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RELIGION

The problem of goodness

  • 02 February 2012

The problem of evil has always been with us. The ills that befall us and the monstrous evil that people do are a problem because they challenge the belief that life has a higher meaning. They are particularly corrosive of belief in a loving God.

The problem of goodness is rarely spoken of. Yet it challenges the view that the only meaning we can find in the world is at the level of what can be perceived and measured.

Evil challenges large frameworks of meaning because random suffering and human brutality are experienced and imagined with such intensity. Explanations of how they are consistent with a loving and attentive God may be intellectually satisfying. But when people experience suffering and brutality in their own lives, they are often repelled by large arguments.

The explanations, which work at a level of abstraction and assume a large view of the world, may seem superficial to them in their deep loss and pain. Once they believe that the cost of accepting that their suffering has a higher meaning would be to deny its overwhelming reality and obscenity, they reject all large explanations.

Theories that deny any higher meaning may then be attractive. If we can say that there is no other human reality beyond the small causalities and interplay of chance at atomic, genetic and other levels, evil and suffering cease to be a problem. They can be explained in material and physiological terms, with no need for a larger reason, nor an intelligible purpose into which to fit. So people are relieved of the burden of meaning.

Then there is goodness. In this context I understand goodness as something concretely experienced and not as an abstraction.

Most of us have known people whom we could only describe as good and whose qualities have made an indelible impression on us. We experience them as generous, serene, selfless, and unfailing in their consideration and personal regard for others, even when this is costly to themselves and apparently not in their own interest. We see in them a great and remarkable inner freedom and consistency. We might describe our dealings with them as an experience of goodness.

Goodness is an encouraging an experience as evil is

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