The Absence of Good
"The spiritual state of unbelief is desperation." ~ Stephen King, Desperation
Lately I've been thinking a lot about questions relating to evil. Where does evil come from? Is it from God, or some outside force? Or is it a flaw in human beings, a natural bent toward selfishness? If so, then wouldn't evil be from God? Didn't God make us the way we are? If we are made with both light and dark within us, then don't we need to have darkness in order to define light?
Part of it probably has to do with the fact that I've been on a big Stephen King kick lately. Specifically, I've been reading through the Richard Bachman novels (written by King's own "dark half") and Desperation, which has been called "one of the most profound Christian novels of the second half of the 20th century."(1) Desperation introduces some very uncomfortable thoughts about God, like the idea that recurs often throughout the book, "God is cruel." Does God orchestrate the horrible events that happen in the town of Desperation, Nevada, in order to bring a motley assortment of characters to town that are hand picked to stop the evil being Tak? It's an exploration of what is known in theological studies as the "theodicy" question. Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Is God all-loving and all-powerful? If so, then how can evil exist?
I have been struggling with this question myself probably all my life, because the devil has been a source of fear since the time I was old enough to understand what he was. I was brought up with a religion in which the devil was very much alive, and out to get you at every turn. Faith was less about loving God and more about avoiding the devil, the way I saw it. It was fire insurance, a "get out of Hell free" card.
When I found myself drawn to faith as an adult, realizing that God is love, that didn't completely erase the problem of evil. But sooner or later, one begins to wonder about it. I think a lot of people agree with me that a loving God would not consign even the worst sinner to eternal torment in Hell, but is there such a thing as a devil, or evil spirits? The question becomes really interesting when you look for answers in the Bible and discover that in the Old Testament, there's not a lot of mention of Satan. I remember the first time I really read Genesis, and thought, "wait a minute. Where's the story of Lucifer and the fallen angels that I was taught in catechism class? Are there pages missing?"
Satan really becomes a character in his own right in the book of Job. This book brings up the uncomfortable questions about God that I mentioned earlier. Why would God allow Satan to smite Job with all these terrible things, with boils and loss of all his possessions and children, just to prove a point? Job and his friends have a long debate about the answers to "why does God allow bad things to happen to good people" and in the end, when God shows up, God's answer is really unsatisfying. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" Job is basically chided for his hubris in questioning God, rather than being given an answer. The fact that he gets a consolation prize of more children in the end almost seems like a tacked-on ending to edify readers.
Looking at this story, it's easy to see the "God is cruel" theory making a lot of sense. But that is not what I believe.
I have a lot of qualms with Augustine of Hippo, but his approach to the question of evil is pretty much how I see it:
"(Variations of Augustinian theodicy) typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally) good; that he created the world out of nothing; and that evil is the result of humanity's original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as punishment for sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of free will. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.
Augustine of Hippo was the first to develop the theodicy. He rejected the idea that evil exists in itself, instead regarding it as a corruption of goodness, caused by humanity's abuse of free will." (2)
So according to Augustine, evil is the absence of good and not a "substance" of itself. Evil cannot be of God, because God is all-good, and therefore it is defined as the absence of that good. An interesting thing I read recently about Jewish mysticism states that since God is omnipresent, the act of creation was an act of subtraction.
"God as omnipresent and omnipotent was everywhere. He filled the universe with his Being. How then could creation come about?... God had to create by withdrawal; He created the not-Him, the other, by self-concentration." (3)
In order to allow us to have free will, to choose to love God rather than being mindless puppets, God had to withdraw a certain amount from creation. The vacuum left by that withdrawal seems to be the source of evil. We have capability of doing great good with our free will, and also great evil. Thinking about that vacuum left where God is absent, I think of the quote I opened with, "The spiritual state of unbelief is desperation." We all have that hole inside us that we are desperate to fill, and we try filling it with all kinds of things. "Our hearts are restless, oh God, until they rest in you," was what Augustine famously said.
The restlessness, the desperation, that King refers to is his battle with addiction:
"In 1989 he finally got sober, and by all accounts he went full AA. One of the interesting things about AA is its tough-minded belief in a higher power that offers a path to salvation and sobriety that isn’t easy, but offers less obvious but deeper rewards than drinking. The higher power of AA doesn’t care if you drink or don’t drink. It has no active interest in your life. But if you admit that it’s more powerful and perfect than you are, then you stand a chance of recovery. It’s not a pleasant belief, but it’s a necessary one, and one gets the feeling that King regards it as central to his sobriety." (1)
The God that King refers to seems to be a rather bleak one, but powerful. It's also a more mature understanding of God than we are so often presented with, especially in a horror novel. The God that the protagonists of Desperation follow requires immense sacrifices, but the rewards of following him are profound. The power to stop evil, to do God's will, is given to these characters as soon as they decide to do so. Sounds like Christianity to me.
I have a lot more thoughts about evil, more specifically evil that is inside of us, our "dark halves", but I think that will be the subject of my next blog post. Stay tuned...
Sources:
1) Grady Hendrix, "The Great Stephen King Reread: Desperation". https://www.tor.com/2015/06/26/the-great-stephen-king-reread-desperation/
2) Wikipedia, "Augustinian Theodicy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_theodicy
3) James Hillman, quoted by Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer
William Blake, "Satan smiting Job with sore boils", 1826
Lately I've been thinking a lot about questions relating to evil. Where does evil come from? Is it from God, or some outside force? Or is it a flaw in human beings, a natural bent toward selfishness? If so, then wouldn't evil be from God? Didn't God make us the way we are? If we are made with both light and dark within us, then don't we need to have darkness in order to define light?
