Ashleigh Brilliant, self-proclaimed as the world's first professional aphorist, has some advice for us when we feel we've just about had it: "Right now would be a good time to postpone everything." He goes on, "I can face anything except the future, and parts of the past and present...."[1]
There are times each of us feels like that - perhaps for an hour, or a day - or perhaps large chunks of a lifetime. Unfortunately, we can't just postpone everything. And we do have to face up to what time has brought us. The past we cannot escape, the future will soon be upon us, the present - well, we're in it. Life keeps coming at us. There is no let-up....
That's what happened to Job, that pivotal figure of the Hebrew scriptures. In this archetypal myth he was victim of a bet between God and Satan. Could Job maintain his faith if his happiness and prosperity were stripped from him? God said yes; Satan said no. For 39 chapters Job struggles with "undeserved" suffering and maintains his faith in God despite the pious advice of false tempters. In the 40th chapter, a probable add-on by the so-called Deuteronomist school, everything is restored to Job manyfold. Moral of the story: It's an honest universe. Do good and prosper. Suffering is always an interim condition....
Without that 40th happy-ending chapter we have the real Job - the genius of its author or authors - raising the hard questions of human existence: Is this an honest universe? Why do the good suffer and the evil prosper? God speaks from out of the whirlwind and challenges Job's complaints. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth and the morning stars sang for joy?" It is that authentic story line that poet Robert Frost picks up in A Masque of Reason. God and Job look back upon their original encounter. God speaks to Job: ......
I've had you on my mind a thousand years
To thank you someday for the way you helped me
Establish once for all the principle
There's no connection man can reason out
Between his just desserts and what he gets.
Virtue may fail and wickedness succeed.
'Twas a great demonstration we put on.
... Too long I've owed you this apology
For the apparently unmeaning sorrow
You were afflicted with in those days.
But it was of the essence of the trial
You shouldn't understand it at the time.
It had to seem unmeaning to have meaning.
And it came out all right. I have no doubt
You realize by now the part you played
To stultify the Deuteronomist
And change the tenor of religious thought.
May thanks are to you for releasing me
From moral bondage to the human race.
The only free will there at first was man's
Who could do good and evil as he chose.
I had no choice but I must follow him
With forfeits and rewards he understood -
Unless I liked to suffer loss of worship.
I had to prosper good and punish evil.
You changed all that. You set me free to reign....[2]
Where did we get the idea that the universe was "fair"? That good inevitably was rewarded and evil inexorably punished? That God was like a candy machine - you put your money in and the requested candy drops neatly into the bin? That God was a cosmic runner of errands - delivering good news to the virtuous, bad news to the wicked?...
We probably got that idea from our earliest days of ethical consciousness. Fairness is perhaps the earliest moral value we learn, and it continues to be paramount in our pantheon of principles. Life ought to be that way. That is the conventional wisdom....
For example, I recently read an article about Howie Long, former defensive football lineman, now sports panelist for Fox Network, who lives in near-constant pain which he expects to last a lifetime. And so he wrote, "There is no easy way to greatness in any venue. But if you work hard, good things will inevitably happen to you."[3]...
Inevitably? Only gradually does it dawn upon us that this isn't always the way the world works - saints are martyred and scoundrels get rich. At the heart of the universe there ought to be an ethical structure that metes out our just deserts. There ought to be, but is there?...
I was moved recently by the story of Jerry Sittser, a professor at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, who lost his mother, his wife and his four-year-old daughter in a car accident. Many people wrote to him expressing shock, anger, and doubt. "'Why you?' they kept asking. As one person commented, 'Your family appeared so ideal. This tragedy is a terrible injustice. If it can happen to you, it can happen to any of us. Now no one is safe!'...
He went on, "No one is safe, because the universe is hardly a safe place. It is often mean, unpredictable, and unjust. Loss has little to do with our notions of fairness....Loss is no more a respecter of persons and positions than good fortune is. "There is often no rhyme or reason to the misery of some and to the happiness of others.... Over time I began to be bothered by the assumption that I had a right to complete fairness. Granted, I did not deserve to lose three members of my family. But then again, I am not sure I deserved to have them in the first place. Lynda was a woman of superior qualities, and she loved me through some very hard times. My mother lived well and served people to her life's end, and she showed a rare sensitivity to me during my rebellious teenage years. Diana Jane sparkled with enthusiasm for life and helped to fill our home with noise and excitement. ...
"Perhaps I did not deserve their deaths; but I did not deserve their presence in my life, either. On the face of it, living in a perfectly fair world appeals to me. But deeper reflection makes me wonder. In such a world I might never experience tragedy; but neither would I experience grace, especially the grace God gave me in the form of the three wonderful people whom I lost....
"So, God spare us a lifetime of fairness! To live in a world with grace is better by far than to live in a world of absolute fairness. A fair world might make life nice for us, but only as nice as we are. We might get what we deserve, but I wonder how much that is and whether or not we would really be satisfied. A world with grace will give us more than we deserve. It will give us life, even in our suffering."[4]...
I cannot conceive of Sittser's loss. I try to put myself in his position, but then I back off. I don't want even to imagine such horror. It couldn't happen to me, could it? Surely I don't deserve it. Before the words are out of my mouth, I know I'm in spiritual and moral denial - for it could happen to me - it could happen to any of us - it does happen to some of us - totally unexpected, undeserved suffering. We feel violated - as if God had singled us out, not really understanding who we were. "It's me, God, you can't do this to me!"...
