About God (part 3): The Problem of Joy

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

One of the most common objections to faith in God is what people often refer to as the problem of pain. The question is how could pain exist–and particularly how can apparently good people suffer it–in a world ruled by a supposedly good, loving, and all-powerful God. Because pain obviously exists, therefore it is impossible to believe in the God asserted by Christians, Jews, or Muslims. It is a vexing question, and many writers have sought to defend religion by meeting the question head on--with varying degrees of success.

However, those who want to disprove, discount, or discard God themselves face a problem possibly even more difficult to explain. It involves the good things in life--the joy and the beauty. Rather than asking “Why do bad things happen to good people?” (by which we probably mean us), we can just as legitimately ponder “Why do good things happen to bad people?” (which can also refer to us). Countless instances of inexplicable joy, beauty, and variety surround us. The world would be much simpler and would conceivably operate just as well without all of them.

For example, rather than the 850 species of birds in Australia (as listed in the Field Guide to Australian Birds), a half dozen generic species of birds would surely suffice. Similarly, the variety of colors, aromas, and tastes found in a selection of fruit or vegetables might seem unnecessary in practical terms. If we only pause to observe, we will find an astounding range of trees, fish, insects, rocks, and almost any other category we might choose. Or the world could easily be black and white, and we–not knowing any better–would get along quite satisfactorily. After all, some animals such as cats do not see color at all, and they do fine. There often seem no functional or practical reasons for so much of the beauty and sources of joy surrounding us in our everyday lives. And if we try to explain the world without God, then we also have to account for the abundance and even inefficiency of beauty.

Yes, both the philosophical and experiential problems of pain continue to persist—as well as the issue of why we find beauty even in a world filled with so much suffering.  Speaking of the natural world, C. S. Lewis, a Christian writer, asks: “How can it be so beautiful and also so cruel, wasteful and futile?” However, even the apparent futility of so much of the natural world itself raises the question of the temporary beauty. For example, why does an insect living for less than 24 hours have such delicate and finely detailed wings?

The difference is how we see it. As poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.

Creator of the hidden colors in coral reefs, the fragile wings of butterflies, and the spectacular glory of the sunset, He is a God of both endless repetition and endless variety, but above all a God of endless beauty and joy.

Maybe the universe is not as silent and solemn as we often imagine:

“We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear” (G. K. Chesterton).

(adapted from 7 Reasons Life Is Better with God by Nathan Brown, 2007)

Comments

[Sieghard Frischmann]

The poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning brings it to the point - each bush is afire with god - we only cannot or will not see him. And this is the tragedy many of us are in - we see a reality which we were taught to see. Blinded by our every days life. Religion must open eyes to see god and not limit itself to teach doctrines.

[Sam]

How much better does dessert taste when one is hungry? How much more euphoric a calm is right after a storm? Sometimes I can't believe that these so called "negative" emotions are of the devil, but created by God to give us wonderful experiences which we couldn't have otherwise.