I Love You, And ... VI

I write this with considerable trepidation, but I suspect* that most people who worry about God’s permission of evil—worry to the point of leaving religion—worry because they do not understand the why of the bad things that have happened to them.  Religious people seem to handle the problem of their personal sufferings in two ways.**

The people who see God’s hand in their own troubles, in the sense of seeing how their sufferings have made them better, keep their faith; and they have confidence that God operates the same way in other people’s lives as in their own—that God somehow ensures that tsunamis, too, shall be well.

The people who do not see God’s hand in their own troubles, who fail to see their sufferings making them better, leave or lose their faith—not because they feel personally injured by God (or not necessarily) but because, not seeing his actions in their own lives, they cannot fathom how God could be acting (except in evil or negligence) when he permits something like a tsunami, or a cancer, or an addiction.

Both of these views are incomplete, I daresay (though obviously I favor the first one; it is closer to my own).  But I suspect each view has its roots less in official philosophy than in something that happens very, very early indeed, something that has (superficially) nothing to do with religion: an approach to discipline that occurs early in childhood: I love you BUT versus I love you AND.

 

* Another question worthy of sociological study.

** Again, this is very anecdotal.