Dear one,
Once again I find myself pondering that perennial question: Is God good? Or that very related question: Where is God? The impetus for my return to these questions has been my reading of Mark Sullivan’s historical fiction, The Last Green Valley. Although published in 2021, Sullivan first came upon its storyline in 2017, when he heard the retelling of the Martel family and their flight from Ukraine in 1944. Without question, their escape has a ring of déjà vu, as the Martels, in their flight from Ukraine found themselves caught between two malevolent forces: Stalin’s Red Army and Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Their experience most surely parallels the millions, who have now fled Ukraine, raising those ancient questions: Where is God? Is God good?
As I thought of the present-day, Ukrainian trauma, I was reminded of the prophet Jeremiah (c.600 B.C.) and his contemporaries. As they faced an impending national disaster, their enslavement by the Neo-Babylonians, their rallying cry became: “The Temple! The Temple.” That is, as long as the Temple stood, where the LORD God dwelled, then certainly they would be spared suffering and pain. But they were not spared: the Neo-Babylonians came, the Temple was razed, and suffering has become their history, and so too the question: Is God good? But if such a One is not good, or as Elie Wiesel reasoned, if God is unjust, then surely such a One does not exist.
Clearly, within this space, I can only tentatively address this question; but even if I were to produce a volume reflecting much research and labor, I’m not certain I could answer it to anyone’s great satisfaction. That noted, I will make two observations:
First, as Mark Sullivan did in his retelling the Martel’s story, the answer to, “Is God good?” depends upon the lens we bring. It’s not a question of denying the existence of evil, but rather, given life’s great traumas, do we only see evil, as did some of the Martels, or is there good to be seen? Having experienced very similar Soviet and Nazi horrors, for some of the Martels, life became bitter, horribly twisted, and dark. But for others of the extended family, they chose to hope, recognizing that light shone within the darkness. Even forced death camps could not extinguish that light.
Second, the lens through which we see anything already has some prior shaping or properties: the lens crafter has applied certain techniques to the materials before him. That is, in order to answer, “Is God good?” we must already have some understanding of “goodness” and/or “justice.” But if so, what then is the basis or standard of that understanding? For some of the Martels, as well as for those of Jeremiah’s day, surely a “good” God would protect them, or would not allow them to know soul-wrenching suffering.
From my perspective, the Christian Faith seeks to answer this very weighty question through the lens of the Cross: Jesus’ death and resurrection become the paradigm by which we approach the goodness of God. Our Creator does not remove suffering but deigns to suffer with us, transforming Cross into Crown.
Hopefully,
Stan
The Last Valley?