Tinted Greys

Dearest Rachel –

Much as I like to have it taken care of before I start in on the ‘real work’ of my day, unless I’ve had a dream I simply must tell you about before I forget it, writing you is rarely my first task of the day. And no, ‘tasks’ like opening my eyes and getting out of bed don’t count – I can tell you’re about to say something like that; I can sense that twinkle in your eye, even if I can’t see it or hear you. For what it’s worth, I recall how you weren’t much of a morning person (although somehow, you almost always made it to breakfast back at university – I think it’s part of how we became so close, as we were among the few to actually be there together regularly), and there are many days when I don’t feel like getting up straightaway, so I don’t fault you for that little joke in the slightest.

But most mornings – sometimes even before getting out of bed – I’m liable to grab my phone, check the time – if it turns out to be too ridiculously early, I may just roll over and try to return to sleep – and go through my news feed. It’s not a means of finding inspiration to write about, I can assure you of that – if anything, it’s rather a distraction on days when I have a thought or two for you that I want to expand into an essay (which, again, if I’m not dealing with a dream, is a fairly rare occurrence) – but I like to keep up with what’s going on in the world, especially after a long weekend of basically ignoring it all (for the most part). There’s always a lot going on down here, even if on a cosmic scale like the one you exist in, none of it really matters. It’s why I try not to talk about it with you in these letters, although since I’m immersed in it, it’s hard to completely avoid.

Today seems to have been one of those days. Not because of what’s been happening; far from it, actually. But there was an opinion column that I encountered that made an observation that never really occurred to me, but makes a surprising amount of sense – and it’s something we down here ought to bear in mind (again, from where you are, faith is sight already – and thus, is no longer ‘faith,’ as such) as we struggle with certain imponderables that we on this side of the metaphysical border can’t definitively answer.

Specifically, it touched on the question of a just and loving God. It was, in fact, the middle thesis of a discussion of death and the afterlife; there is a God, He is just, and therefore, there is an afterlife, wherein the injustices of this life will somehow be reconciled. The author pointed out that, from a rational standpoint, God’s existence is a far more logical position than the thought that everything in the cosmos, in all its minute complexity, came into existence by mere happenstance. Additionally, given a just God, the concept of both a pleasant and unpleasant afterlife to offset the imbalance this present world is in is a sensible one. But what do we make of a God who allows these present imbalances to exist in the first place?

Now, you and I were raised in a religious tradition that postulated that our heavenly Father is both just and loving. Like geometric concepts, they cannot be proven (as opposed to hypotheses, say), but they make up the foundation of what we build our understanding of Him upon. By definition, He is good; by definition, He is just; among so many other attributes, He is the quintessence of those very concepts themselves.

And yet, we find ourselves questioning it. We struggle with reconciling the idea of a ‘good’ God – specifically, a ‘good’ Creator – whose creation seems to be teeming with evil. Did He create that? If He did, wouldn’t that make Him evil? If not, why doesn’t He do something about the evil, assuming He can (and if He can’t, is He truly the all-powerful Being He claims to be)? Isn’t His reluctance to do so a sign that He is accepting, even possibly approving, of its existence?

The author of the column acknowledges that one could argue that the existence – and endurance – of evil within creation suggests a Creator who is neither particularly good or loving, but he disagrees with the conclusion. His argument is that, since He created beings (humans, yes, but it would seem other animals have the capability to do so, too; you certainly would argue the case for the dogs in your life) who are capable of loving, He must be, as well. Otherwise, we would surpass our Creator in that aspect, which seems improbable to the point of ridiculousness.

And of course, we have plenty of scripture to address some of these questions – Peter, in particular, goes into some detail about how God wishes for us all to choose rightly, and that He wants no one to ‘perish.’ He also talks about how God’s timetable doesn’t necessarily align with ours – what we consider ‘slow’ in terms of His reaction is as nothing to Him.

And yet…

I’ve had it pointed out to me that I should not wish for God to administer His wrathful judgement upon others, lest it be visited upon myself in equally full measure. His patience with us is what spares us all. But since scripture (which is, after all, His words for our consumption) states that, in comparison to His wisdom, sheep – dumb, brute beasts – we need a certain amount of punishment to know when we’ve done wrong. Again, recall your pet dogs; when they misbehave, you have to punish them immediately, or they won’t connect the action with the punishment and come to the realization that ‘this behavior is wrong,’ and stop doing it.

The thing is, if we accept the postulate of God as good and loving, we also have to accept that He defines what ‘goodness’ and ‘love’ are. With Him as our yardstick, we as humans exist on sliding scales of being more or less like Him in these (and other) dimensions, from black to white in terms of morality.

But there is a trope in literature that suggests those steeped in different religious traditions (or no religion at all) would find these sliding scales to be alien to them, as we might theirs in turn. Rather than a black-and-white morality, theirs (or ours) would appear to be more like blue-and-orange, or violet-and-yellow. They are still opposites, but they don’t look remotely the same. And with a mingling of these various traditions, the shades of grey between godly and godless are tinted to the point where we have difficulty recognizing the black-and-white of what God describes as good and evil, and as such, we have trouble seeing God as ‘good’ – because our definition of good has taken on hues and shades it was never meant to contain.

I confess that I have no idea what’s to be done about this issue; how do we filter out the tints that color our perspective on God, and what He defines as ‘good’ or ‘evil’? Just as our perception of the Father is colored by who our fathers were (fortunately, our experiences were overwhelmingly positive, but that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing situation worldwide), so too do the alternate moralities we are exposed to alter our perception of things such as justice, mercy, and even love. If God looks to be wrong in our eyes, it’s not Him, it’s us… but I’ve no idea how to get to white from blue and orange.

With that in mind, honey, keep an eye on us all, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.