Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know — Peme Chodron
By Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — The senseless deaths seen in the coronavirus pandemic challenges religious people’s concept of God. How does one reconcile our faith in a personal God who loves life, but allows a natural evil to destroy everything in its path? What kind of God—if any—can allow the suffering of innocent children? Every natural catastrophe seems to make the belief in a personal God seem unlikely.
Human beings have long associated natural disasters with the anger of God, or the gods. Some of the ancient Greek thinkers rejected the notion that natural catastrophes had any correlation with human behavior. The philosopher Epicurus took a different approach. According to him the reality of human suffering ought to be seen as anti-proof for the existence of a benevolent deity looking over mortals from afar. Epicurus asked: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
Epicurus’ argument challenges the classical theistic tradition of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The question: How do we reconcile a God Who is omnipotent with the existence of evil we experience in our world?
But before we examine this question, let us ask ourselves a Socratic question: When we say, “evil exists,” what do we mean? Some people might answer that evil has a real substance of its own; in terms of its ontology, it is no less real than “goodness.” But Maimonides, Augustine, and others assert this understanding of “evil” is problematic. In a Platonic sense, evil is nothing more than the absence of good; its existence is parasitical—it is also an apt metaphor for the coronavirus. Evil is noting more than a contamination, it has no reality by itself. And yet, evil’s effects are undeniably real in terms of its impact upon the living.
These are important questions we shall touch upon later. Epicurus presupposes God can prevent evil, but for now we could object: Must God prevent evil from occurring in our world—whether it be natural evil such as a pandemic, or whether it is matters of moral evil that mortals foolishly choose? Morality may not be as binary as the ancient cynic Epicurus thought; there are shades of gray. In both Judaism and Christianity, moral evil is something that human beings must take responsibility for—not God. But what about the existence of natural evil?
As stewards of God’s creation, we are responsible for that as well. How we utilize our freedom of choice, determines and shapes the kind of society we live in—not God. In addition, it is also conceivable that God creates imperfection and evil for a higher purpose that requires humanity to come to terms with its own imperfect nature. Although God considered the creation of humankind as something fundamentally “good,” nowhere does it state God made man a perfect human being. This lack of perfection does not necessarily suggest a maleficence on the part of God, but reflects more God’s optimism that human beings will triumph over their inner demons and the reality of natural evil we experience in our world.
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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista. He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com