A
Theodicy
Only by Our mercy could they be
reprieved to enjoy life for a while. Yet when they are told, ‘Beware of what
lies before and behind you, so that you may be given mercy,’ they ignore every
single sign that comes to them from their Lord, and when they are told, ‘Give
to others out of what God has provided for you,’ the disbelievers say to the
believers, ‘Why should we feed those that God could feed if He wanted? You must
be deeply misguided.’ (36:44-47)
This
is a critical point to ponder: why should we feed those that God could feed if
He wanted? Indeed, in this question, God
is addressing the point of creating the earth and heavens and the problem of
evil. Lactantius ascribed the following
to Epicurus:
God, he says,
either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling;
or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is
willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the
character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally
at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and
feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is
suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove
them? (De Ira Dei ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus)
Epicurus
and Voltaire (in Candid) and others repeatedly raise the question of
evil; and yet I feel they lack imagination.
In the verses above disbelievers raise the same question. What would be the answer?
In
the surah The Poets, God sooths the Prophet: “are you going to worry
yourself to death because they will not believe? If We had wished, We could have sent them
down a sign from heaven, at which their necks would stay bowed in utter
humility.” (26:3-4)
In
the Quran, God is explicit about the fact that the world has been created for a
reason and purpose. Surely, we see so
many die in earthquakes, storms, cancer, and other sicknesses. Why should we call it the problem of
evil? We need to remember four points:
1) We are living in a suffering and
imperfect world so that we may grow and arrive at God through guidance and our
own free will. We are the viceregents on
this planet, here to take care of life and in this way to be cultivated. Through helping others in need, we grow
spiritually and learn to abandon our close-mindedness and self-centeredness. Of course, God is capable of everything. To reflect on Epicurus’ question, one may say
God is able, willing, and wishes to take away evils. But then what is the relation between God and
human beings? What happens to our
autonomy and cultivation? Asking why God
doesn’t solve all problems is seeing ourselves as automata in the eyes of God,
who can be programmed like a robot to be “good”. But this artificial goodness is against human
autonomy to realize and experience God’s theonomy within and without.
In the Quran God says:
To each community among you has
been prescribed a Law and a way of life. If God had so willed He would have
made you a single people, but His plan is to test you in what He has given you:
so strive as in a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is to God; it is He
that will show you the truth of the matters in which you differ. (5:48)
And this one:
No misfortune can happen, either in the earth or in yourselves, that was not set down in writing before We brought it into being––that is easy for God–– so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain. God does not love the conceited, the boastful. (57:22-24)
2) We are unable to understand the
ultimate reason of sufferings on the earth.
We see so many people suffer in sicknesses, natural disasters, wars, and
injustice. We are here to help others.
Period. Why do so many children have to
suffer? We ask this question from a
limited point of view. From the inside
of human needs and desires we make a series of judgments and set these
judgments as the measure of good and evil.
However, if we use our imagination, it is not difficult to see that we
don’t have the big picture.
