The Nature of God

God is unfathomable; it is the essential nature of God to be infinitely more than we as humans can comprehend. In order to be God, He must have the knowledge and power to have created all of existence, and although this is the most basic of logic, it does not stop the urge to understand, in hopes, perhaps, that the more that is understood, the more peace and progress can be obtained. Voltaire expresses this universal question in his work “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster” in the passage,

“But how conceive of a God supremely good,

Who heaps his favors on the sons he loves

Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?

What eye can pierce the depth of his designs?

From that all-perfect being came not ill:

And it came from no other, for he’s lord.”

Voltaire makes three assumptions in this passage. First, it is assumed that there is a God. Second, the narrator assumes that God is supremely good, and does not cause evil. And last, it is assumed that God is all-powerful, and every occurrence is according to his omnipresent plan, which implies that all evils are caused by God. Naturally, when these ideas are combined in any attempt of explanation of the world, they cease making sense. Therefore, at least one of these assumptions must be wrong.

One possibility is that the second assumption is wrong, and God is not supremely good. This is a painful admission to make if it is true, but religious conditioning should not stand in the way of logic. The phrase “God is good” encompasses many smaller connotations, such as “God is just”, “God is loving”, and “God is reasonable”. It is easy to understand how the idea came about; it is comforting to think that there is a father figure in charge of things that cares about you personally. Losses are easier to take if one thinks of them as a punishment for something that can be avoided in the future. If an infant passes away through some kind of accident, as often happens, the only ones involved were the child and God. God, under this assumption, only afflicts what is deserved, so the blame is left to the child, but the infant couldn’t have possibly sinned badly enough to deserve death. So it is the parent that blames himself, for being either an irresponsible parent or simply a bad enough person to deserve the loss.

Although this logic makes perfect sense by itself, it makes no sense at all when taken out of the context of the moment and set beside the idea of a supremely good God. If the parent had erred in parenting or in life, it is the parent that should have been punished, not the child. A fair God would never destroy a child’s life for the simple purpose of making the parent feel bad about his choices in life. It can be argued that God is too powerful to be bothered by the humans’ concept of fairness, and this may well be true. God certainly must have a lot on his mind, but what is the use of infinite abilities if excuses are made about being stretched too thin to govern fairly?

However, what would the world be like if God was bound to our ideas of fairness? What if planes and cars never crashed unless everyone inside was a bad person (Kushner 66)? If God decreed that nothing bad would happen to good people, could good people then ignore the laws of nature and not fear any harm (Kushner 67)? Every loss of life would be equated to capital punishment, people would behave well out of fear of punishment rather than any real goodness, and the world would overflow with obedient, god-fearing animals. In other words, fairness would result in chaos.

On the other hand, there is an alternative to this admission. We can still think of God as kind and righteous if we could admit that God is not all-powerful (Kushner 48). There is a perfectly plausible possibility that God does in fact love us and wants only the best for us, but he is unable to bring it to us. This would explain many inconsistencies in the theory of God; under this theory, God has little to do with our every day lives, but He can no longer be thought of as cruel when a loved one dies or develops cancer. No one would have to wonder why He brought Satan into being, or why He did not simply unmake him when he turned out to be evil. If God is not all-powerful, he cannot be blamed for our miseries.

Of course, there could very well be no God at all. If there is no God, then there is no conflict of ideas, and the idea of righteousness is nothing but a superstition. Heaven and Hell would then be fantasies invented by the meek to help them deal with the injustice of life. However, man has always had the sense of a God that watches over them, like the simple Indian in Pope’s “Essay on Man”, whom “Simple nature to his hope has giv’n/ Behind the cloud-topt hill, a humbler Heav’n”. It is natural for man to believe that his good deeds will be rewarded, and either he has been wrong for all recorded time, or he knows instinctively what he can not know logically, in which case, the condemning the idea over lack of evidence would be a grave mistake. In any case, even if there is no real God, there is religion that that teaches kindness and tolerance, so in all practicality, whether or not they are right about the existence of God, they are helping to improve the state of the world and should not be interrupted.

