Hauerwas addresses the objectified questions of theodicy. A theodicy usually revolves around attempting to answer the dilemma of how evil can exist despite the existence of an all powerful and completely good God. Some construe the book of Job to be such a theodicy. Another theodicy might be the Free-Will Defense which usually originates evil in the necessary free decisions of humanity thereby absolving God of responsibility. There are many more of these objective attempts at theodicy. Hauerwas, I think rightly, appears to be exasperated by these attempts. He states:
The question “Why does evil exist?” is asked as if it makes sense from anyone’s perspective. But we are not “anyone”; we are people who exist at this point in time, with this particular set of convictions, in relation to these friends and this community, and who have these particular hopes and desires. Only within such a context does the question of suffering become serious. We are, quite rightly, not interested in the theoretical issue of suffering and evil; rather, we are torn apart by what is happening to real people, to those we know and love. (2)Rather than using theodicy as a tool to objectify suffering Hauerwas suggests that “our only hope lies in whether we can place alongside the story of the pointless suffering of a child…a story of suffering that helps us know that we are not thereby abandoned” (34). Consequently, it is the community of the sufferer and their narrative together that takes an increased role. For a Christian believer these narratives are closely wrapped up in the narrative of God and the new communal life he makes available in his kingdom. In fact, Hawerwas argues that for early believers suffering didn’t elicit questions of God’s existence or goodness, but rather, it elicited questions of practical response. Likewise, the laments of the psalmists were community protests against the pointlessness of suffering—they were practical tools of a community within the narrative of God. Hauerwas suggests that the concept that Christian beliefs are explanatory accounts sufficient to show “the way things are” was developed “when Christianity became a civilizational religion oriented to provide the ethos necessary to sustain an empire. Rather than being a set of convictions about God’s work in Jesus Christ requiring conversion and membership in a community, Christianity became that set of beliefs which explains why the way things are is the way things were meant to be for any right-thinking person, converted or not” (55).
Despite these efforts to show the way things are, Christians have not historically had a ‘solution’ to the problem of evil; “Rather, they have had a community of care that has made it possible for them to absorb the destructive terror of evil that constantly threatens to destroy all human relations” (53).
It is clear that something has gone decisively wrong for Christians when we underwrite the widespread assumption that there is a so-called problem of evil which is intelligible from anyone’s perspective—that is, when we turn the Christian faith into a system of beliefs that can be or is universally known without the conversion of being incorporated within a specific community of people. In effect, it is to underwrite the Enlightenment assumption that we are most fully ourselves when we are free of all traditions and communities other than those we have chosen from the position of complete autonomy (53).It is this autonomous individuality that often characterizes our approach to medicine. While at one time it was a long death where one could make final preparations that was most desired, today many desire a short death in a car accident or in ones’ sleep. Rather than having an understanding of when to allow life to come to a close we are frightened by it. Consequently, medicine has become a sort of theodicy—an answer to the question of evil. We use medicine to keep people alive or to disguise the fact that we are dying.
I will close this blog entry with a final quote from Hauerwas regarding the pointless death of children struggling with tuberculosis.
I think that childhood suffering bothers us so deeply because we assume that children lack a life story which potentially gives their illness some meaning. In that respect I suspect we often fail to appreciate the richness of their young world as well as their toughness and resilience. But I suspect that what bothers us even more about childhood suffering is that it makes us face our deepest suspicions that all of us lack a life story which would make us capable of responding to illness in a manner that would enable us to go on as individuals, as friends, as parents, and as a community. I suspect that if Christian convictions have any guidance to give us about how we are to understand as well as respond to suffering, it is by helping us discover that our lives are located in God’s narrative—the God who has not abandoned us even when we or someone we care deeply about is ill (67).
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