Part Four: The Free Will Defense, and Humanity’s God-given “Immune System”

My letter to my niece Krystal continues from last time….

For example, there is what is called in Philosophy The Free Will Defense. It simply says this: from what we can see, the “lion’s share” of all the miseries of human life are directly caused by, and augmented by, the misuse of God’s greatest natural gift to us — our freedom to choose. God did not want to create us as mere robots, whose behavior was completely pre-programmed by our genes and our environment; He did not want to create mere “puppets on a string”— for robots and puppets on a string cannot think for themselves, cannot create anything new or meaningful, and most of all, cannot love. Authentic love, creativity and knowledge can only arise in beings who are truly free, and who voluntarily choose to embrace an idea, to envision a new work of art, and to reach out and give themselves away for the sake of others. If this is the kind of creature that God was striving to create when He fashioned human beings — if this was the “greater good” He was trying to attain — then He had no choice but to bestow upon us the gift of free will. But the freedom to think, love, and create is also the freedom to lie, hate, and destroy. God took the risk of giving human beings true freedom because He evidently believed the risk was worth it: “the greater good” of enabling human beings to attain true wisdom, creativity, and love was worth it. Do we have the kind of vantage point on the whole story of humanity to tell him that He was wrong?

“Yes we do,” someone might say. “For it is not that freedom gets misused just by some people and not others. Everyone seems to misuse it, to one degree or another. As a result, ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ wounds every human life, and many pages of human history are written in blood. If there really is a God, then He clearly made a serious ‘design-flaw’ in human nature itself; He is not the ‘perfect, boundless Good’ that your Philosophy claims Him to be.”

Here again, however, Philosophy [human reason] has more to say, Krystal. For the deepest miseries that we inflict on each other come from the misuse of another of the highest gifts that God gave to us: our interdependence. Freedom and interdependence go together to make up the twin foundation of the highest human goods. I put it this way in a book manuscript I am writing, Krystal:

It is only because human lives are free and interdependent that we can experience such blessings as the procreation and nurture of children, familial love and affection, the enrichment of our lives through the development of culture and civilization, and social and cooperative enterprises of all kinds: those that sustain human life with proper food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and creative work opportunities. Human freedom and interdependence make possible love, language, literature, scientific advance, the development of computers and the construction of great cathedrals. At its highest and best, human freedom and interdependence are taken up by divine grace into the experience of loving “communion” in the Body of Christ. However, the same freedom and interdependence which makes all of these goods possible also makes us deeply vulnerable to their misuse, resulting in abuses of human dignity, and injustices of all kinds. In short, we can affect each other’s lives so deeply for ill only because we can also affect each other so deeply for good.

So, again, we are faced with the same question: are we in a position to be able to say that God made a big mistake here, that everything that He made possible for us by giving us true freedom and interdependence is not worth the cost in human suffering? I don’t think we are. And unless we are sure that we are, then the innocent suffering in the world, insofar as it results from human vice, and agonizing as it is, does not amount to a strong objection to the existence or goodness of God.

At times, we do seem to live in an “unfair” world, where all too often people suffer from the evil deeds of others, and not just from their own. Does this make God unjust?

There is a deep mystery here, Krystal, I think. My favorite passage from any book on this subject comes from Jerry Sittser’s A Grace Disguised. Sittser lost his wife, his mother, and his baby daughter in a fatal car accident, and that led him to ask the obvious question — and then to hear an unexpected answer:

Why me? Most of us want life not only to be under our control, but also to be fair. So when we suffer loss, we claim our right to justice and resent circumstances that get in the way. We demand to live in a society in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished, hard work succeeds and laziness fails, decency wins and meanness loses. We feel violated when life does not turn out that way, when we get what we do not deserve and do not get what we feel we deserve…..

Yet over time I began to be bothered by this assumption that I had a right to complete fairness. Granted that 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 showed rare sensitivity to me during my rebellious teenage years. Diane Jane sparkled with enthusiasm for life and helped 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 three wonderful people whom I lost.

