Let us continue our talk about human suffering in the presence of an all loving and caring God. Actually the issue is not only why suffering occurs but why good people suffer and bad people sometimes don’t?
At the very beginning, when bad things happened (volcano, starvation, drought, disease, etc.) people INSTINCTIVELY knew that they had pissed off a god(s). They needed to appease this supernatural being by offering it what they thought this being wanted or liked. In many cases it was what the people also liked: food, animals, gold, virgins, etc.
If the “evil” did not cease, it was easy to think that maybe the god did not get enough or that it was the wrong sacrifice. The priests (shamans) of those days always had these ready-made answers why their offerings did not satisfy the god and end the misery. When the suffering did end, these Shamans took all the credit for knowing how to appease the god.
This actually still goes on but now we pray to the supernatural being instead of sacrificing virgins to him.
The inventors of the Old Testament god gave him a lot of power and he in turn gave them (Jews) a lot of laws / rules to follow. It was easy then to explain the reasons for the various suffering visited on the people of Israel – they were being punished for breaking the rules.
This tradition of blaming woes on punishment for human transgressions against their god went on for a long time and in some cases, goes on today. There are some in the Jewish community that blame the Holocaust on something they did. Remember that right after the 9/11 tragedy some U.S. Protestant leaders saw the attack on the NYC Trade Center as punishment for Americans allowing abortions and gay marriages – see, nothing changes!
The Old Testament god was quite literally, a bastard. In the Book of Job he takes a perfectly law abiding man and screws the hell out of him for no apparent reason. This reminds me of the cartoon where a hermit is carrying a sign which read “Repent – the end is near” and then a big thumb comes out of the sky and squishes him flat. The caption read “Something about him just pissed me off”. I think you get the picture.
In the Book of ECCLESIASTES (Old Testament), the author basically states that life is often meaningless and in the end, all of us – wise and foolish, righteous and wicked, rich and poor – all of us just die and that is the end of the story. His point is that the only good thing we have on this earth is life so live it to the fullest and don’t worry about no stinkin’ god.
Towards the end of the Old Testament period, the people were no longer buying the punishment for transgressions explanation for their suffering and misfortune. They finally realized that it did not matter how carefully and diligently they kept the Law; they still got screwed.
The religious leaders needed a new approach at explaining suffering and woe when they were the chosen people that their god promised to protect, lead to victory and make prosperous.
They came upon the APOCALYPTIC view. Here god is no longer in control. A bunch of really bad elements were in control and wreaking havoc among the good Jewish people. God had a plan to eliminate this bad element from the earth and make everything RIGHT. The plan involved the coming of god’s kingdom on earth where everything would be hunky dory and everyone would live happily ever after.
Everyone just had to sit and wait for the kingdom to come…
Sure is taking me a long time to get to the point – next!
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