Actually, personally I would say that if our own body’s cells had some tiny perception and sentience, we ARE doing them a wrong by subjecting them to that, even if only regretfully and for a positive end result. For me, if we imagine a “scale of wrongness” on which a minor thing like… I don’t know, stopping a child from eating all the chocolate it wants is a 1, and stopping a child from becoming unwell from eating too much chocolate is a 10, we have to add on our karmic tally boards both that 10 and that 1, rather than a 9. But that’s me.
One problem I guess I have with this “God is good, but we can’t actually see how or why that is” position, aside from the loophole-y nature of it that people have already brought up, is that we actually do have to bring it down to our level for a moment if only because it’s us that it’s happening to. Our conception of what is happening - even if it is a flawed one - has to become part of the equation. If I stop a child from eating too much chocolate, and he says that I’m mean and cruel and nasty, I can understand why it might seem like that from his position - and I wouldn’t take it personally or as something that indicated bad motives on their part in the same way as if they did that on no prompting. I would find it fully justified and fair if Job said, “You know what; fuck God, and fuck the Holy Spirit, for what they have done to me.” in a moment of sober thought, not simply overruling anger. As I understand it this would be a problem even though it seems like a reasonable reaction to the situation. To put it another way - at times, there seems to be a disconnect between whether we’re being judged by the standard of what we ourselves know and this overarching meta-goodness which we don’t.
Too, this causes a few issues as far as how we can interpret non-meta-goodness. If things that we believe are evil, or that we cannot see as good, are all part of an overall plan maximising the greatest goodness (is God a utilitarian?) who are we to say that the things that we think are good aren’t actually also merely there to serve a purpose, or are actually meta-evils? Couldn’t charity, for example, or love, not be “good” by the standards of meta-goodness, and merely be there as are illness and natural disasters because their presence means a better end result for us all?
But surely personal persuasion shouldn’t be evidence either? There are demonstrably people all over the world personally persuaded of multiple things. I imagine there are very few faiths for which at least some people have not been prepared to be martyred for; that seems like a high bar for being convinced. If me and my six friends had a calculator each, and we all try to find 385 x 6,781, and get six different answers, it wouldn’t make sense for me to say that mine must be correct because it’s mine. The correct response - putting aside the ability to do our sum another way for the moment - would be to say “Ok, well, one of ours might well work, but there’s no real reason to pick one over the other.” And what’s worse is if this was all the experience of calculators we had, we’d also have to say “Clearly, a calculator is not a good tool for this purpose.”
Personal conviction, demonstrably open to invisible flaw, is problematic. I don’t doubt at all that it exists, or that it is deeply held. But it shouldn’t be used an argument for truth.
Thinking about it some more, I’m not so sure this isn’t an out for any kind of bad action.
Let’s say I see my friend being robbed. If I can safely intervene, and do so, I would say I’ve done a good deed. But if I didn’t intervene, then because it was all part of the divine plan it was necessary in order for the maximum good to occur, that’s fine. If God should not be blamed for what may only “seem” to be evil things because by necessity whatever happens is for the greater good, why shouldn’t the same go for me? And if there’s a separation between the two - that is to say, regardless of it being a good thing in terms of the entirety of the universe I personally did something bad and should be blamed for that bad thing - why shouldn’t God?
I enjoy helping people buy cars. I love negotiation, and because i know a number of people that don’t, I am sometimes pressed into service to be the annoying friend who scuttles the dealership’s offers. (This role has decreased greatly as the Internet has matured).
But in my prime, I got into a discussion with a car salesman, who asserted that if he was happy with the deal, and the customer was happy with the deal, then it was a good deal for both sides. I demurred, pointing out that the customer buys one new car every 3-6 years. He sells four or five cars, if not more, per month. And he knows the precise financial details, the F&I, the dealer holdback, the true wholesale value of the trade-in. In short, while the customer may THINK he got a good deal; the salesman KNOWS whether the deal was good.
It’s even more true here. You don’t get the same benefit of “Hey, bad things happen for a reason,” because God KNOWS what the plan is, and you don’t… and in fact cannot possibly.
I don’t disagree with Catholic teaching on this point, no. Catholic teaching certainly affirms the existence of hell as the destination for those who die unrepentant of their mortal sin.
But remember that mortal sin is only that sin which is committed with full advertance of the will, about a grave matter. Someone who genuinely lacks faith is not willfully rejecting God.
Yes, indeed – but if it happens as a result of your exercise of free will, then to you is imputed agency for its result. That’s the nature of – and curse of, perhaps – free will.
So we go the other way, then - God has free will too, he created the world which included harmful natural things, then to him is imputed agency for its result.
It works both ways, so far as I can tell. If God gets an exemption for the bad things he’s done - or, in fact, negates them being bad at all - because they’re there in order to end up with the best possible end product, likewise, I should get an exemption for the things I do because, in my own small way, I too am furthering that plan. If on the other hand what I do is my fault, regardless of its furtherance of the divine plan, then so too is what God does.
As you may recall, I conceded as much above, only pointing that while He is certainly responsible for both the good and the bad, the bad was an unavoidable and undesired result of the good.
But that supposes that you and God have equal knowledge of the playing field and its consequences. Returning to my semi-sentient muscle cells for a moment, let’s consider their similar argument. They might say, “This supposed ‘brain’ in charge of the entire body – why does it get to decide that we exercise? I should get the same deference about whether we get strained and bathed in painful lactic acid. There’s no good reason for that to happen.”
But you, the brain in charge of the body, understand that there’s a benefit to the exercise. unfortunately, you can’t explain the particulars of that benefit to the muscle cells, because – being simple cells – they entirely lack the capacity to understand.
You don’t get an exemption for everything you do – only those things which you genuinely, after prudent reflection, believe are the right thing to do.
I didn’t get the impression from that that your conclusion was “…and because God does those bad things he is occasionally a bad being and should repent for his evil.” in the same way that I would be held to such a standard for the things that I do.
I don’t need to know that part - I can rely on God’s knowledge. If God says that whatever happens happens for a reason and that the end result of even the evil in the world is towards his divine plan, then if I believe him I know that whatever I do has the end result of working towards that divine plan. That is all I need to know, for my small part in affairs.
To use your semi-sentient muscle cells, the thing is that if they were able to decide, “Actually, no, I don’t see the purpose to this lactic acid business, I’m not going to do it.” they would be exactly correct, because what happens is the plan, and that’s what happened.
But we’ve already defined the right thing to do; God seems to do evil, but we don’t say he’s evil or bad for doing them because he follows the plan that leads to the best end result. The same should apply to me; it might seem evil to us if I go out and mug and rob someone, but we shouldn’t say I’m bad or evil because I follow the plan that leads to the best result. And I know for sure I’m following the plan because the plan is what happens. The best thing to do is to follow God’s plan; my role in that is whatever I am capable of doing.
I’m trying to think of a way to put it more understandably.
Let’s say God creates a world in which on one day a tsunami occurs in which 1000 people are killed. This seems cruel, an evil act, but he knows that it follows the divine plan which ends with the very best result, and therefore it is not cruel or evil.
I go out and I kill 1000 people. This seems cruel, an evil act, but I know that it follows the divine plan which ends with the very best result, and therefore it is not cruel or evil.
Where’s the difference that means one of those statements works out and the other doesn’t?
The problem is that you can’t know it follows the divine plan.
The obvious problem with what I just said is that if it happens, God meant for it to happen, because it would not have been set up that way otherwise. You cannot take an action God does not intend you to take.