Christian AgnosticismGod gains some credit at the end of the book for chastising Job’s
tormentors – his ‘friends’ who tell him his suffering must have
some ‘meaning’ as punishment – God can appear to come out
of the story as a monster who followed Satan’s agenda, the angel
whose challenge to God initiates Job’s tragedy. The book of Job
seems, in part, to say that it is better to think God a monster
than to think the problem of evil can be solved and that suffer-
ing need no longer be a concern.
To put it another way, the most valid response to suffering,
whatever the content of that response, is not via abstract argu-
ment but is in real experience. After all, the irreducibility of evil
stems from its ever tangible presence. Cautiously, then, for to
write about the problem of evil is always to risk complacency,
I would offer two refl ections, one from my own experience, one
from experiencing a tragedy faced by others.
My own experience is that of the early death of my mother.
The bare facts will be familiar to others. She had cancer and,
after various treatments and the roller-coaster ride of hope and
dismay, the disease became terminal. Medical science gained us
two years while she was ill, and they were invaluable: as has
been observed before, mortality, when one is conscious of its
irresistibility, comes with the strange gift of knowing life in all
its agonising fullness. I understood the wisdom of the ancient
liturgy which asks to be saved from sudden death.
At the funeral, which was a requiem mass, I did not receive
communion. This was partly because I was at the time still an
atheist. I could appreciate the value of the ceremony as a rite
of passage, and that kneeling to receive the bread and wine
might be a very good way of admitting my vulnerability at her
death – especially since it would be to do so with others who
also mourned her loss. However, in my mind, this benefi t was
outweighed by also needing to express my conviction that the
world was godless. At that moment in time, that seemed to be
the best response to her too early death. It was not that I felt
angry, just the need to be quietly resolute in the implications of
my atheistic belief.