orderly universe.
Evil is good for you. Bad things are not truly evil but a disguised form of good. For example, suffering can be a challenge to faith, a hidden growth experience, a spiritual test.
Evil and suffering are a mystery. These matters cannot be understood by limited human minds. Resolutions to the problem of theodicy will wait until we receive what Catholics call the beatific vision in the afterlife.

None of these explanations are very satisfactory, especially for a parent who has just lost a child or any innocent bystander who has suffered the collateral damage which goes with living in a physical universe. Rabbi Harold Kushner’s best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People makes the following comment, which is the key to the problem:

All the responses to tragedy which we have considered have at least one thing in common. They all assume that God is the cause of our suffering and they try to understand why God would want us to suffer … We were left either hating ourselves for deserving such a fate or hating God for sending it to us when we did not deserve it. There may be another approach. Maybe God does not cause our suffering.

The confusion begins with a misunderstanding of God’s nature. Instead of pulling strings like a puppeteer, perhaps God is not separate from the cosmos. What if God’s power in fact animates the very atoms of the universe, yet even the smallest molecule has a measure of free will? Suppose God wants all sentient beings to be happy, healthy and wise and has provided a cosmos in which individualized expressions of Divine Intelligence—you and I—must discover and apply the physical and spiritual principles necessary to produce such happiness, health and wisdom.

If people center themselves on the Truth of God’s absolute goodness, even in the face of apparent “evil” and unspeakable suffering; if they rely upon God while walking the valley of the shadow—for that is what evil and suffering are in eternity, mere shadows—then no calamity can overwhelm their sense of okay-ness about life, for they know God has issued a guarantee that everything will work out for the good. This does not mean I should glibly dismiss suffering as an “error in consciousness,” or feel superior to people who are in pain or feel guilty when I face a health challenge or some personal tragedy. For reasons known only to God, that’s the kind of universe where humanity was born. What other arrangement allows the freedom necessary for spiritual growth?

This article appeared in Unity Magazine®.