Wednesday November 29, 2006
Self-answering questions
About an hour north of my home, Highway 97 snakes along for roughly 20 km between rock cliffs and Mara Lake. The road is narrow, twisty, with a solid double line down the middle of the road for the entire distance – no passing anywhere.
Whenever I drive that road, I seem to end up behind somebody\’s recreational vehicle, wallowing along at 10 km/hr under the speed limit.
Each time this happens, I find myself wondering: “Why do I always get trapped behind a slow-moving RV where I can\’t pass it?”
Then I realized that my question already contained its answer. If I were on a road where I could pass that RV, I wouldn\’t be trapped behind it. I probably wouldn\’t even be aware of it, because it wouldn\’t impede my progress.
As I waited for an opportunity to pass, I started thinking about other questions that contain their own answer.
Like the time our daughter Sharon came home from high school complaining that she had had a rotten day. “Why is it,” she demanded, “that the teachers are always in a lousy mood whenever I haven\’t had enough sleep the night before?”
Joan and I burst into unsympathetic laughter.
Origin of evil
Another example might be the question that thoughtful people have asked from time immemorial – if God is good, and God created everything, how can there be evil in the world? Did a good God create evil?
The academic name for this question, by the way, is “theodicy.”
Don\’t weasel on that question and object that God didn\’t create evil — humans did.
As a parallel, consider the National Rifle Association\’s mantra: “Guns don\’t kill people; people kill people.” Tragically, they\’re right – guns don\’t kill people, bullets do. But neither guns nor bullets make themselves. If some people didn\’t make guns, for other people to shoot bullets with, there would be no gun-related killings.
To my mind, that places responsibility on the makers of guns and bullets.
So if God made humans capable of creating evil, God is still responsible.
But again, the question contains its own answer. It assumes that God created everything. If God didn\’t create everything, then God wouldn\’t be responsible for evil.
I can\’t actually imagine any alternative to God as Creator. But that inability merely confirms how deeply entrenched the concept is.
Equally hard to imagine To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
Many scientists believe that the universe exploded into existence from nothing – from a “singularity,” which is as close to nothing as you can come, because it has no measurements of any kind. No length, no mass, no time.
Religious people contend that nothing can\’t become something. Therefore something must have created the universe. Each religious culture has its own name for that creative something — mine calls it “God.”
But then where did God come from? Out of nothing? Or can there be something, like God, that never had a beginning? Something that has always existed?
I find that equally hard to imagine.
But perhaps those questions would also contain their own answers, if I were smart enough to figure out what they were.
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Copyright © 2006 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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