Wrestling with God

There is a story in the Old Testament about Jacob wrestling with God. He was returning from a self imposed exile to the land of his father when he came face to face with a stranger with whom he wrestled all night. By dawn the fight was over, with the stranger having caused non serious injury to Jacob’s hip. However, Jacob would not let him go until he agreed to Jacob’s demand to give him his blessing. According to Jacob, he was in no doubt that the man he fought through the night was God himself. A number of different lessons can be taken from this strange story, but the one I prefer is that Jacob was not prepared to allow God to have things all his own way. Jacob stood up to him and demanded answers. I like to think I do the same.

Of course, being agnostic, you might think that’s hard to do. But Pascal, the French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, had a nice idea. He said that even though God’s existence can neither be proved nor disproved, it would be a good wager to live as though he did exist because then you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. But there’s a flaw in that because if God does exist and assuming he is the blood thirsty fellow of Old Testament times, he knows you are taking this wager and that might not be the best of ideas. However, I’ll take the risk and argue with him anyway.

I’d like to start with looking at the general story most of us were told by our parents and teachers throughout our schooldays and into later life. It goes something like this: God sent his only son down to earth to become fully man as well as remaining fully God. Let’s not get into the theology now, just assume we accept it. Jesus started his ministry (according to the New Testament) in his early thirties. He upset the Jewish authorities by his teaching and actions (he had caused a disturbance in the temple when throwing out the money lenders) and was betrayed by Judas. He was arrested and eventually crucified by the Romans. Three days later he rose from the dead and hence started the greatest religion on the planet.

The human race were quite a bad bunch. They were murdering each other, lying, stealing, blaspheming, committing adultery etc. But because God loved us so much he felt he had to help us to mend our ways. By sending his son down to us and having him die an ignominious and really horrible death, he atoned for our sins and hence redeemed us.

I’m not sure it worked as we are still murdering each other today.

However, the whole idea seems to me to be absurd. Here we have a supposedly omnipotent God who has created the universe and humankind. But something goes awry with his creatures and the only way he can fix it is by killing his son! And then we have to consider the existence of the devil. Apparently Lucifer was a most beautiful angel who got too big for his boots and decided to take God on. But God, being the creator of the universe and everything defeated Lucifer and the angels who took his side and hurled them down to hell. But he didn’t bind them there. He allowed them loose to roam the earth and place temptation in mankind’s way. I ask you what chance did mortal men have? The devil, now renamed Satan or one of his demons comes along and offers you some great deals. You’ve just been chucked out of the Garden of Eden and now have to live by the sweat of your brow and suffer illness and disease and worst of all, death. What are you going to do? You’re a weak mortal and you’re surely gonna accept. So you murder, cheat, lie, steal. But God still has a soft spot for you and still wants to redeem you.

I would have thought that if Satan was the one causing us all to do bad things, couldn’t God have locked him up good and proper? Then he wouldn’t have had to do what he did. But no, he goes ahead with the crucifixion and resurrection idea.

Now not only does he have his only son put to death, but in order to do this, he has to get somebody to betray him. This unfortunate, Judas, has gone down in history as the worst traitor of all time. But it wasn’t his fault! God used him. And if Judas had the guts to say no, then God would have got some other sucker to do his dirty work for him. Why? Couldn’t God have just given the nod to the Romans? And worse, he makes it look like the whole Jewish people are to blame rather than the guys who actually carried out the killing. The Jews were not allowed by their Roman masters to put anybody to death. They could punish people or imprison them, but they had to get the seal of approval from Rome before they could actually sentence anybody to the ultimate penalty. So Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea at the time had to give the authorisation. And so the Jews have suffered throughout history for this crime ultimately committed by God and not them.

Does this make any sense at all? People often say that the New Testament is a great book replacing the blood and thunder God of the Old Testament with Jesus, who came to bring love and peace. But consider that Daddy is still running the show and doles out a horrific death to his son. He is arrested, beaten, spat upon and mocked. He then has a garland of thorns viciously crammed onto his head. He is scourged to within an inch of his life and is then made to carry the crossbeam on his back and walk up Calvary to his place of execution. He falls three times and is then nailed, hands and feet to the cross. He has the mocking sign “King of the Jews” attached above his head and hangs in extreme agony for three hours before he finally dies. This is no quick killing. It is a long drawn out bloodfest. And that is how mankind was redeemed.

I always wonder at the last words of Jesus according to the gospels of Matthew and Mark, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” Did he suddenly realise his trust in God was to no avail? Strange words to say and as they are not the words one would expect him to say, many scholars believe they are authentic.

The passion of Christ as it is called has since played an enormous role in the spiritual and physical life of the church. We are told we should offer our pain up to God in further atonement for our sins, even though this was already done by Jesus. Because of this suffering by Jesus, a lot of saints and churchmen put a lot of emphasis on suffering, even making it into something that is somehow good. Suffering is not good and is one reason why mankind has laboured since the dawn of history towards trying to lessen or do away with suffering altogether. So not only does God expect his own son to suffer but expects all his creatures on this planet to suffer as well. Now what sort of God is that?

