God's Racket

While searching online reports of the subject of my last post, I noted the following comment from a skeptical reader in the comments section:

That's quite the racket God has going for him. All the praise and none of the blame.

I had to wonder if that commentor is aware of the long history of believers in God asking an anguished, "Why, God?" The Jewish and Christian scriptures are full of such examples.

From time immemorial there has been a tension between God's providence and human freedom. The original answer, I suppose, was that the gods are as capricious as humans.

If the view is entertained that humans are in a sense co-creators with God because of human freedom, perhaps some of the sting of the intellectual problem of evil and suffering is soothed. At least it would mean that God isn't just dishing out goods and evils according to some highly detailed "master plan."

Does that get God "off the hook" and relieve him of blame?

I suppose it is better to ask whether God should or should not have created a world with freedom of the will in the first place. Was it better to create or not create? Which brings to my mind a further question: Can the finite mind presume to answer that question?

My thinking along these lines is very much skeletal. My confession: The problem of evil and suffering has always been a problem and stumbling block for me.

My personal understanding of the Logos behind the Comos is still evolving and developing.

To proclaim God as mysterious is not a cop-out. It is an admission of finite ignorance.

Perhaps no greater damage has been done to the cause of theology than that of humans speaking authoritatively about that which they so poorly understand.