IS GOD A SADIST?
A Sermon by Rev. Robert M. Eddy
Delivered 9/26/2004
at the
Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola, FL
For more information go to
www.uupensacola.com
The title of this sermon was announced long before Ivan the terrible was even a tropical depression. I make no claim to prophecy! The question is being asked by many in our storm wounded city today but the question is as old as the human intellect. Some of the most ancient documents available to us tell the story of Job, the most righteous among men who suffered nevertheless. The version most of us know comes from the Scriptures of the people, Israel, writings which were later incorporated into the scriptures of the Christian Church. But the story and even the form of that book of Job is much older, perhaps a thousand years older. A similar book called, the Babylonian Theodicy has "an unnamed sufferer and his friend speak alternately in a cycle of twenty-seven speeches. The sufferer protests his misery, describing the injustice of the world and the unfairness of the gods. His friend attempts to defend the rationality of the world and urges his friend to seek the mercy of the gods " - note gods Plural " In contrast to Job, however, The Babylonian Theodicy ends without any appearance of the deity or narrative resolution."
I've been quoting from The New Oxford Annotated Bible 2001 which I recommend to any of you who wish to begin a detailed study of this curious book of Job. Like many books in the Bible the Book of Job is a mishmash, a work that has been edited and reedited over centuries. It may have reached its present form as early as 699 before the common era or it may have reached it s present form only in the fourth century BCE. It has a special place in my heart because during the week before my wedding, more than 50 years and four months ago, I was completing an overdue seminary paper on the book of Job. I was trying to reconstruct what the original author intended removing the layers of pious commentary added much later. If one does that removes the excrescences - the conclusion of the book of Job is this I paraphrase - "It is foolish to try to understand the purposes and motives of the creator and sustainer of the universe. A pious life is no guarantee of good life." Jesus of Nazareth said it succinctly, "the rain falls on the just and the unjust."
We know that don t we! One need only look at the destruction wreaked by Ivan to understand that. Unitarians and Jews and Southern Baptists were wiped out in about the same proportion. Unitarians and Jews and Southern Baptists were spared in about the same proportion. Even if you accept the notion of "a creator and sustainer of the universe" God it makes no sense whatsoever to expect him, her, or it to favor those who are believers over those who are unbelievers those who follow one ethical code over those who follow another or those who are pure opportunists. "He maketh the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust." A radical idea in 33 AD as it was in Job s time and as it is today.
But let me suggest an even more radical idea. Namely this: It is foolish to believe that there is a "creator and sustainer of the universe." It is foolish to conceive of the universe in anthropomorphic terms. Let me revise that, it is childish to conceive of the universe in anthropomorphic terms. It is childish to try to "Justify the ways of God to man." We can usefully try to understand how the Universe is put together to tease out the hidden links between cause and effect we have a powerful tool to do that it s called the scientific method. That method in three hundred years has given us an understanding of the "how" of the Universe that exceeds the understanding of Job ten thousand if not a billion fold. But the scientific method tells us nothing about the "why."
It is my belief that nothing can answer the question "why" when it comes to individual suffering. We might eventually know why Ivan came ashore where it did instead of destroying New Orleans say. We all heard learned talk on the weather channel of "steering winds." Maybe Meteorologists can be more precise in predicting landfall, but that will not the answer to the "why me?" that so many are asking today.
One cruel response to that question is, "Why not you? What makes you special?" I would not make that reply to someone who has lost everything or even something significant to them. I could only say your house happened to be in the path of an embedded tornado or your house happened to be in the path of a storm surge. There is no answer to why in anthropomorphic terms. "God makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust." Or, as Babe s mother always said, "That s just the way it is."
Few of us human beings can give up the notion of some kind of ruling force that is responsive to petition. Few of us human beings can give up theism. I am one of them. That doesn t make me superior or brilliant. It s just what I believe. I am a non-theist. Now, there are as many kinds of non theists as there are kinds of theists. My kind of non theism, I call humanism. My focus is first and foremost on human beings. "The proper study of mankind is man" said Alexander Pope 250 years ago. I believe that. I stand in awe of the models of the creation and structure of the universe over time that physicists and astronomers paint, but the nature of a newborn child or a centenarian is of more interest to me. Collections of atoms are of less interest than collections of people. How we humans respond during and after a hurricane is more important to me than why black holes exist. The "proper study of mankind" is a never ending and delightful task.
One of the things I have learned in my study of men and women and children is that we seem to be ethical creatures. By that I do not mean we all behave well but that in every culture there is a set of standards to which individuals belonging to that culture are expected to adhere. There are few universals.
Many succumb to the temptation to see their own set of values as somehow universal. But some universals are emerging and they were first given expression on a global scale in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Which should be in any Hymnal with the title Universalist in it. Sadly it s not even quoted Take my word for it: the values incorporated in that document that reflect the growing humanization of man - and my retention of gender specific language is not accidental. Think about it. I repeat. "The values incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reflect the growing humanization of man." Even the Vatican has acknowledged that the "feminine values" need to be more honored in their church and in society as a whole.
I can offer you no great hope that Pensacola will be spared another devastating hurricane. Those matters are beyond human influence and it is good, painful but good, to be reminded of that fact occasionally. But I can offer you hope that in your lifetime, if you but look beyond the headlines, you will see a growing expansion of the "community of concern" as more and more cultures acknowledge their common human heritage and future on this planet.
Perhaps we need to cultivate an attitude expressed among Moslems when they say, "s alla" "god willing" but I would use a less loaded word. I would substitute for god or even whatever gods may be. I intend to mentally append to every promise the phrase, "Universe allowing" Ivan taught me that.
We all exist within a framework of possibilities; for some the framework is like a prison cell and for others the framework is like a great network of highways but none of us is all powerful, all knowing or all beneficent. And there is no God in charge of things who is "all powerful, all knowing, all
beneficent." To believe so is to think like a child and we are not children.
Is God a Sadist? Of course not. Sadism is an all too common human trait. Is God all loving? Of course not. That too is a too rare human aspiration. There is no answer to Job s question, "why do good people suffer" within the framework of a childish view of the universe but if we undertake to
understand our fellow human beings, we may find an answer. Non Theistic thinkers like Gautama Siddartha, the Buddha and his followers offer many suggestions.
And, as Shirley Jackson Denham reminds us, "Even to question truly [meaning honestly] , is an answer." Let us question truly the nature of humanity and be satisfied with what we discover.
.
Edwin Markham, the Universalist poet, put if well in the words you ll find
in your hymnal at number 312. Please (If there is light) read the words
through and if you agree say them with me.
"Here on the paths of every day
Here on the common human way
Is all the stuff the gods would take
To build a heaven, to mold and make New Edens.
Ours the task sublime to build eternity in time.
We need no other stones to build
The temple of the unfulfilled
No other ivory for the doors
No other marble for the floors
No other cedar for the beam and dome
Of our immortal dream.
Please join me in some moments of quiet meditation.