This Might Be the Only Answer to The Problem of Suffering

“The Dog” by Francisco José de Goya

I am a theistic finitist.¹ This means that I believe God is limited in power.² Most theists, however, believe that God is maximally powerful. The reason they believe this, aside from abstract philosophical arguments, is mainly twofold. First, the idea of an all-powerful God is soaked in Christian tradition. For this reason, Christians are often uncomfortable branching away from what tradition tells them is true. But tradition is, of course, the product of fallible and limited human beings. Just because Aquinas said that X is true does not mean that X is, in fact, true. Second, I think many Christians are psychologically uncomfortable with the idea of God not having full control. If God is limited, is he even God? How can he protect me if he has struggles of his own? I think such questions and concerns result from the need to make God perfect in light of our own limitations and imperfections. Ludwig Feuerbach, for instance, believed that when human beings think and talk about God, they are actually externalizing their own highest qualities, such as love, wisdom, justice, power, and goodness, onto a divine being. So, for Feuerbach, belief in God is largely a projection of human nature. In other words, God’s omniscience reflects our desire for perfect knowledge. God’s goodness reflects our longing for a perfect world. God’s love reflects our wish for unconditional love. God’s power reflects our desire to have power and control over our own lives, and so on.

Aside from these two factors driving our belief in a maximally powerful God, when we actually step back and think about this idea carefully, especially in light of suffering, it makes very little sense. In my eyes, there really is no compelling answer, outside of theistic finitism, as to why God would allow such extreme suffering in our world. There is no reason he would allow, for instance, Kelly Anne Bates to have been tortured for an entire month. Her captor, James Patterson Smith, fractured her arm, stabbed her with forks, knives, and scissors, crushed both of her hands, mutilated her face and body, gouged out her eyes, and stabbed the empty sockets. The most disturbing part is that she lived for weeks without eyes. The free will defense doesn’t seem to work here. Why not give her captor a heart attack? Why not intervene? After all, Christians believe God intervenes often through miracles. For instance, many of them believe that God healed James Drain’s optic nerves. If he did, I find it extraordinarily difficult not to ask the following: Was Drain’s eyesight of more urgency than Bates’ ongoing torture?

What about animal suffering? Why does God allow a deer to be trapped under a tree, starving to death for an entire week? Is there some hidden good behind the deer’s suffering? Is there some lesson being learned? What possible greater good could justify millions of years of animals being eaten alive, dying from diseases, freezing to death, starving, or suffering in ways that no human being will ever actually witness? A lot of Christians simply ignore animal suffering, directing their attention toward human suffering instead. But, in a sense, animal suffering may be worse than human suffering insofar as they don’t appear to grow morally or spiritually from their suffering in the ways we grow from our suffering. Even if some growth occurs, I would imagine that it would have little to no comparison to ours. So, it seems to me that they suffer for no good reason at all. It also strikes me as peculiar that God would not simply create non-sentient animals, that is, creatures that could still function ecologically as food sources without the capacity for suffering. That move alone would improve animals’ lives immediately.³

Now, the tales we are told by Christian apologists are that we live in a “fallen world,” that suffering is necessary for growth, that Satan is to blame,⁴ or that God is just so mysterious. None of this explains, however, why we suffer so much. The problem is not merely that suffering exists, but that it exists on such a vast scale, with such intensity, and apparent randomness. The free will defense may explain why some suffering exists, but it doesn’t explain why God couldn’t occasionally intervene to prevent the worst horrors, like in Bates’ case. Maybe God just values freedom so much that he permits us to do whatever we want, but if God were truly all-powerful, he could still intervene in extreme cases. After all, we even place limits on freedom. We don’t allow children to play on highways, smoke meth, or play with guns. We also imprison dangerous people. In other words, we recognize that freedom must be limited or outright taken away at times. It would therefore be insane for me to say, “Well, I just have so much respect for Smith’s free will. I will let him do whatever he wants to Bates. His freedom is simply too valuable!” In a very real sense, if you are to employ the free will theodicy in all cases, God is precisely in a similar situation.

