Horror

The dream seemed to be as vivid as if I truly had been there, and the feelings of helpless horror were incredibly memorable. This dream was a continuation of a series of dreams that I have had since I first began reading as a preteen about the Nazi roundups and mass murders in the second World War. In this case I was a member of a group of Jews targeted for elimination and I stood helpless waiting my turn as I watched people ahead of me tormented in terrible ways before they were murdered. I awoke with a shudder and the question occurred to me "Why did I survive?" As my mind came back to full awareness I realized that my survival was as it always was in my dreams, but then I noted with revulsion that people are still torturing their fellow humans in such ways even today. While the dream was not real, it reflected in a small way events that happen all the time around the world where one group of people is powerful enough to treat others to such horrors as most Americans have no concept.

This is the problem I have with the form of Christianity that I practice in which I acknowledge the existence of a supreme creator deity that supersedes and controls every other member of reality. We call this deity The righteous, loving God and discuss Him as an all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful person who is perfectly good and just. With all this recognized why on earth (or any part of the universe for that matter) would this wonderful deity allow such things to occur as the horrors that people experience in the world today? This is my version of the problem of evil- If God is so good why does He let really bad things happen?

Some of the answers that come instantly to mind is that Satan causes evil or that God is doing a greater good by allowing suffering now. I instantly dismiss the claim that Satan is at fault for evil. Satan may be noted in the Bible as the actor that produces evil, but God limits and controls what evil Satan does. God, even if it is indirect, plans and controls the evil that happens. Think, for example, of the fateful conversation between God and Satan that is recorded in the book of Job where God gives incremental allowances for the level of suffering which Satan is to subject Job just to prove that God is right about Job's righteousness.

If God is truly good and just why does He allow evil when He can control it? Some of the arguments I have heard or thought of to explain this are the ideas that God wants us to have the option to choose Him so He allows the option to choose evil, that God allows us to see such horrors to contrast His goodness or to give hope of a better future in Heaven, and that God has a better view of what is going on and what is evil in our view is good in the bigger picture which He can only see. I have to admit that I am still unsure that any of these work. Is it possible that the common American Christian view of God as a sweet, wonderful, good God is mistaken? Maybe He is a mean, vindictive, petty God who picks and chooses evil events for His own twisted pleasure? What evidence in there in Scripture that God is good?

This is what I have been pondering for a while...