The So-Called Problem of Natural Evil

When I was a little kid, there were two things about my parents’ life-style that especially piqued my curiosity. One was what went on between them whenever I heard them lock their bedroom door behind them. The other was what went on between them whenever they left me in the hands of a sitter, even one I liked. Their explanation of the second kind of behavior always proved more satisfying than their explanation of the first.

With respect to both, however, I have to confess that the very idea of my parents’ enjoying a life of their own which did not involve me was both irritating and insulting. What kind of parents would even consider the possibility that their world would not perpetually revolve around their son? (My sister and her world counted for absolutely nothing in my ventings of ontological outrage.)

Of course, I left all that dudgeon behind a long time ago. But then again, maybe not. I know I am not supposed to feel anything but humbled that the universe and our earth within it have been preoccupations of God for --- Carl Sagan intoned it best --- billions and billions of years, before there was any “me” at all, and that they and God will continue to have dealings with one another long after I am gone. The truth is, though, that this discovery is not just humbling; it is downright humiliating, and I think it is to all of us. Talk about being brought low. And just when we were getting used to feeling our oats at the very center of the divine pasture.

Painful as it is to have to concede, God has been, is now, and will be enjoying all kinds of  things within which we will play only a limited part, if indeed we are permitted to play any part at all. These things will include the very smallest and the very largest of which we can ever be aware, from every sub-atomic particle/wave/string/? all the back to the big bang, with DNA, microbes, natural selection, and the human spirit paid more than lip service along the way. There will be nothing wrong with any of this, just as there was nothing wrong with what our parents were up to both when they were all alone and when they were in companies of people that did not include us.

Where the “wrong” comes in these scenarios --- the “evil,” as philosophers and theologians are fond of talking about it --- is not from the natural order itself. It is from our taking issue with its very naturalness (including the naturalness of our parents’ craving both sex and friends) by demanding participation in it on our own terms. By making an issue about natural things and processes being just what they are and doing just what they do, we lose the capacity to take wonder and delight from them and become caught up instead in feelings of anxiety, frustration, and loss, particularly when we wrongly perceive nature to have gone mad. Natural evil, then, does not lie in natural things and processes themselves. They are neither good nor bad; they are just --- well, natural. When we acknowledge and respect them in their own right, irrespective of what we might otherwise want from them,  the “evil” that is too often attributed to them goes away.

Make no mistake, there still remains a lot of evil in the world. We will not find it, though, by setting up performance reviews of the Almighty’s governance of the universe. Nor will we find it by looking more closely at the created order itself. Instead, we will find it in our own perverse and willfully destructive behavior toward others, as well as in our own misguided efforts to use nature for our own purposes while treating laws of cause and effect as anachronisms we are better off repealing.

Giving up a piece of the action, whether with respect to our parents’ behavior or God’s, does not have to mean relinquishing our natural curiosity about either. Nor does it have to mean abrogating our right to wonder if they are really making good uses of their time. Too many babies, too many earthquakes, floods, and diseases can make even the most chronically annoying child’s questions too powerful to ignore. Sooner or later, though, every child has to grow up and face the question of all questions, one which is not his or hers to ask: “where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”