In the Quran, we have the story of
a divine person who has knowledge of the future and Moses wants to travel with
him to obtain divine wisdom. In the
later literature, this divine person was called “Khidhr”. Khidhr asks Moses to be patient as Moses has
no knowledge of the future. Moses
promises to be patient. Khidhr makes
holes in the boat of a poor fisher, repairs a ruined wall, and kills a
boy. Every time Moses objects to his
behavior. After explaining the wisdom of
his actions, Khidhr leaves Moses. Khidhr
says that he made holes in the boat to save the boat from being confiscated by
a tyrant king, repaired the wall to secure the inheritance of two orphans
beneath the wall, and killed the boy because he would become a mischievous and
rebellious disbeliever who would cause suffering for his pious parents. When I was an atheist, I was upset especially
with killing the boy. But this passage
says all that we want to know about “the problem of evil” and theodicy. Our laws and regulations, our Human Rights
and due process are all valuable means for limited beings like us to be
just. These limits are set by God, and
the Quran repeatedly asks humans not to exceed the limit or kill children or
unjustifiably kill people. The Quran
says that life is sacred and even killing one person unjustly is like killing
the whole human species (5:32). Even in
the story of Abraham and sacrificing his son, the Quran emphasizes that:
When the boy was old enough to
work with his father, Abraham said, ‘My son, I have seen myself sacrificing you
in a dream. What do you think?’ He said, ‘Father, do as you are commanded and,
God willing, you will find me steadfast.’ When they had both submitted to God, and he had laid his son down on the side of his face, We called out to
him, ‘Abraham, you have fulfilled the dream.’ This is how We reward those who
do good– it was a test to prove– (37:102-106)
So,
God has forbidden us to kill children and the command to test Abraham also
didn’t come to him until his son could make a judgement and decide for himself. However, I couldn’t digest the fact that in
the story of Khidhr and Moses, Khidhr kills the young boy and again the anguish
of finding a theodicy and not being able to understand Khidhr’s actions, kept
on ringing in my ears and head, and so I wrote:
If I were the sojourner of Khidhr I would not be perplexed by
his making a hole in a boat, because I could imagine there was somehow longer-term
goodness in this action. Remember Khidhr is the representative of a
benevolent God whose actions may seem violating some ethics (like making a hole
in a boat) but still it is for a further ethical goodness. This is what
Kierkegaard calls “teleological suspension of the ethical”. I would be patient when Khidhr asked me to repair
a wall in the middle of nowhere, again because I believe in his goodness and
extraordinary vision and knowledge of future. But when he killed the
child or before committing the crime I would hold his hand and would adamantly
tell him this could not be the command of God. Khidhr would argue with me
that, no it is all godly because this young boy will become an in-obedient
indolent and insolent adult and his parents will suffer from his denial of
religion and criminal character [18:80. “As for the youth, his parents were
people of faith, and we feared that he would grieve them by obstinate rebellion
and ingratitude.”] I still would say to Khidhr: this argument is
so loose and groundless that I doubt it has come from God. You say because this boy will become, say,
Hitler, Antichrist, or Dajjal, so I have to kill him now. I say this is
not godly and God doesn’t ask for it. God doesn’t ask you to kill a
child, who has not yet committed any crime, for his possible future crimes.
If everything about our lives is so determined, then there is no point of
making a choice and act for betterment or even repent. Secondly, we don’t
punish people for what they have not yet done but is likely to do in the long
run. Even preeminent wars have rules. The ethical act has INTRINSIC
and KARMIC value, not committing murder has INTRINSIC and KARMIC value.
To repent from killing and harming has an intrinsic and karmic value. They are
not INSTRUMENTAL only for some further good. Therefore, if you, Khidhr,
kill this young boy now, it is Unjust, and God cannot be unjust.
Can you see where I went
wrong? I am applying the ethical
measures for human beings to God. The
sense of God’s mercy and justice and the way God implements them is different
from us. For limited beings like us, who
are blind to the big picture, the ethical has an intrinsic value as we are
finite bodies literally building up our character and destiny by our actions
and habit. This is a reason that
Aristotle’s virtue ethics makes sense to us.
And Gandhi’s words are endearing: “Your
beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words
become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your
values. Your values become your destiny.”
However, God is the source of the
ethical and spiritual and has an unclouded vision of the beginning and the end
of the story. God is also not a limited
body/soul like us whose actions create our destiny. God’s actions are destiny for all living
beings and for the cosmos. My false
analogy resonates with the anguish of the problem of evil, as we understand it:
seeing dying children in the hospitals and all those who die in natural
disasters and wars and similar destructions.
This picture doesn’t fit OUR value judgements, simply because we are not
in a position to understand it. However,
God’s justice and mercy may include killing young children and even generations
and species, as God’s ethics consist of both the intrinsic and extrinsic value
of actions at the same time. To
understand my point let’s consider Kant’s non-consequentialist deontology and
Mill’s consequentialist utilitarianism.