When we entertain these questions, we have entered the realm of what theologians call theodicy - explaining the ways of God to humanity. Archibald MacLeish, in J.B., a modern play in verse based on the Book of Job, has the main character say, "If God is God, He is not good. If God is good, He is not God; Take the even, take the odd..."[5]...
How can an omnipotent and benevolent God allow such things? Slavery? The Holocaust? Hiroshima? Kosovo? The death of an infant? The suicide of a teen-ager? The murder of an innocent? The pre-mature death of a spouse? If one believes in such a God then it is a dilemma for which I believe there is no resolution - a situation from which there is no rescue. If one wonders about God's omnipotence or benevolence, or even God, then we have the beginnings of a conversation....
I have had this conversation many times - with friends and family, with parishioners, with friends, with myself. While I find it difficult to conclude much of anything, here are some ruminations that seem true to me....
I begin with an affirmation of Albert Camus, who has a character in one of his novels profess belief in "the benign indifference of the universe."[6] It is benign in the sense that life is fundamentally good - my existence is fundamentally good - I would rather be than not be. Life is more than we deserved - for what did we do to deserve being born? Life is an original blessing, albeit an ambiguous one....
On the other hand, I believe the universe to be indifferent, no respecter of persons. While the Bible says that God notes the fall of every sparrow, the Bible also says the sun rises on the evil and on the good; the rain falls on the just and the unjust.[7] With John Burroughs I believe in "nature's impartial providence."[8]...
Which brings me to a distinction between natural evil and human evil. All of us are subject to rain, snow, tornado, earthquake and flood - natural disasters - mistakenly called "Acts of God" by insurance company executives who have never been to seminary. They give God a bad name. These are not "acts of God" as if perpetrated by some cosmic puppeteer capriciously manipulating the strings of human existence; they are the workings of natural law. And natural law does not play favorites. ...
Human evil is that about which we can do something because it is a human creation. Human history is the struggle to bring human good out of human evil - to civilize ourselves. We can ourselves be responsible for what we do, and hold others accountable for what they do. We do know that bad health habits are more likely to bring on illness, that cruelty tends to beget cruelty, that love tends to be reciprocated. We bet our lives on doing good even though we know there is no guarantee of reward. As one cynic said, "No good deed goes unpunished."[9]...
I believe there are no cosmic lifeguards out there on the shoreline of human existence. Human existence provides no guarantees. Life does not come with a warrantee. We play the game and take our chances. One of the greatest spiritual dangers we face is to believe there is some kind of absolute assurance that comes with life - that we will get exactly what we deserve. However, as one comic said, "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you're a vegetarian."[10]...
Poet Octavio Paz puts our predicament more seriously when he writes, "Our fault is not moral; it is original insufficiency. Sin is littleness of being....[11] Being is nothing something given, but something that is made."[12] Our mission is to work against littleness of being - expecting more from the cosmos than it can be expected to deliver - not to expect life to be given to us ready made - but as a project and an opportunity to make something worthwhile out of it....
But living is hard. But then, as the late columnist Sidney Harris once said, "When I hear somebody sigh that life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, compared to what?"[13]...
I also know that it is inevitable that we cry out when we believe life has not been fair. Our response to such a painful word is not to try to explain why, but to be there, to listen to the anguish, to lend a patient ear and a helping hand. "Why me?" is a call, not expecting an answer, but some understanding of our pain....
We begin and end in ambiguity. We know we must deal with finitude, contingency and transience. Our lives will end no matter how good we are. There will be contingencies that shape our lives over which we will have little or no control. Our lives will be ever transient - they are temporary. We are merely guests of existence. We must learn to endure ambiguity, to stand fast in uncertainty, and to love unreservedly - no matter what. ...
The more our lives are unpredictable and uncertain on the outside, the more do we need to find a serene but rugged confidence within. We need to develop a confidence in life so strong it remains even in the face of cosmic provocation. We need a trust in life so deep that, no matter what happens, nothing can go wrong. We need the courage to be - no matter what. ...
Or, in the words of Walt Kelly's Pogo: "When we get to the bottom of the hill something makes us pull our little wagons back up for another scary ride down."[14]...
So where are we? We want to believe in fairness; we always have; we always will. As children of life we want to believe in an honest universe; we want to believe that good is rewarded, evil punished. As students of life we soon learn it is not quite so simple: there are too many times the good suffer and the evil flourish; there seems no connection between the lives we lead and the pain we experience - physical, mental, spiritual....
We cry out at the unfairness of it all. We may curse God! Complain to our friends and loved ones! Cry out to a universe that seems indifferent to our pleas! In our moments of deeper wisdom we know this is futile - merely a temporary cure for our predicament....
Honesty is not an attribute of the universe; fairness in life is not inevitable. And so we spend a lifetime wrestling with these hard truths, doing our best to accept our fate, whatsoever it may be, not in abject helplessness, but with firm resolve to make the best of it - trying to find the courage to be - so that we may say when we come to die, it will have been an unjust fate....
I leave you with the words of poet Arthur Davison Ficke:
Here on this hilltop I renounce the dream
Long dear to my myth-haunted vanity
That Nature holds in high, unique esteem:
The fortunes of my private destiny
I will demand no solace from the stars
Nor plead beneath the sunset with my tears
Nor wage again my spirit's secret wars
Against the iron-tramplings of the years
Nor ask that Nature justify her laws
Buy their propitiousness to my desire
But seek, amid her granite mountain-flaws
For the deep permanence of her central fire
And be content, since those eternal rays
Lend some slight, casual glow to my brief days....
return to main page