House of Faith or Enchanted Forest?. Charles W. Hedrick, Jr.
to speak).
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Can humans really trust the Gods always to treat us with integrity, when on our better days we appear to have a sharper sense of morality than they do on their worse days? We assume Gods will always act with integrity—after all, they are divine. We expect immoral behavior from demons, but not from Gods. The record, however, is flawed. For instance, in *Homer’s epic poem the Illiad * Zeus deceived *Agamemnon with a lying dream—to the hurt and detriment of *Achilles (2:1–35). And even *Yahweh, the God of the Bible, sent a lying spirit to deceive King Ahab of Israel so he would be defeated in battle. Later he placed lying spirits in the mouths of all the prophets of Israel (1 Kings 22:19–23). On another occasion, he sent an evil spirit to torment King Saul (1 Samuel 16:14–15)—strange behavior for a God! Such behavior by the Gods recalls Homer’s description of Zeus’ father, *Cronus, as the God “of the crooked ways” (Illiad 2:205).
Humans believe it is not ethical to deceive or mistreat others. And that is one reason the “serious misconduct and loss of moral value” of American soldiers in the *Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraqi war was so reprehensible. The soldiers were held accountable for their actions, but apparently Gods can act as they wish—and with impunity! We explain their occasionally shocking ways by arguing that Gods obviously know the big picture. Since they are Gods, we assume they must know what is best for us in the long term. Our human view of things is finite; we see matters dimly and then only in short term. So we conclude: an event appearing tragic to us must only be so from our limited perspective, for surely Gods always act justly. For that reason, we tend to think that our personal tragedies must somehow be for the best. This solution, however, leaves honest folk with a nagging ethical question: how can bringing anyone harm ever be considered “good”? Is it possible that Gods do not always know best after all, and humans invented that idea to cover divine misbehavior? Or is it, perhaps, possible that the writers of our religious texts have mistakenly misled us? For example, did Jesus really instruct his disciples to take up the sword (Luke 22:36).
The biblical book of Job is one of the clearest examples of divine misbehavior in the literature. Job simply could not understand why tragedy struck his life. When his “friends” told him that God punished him because of his sins, Job was perplexed. He was willing to admit he was not perfect, but he knew his suffering was not proportionate to the sins he committed. And Job actually was correct: God permitted his egregious suffering to see if he would commit a greater sin, as the text makes plain (Job 1–2).
“The ends never justify the means” is clearly an idealistic sentiment, and we humans on our worst days never quite measure up. In cases of expediency, we frequently find our ends justifying our means, like at Abu Ghraib, for example. Nevertheless, when we privilege ends over means, we at least know we are traveling down a lower road. And if we finite humans sometimes know the difference between high road and low road, shouldn’t Gods always know the difference?
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Do all things happen for a reason? If I said that someone survived a car crash with barely a scratch but four others in the car were killed outright, most people, religious or not, would likely observe, “stuff happens for a reason.” Behind that observation is the popular religious belief that God micromanages the world. But if I were to ask, Was there some divine reason for a bird dropping poop on my forehead rather than my shoulder this morning, many would think my question silly. Nevertheless, a serious issue lies behind both situations: Is anyone completely in charge of the universe?
One answer is that God micromanages the universe. If so, everything happens for a reason. A micromanaging God would scarcely leave anything to chance! This line of reasoning leads inevitably to the conclusion that even bad things (New Orleans comes to mind) are due to God’s deliberate management. Hence, since by popular definition God can do no wrong, everything apparently bad must really be good—and that includes even the bird poop on my forehead. A micromanaging God would have had good reason for the bird poop—for under the theory of divine micromanagement, God makes everything happen for a reason.
Perhaps God only generally manages the universe and is not responsible for everything that happens. Under “general” management some things are divinely manipulated but other things are just allowed to happen as they will. Under this theory the universe has been set up to work in a well regulated way, and God only intrudes now and then for whatever reason that strikes the divine fancy. For the most part, things do seem to work fairly well in our world. The world turns with general regularity and only the occasional glitch (New Orleans and cancer come to mind). This theory raises the question: how can we ever really be sure what is deliberately caused by God, what is part of the regular pulse of the universe, and what is a glitch in the system? The bird poop is well accommodated by this explanation, however: it is just one of those billions of little things that never register on the divine radar scope, or simply are part of the regular pulse of the universe where things happen for no particular reason—like a leaf falling off a tree, or bird droppings. I just happened to look up at the opportune time this morning at the precise moment the bird pooped. Such occurrences are part of the regular design of things: leaves fall off trees, and birds poop all over the place. But under this theory one can never be sure of anything God does or does not do.
It is also possible that God has chosen to be an observer of events in a universe designed to run itself, more or less—or worse, God has gone missing. “How could that be possible? God created the world, so why abandon it?” Good question! But since we cannot even prove that God exists, how could we possibly know whether God is missing? A missing God, however, does make a sort of perverted sense of our human situation, and could account for natural disasters and unconscionable human sufferings (New Orleans, *tsunamis, and cancer come to mind)—in short, for whatever reason no one is minding the store! Bird poop on the forehead makes excellent sense in such a world, however; a God absent for the big things could scarcely be expected to be around for the little things.
Perhaps we have simply misunderstood God’s character. If God were a bit devious, it could explain the general regularity of the cosmos and its blessings when things work without the glitches—such as natural disasters, the tragedies of disease, and fatal “accidents.” In short, God may be prone to be a bit “impish,” so to speak. Certain passages in the Bible seem to support such a theory—at least the early Israelites and Christians must have thought so by some of the ways they portrayed God. The book of Job is a case directly on point. Bird poop on the forehead is precisely the kind of thing one might expect from a mischievous God.
Of course, it is always possible there is no God. The only difference between this possibility and the last is that human tragedy and natural disaster could not be caused by a nonexistent God, but must be the result of randomness in a universe that never had a manager of any sort. We would be alone in a sort of well-regulated universe—except for the occasional glitch. Such a situation accommodates regularity, natural disasters, and bird poop on the forehead.
The five possibilities for explaining bird poop and divine management of the universe boil down to this: do you choose to believe in an uptight micromanager, a lax general manager, a God gone missing, a mischievous deity, or in no God at all? One could choose to ignore human experience (which the Bible is), and fashion a God of one’s own choosing. I suspect that is what most of us do!
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The issues addressed in this section are provocative enough to raise the more basic question about God having a future, particularly in the light of the numerous Gods worshiped through recorded and un-recorded history. Persons even slightly familiar with the history of religions would be unusual had they not in more reflective moments pondered the question: Does our God have a future? I know it sounds like a really dumb question. How could God not have a future? If anyone or anything has prospects surely God does! From the perspective of world history, however, the question is obvious, for history is littered with decayed temples dedicated to obsolete Gods whose religious communities did not survive the passage of time. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, and modern popular imagination, all other Gods are “false” or imaginary Gods, created in the minds of ignorant and misguided people. In their heyday, however, these other Gods were powerful and controlled the lives of many people for many years. They were loved, feared, and their grace invoked through prayer