Although each of these possibilities makes perfect sense, all three are perfectly possible, and none can give evidence that it is the one answer. So, we must turn to our own answer rather than finding fault in Voltaire’s question.

If God is the ultimate good, and yet man is miserable, it is reasonable to think that man is at fault, not God. After all, who is man to judge their importance in the world, or to blame God for their unhappiness? Man has no idea of the complexity of Creation, and has no right to think “if man’s unhappy, God’s unjust” (Pope). God gave man free will, and the laws of nature to govern us, perhaps in hopes that He would not have to micromanage our lives and take all of the blame when things go wrong. Perhaps it is our own arrogance that leads man to think that he is the most important of God’s creations, made in his image. Emperors used to believe that they were chosen by God, and holy wars fought over the idea that God supports their cause, not the enemy’s. In God’s great power, why would He care whether the Muslims or the Jews think that He favors them? If He cares at all about affairs like these, it must do nothing but exasperate him, for it is highly counterproductive to the Semitic ideals for people of the same basic religion to kill each other over differences in creed.

If God made the laws of nature to govern man, then He is not at fault at all for the miseries of man. Granted, He made man frail but sharks strong and nature dangerous, but it can not be God’s fault when the shark mistakes a man for a seal, or a home proves too flimsy to stand up through a storm. The family of a store clerk has no right to blame God when someone robs the store and shoots him. After all, God did not pull the trigger, the robber did. Guns were designed to kill, and once the trigger is pulled, the laws of nature must run their course.

It is a valid argument that God could have done something even if he couldn’t stop the bullet in midair. He could have run the robber over with a bus on his way to the store to avoid the tragedy. However, the laws of nature dictate that the bus driver steers the bus, not God, and has just as much free will to steer responsibly as the robber has to kill someone, and again, if God did everything in his power to prevent people from hurting each other, the totality of order would result in chaos and the loss of humanity’s right to free choice. Imagine a parent that allows her child to choose whether or not to do his homework, but when he chooses not to, tells him to choose again. One could argue that practice is good parenting, but it is certainly not free choice (Kushner 89). In this logic, God can not stop humans from hurting each other or themselves without taking from us free will.

The laws of nature could have been made differently, that is true. However, what kind of people would result from nothing but happiness and leisure? The true value of goodness is taught best by the presence of evil. The struggle for righteousness would be meaningless if there was no unfairness in the world. If Nature was run by some kind of idealist communist system, where everyone was equal and happy and immune to decay or death, we would be again robbed of ambition and the choice between good and bad, and, really, who would truly appreciate such a gift? If no one knew anything else, they would feel entitled, and inevitably ask for more. If no one had to work for what they receive, no one would grow as a person, and absolutely no one would deserve what they have.

What can God do, then, without causing total chaos? He can lead us to be better and stronger. He can comfort us when we feel that life is unfair and He is unreasonable. God either can not or will not make the world a perfect place, but His religions are in every corner of the world, not only in Semitic faith, but in every religion that teaches love and tolerance towards mankind. His influence is present to help anyone who chooses good over evil, or forgiveness over hate.

God put man in an imperfect world, full of chaos and evil. However, it is the only way to give him free will, for without knowledge of evil, man could not make the conscious choice in favor of good. God is not all-powerful, but perhaps He is simply wiser than He is strong, which is preferable in anyone. He knows that the misery of life is necessary in order to grow. He has given man free will, for what reason, we cannot know. However, it is that free will that makes us human, and for that we should be thankful. He gives us the choice of good or evil, and gives us all the guidance that He can, and although that choice causes pain and suffering and confusion, it can not be denied to us without reducing us to animals who can not be good or bad, only convenient or inconvenient. Man is arrogant and sometimes even angry towards God, but He understands and hopes that he will tire, and in the space between breaths, hear the truth: Man has the choice, not God, to change the world. If man chooses evil and anger and bitterness, and his misery will continue, but he can also choose to forgive, and love, and in time, perhaps, join Him and escape our hurtful, dangerous world.