Part of it probably has to do with the fact that I've been on a big Stephen King kick lately. Specifically, I've been reading through the Richard Bachman novels (written by King's own "dark half") and Desperation, which has been called "one of the most profound Christian novels of the second half of the 20th century."(1) Desperation introduces some very uncomfortable thoughts about God, like the idea that recurs often throughout the book, "God is cruel." Does God orchestrate the horrible events that happen in the town of Desperation, Nevada, in order to bring a motley assortment of characters to town that are hand picked to stop the evil being Tak? It's an exploration of what is known in theological studies as the "theodicy" question. Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Is God all-loving and all-powerful? If so, then how can evil exist?
I have been struggling with this question myself probably all my life, because the devil has been a source of fear since the time I was old enough to understand what he was. I was brought up with a religion in which the devil was very much alive, and out to get you at every turn. Faith was less about loving God and more about avoiding the devil, the way I saw it. It was fire insurance, a "get out of Hell free" card.
Gustave Dore, "The Inferno: Canto 21"
When I found myself drawn to faith as an adult, realizing that God is love, that didn't completely erase the problem of evil. But sooner or later, one begins to wonder about it. I think a lot of people agree with me that a loving God would not consign even the worst sinner to eternal torment in Hell, but is there such a thing as a devil, or evil spirits? The question becomes really interesting when you look for answers in the Bible and discover that in the Old Testament, there's not a lot of mention of Satan. I remember the first time I really read Genesis, and thought, "wait a minute. Where's the story of Lucifer and the fallen angels that I was taught in catechism class? Are there pages missing?"
Satan really becomes a character in his own right in the book of Job. This book brings up the uncomfortable questions about God that I mentioned earlier. Why would God allow Satan to smite Job with all these terrible things, with boils and loss of all his possessions and children, just to prove a point? Job and his friends have a long debate about the answers to "why does God allow bad things to happen to good people" and in the end, when God shows up, God's answer is really unsatisfying. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" Job is basically chided for his hubris in questioning God, rather than being given an answer. The fact that he gets a consolation prize of more children in the end almost seems like a tacked-on ending to edify readers.
Looking at this story, it's easy to see the "God is cruel" theory making a lot of sense. But that is not what I believe.
I have a lot of qualms with Augustine of Hippo, but his approach to the question of evil is pretty much how I see it:
"(Variations of Augustinian theodicy) typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally) good; that he created the world out of nothing; and that evil is the result of humanity's original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as punishment for sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of free will. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.
Augustine of Hippo was the first to develop the theodicy. He rejected the idea that evil exists in itself, instead regarding it as a corruption of goodness, caused by humanity's abuse of free will." (2)
Michael Pacher, "The Devil presenting St Augustine with the Book of Vices"
So according to Augustine, evil is the absence of good and not a "substance" of itself. Evil cannot be of God, because God is all-good, and therefore it is defined as the absence of that good. An interesting thing I read recently about Jewish mysticism states that since God is omnipresent, the act of creation was an act of subtraction.
"God as omnipresent and omnipotent was everywhere. He filled the universe with his Being. How then could creation come about?... God had to create by withdrawal; He created the not-Him, the other, by self-concentration." (3)
In order to allow us to have free will, to choose to love God rather than being mindless puppets, God had to withdraw a certain amount from creation. The vacuum left by that withdrawal seems to be the source of evil. We have capability of doing great good with our free will, and also great evil. Thinking about that vacuum left where God is absent, I think of the quote I opened with, "The spiritual state of unbelief is desperation." We all have that hole inside us that we are desperate to fill, and we try filling it with all kinds of things. "Our hearts are restless, oh God, until they rest in you," was what Augustine famously said.
The restlessness, the desperation, that King refers to is his battle with addiction:
"In 1989 he finally got sober, and by all accounts he went full AA. One of the interesting things about AA is its tough-minded belief in a higher power that offers a path to salvation and sobriety that isn’t easy, but offers less obvious but deeper rewards than drinking. The higher power of AA doesn’t care if you drink or don’t drink. It has no active interest in your life. But if you admit that it’s more powerful and perfect than you are, then you stand a chance of recovery. It’s not a pleasant belief, but it’s a necessary one, and one gets the feeling that King regards it as central to his sobriety." (1)
Original cover art for Desperation, 1996
The God that King refers to seems to be a rather bleak one, but powerful. It's also a more mature understanding of God than we are so often presented with, especially in a horror novel. The God that the protagonists of Desperation follow requires immense sacrifices, but the rewards of following him are profound. The power to stop evil, to do God's will, is given to these characters as soon as they decide to do so. Sounds like Christianity to me.
I have a lot more thoughts about evil, more specifically evil that is inside of us, our "dark halves", but I think that will be the subject of my next blog post. Stay tuned...
Sources:
1) Grady Hendrix, "The Great Stephen King Reread: Desperation". https://www.tor.com/2015/06/26/the-great-stephen-king-reread-desperation/
2) Wikipedia, "Augustinian Theodicy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_theodicy
3) James Hillman, quoted by Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer
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