Q&A: A Concise Question About the Rabbi’s Approach to Suffering
A Concise Question About the Rabbi’s Approach to Suffering
Question
Hello and blessings, Rabbi.
Following up on our conversation a few days ago about suffering in the world, I wanted to distill your view on the matter.
Your claim is that there must necessarily be some lack, some flaw in perfection, in the Holy One, blessed be He, because of which He created the world and within it us, who have free choice. The Rabbi explained this in that phone conversation based on the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, that the only deficiency of one who is absolutely perfect is that he cannot become more perfect. And therefore He created a world in which we can perfect ourselves.
This is indeed a wonderful answer for the very fact of our having been created, but it still does not explain the problem of evil in the world. And to argue that it is impossible to create a better world within the framework of the current laws of physics seems puzzling to me.
A- Since history shows ups and downs that also take place within those same rigid laws, what would prevent an all-powerful Creator, who is absolute good, from positioning the world at a better point forever?
B- If I understood correctly, the Rabbi’s explanation was that erasing only suffering from the world in its current format is like creating a square circle, since the rigid laws of nature also dictate suffering. My question is: why can the component of suffering alone not be isolated from the totality of the laws (at least wherever it is unjust, such as harm to babies and innocent people)? The only answer is that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted specifically this system of laws, one that also dictates suffering (whether as a goal or as a side effect), and the question is why He wanted specifically this system of laws, which on its face seems unjust and arbitrary, at least in the eyes of His creatures.
And again, more power to you for the wonderful site.
Answer
Hello Chaim.
Isn’t this a continuation of a discussion from somewhere else? Please thread it there. There’s no point in opening a new thread as a continuation of something that got cut off. By the way, I explained all this to you well, and I don’t see what is new here. It’s simply a lack of understanding.
Discussion on Answer
So, you’re continuing here? Where is the original discussion? Give a reference to it there. There’s no point in opening a new thread that continues an earlier discussion.
Chaim, don’t you see that the unthreaded discussion is causing the Rabbi suffering?! You’re like binding him in chains of iron and not threading it to the original discussion about suffering, and making life easier for the Rabbi, Chaim.
You assume that because this system of laws *appears* to you unjust and arbitrary, it is therefore probably *actually* unjust and arbitrary. But the move from the first clause to the second would be logically valid only if you add another assumption, and we have no reason to think it is true; in fact, there are good reasons to think it is false. The required assumption is:
If human beings are unable to think of good reasons that would justify the permission God gives for evil to exist, then it is likely that there are no such reasons.
That is a mistaken assumption. If God exists, then “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His thoughts higher than our thoughts,” so it is not surprising at all that He may have reasons that we are simply incapable of thinking of at all.
Take, for example, a baby girl whose father takes her to receive a painful treatment. Suppose she cannot know the reasons why her father permits others to cause her suffering, but if she concludes that “therefore, it is unlikely that there are good reasons that justify this,” that would be a poor inference.
Indeed, that is what I assume. If a child who did nothing suffers, that is injustice. The examples you gave are beside the point. The doctor and the father cannot save the child without causing suffering, but the Holy One, blessed be He, can do anything.
The answer, simply put, was that your assumption is mistaken, and it was explained why it is mistaken. If you want to reject it, you need to clarify why you think it should be surprising or unlikely that God is aware of reasons that we are, in principle, incapable of conceiving.
The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do things that contradict His nature. For example, command the murder of innocents for pleasure and the offering of sacrifices to Molech, cause there to be fewer than infinitely many prime numbers, or create human beings with free choice who are incapable of choosing evil.
Well, the question was threaded there too (under the tag “Predatory Animals”), and the main point of my question is why it is impossible to position the world at a better point under the current mode of governance. (We’ve seen periods during history that were better, with much less suffering for humanity.)