Problem of Evil Part 1 of 4: The Mystery of Good

This is really an exploration of an essay by Ellenore Stump and this entire four part post is from emails I was sending to fellow book club on this topic prompted by something we read in the book. (Of course, I don't think its normal to write four part emails to fellow book club participants ... Sometimes I can't help myself and I wanted to revisit all these writings anyway). Stump begins with a question. "If the is an omnipresent, omniscient, perfectly good God, how can it be that the world is full of evil? This response to evil is normal and healthy." But instead of trying to philosophize about this: the problem of evil; she describes evil, the evil we see in the newspapers and around us as a mirror, reflecting back to us our world and ourselves. "We ourselves--you and I, that is--are members of the species that does such things." She quotes Ecclesiastes:

​I observed all the oppression that goes on under the sun: the tears of the oppressed with none to comfort them; and the power of the oppressors--with none to comfort them. Then I accounted those who died long since more fortunate than those who are still living. (4:1-2)

​​Then she says that some look into the mirror and quickly look away. "They work hard, they worry about their children, they help their friends and neighbors, and they look forward to Christmas dinner ... There is health and strength in their ability to forget the evil they have seen." And she really speaks highly of them (doesn't mean to say this way is less than the other).

But "some people look into the mirror of evil and can't shut out the sight." She goes on to describe the different ways this temperament deals with evil (drinking, political action to eradicate evil, loathing of life altogether, etc.) She finally tells the story of Philip Hallie who studied cruelty and specifically was focusing on Nazi doctors who carried out medical experiments on Jewish children in the death camps. Hallie writes "the pattern ofthe strong crushing the weak kept repeating itself and repeating itself, so that when I was not bitterly angry, I was bored at the repetition of the patterns of persecution ... My study of evil incarnate had become a prison whose bars were my bitterness toward the violent, and whose walls were my horrified indifference to slow murder."

So before describing what happens to Hallie next, she explores how we know the difference between good and evil. She rejects "reason" as the answer though she acknowledges it plays a role. She says it is a faculty that we all have and rely on and is basically reliable even though we are not clear on exactly what it is. (She uses the rare disorder of face blindness to show that we have faculties that science doesn't understand). But from here she moves in a new direction.

"What is perhaps less easy to see is that the this faculty [for discerning evil] also discerns goodness. We recognize acts of generosity, compassion, and kindness, for example, without needing to reflect much or reason it out. And when the goodness takes us by surprise, we are sometimes moved to tears by it. Hallie describes his first acquaintance with the the acts of Chambonnais in this way [forgot to mention the book she is quoting Hallie from is on the Chambonnais, French family that worked to save Jewish people during the occupation] 'I came across a short article about a little village in the mountains of southern France ... I was reading the pages with an attempt at objectivity ... trying to sort out the forms and elements of cruelty and of resistance to it ... About halfway down the third page of the account of this village, I was annoyed by a strange sensation on my cheeks. The story was so simple and so factual that I had found it easy to concentrate upon it​, not upon my own feelings. An so, still following the story, and thinking about how neatly some ofit fit into the old patterns of persecution, I reached up to my cheek to wipe away a bit of dust, and I felt tears upon my fingertips. Not one or two drops; my whole cheek was wet'. Those tears, Hallie says, were 'an expression of moral praise'.

​Stump asks us Why tears? Why do we cry at good news, at goodness. Maybe, she says, we grow accustomed to bad news and harden our heart to cope with it "and then good news cracks your heart ... it opens it up to longing and hope, and hope is painful because what is hoped for is not yet here."

There really is a lot here so if you have interest and time, reading it directly is great. But I am going to jump down to what stands out to me as the "answer" if you can call it that. Behind these questions about evil is really a question about God's goodness (or his power, but I don't think people question that deep in their hearts as much as his goodness ... in fact I think, in a way, you could say the answer is that he has chosen to limit his power because of his goodness ... i.e. you do ultimately have to choose to believe in his goodness or his power in the face of evil in the world).

She says we often think of Job as never receiving any answer to his many questions all asking why did this happen to him, what did he do to deserve this. Similar in a way to our "why evil" question.

​​"But they forget that in the end Job says to God, 'now I see you.' ... When you see the deep love in the face of a person you suppose has betrayed you, you know you were wrong. ... To answer a mistaken charge of betrayal, someone who loves you can explain the misunderstanding or he can show his face. Sometimes showing his face hearts the hurt faster."

​​And so I think perhaps to the question of evil, we might say that it is a mystery. But goodness is also a mystery and we see both and cannot explain either. Herschel, in the essay I will use for Part 3, says "There is an irrationality in the givenness of the world that we have to accept." Maybe another question that speaks to this "problem of evil" is Why did God create the world at all, create us, create life?

I don't think these questions are satisfactory in deep moments of grief when we are facing evil in the form of death ... but in the long run ... the way I continue to hope and try and embrace life is by asking these types of questions ... or more by acknowledging the mystery of evil and​ the mystery of goodness.