Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Lately it has become customary to discredit the existence of God by claiming that an all merciful, all loving God would never allow suffering in the world. This is an approach taken recently by Stephen Fry and even the great naturalist, David Attenborough, remarked that many people often ask him why he doesn’t attribute the sheer beauty and the very delicate balance of nature to a god. He answered that he cannot think that there can be a loving god when he thinks of some child with a worm eating its way into his eye. A similar argument is used by those who question the extermination of the Jews – why did it happen? How could an all merciful and loving God allow such a thing to happen?
Suppose for a moment, that God did intervene to prevent something like this from happening. Suppose that he does intervene in the case of that child with the worm eating its way into its eye. Suppose he does intervene every time someone is about to be tragically killed on the roads and every time a war is about to break out or natural disaster is about to occur? What does this make God? It makes him a dictator. We no longer have free will. We now can only do what God wants us to do. Thus we will lose all responsibility for our own behaviour.
We cannot expect to have free will and, at the same time, expect God to intervene in human history every time some accident or something terrible is about to occur. With free will comes responsibility and it is our responsibility, not God’s, to prevent suffering and needless death from occurring. Thus when I hear that a worm is gnawing through a boy’s eye, it would be most disingenuous of me to ask: “What is God doing about this?” when, instead I should be asking “What am I doing about this?”
Yours etc.,
Michael Healy,
Macroom,
Co. Cork.