Theodicy Expectations

Our Church is venturing into questions of theodicy over the next few weeks in Sunday worship.  Theodicy is the question of how a loving God can allow suffering to take place in our world.  I am excited about exploring this topic alongside the congregation, but I must admit that there are limits to what we can actually accomplish in our discussion together.

From the outset, I am somewhat opposed to spending a lot of time with theodicy. I side with Stanley Hauerwas when he notes that theodicies are always historically located and presuppose particular, detached definitions of God that often exist outside of Scripture. That is, theodicy starts with a preconceived notion of what power and love is and then assumes that God must meet our expectations.  In starting with a predetermined definition of omnipotence or love, then we make these categories into a god that is higher than the God that we worship.  Plus, when the question is cast this way, we will most likely fail for God will either be ‘not powerful enough’ to overrule evil or ‘not loving enough’ to use his power to overcome evil. Contrarily, the starting point for any discussion must always be God—thus, making our definitions of power and love a reflection of God as revealed in Scripture.  

The second problem might be the abstraction of suffering from personal narratives.  Theodicy tries to create a univocal concept of suffering that can be answered by a univocal concept of God. Suffering is intensely personal and each of our responses to suffering is intensely personal as well.  Our redemption from suffering is going to look different a little different, as well.  This creates numerous problems for the attempt to create a universal theodicy. 

All of this is to say, that I am not going to have any solidified answer of why we suffer by the end of our series. Maybe that is ok, though. God does not give us an answer to our sufferings, but God chooses to share it. Nicholas Wolterstorff says, “God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. The pain and falleness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God...And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent his beloved son to suffer like us, through his suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil” (81).  At the end of the day, when you lay on your deathbed you are not going to care about why you are there.  You are going to want someone with you, to hold your hand, share the suffering, and become the face of Jesus Christ in the midst of pain.

In Naming the Silences, Hauerwas writes, "For the early Christians, suffering and evil...did not have to be 'explained'. Rather what was required was the means to go on even if the evil could not be 'explained.' Indeed it was crucial that such suffering or evil not be 'explained'--that is, it was important not to provide a theoretical account of why such evil needed to be in in order that certain good results occur, since such an explanation would undercut the necessity of the community capable of absorbing the suffering ” (49).  As Hauerwas notes, I am hoping that this sermon series will not merely try to be an answer to a problem, but result in a response to a challenge.

 This sermon series will not be successful if it explains suffering, because I can’t do that.  This sermon series will only be successful if it leads people into a deeper relationship with Christ—one in which we might realize that we will never be abandoned, by God or one another, even when we suffer.