Kant emphasizes good will and intention in performing one’s duty as the
measure of the ethical, and Mill considers the consequence of actions and how
they maximize the greatest happiness for the most. Well, for God the intrinsic value of “good
will” and the extrinsic value of “good consequence” are superimposed upon each
other. This means that God’s action at
the same time comes from “good will” and aims at the “good consequence” spontaneously
and coextensively, because God is omniscient and omnipotent.
This means God’s “ethics” doesn’t
construct God’s “ethos” (habit, custom, character). God’s discernment and discretion is how life
in the world can take the direction of goodness, justice, balance, and purity,
the direction of Good. God has set ethical limits for us for this purpose. In the final analysis and picture, when we
lose sight of the right direction and create corrupt and unjust systems and
societies, our “ethos” becomes contagious and epidemic to our own offspring and
others, and God can see the future and what is best for our “ethos.” So, it is completely just and meaningful for
God, NOT US, to destroy even whole generations of people and their children, if
God deems that this corrupt system has no future and their only positive effect
is to become a sign at the threshold of the road to perdition: the Pharaoh’s
people, as well as those of Noah, Lot, Saleh, Hud, Shoaib… This is the same
with natural disasters.
3) Let’s use this thought experiment: Imagine we want to save an
endangered species, and so we create a special habitat for them to be safe from
excessive danger. We know that these animals will deteriorate if we turn them
into pets. They have to move and have a natural life style, thus we let some of
the predators in to stimulate them to be active for survival. Some of them may
die due to their frail predisposition, but based on our probabilistic
calculations, we know the species as a whole will flourish and survive. In this
thought experiment, though the analogy is barely similar to our love
relationship with God, we can see that the predator (evil or Satan) is used as
the condition of survival and growth of a species. In our thought experiment,
we are the master of process and know the outcome, and in this process the
species will prosper and flourish. And it doesn’t mean that the predator and
the endangered species are the same, on the contrary, the ultimate goal is to
save the endangered species from the domination of predators.
4) In Surah
41: (Made Distinct) the Quran says: “Good and evil cannot be equal. Repel evil
with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued
friend, but only those who are steadfast in patience, only those who are
blessed with great righteousness, will attain to such goodness” (41: 34). This
is an example of how, despite the fact that good and evil are separate, in
repelling evil with good, we grow and purify ourselves from evil by doing good.
Obviously, the Quran is saying that even if
good and evil are separate, God has complete knowledge about how things will
unfold and through affliction and reward, God examines us and lets us grow.
What is the direction of cultivation? To become one in intention, thoughts,
words, and deeds and to achieve the intrinsic value of the ethical in worshipping
God and having God-consciousness. What is the point of having
God-consciousness? To arrive at our
origin and destination and to be released from despair, nihilism, and
disconnect. We learn to repel evil from
our divine constitution by worshipping God and doing good, and arriving at the
beginning and the end, which is the love of God, but meanwhile we mature,
absorbing the intrinsic value of having a divine self, the intrinsic value of
being moral, and the intrinsic value of being ethically creative: “Keep up the
prayer at both ends of the day, and during parts of the night, for good things
drive bad away—this is a reminder for those who are aware” (11:114). And human
beings desire the process and the end for its intrinsic value, and this is
possible only through earning it: “God would never change a favor It had
conferred on a people unless they changed what was within themselves.” (8:53)
Conclusion:
in the Quran, God repeatedly says: God did create the heavens and earth (and
human beings and life in general) for a serious purpose. What is this?
It is a movement from life to death and from death to life. But it is not an absurd Sisyphean cycle. It has a purpose. It cultivates us and all living beings in the
universe. It teaches us—life as
such. It helps us to grow amid suffering
and agony of life and death. The
movement of life and death ends in life and not death. We will become who we are seeded to
become. We can make a choice between
life and death. Life is love and taqwa
(God-consciousness) and death is corruption in a sheer desire for survival,
power, and pleasure.
“We grant the Home in the
Hereafter to those who do not seek superiority on earth or spread corruption:
the happy ending is awarded to those who are mindful of God.” (28:83)
