Who's to Blame?

Without a doubt the recurring question I get most from people who struggle to believe in the existence of God concerns the issue of evil and human suffering.  They have a problem believing in a God who who has let us screw up the world this badly.  On some level, who can blame them?  It is like the kids wreaking havoc because they have been left at home alone.  I know, the kids should have been more responsible, but the parents, we should have known better.  Or were we totally oblivious as to what the kids were capable of?

The short version of this argument goes like this:  "If there is a God, why does He allow such horrible things to happen?"

My response to this question usually goes like this ... so let's say there is no God.  Is there still evil in the world?  Are we not still living on a planet filled with violence?  Is not our history still marred by murder, oppression, destruction and corruption?  Are there not millions still dying of want while we in the west callously throw away our leftovers?  If there is no God, is there still not evil?  The answer, of course, is yes!

Well then, if there is no God and we still have a problem with evil, who should we hold responsible?  Now this begs the question of one of the good things about there being a God is that we can blame him for everything.  But say there is no God, the question remains:  Who's to blame?

Who's to blame for the millions of people dying of AIDS and starvation in Africa?  For the women set afire in India so that their husbands can be free to marry another woman and collect another dowry?  For the millions buried in the killing fields of Cambodia?  For those being hunted down and killed in Syria for opposing the government?  For the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust?  For the millions of children living in urban garbage dumps in Central America, homeless and alone?  Remember there is no God so we can't blame him.  Who's left to blame?

Oh yeah, all we have left is us.

Part of the problem we have in making sense of this life is that we cannot really even make sense of ourselves.  We tend to blame God because we don't want to take responsibility for the mess we've made.  Then we stop believing in God because He won't change it.  Is it possible that God does, in fact, exist, and we are still fully responsible for the human condition?  Hmmm.

Is it possible that God created us with the power to create the world of our own choosing???

The truth of the matter is ... it is not so much we that have a right to be mad at God so much as it is God who has a right to be mad at us!  Still human nature being what it is, we still want to blame God for not fixing our problems.  But exactly how would He do this?  Let's consider the options.

For God to create a perfect world, there seems to be just a limited number of scenarios possible.  First, He could just get rid of all of us.  That would pretty much solve all of the problems right away.  But ... I am personally not so much for this option ... so let's move on to the next.

He could control our every thought, our every emotion, our every motive, our every action.  And since he is God, he could do this in such a way as to make us feel as if we have free will.  We would all be the products of a divinely created illusion, a utopia ... a planet-wide version of the Stepford Wives ... a place where everything is perfect because we cannot truly choose for ourselves.  But again, I am not to keen on this illusory solution either and I am personally grateful that God has created us as thinking creatures with the capacity to choose.

For God to create us in such a way that we can choose that which is good, true and beautiful, he must also allow us the freedom to choose that which is corrupt, false and destructive.  Most of us want God to fix every wrong choice we make without taking from us our right to choose wrongly.  We want to transform God into our personal "pooper-scoopers" following along behind us to clean up our messes.  God, however, usually lets us make our beds and then makes us lie down in them.

There is one last option that we should also consider.  Given that there is a God and that He cares about humanity and that He is deeply troubled by the human condition, how could He proceed to actively engage the human condition?  If God refuses to take from us our free will and He refuses to leave the world in its present condition, what then can He do?

Here is an interesting possibility ... He could change our hearts.  He could take us through a process that would move us from greed to altruism, that would move us from indifference to compassion, that would move us from hate to love, that would move us from apathy to activism.  If He could change us then He could change the world.  Call me crazy but this simple truth seems to be key ... the world will change when we change.