Jewsweek has an article about Benjamin Blech's new book, If God Is Good, Why Is The World So Bad?.
Check the article above for Blech's introductory chapter, which explains the issue at hand; You may have also heard of another book that address the same issue: Harold Kushner's "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." I don't want to reiterate the argument, but suffice it to say, it is, as far as I can tell, the best argument for the non-existence of God (if that is what you are trying to prove) out there. No other argument is as cogent. And if you are sold on the existence of God, it is the most difficult question you will face in understanding the world you live in.
That being said, the response of both of these authors (Blech and Kushner) appears to be (I say appears, since I have not read Blech's book; yet) a re-rationalization of the ways of God. [Kushner is famous for his assertion that God is not all-powerful, that there are somethings that He can not do; hence Evil. As Blech says, this is an unacceptable answer as far as Judaism is concerned (I can not answer for other faiths, but the consequences of such an outlook are not encouraging). A simple perusal of the High Holiday liturgy is enough to convince even the most stalwart of objectors.]
I think taking a rational approach is misleading, and creates more problems than it solves.
The question presented is an existential one, the answers given rational: how does what I experience fit in with my rationalization of God. As long as this approach is taken, the explanation will never be compelling because it is simply that: an explanation. As Job retorts to his friends, you can explain all you want, but what I experience doesn't fit with your conceptualization.
My current approach to this is to understand the problem in existential terms. The Torah provides for us a picture of what life is like in God's Presence. The Torah (here I mean the five (5) books of Moses) is the story of Israel, from its conception by Avraham, to its culmination upon entering the Land of Israel. The Jews are the people who merit God's Presence among them, and their lives are different because of it. Life and Death have a different, enhanced meaning; suffering has a cause, a moral message, when God's Presence resides in the midst of your community.
How is the Divine Presence brought down into the midst of the people? Again, the Torah points us to our forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, as exmaples. The various concepts they represent (Chesed [kindness], Din [justice], Emet [truth]) are what it takes to bring God's Presence down to live with amongst a people. Jews believe that the concretization of this is the Torah, and the path towards implementing it is the Mitzvot (understood here to mean 'commandments', not 'good deeds').
So what happens when a society loses sight of these values, ostensibly by abandoning the Mitzvot? The Divine Presence withdraws, and all hell breaks loose. God hids His face from us, until we return to Him (check out the end of Devarim/Dueteronomy for an explication). When God's face is hidden, all the suffering, all the Good and the Bad, still happen, only this time, there is no moral message. No one is making sure the good people get the Good things, and the Bad people get the bad things; life loses its meaning. Which brings us back to where we are today.
I will admit that my answer is no less a rational explanation of how God and world work than Kushner's or (ostensibly) Blech's. But there is one difference, and that is how we move forward. We have to look at the world as a place that we can bring God's Presence into. We know the basic foundations we need: kindness, justice and truth. And we know the process for extrapolating a practical political system from those foundations: by living and learning Torah. Our response to the question is not an answer, but action. The world where bad things happen to bad people, and good to good, is our vision of the future, not our present situation.
Kushner presents a rational depiction of a God that fits with his experience. But his solution leaves us empty. Kushner's God provides no vision of the future, no potential existence worth striving for. It leaves us alone and helpless, uselessly praying to a deity that can not help us. This, I would suggest, is antithetical to Judaism. We believe there is a better world, and it is our job to build it, no matter how immense the task. The work may be great, but it is not our choice to refrain from the task.
Those are my current thoughts, albeit in a much abridged form. I'm hoping on exploring them further in future posts. I would love to hear any comments you might have, as this is a topic I spend much time thinking about. As I said, for me it's the only question.
Greg: I think what you've written makes sense. It shows that you have really spent time thinking about it. BubbyT
Posted by: Bubby Tova at October 1, 2003 09:09 PM