Furthermore, appeals to soul-making theodicies seem seriously strained when confronted with extreme cases. What character is being developed in a child who dies of cancer? Or what about the parents of that child? Do they learn just how precious life is from the death of their child? Did they “grow” in virtue?⁵ What spiritual growth is occurring from that deer slowly starving beneath a fallen tree? What lesson did Bates learn from her torture? There is no doubt, however, that some suffering makes us better people. For example, failing exams and learning from your mistakes, failed relationships and working on restoring them, family troubles and successes, the fear of public speaking, working out, dieting, family deaths, and so on.⁶ Some suffering does shape our character toward higher virtues such as patience, courage, sacrifice, and so on. But there are other sufferings such as cancer, torture, animals starving in nature, being eaten alive, and much more that can’t be explained by soul-building. Where does this all leave us?

It leaves us at theistic finitism, which I think may be the solution to the problem of suffering. It doesn’t claim that every instance of suffering is secretly a part of some perfect divine plan, nor does it ask us to believe that every horror serves some greater good that will eventually justify it.⁷ Rather, it says that God may not possess maximal power. Therefore, he can’t prevent every evil. God is perfectly good in the sense that goodness is fundamentally creative and sustaining, whereas evil is parasitic, that is, it destroys and disrupts what is good. But there may be genuine limits on what God can accomplish within the structure of reality. God may be metaphysically constrained by the very structure of reality or by his very nature, which I talk about in this video here.

Whether you accept this view or not, it strikes me as a far more coherent response than claiming that every atrocity, starvation, disease, act of torture, and every instance of animal suffering can be stopped since God is all-powerful, but for whatever reason, he doesn’t stop it. And in the end, this all fits into a hidden agenda that we simply can’t understand.⁸ This is the typical sort of move we see, one that I hope to have shown is profoundly problematic and almost certainly false. These traditional responses often don’t feel like answers at all. They are, instead, more like desperate attempts to preserve faith at all costs. So, the question is not why a loving God would allow some suffering. Instead, the question is why a loving and all-powerful God would allow this much and this kind of suffering. To me, then, theistic finitism is the only view that offers a compelling explanation to the perennial problem of suffering.

1. Like all of my other beliefs, I hold to this position provisionally. I just think this is where the evidence is pointing.

2. I also happen to believe that God may not be all-knowing in the sense of knowing the future in an exhaustive way. I discuss this a bit here.

3. It’s impossible to relate to the suffering animals go through without actually seeing it for yourself. In this video here, a deer is eaten alive by a komodo dragon. It’s very graphic and quite difficult to watch, but I would encourage you to watch it. While watching it, imagine some of the apologists who have argued that “animals don’t really feel pain.”

4. How can any rational person posit a gigantic demon as the reason behind our suffering? According to those who posit such, this demon and his minions’ sole purpose is to maneuver around the world invisibly, causing us harm. How would they even do this? What would that even look like? This is sheer nonsense and almost seems like a horror plot for a video game. This is not what it means to think critically about the world.

5. I have heard people say that “God took my child to draw me closer to him.” Or that “it was my child’s time. The Lord used her as an example.” This, again, is not what it means to think critically about the world. If God actually operated in those ways, he would strike me as a sadistic monster. No reasonable person should say, let alone believe, such things.

6. We suffer enough in life just through our daily routine. This is more than enough to build strong characters. All of the other suffering, that is, the extreme and seemingly gratuitous suffering, is not needed. This kind of suffering makes our lives qualitatively worse, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise.

7. God will “make it all better.” Again, this doesn’t answer why we suffer so much here and now. It’s problematic anyway you look at it, though. It’s akin to me saying, “I’ll kick your ass now, but don’t worry, I’ll compensate you down the road.” Even so, it’s still wrong for me to kick your ass or to permit others to do it.

8. While I recognize that we may not be able to spot all of the metaphysical and empirical connections behind good and evil, I don’t think it’s true to say that “it’s totally above our understanding.” We do, in fact, understand very well that this world is soaked in monstrous amounts of suffering, and we clearly have a moral outrage toward it. Saying that we can’t understand it often functions as a way to evade the question rather than answering it.