Theodicy is the attempt to vindicate God when we see so much evil in the world. During the first phase of my deconstruction, my own theodocious issues weren’t quite the same as others. For me, the problem of evil was addressed with by Calvinism and the doctrine of Original Sin. I think the big issue for me was the fact that so many Christians are led astray. If Jesus came to purify the people of God, to weed out the corruption in the institutional religion, how could it be that the Christian church of 2,000 years later would be so far off the mark? It’s not the same theodicy of how could God let the Holocaust happen, and it’s not quite the theodicy of how could God pre-ordain people to hell (the Reprobation problem), though it’s similar. Basically, it’s like Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares, except there isn’t any wheat in the tare field. Corruption in the House of God should not exist. For the Glory of his name he would never allow it.
One of the teachings of the church is that it’s not enough to be a good person, one must also have faith. But it’s gotten twisted around to the point that being good is completely irrelevant. Consider the evangelical church’s love for Trump. He is not a good person. But they deem him chosen by God. It’s like it’s just a matter of whether you went forward for the altar call at Jr. high camp, and then you go and live like the devil. As long as you have that get-out-of-hell-free card, nothing else matters. If you take the teachings of Jesus seriously, however, and start seeing the Beatitudes and Golden Rule as tenants we ought to live by, then you can end up wondering why the rest of the Christians aren’t also looking for social justice, and peace.
There’s the problem of people having different interpretations of scripture. Consider the issue of slavery. There are many in the south who believed that according to God’s word, slavery was not only permitted, but actually a good thing. Of course, we know slavery is evil, but the so-called biblical justification came through picking and choosing and elevating some verses over others. e.g. “Slaves, obey your masters” becomes more important than “In Christ there is neither slave nor free.” Just as “Wives, submit to your husbands” is elevated above “In Christ there is neither male nor female.”
As former pastor Mike Aus described it in an interview on Up With Chris Hayes 10 years ago, if church life functioned all that well, we’d see a much higher quality of life among the needy in particular religious areas. But we don’t. This is one of the things that bothers me about the GOP saying that it’s the responsibility of the church and not the government to provide charity. You can’t manage your government on the assumption or contingency that Christians are going to behave in a Christian manner. Because chances are, they won’t. Divorce rates and abortion rates are both higher among Christians than unbelievers. If Christianity is true and Jesus said he’d build and maintain his church, how could it be this way? This is the theodicy: how can there be so many wrong Christians when I was sure I had found good ones in the progressive church?
I think the argument between evolution and young-earth creationism (YEC) really brought things to a head during my deconstruction. You see, God reveals himself in two ways: in Scripture, and in Nature. Nature does not lie. If there are bones in the ground, and if elements have a half-life, then if the half-life of the carbon in or next to the bones indicates it’s 600-million years old, then that’s what it is. The devil didn’t manipulate the dirt to make it look older. And the paleontologists who analyzed the data aren’t devil-worshipers peddling lies in order to deceive the elect. If the speed of light is 1 light-year per year, and we can see a star that’s a billion light years away, then it means that the star was there a billion years ago. God didn’t wrap the earth in a firmament of a backwards telescope to make the star look farther away than it is.
“It may be urged that we do not understand the sacred record correctly. To this it may be replied that for thousands of years the account of the creation has, by the Jewish and Christian world, been regarded as literally true. If it was inspired, of course God must have known just how it would be understood, and consequently must have intended that it should be understood just as he knew it would be. One man writing to another, may mean one thing, and yet be understood as meaning something else. Now, if the writer knew that he would be misunderstood, and also knew that he could use other words that would convey his real meaning, but did not, we would say that he used words on purpose to mislead, and was not an honest man.”
Robert Ingersoll
This summarizes my apostasy pretty well. More liberal theologians have been able to reconcile the age of the earth with the Genesis account through literary criticism, recognizing the creation story as a poem rather than an eyewitness account. I thought I had found a pretty nice loophole with the Framework interpretation—and I still believe it’s the best literary analysis of the passage—but the fact that so many literalists have held onto it so “religiously” puts the onus on the Holy Spirit who supposedly guides his church.
The problem of religion is that scientists are always treated as heretics by the orthodox. So “orthodox” religion is therefore invalid. If one argues that the orthodox are not the true Church and only the critically-thinking Christians are the true Church, then you’re still left with the problem of theodicy: that the Holy Spirit has allowed the established church to deceive billions of people over the last 2,000 years.
Jesus said he would take care of his sheep. It doesn’t feel like he’s doing that.