Divine Justice: A Conundrum

The question of divine justice—theodicy—poses the greatest challenge for religious people. How can we understand the suffering of innocents if God is merciful, just and good? It is ultimately a question without an answer. Religious people believe in spite of the lack of an answer and non-religious people point to the problem to justify their lack of faith.

It is not for lack of attention that the question persists. The issue is addressed in numerous Jewish sources, such as the books of Job, Jonah and Ecclesiastes. Job, the best-known, portrays a just man ostensibly treated unjustly as a test. Job remains faithful to God but sharply questions his treatment. In the end, God declares that his ways cannot be known, which many find deeply unsatisfying.

Jonah, a prophet, is instructed by God to go to the capital city of a great empire to warn them to repent of their sinful ways or they will be destroyed. The king and citizens do repent and God spares them. For reasons not revealed, Jonah despairs and God castigates him and tells him that His ways are just. Jonah cannot accept that such overwhelming evil is unpunished and, again, we have an example of God’s actions as mysterious.

The book of Ecclesiastes is attributed to King Solomon, renowned as the wisest of all people. And yet the book is entirely devoted to Ecclesiastes’ inability to fathom the meaning of life.

An encounter in the Torah prefigures these books. When Moses draws near to the burning bush that is not consumed by the fire, he discovers that he is in the presence of God. He asks to know God’s ways and God tells him to withdraw to the cleft in a nearby rock so that he can see God’s back, because one may not see God’s face and live.

Commentators have many interpretations of that encounter but one meaning is clear: God is a mystery to the human mind, incomprehensible to human reason. So how does the religious person accept this irreconcilable dilemma—a just and merciful God in a too-often cruel and suffering world?

An understanding of how literature works may be a way to approach the issue from another perspective. Literature doesn’t answer questions; it asks them. It doesn’t resolve complex issues; it explores them for examination and reflection. Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, F. Dostoyevsky, Cervantes and Flaubert portray life as they see it in its raw, searing, painful reality. We see the impact of injustice, the toll of suffering, the devastation of inhumanity.

One will not have answers to Don Quixote’s quest for truth; Dickens does not provide a remedy for the poverty and inequality of England of his time; Twain does not advocate any policy for eradicating racism. But we accompany Don Quixote on his voyage and come to understand the dignity of a quest for the good life. Dickens shows us what a mean-spirited society looks like from the ground up and makes us think about where we stand and how we should react. Twain’s Huck starts out with the prejudices of his society, but getting to know a slave whom he helps escape sensitizes him and he becomes a better and more moral person as a result.

Literature holds in balance all of the negative aspects of life along with the reality that exploring the issues, questions and dilemmas is what being human is all about. The problems raised cannot be immediately resolved. Maybe they can never be fully settled. But exposure to them, reflecting on them, confronting them is part of human experience and the meaning of life.

Literature holds in balance all of the negative aspects of life along with the reality that exploring the issues, questions and dilemmas is what being human is all about.

Perhaps applying that approach to sacred texts would help make the contradiction less daunting. The great texts of our tradition explore the thorniest of issues, including the idea of theodicy. Much of it is painful but revealing. Exposure to complex ideas and often unresolvable dilemmas makes us aware of our weaknesses and strengths. Our desire to understand the divine plan and divine justice may be unanswered, but engaging with open-endedness of many of our stories can be inspiring and make us more sensitive to the world beyond the self.

We may not know the answer to the most mysterious questions, but the process of addressing them makes us more human. It also makes us more Jewish. Jewish biblical exegesis has often focused on fleshing out the nuances of the text, revealing the paradoxes and inconsistencies rather than foreclosing them. And the methodologies of both the Talmud and midrashim underscore the importance of raising questions rather than determining answers. In many cases, theological debates remain open and unresolved.

Job did not learn the cause of his suffering, but the reader comes to understand that we can live with uncertainty as long as we believe in our own good actions and have faith in values that are eternal. The great fable of Jonah makes poor Jonah quite miserable at the end, but the reader gains insight into the meaning of repentance. Ecclesiastes never does figure out why all of his attempts to gain ultimate understanding fail, but the reader gains insight into the need for living a life examined rather than a life blissfully ignorant.

The Torah is filled with many laws, but all of the truth-seeking texts are built around stories.

The Torah is filled with many laws, but all of the truth-seeking texts are built around stories. That is because stories give us what law does not—insight into the human condition. Secular literature addresses social, political and human issues. Sacred texts focus on the human dimension in relation to the Divine. They have in common a desire to explore how we can live in the world with meaning and purpose so that life can be lived, if not with absolute certainty, at least with lucidity and sensitivity.

We are like Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis. Jacob’s struggle is interpreted metaphorically as grappling with his inner fears and doubts. In the process, he gains victory as he realizes his own strength and faith. Wisdom is found not in understanding, but in the struggle to understand.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies programme at the University of Waterloo.