God’s Accountability

Recently during a family reunion there was a prayer for Ukraine. While the sentiment is there and the situation is certainly terrible, I was puzzled by this. How come God was supposed to deliver us from a catastrophe like this one? If so, why did he not do so already? Even better, why not prevent the whole ordeal?

We fault presidents and countries for not doing enough, limited as they are in their options, while a Christian God is above fault. Truly, the most powerful bystander. Moreover, if God is at work in everything that happens, maybe as part of some plan, how is all this suffering not God’s fault altogether?

This phenomenon is not new. It is very typical actually. Very often a person with a terminal medical condition is given hard news: there is a 1-in-20 (or some such) chance of surviving. This is plain statistics. What is curious is that, when 19 of those people indeed die, it is a human tragedy. On the other hand, when the 1 survives, it is a divine miracle! The odds were beaten, to the invariable “shock and awe” of the doctors in this common narrative. It must have been our prayers, surely.

This is an incredible double standard, one that surprises me generates no cognitive dissonance at all. If it is good, it comes from God, if it is bad, it comes from… somewhere else. Anywhere else.

See, Christianity really has a problem explaining why there is suffering at all. At least Buddists can claim that all people in Ukraine deserve it somehow; it is Karma from a previous life. But Christianity has to contend with the fact that people suffer all the time, and a loving God is in abeyance. So some excuse is needed.

The obvious one is a total retreat to faith and ignorance. Just state that “God works in mysterious ways” and give no reasoning whatsoever. This feels, not surprisingly, very weak, so there is one other ready-made excuse, one that was quick to appear in this family reunion: “free will”.

See, if God cannot be blamed, people certainly can. You have to ignore the part where the will of war of a single individual can prevail over the will to avoid suffering of the many innocents. Don’t question “whose will exactly?” or if that is fair. In fact, free will is used more as a curiosity stopper than an actual explanation. It has very obvious weaknesses like tsunamis, earthquakes, etc.

But the most intriguing weakness for me is that somehow God is not to blame for the fact that we have free will in the first place. Or that we are so badly put together that we are capable of using it with enormous cruelty and indifference. It is as if I would take my own son and allow him to sit to play in the middle of the road. I never told him of the danger, nor to be aware of his surroundings. I gave him no tools. And then, when I see my supposedly beloved son about to be hit by a car, I don’t even attempt to push him out of danger. All of those are within my power, but I, the good father, do none of them. I just limit myself to witnessing the carnage and saying: “he could have chosen differently”.

That’s free will for you.

And that is why, if you truly observe the world instead of blinding yourself under dogma, you quickly conclude that God is either nonexistent, indifferent or a sadist. If you would believe in a God (which I don’t recommend), then don’t pray, rebel!