I asked my husband recently about whether or not he believes in a benevolent God. He said no. The existence of suffering was his rationale. When I asked then if he thought it was all pointless, he said he did not believe it was. We then concluded that this was an indication of a form of faith, that all things have a purpose. Or at the very least, a potential. That does not automatically indicate a belief in the existence of God. For suffering can have potential with or without the presence of the Divine. Meaning, we can learn from our mistakes either way if we choose to.
That doesn’t mean God laid the mistake at our feet for that purpose. Faith in the potential value of our mistakes has an agnosticism to it which neatly evades the question about the existence of God. Something which many people could find helpful. It focuses on an inherent opportunity within suffering to improve things based on our personal experience of it.
As a person who believes in God, however, I have a hunch that Its benevolence can be seen as a withholding of interference. The reason I feel that is because we already know that natural consequences are better educators than punishment. If a kid draws on the wall, they learn more from having to clean the wall themselves than from being grounded and the wall getting cleaned on their behalf. They are disconnected from the consequence, and therefore learn nothing. The behavior may indeed be modified away from doing it again, but through coercion and negative reinforcement rather than actual learning.
Are we saying that we understand this concept better than God does? I can’t imagine that being the case. Further, I believe that allowing us to fail is an indication that God has faith in our ability to figure it out on our own using the principles and guidelines we’ve been given through history’s spiritual teachers.
But are we alone in our suffering? I can’t believe that, personally. The fact that there is so much guiding spiritual text in the world designed to help inform our choices in a more loving direction serves as an indicator that we were either made with that inner understanding or that it’s being constantly whispered to us. Or possibly both. I choose to see this as a signal that we are accompanied by God through our suffering because to prevent it entirely would be enabling us rather than empowering us. It would violate the prime directive.
The Old Testament describes God as a dispenser of unnatural consequences. It describes God as an all powerful male figure who casually annihilates everything from individuals to cities to flooding the entire world as a punishment for human misbehavior. Does that seem logical?
If Sodom and Gomorrah were so horrible, then they were already dying by the sword they lived by, and did not need to be destroyed in a cataclysm they could not possibly understand as a consequence of their actions. I think the authors of the Old Testament were making assumptions about why that cataclysm occurred, assuming it did. They were choosing to connect dots that felt logical to them. Perhaps they even saw their reporting of it as a helpful cautionary tale. But there is no spiritual logic to wrathful punishment. Although to be clear, this does not mean that someone who commits a crime against society should not be separated from it for a time to reflect upon their actions. But through a rehabilitation process informed by benevolence, the intention should be that they are one day restored to it. We already know that this approach reduces the number of those who return to prison, and isn’t that what we want? Benevolence also dictates that even for those who cannot be rehabilitated, their confinement must at least be humane.
We should also examine the character of suffering itself when looking for clues about the benevolence of God. For that is the aspect which hinges our complicated feelings about it.
What is suffering? Obviously, it is unhappiness or trauma due to unfavorable circumstances. But from what types of things do we typically suffer? As an illustration, child abuse is a form of suffering that exposes flaws within our wider system. It is hereditary in the sense that frequently adults who have suffered in their childhood from abuse are much more likely to inflict it upon their own children. Improving our systems of education and mental health would reduce the likelihood of child abuse by orders of magnitude. So it points to even that form of abuse as a natural consequence of ignoring our people and their emotional needs.
Check out next Saturday’s Hopeful Thinking column for Part III of “Is God Benevolent or Not?”
Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is a Unitarian Universalist Minister at the First Parish of Fitchburg and the First Church of Lancaster. He is also the host of a monthly radio show called Our Common Dharma based on his columns every 4th Monday at noon on WPKZ 105.3FM. Email [email protected]. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @wildarcangelo. His blog, Hopeful Thinking, can be found at www.hopefulthinkingworld.blogspot.com.
Wil Darcangelo
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