c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) If you want religion to represent more than “sermons, songs, and shaking hands,” you need to confront the issue of theodicy as soon as possible.

In recent weeks I have met many people who are stunned by the unrelenting series of natural and human disasters: lethal earthquakes, sudden tsunamis, murderous mudslides, destructive hurricanes, continuing genocide, “evil but not insane” (President Bush’s term) terrorism, global warming, rising ocean levels and predictions of an influenza pandemic that will kill tens of millions of people.

If the religious community does not respond in a meaningful and timely manner, increasing numbers of men and women will seek spiritual answers elsewhere, including membership in dangerous cults, New Age claptrap, or other seductive substitutes. If the questions of theodicy are not publicly addressed, the Marxist definition of religion as the “opiate of the masses” will not be so easily dismissed.

Laypeople may be unfamiliar with the theological term, theodicy, but they are surely asking theodicy-focused questions. Sadly, theodicy as a subject frequently receives scant attention in Christian and Jewish seminaries, and is rarely discussed when rabbis, priests and pastors meet with one another. It’s time to change this lamentable situation.

For the record, theodicy (the Greek for “the justice of God”) concerns how the existence of a benevolent God can be reconciled with the persistence of human evil and horrific events that kill and maim the innocent. Many theologians have struggled with the effort to reconcile the coexistence of evil and God, and in case you play “Trivial Pursuit,” remember it was Gottfried Leibniz in 1710 who first coined the term, theodicy.

F.M.A. de Voltaire offered one popular response to theodicy with his Dr. Pangloss character in “Candide”: Evil people and events do not conflict with God’s goodness, and this is, after all, the best of all possible worlds.

Well, maybe, and maybe not.

Calvinist Christians teach that everything that happens is part of God’s righteous plan, and although some events are indeed evil, they still reflect God’s morally justified purposes that finite humans cannot always understand. In this theological system, God never loses or is truly called to account.

How often have we heard grieving parents throw up their hands when their young son or daughter drowns in a hurricane or is lost in an earthquake? “God knows best. God wanted or needed my child more than I did.”

Perhaps.

Some Christians and Jews believe God creates humans with choice or free will. It is we, not God, who carry out evil actions, and the divine gift of freedom of action is a supreme good. Evil deeds are the result of an “eclipse of God” (Martin Buber’s words following the Holocaust). While this lets God off the hook for evil human behavior, it does not explain catastrophic natural disasters.

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Other Christians and Jews believe that ultimately the good in the world outweighs the obvious evil. Together with God, it is our religious obligation to transform all expressions and acts of evil into goodness. Augustine offered this kind of answer to Christians, while some Jews, after first crying out in pain, may ultimately assert “Gam Zeh L’tovah,” _ “This too is also for the good.” However, delayed “ultimate” good is usually reserved for others, not ourselves.

Finally, there are individuals _ and I sense their number is growing _ who believe the issues of evil people and terrible events are not a problem at all. They wash their hands of religion, declaring that a truly compassionate and merciful God would never permit evil in the world. So God is either not compassionate and good or is limited and not all powerful. Either way, such a God is unworthy of worship or trust.

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My favorite response to theodicy is exemplified by Hasidic Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev (1740-1809), who constantly challenged God and symbolically put the creator on trial for permitting evil to occur in the world. Levi Yitzhak’s powerful courtroom imagery teaches that active questioning and engagement with God is far better than passive acceptance or Panglossian pabulum.

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(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser,is distinguished visiting professor at Saint Leo University.)