It?s a fundamental question of the ages and a high hurdle for many a believer. Why does God allow evil to exist?
Theodicy is the theology of reconciling God?s goodness and omnipotence with the existence of evil and suffering in the world.
“It?s kind of a classic quandary, isn?t it?” Beltway Atheists co-founder Rick Wingrove said of the ancient paradox. “For a lot of people that is the ultimate contradiction, and for a lot a people that?s the fatal flaw in the whole God mythology. For me that?s absolutely [the case].”
But such was also the case for outside-the-Beltway skeptics like David Hume, Ludwig Feuerbach, Friedrich Nietzsche, Francoise Voltaire and Pierre Bayle ? who called free will a “poisoned gift” ? Enlightenment thinkers who either diminished or dismissed the reality of a supreme being as a consequence of sullen speculations on universal, and often unmerited, human suffering.
But could the poisoned gift itself contain the answer and the antidote to modernism?s mordancy and malaise?
“[Rabbinic philosopher] Maimonides stated that is just how God created human beings,” said Rabbi Barry Freundel of Baltimore Hebrew University. “He wanted to have them [share in his nature], which allows them to go against his plan? and why suffering exists.”
Addressing the knottier question of suffering innocents, Freundel said, “Because reward and punishment is not the only dynamic that works in the world. There are other ordained dynamics [such as the “problem” of mercy for evil-doers, and thus Job-like suffering for victims]. Otherwise there would be no challenge to being righteous.”
Baptist and Catholic clerics alike echoed Freundel?s views.
“If you believe God created us the ability to make decisions to either love God back [or not] … then you become more aware of your role in the continuing creation of the world,” said Intentional Interim Pastor Robert Patterson of Baltimore?s University Baptist Church.
Baltimore Catholic archdiocese Chancellor Monsignor Robert Jaskot extended this will respecting reasoning to the necessity for an historical suffering savior in the person of Jesus.
“It speaks to [the divine intention of] human choice,” he said, “and to the struggle to find God, even if it?s just a God who suffers with us.”