Let’s go even deeper, Krystal, because I think Philosophy can shed more light for us on this mystery of innocent suffering.

For instance, reason can tell us that if an infinitely wise and good God gave to humanity many rich blessings as our Creator, blessings such as freedom and interdependence, then He must have given them to us for a good purpose. Evidently, the talents and gifts He gave to each one of us are to be freely used precisely to help overcome and relieve the miseries of others. In other words, God knew that as a result of the highest gifts He gave to us, He would have to permit the misuse of His gifts, and therefore some evil and suffering in His world, and so He included in His creative design for human life a built-in “immune system,” so to speak, to counteract these miseries.

How do we know this?

Well, first of all because He gave us some “white-blood cells”: not just those in our bodies, but also the guiding light of conscience. This inner light of conscience that He instilled in every human heart includes a general principle of “benevolence,” directed especially toward those who are closest to us, whose needs are most evident to us, and therefore whose needs we can most effectively address: our family members, relatives, friends, and near neighbors. In short, the inner voice of conscience beckons us to reach out and help one another.

In addition, God has given us “vital signs” indicators, to help keep us on the right path. Clearly, if God is pure Spirit, and He has bestowed on every human being a spirit [or soul] that is a created reflection of His own, then it stands to reason that our spirits were made to do what God’s Spirit does: bestow gifts and blessings on others. It is the constant testimony of those who follow the voice of conscience, and who reflect God’s generous and compassionate Spirit in their own lives, that they experience tremendous inner peace and satisfaction from doing so — a clear sign that this is precisely the way we were meant to live, to fulfill the good purpose for which we were made. The person who lives this way walks with an easily contented spirit, a peaceful conscience, and a quiet heart. The “vital signs,” so to speak, are all positive!

Third, it is clear from the reflections of great philosophers (e.g., Aristotle and Aquinas), that the more we practice virtues such as generosity of spirit and compassion, courage, patience, and trust, the stronger these virtues become within us — especially if they are forged and refined in the midst of adversity. This suggests that one of the main reasons that God permits evils and sufferings in His world is that by overcoming them with virtue, we can grow stronger in spirit. Many philosophical theists, therefore, speak of God’s world as “a vale of soul-making.” To some extent at least, God permits life to be a struggle and a challenge for us for our own good, so we can grow stronger in virtue. In other words, life is meant to be more like a physiotherapy center than a rest home!

Fourth, there must be divine medicine for us near at hand. For it is reasonable to assume that a God who asks us to face and overcome suffering and misery in our lives, and in the lives of others, will not leave us to do so on our own. He will come to our aid. At the very least, He will provide us with the spiritual medicine we need for our journey: I mean, light and inspiration to guide our steps, strength to enable us to persevere, and pardon and forgiveness when we stumble and fall. That He does so is the constant testimony of those who believe in God down through history (Jews, Christians, philosophical theists and deists of all kinds). Turning to Him in prayer for light and strength, therefore, is not solely a “religious” thing to do—it is a reasonable thing to do for anyone who walks the path of Philosophy.

Finally, can we imagine that if there really is an all-powerful, all-seeing, infinitely benevolent God that He would create such amazing creatures as us, and set before us such difficult challenges, and then let our lives be cut off in the end without hope? Surely, reason alone compels us to believe otherwise. Remember, Krystal, [going back to our previous letters] Philosophy, backed up by evidence from science, can show that He gave to each one of us an immortal spirit, which means that our destiny must extend beyond the struggles of this world. In other words, if God intended this world to be a “vale of soul making,” then this implies that the immortal souls He gave to us are being fashioned for an immortal purpose. The book of Wisdom in the Bible, chapter 3, drawing upon the ancient Greek heritage of Philosophy, sums it up like this:

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seem to have died, and their departure was thought to be an affliction, and their going from us their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.

Robert Stackpole, STD

Mere Christian Fellowship

Next Time: Reasonable Hope