Saturday, May 25, 2013

God's Catch 22

Exodus 32. The Israelites are in the desert. While Moses is on the mountain with Yahweh, they fashion a golden calf, calling it "the god who brought them up out of Egypt." Yahweh is understandably incensed, and he is ready to destroy them & get a fresh start with a different group of people (he proposes Moses' descendants).

Moses tactfully intervenes: "Oh Yahweh, why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth'?" Yahweh sees his point, and he backs down from his threat.

There are many intriguing questions this story raises. Today I'd like to focus on one angle in particular: God is caught in a pickle. Whatever he chooses to do, he can't win in the court of public opinion. Human sin makes it such that any decision he makes is open to misinterpretation. If he brings down the gavel, the Egyptians are likely to see him as an evil tyrant. If he mercifully does not, he could look soft or impotent. Any middle ground is likely to be seen by some as too harsh and by others as too light.

It's easy to see how many conversations about theodicy can quickly devolve into a matter of each person's preference for how they think God should act in given situations. There is an existential, self-defined desire for a certain outcome, and without an appreciation for the fact that the situation might be more complex than any one of us can understand, God is judged to be _______ based on what occurs.

I've nothing else to add on the matter at the moment. This is certainly not meant to be a full theodicy, as we haven't touched on many of the deeper philosophical questions of ultimate cause and effect. It's just an observation that we should be slow to jump to grand anti-theistic conclusions based on how we see any sampling of life situations.