This whole idea of suffering is one reason I find it hard to accept the existence of God. If God exists and is omnipotent why does he allow this to continue. I can accept that adults may suffer a bit because it might be some sort of punishment for wrongs done, but innocent children? This I cannot condone. Assuming the existence of God for one moment, this leads to the whole problem of exactly what manner of God he is. If he is all powerful then why does he not stop suffering? Either he can’t which means he is not omnipotent, or he won’t which means he is not all good. Simple logic? Maybe our minds are not intelligent enough to understand God’s ways and it will all become clear in due course. But that is one hell of a leap of faith to take, surely? Okay, I know many do have this faith, but what about those who don’t? Besides, why do we all come into this world with no choice in the matter, go through whatever we go through and then die? Does this not seem like some sort of perverse alien experiment? Hardly the handicraft of a supposedly all good God.

Some say that maybe suffering can make one strong. There are people who have stated that their suffering in life has actually helped them to understand their place on this earth, become strong and appreciate life much more. But if that is so, then it can only happen in the context of being able to understand the suffering. It surely cannot apply to children or animals. And whereas some people may find comfort in their distress, I think it’s a cop out.

Another way to look at the problem of suffering is to ask the question what is evil about a life-saving operation performed without anaesthetic (as was done not so long ago) such as the removal of a gangrenous leg. This, while horrendously painful did save lives. However today we have discovered how to use anaesthetic. And that was mortal man's discovery. How about what a supposedly omnipotent God can do? Why put us through this life in the first place?

I have sometimes looked at the problem of evil by thinking what is a lifetime of pain compared to an eternity of happiness? Maybe we can learn valuable lessons through evil. But I think that is a bridge too far.

Another factor we should consider is the possibility that God could himself be evil. After all where belief in God exists, it is usually assumed that God is good. That is an assumption. Maybe it is wrong. The world itself is not good, at least many of the people in it are not good. And while earthquakes and other natural events can be considered neutral, they leave a trail of evil behind.

The easiest answer is to conclude that God does not exist. But I find that is too easy. There has to be more to it than that? Maybe that is wishful thinking, but that’s the way I feel about it. Then again, maybe the human race is so bad, we don’t deserve redemption. But, hey, we didn’t make ourselves. So many questions and so few answers.

After the time of Christ, many gospels were written about him. We are most familiar with the four gospels which the Church decided to incorporate into the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. However, many more were written which were considered heresy by the early Church fathers and hence were banned. Many were destroyed, but luckily quite a few have survived. In some of these the gnostics as they were called (from the Greek word gnosis meaning knowledge) postulated that the God of the Old Testament, which they called the demiurge, was not a very good fellow at all. In fact this guy was downright evil and not only was he responsible for the creation of evil but he was also created the material world which itself was evil. However, above the demiurge is a supreme, good, but unknowable God who was responsible for sending Jesus to instruct us that the kingdom of God was within each and every one of us and that we could eventually return to that kingdom if only we would open ourselves up to the secret knowledge or gnosis. There were other variations on this theme and the above is only a very sketchy example. But as I’ve said before why would a supreme God go to all this trouble in allowing the demiurge to wreck havoc? Why not just bypass him altogether?

Having said all that, I guess we must accept that the Bible and even the Gnostic texts themselves were all written by men. Not by God. And they were written by men simply trying to make sense of the mysterious world they found themselves part of. In those far off days, they did not have the science or an iota of the knowledge we now have, so they resorted to their own fertile imaginations to come up with plausible explanations of the world and their place in it. And even with all our science and progress today, we still haven’t much of a clue as to the meaning of it all.

There are many areas of the Bible (both old and new testaments) which contain a lot of wisdom and if people adopted the teachings of Christ in their day to day lives, this world would be a lot better for it. The idea that Jesus came down to earth to redeem us seems weird to me. I think a better explanation would be that he came to show us that there was a better way to live our lives than the way we were and that the journey through this life is simply some sort of preparation for an afterlife. His sermon on the mount is a beautiful and marvellous call to change our ways for the better and one really can’t go far wrong with uplifting stuff like that. Whether or not Christ was the son of God is a matter for each individual’s faith to address, but whoever this man was, and I’m convinced he was a real and historical figure, he was way ahead of his time.

I guess that this is no better an explanation than anything else, but it gets rid of the “need to suffer” nonsense. Not that it gets rid of the actual suffering, but that is something which we might eventually be able to do ourselves. After all medical science has already drastically reduced pain and distress at various points in our lives. No reason to think it can’t go all the way. And I think the man Jesus would see nothing wrong with that.

So I continue to wrestle. I wouldn’t be so bold as to say I actually wrestle with God himself, but I sure wrestle with the concept of God. And while I don’t expect to win anytime soon or indeed ever, it is an interesting match.