MrCrowder.Com

Leapers.

I recently got the chance to reflect on what’s been personally formative in the way of theology and philosophy over the past few years, and it sparked an internal dialogue about eye opening experiences. One thing in particular now seems covertly pivotal, so I thought I’d share.

As a senior in college at MSU, I took a World Lit class. I wasn’t necessarily interested in World Literature, but I needed another credit in the general category of literature to graduate. It was in a good time slot, so I took it. To be honest, I was very leery of the course. I tended to be a solid creative writer who enjoyed fiction, but most literary criticism escaped me. And what do you do in upper level Lit classes except for read expansive pieces and write papers evaluating and theorizing about literary works? Not much. I felt doomed.

But that semester was one of the most invigorating academic experiences I’ve ever had. For the first time, I read works by Kafka, Borges, Szymborska, and Basho. But the work I remember most from that semester was Voltaire’s Candide, a novella of sorts that takes a furious run through overwhelming life tragedies where the main character, Candide, seems to blissfully forge forward in unbelievable religious naivety.

Perhaps best known for his satirical prose and condemnation of the Catholic Church, Voltaire considered himself a Diest. He was neither the first nor the last, but perhaps one of the most memorable, who posed the following theological conundrum:

How can God be all good, all powerful, and all knowing?

The obvious issue is that suffering, especially large-scale & systematic suffering, would be seemingly impossible at the intersection of those three qualities.

I’ve read Candide multiple times over the past years. Voltaire’s signature work on the (his opinion) asinine Christian/Catholic/Judaistic relationship between God and his capacities in the world has altered my theology deeply. So, ultimately, I’m grateful to a random Lit course that forced me to wrestle with this French figurehead of the Enlightenment.

It has stirred me deeply that people such as Voltaire could struggle with the paradoxical juxtaposition of values—goodness, power, and knowledge—on God in light of suffering in the world.

After all, he wasn’t the first who had asked that question and he wouldn’t be the last.

Doctrinally, even I could answer the question. I could find logical strains and loopholes to make it excusable. That’s what I’m to do, right? Make excuses for God? Right…

And that’s what strikes me so deeply. If I, unintelligent and at age 21, could answer a question that brilliant thinkers throughout the ages have struggled with, something wasn’t right.

Searching the implications of this has caused a lot revelations in me about the nature of God, faith, and the world. It has deeply influenced my theology and philosophy of life.

There’s not an answer to Voltaire’s question.

Not a doctrinal solution.

Only faith.

Surely some educated Clergyman could have sparred with Voltaire in the arena of debate and laid out some logic as to how these things could be true of God and for suffering to exist in God’s world. And, I’m sure someone did. But he, and millions of others throughout history, haven’t been satisfied with the doctrinal formula.

And neither am I.

I think the only real solution to the problem is an evidenced, experiential & experimental faith. What Kierkegaard and others would call a Leap of Faith.

It means that we trust God, and that we trust that suffering is a part of our world for some reason that we can’t figure out.

For God to be loving, he has to be powerful and active against the suffering he sees going on in the world. And I have faith that he is.

For that to be evidenced in the world, the people who call themselves by his name must be powerful and active. And I have faith that we can be.

And then the world will experience the paradox of powerful goodness and loving intimacy.

The only answer is for the community of God to rise up and be the evidenced, powerful, active, loving community of Faith in the world. A community of people who have leaped blindly across the gap. Those who have figured out that we are called to embrace, endure, confront, and end all kinds of suffering and injustice around the world.

Leapers.