For many years, I have struggled with the problem of suffering, injustice, and evil. The Book of Job tackles this question head on. It asks a lot of relevant questions but, alas, it does not provide an answer. When God replies to Job, the answer surprisingly turns out to consist solely of questions. No answer is given to Job. As Richard Rohr writes (1), what God offers Job is a radically new perspective thus making answers superfluous. God invites Job into a warm and personal encounter with himself.
The book of Job offers 3 possible solutions to the problem of suffering and of evil. One, that contrary to what we believe, God is not all powerful. Two, that God is not good or just. Three, that, as God opted to give people freedom to choose even bad things, suffering and evil are caused by people.
Job opts for the second option, that God is not just.
Like Job’s friends I used to choose solution number three. As a science, Cultural Anthropology – the study of human societies and their cultural life – does not delve into the morals of these societies. But I think that I am inclined towards believing in a negative anthropology. That is, that it is humanity that is the cause of much suffering and of evil. My stand is by no means a rare one. Famously, both Luther and Calvin thought people’s morality was of the lowest quality. (Calvin thought that people are “totally depraved”, while Luther compared people to a pile of manure). Until recently, most Catholic thinking was on similar lines.
This belief gives me a negative view of people and leads me to dislike them and, where possible, even to avoid them. I see them as self-centred, manipulative, opportunists. And many of them are. Psychologists say that we hate in others what we dislike in ourselves; what we do not accept in ourselves. This got me thinking. I also realised that such a belief makes it very hard for me to love my neighbour as Jesus commands.
Rohr in his book picks the first. He argues that our view that God is all-powerful and always in charge does not reflect reality. God in giving us the gift of freedom, has given up some of His omnipotence. Agreed, but that means that some other actor that God cannot stop is responsible for suffering and evil.
Attentive reading of the gospels challenges a negative view of humanity. Jesus appears to have a positive anthropology rather than the negative view of humanity that I have. He accepts that people are not perfect, that we all have light and darkness. He expressed the same belief for human societies in the parable of the darnel (a kind of weed). The owner of the field instructs his servants not to try to remove the darnel as this may have led to the harming of the wheat. The good and the bad are to live together. The final reckoning will only come at the end. Jesus believes that everyone deserves to be saved and acted out his belief by accepting to be crucified for us.
Recent events in Turkey and Syria revealed my bias and its incorrectness. Two powerful earthquakes rocked the region destroying thousands of buildings and killing more than 50,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. In their reports many journalists rightly wrote that the destruction was abetted by corruption. Building contractors did not follow the construction rules that were supposed to mitigate the effects of earthquakes. The people entrusted to supervise them looked away, possibly because their hands were greased. This caused huge suffering.
In the past, I would have stopped there. Today I try to look for positives. In this case I found one. Thousands of volunteers went to help. Volunteers – that is people who offered to help without payment. This was no holiday. The weather was bitterly cold. They had no or few of the comforts that we are used to. They worked in the stench of death.
There are greedy people who do not care about their fellow human beings, or about the environment as long as they make money. There are many that perpetuate injustices, for personal gain or because of fear. But there are kind, helpful, and fair people too. As people are imperfect having elements of good and evil concurrently, so do human societies. They are made of both greedy and unjust persons but also of good, helpful ones. This is far from a fully blown sunrise, but it is a ray of hope. I look for rays of hope to break the oppressing darkness that I seem to be entombed in. The task is not to let a negative anthropology hijack my beliefs. It is a big challenge.
(1) Rohr, R. 1996. Job and the Mystery of Suffering – Spiritual Reflections. USA. The Crossroad Publishing Company.