A Trip Down Theodicy Lane
By John R. Gavazzoni

Theodicy, as one definition has it, is "the vindication of the goodness and providence of God with a view to the existence of evil." That's a biggie, and it's a huge stumbling block for a lot of people, particularly those who fancy themselves as intellectually and morally superior, and of finer ethical sensibilities compared to we hoi polloi. History will show those whose sensibilities are most offended, along with being of determination and presumption that they are the ones to fix God's problem for Him, end up being the ones who pile more evil upon more evil by their presumptuousness.

These are from the ranks of the intelligentsia for the most part.... the kind of folks who are comfortable in the world of abstract thinking, and who are impressed by their skill at juggling ideas and notions. The common man is more prone to take an honest look at the situation, give it a thought or two, conclude it's above his "pay scale," and go his way facing "it is what it is." He is less prone to get his panties all in a twist at the seeming injustice of it all. (Though I must add, deep in his unconscious mind, he, with all mankind, harbors deep resentments at how God has let His world turn out.)

Rather than slogging along in the swamp of our revulsion, I suggest, metaphorically speaking, that we climb the nearest tall tree, and take a look at the big picture, and notice that there's a great big wonderful world beyond the swamp, all around the swamp, and by comparison, that world marginalizes the swamp almost to insignificance.. From that view we'll have introduced into our thinking the matter of what God is up to that includes the need for the temporal, disgusting swamp. I mean, stop with the "why doesn't God do something," and get with the program of what God is up to in it all.

I have had some really intense dialogue with folks who just can't handle God as Yahweh, i.e., God as the God, in some really real way, and by some definition, complicit in the painful mess His world is in. They can't handle it. God, for them, ought to be nicer than that. Ahh; that's what it boils down to: they insist on a nice God. Let me clue you in, brethren, He ain't nice. I can't think of a description of God more inadequate than that. Big, benign Daddy in the sky who wouldn't harm a flea. Lotsa' luck with that!

Abba, Father, is a God of vision, of a grand plan, of an imagination that sees, intends, determines, purposes, and wills, something so beyond anything our eye can see, or our ear hear, or has it entered into our hearts, what God has prepared for those that love Him. It's way, way beyond what we can ask or think, AND.......the swamp is part of the plan on the way to what God sees, intends, purposes, determines and wills. (And, by the way, there's no ultimate exclusiveness in that "those that love Him" part, FOR, "we love God, because He first loved us," therefore, since God loves us all, we will all end up loving Him. I do love such purity of logic: since it's because God loves us that we love Him, and because He loves us all, that love will be the cause of us all loving Him.)

You see, God is the God of the "much more." God is the God of the "superabounding." The description Jesus gave to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well of the water that He would give her, is a description, not first of what her experience would be in drinking of that water, but first a description of the well of water which God is....ever springing up into eonian life. Get hold of this if God grants you to see it: God's perfection is not static, in fact static perfection is no perfection. God is always drawing forth out of the depths of Himself, more and more of all that He is. To experience Him with any consistency is to be delighted in the vital freshness that flows forth from Him, "morning by morning" to us, for us, and through us to others.

In this desire and determination to superabound to all His family and creation, God adds an element of extreme intensification. He arranges a circumstance in which He, as Love, is challenged to bring forth all the treasures of that Love under the onslaught of all that He is not, He gushes forth from the depths of all that He is. Love only shines brightest in the face of enmity, hostility, and alienation. Under that pressure, His superabounding gushes forth as a mighty river of glory-destined goodness. The principle is clear: in order for grace to super abound, sin must first abound. It's not merely that where sin abounds, grace does abound. In the face of sin abounding, grace superabounds.

That's what God was up to when, clearly, He arranged for sin to enter the world, and death by sin, resulting in death being passed on to all men. All the ills of mankind fall under the heading of death. Death is the cause, and the summation of creation's bondage to decay. He, God our Father, with our Big Brother, Jesus, walks before us, at our side, and behind us, and most of all, with us in enduring all our predetermined suffering.

Scripture says,"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself," and since, as Paul taught that we are reconciled by Jesus' death, God was in Christ being crucified. Don't be like some of the early bishops of the church who over-thought that mystery, making themselves to be fools in the face of what is clearly stated as the truth. Makes one want to say, "Shut up, bishop! Go learn before you presume to speak of such things."

We are on what my friend, Ed Browne calls, the Godyssey. It is right to speak of God going with us, but it's first a matter of us going with God, of Him taking us by the hand through the valley of the shadow of death to glory. God does not put us through anything that He does not put Himself through with us and ahead of us, while He walks at our side, ahead and behind. By His experience, He's got us covered.

Has the reader contemplated in depth that the Book of Hebrews informs us that the Son cried out to the Father to save Him from so great a death? In the sense that He descended into the darkness of OUR fallen sense of being abandoned by God, there bearing us in Himself, He, with us, for us, needed to be saved "from so great a death." That death covers all the ghastly stuff recorded in the Old Testament and attributed, in the ultimate sense, to Yahweh. It's strange that while some can't handle God's sovereign complicity in the bad stuff of the Old Testament, the equal and even worse calamities of our day don't seem to present to them any theological enigma.

Set aside for the moment, the matter of evil's entrance into the world. Set aside for the moment its origin, and ask, "Since evil exists, who is directing it?" You'd better bet that evil is under the direction of God, and is "not some loose cannon in God's universe." If suffering is inevitable, I want my Father God directing the how, when, and where of its course. Under His direction, I know where it's all going, evil included. Comes to mind a line from the poem, Invictus, from an atheist: "Out of the night that covers me, dark as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul." The writer suffered terribly in this life, and from his, at that time, lack of the light of Christ in his life, we can understand his determination that he remain bloodied but unbowed, and his soul unconquerable. But a Christian struck a different note in response: "Out of the light that dazzles me, bright as the sun from pole to pole; I thank the God I know to be, for Christ, the conqueror of my soul."