By A Thread

Betrayal Story: Chapter Three

Mar 13, 2024

Introduction

This is probably the point where impatient readers flip back to the first pages to see if the story still stacks up with what they’ve just learnt about the backstory. We’re essentially talking about story rules here and, because of the nature of this particular story, profoundest matters of what constitutes true and real. World building, literally!

We noted structural cracks in the architectures of both creation stories. Creation One’s essential message is: all is sweet. However, there’s still that weird primordial chaos. And Creation Two echoes this sweetness but, because of some seemingly reckless tree planting, feels destined for a fall. Every story of import is cast between the poles of good and evil. You might even argue that without them, however hard you try, there is no story. And the interplay between these poles has to resonate with lived experience. Creation Two reveals the great weakness of Creation One - the unmoved mover feels precisely a little too unmoved. Creation Two wants to show that God has skin in the game. Yet this seems to replace one weakness with another - God now appears vulnerable or naive to the disorder in His own backyard. The weaknesses are, however, the whole point. Stories are about perspective. The question is always: why these particular cracks?

Brave Hearted

This universe-busting thing we’ve been skirting is also fundamental to every story. Again, for emphasis: without it, no story. And that thing is, in the words of Mel Gibson’s William Wallace, Freedom! Imagine a story where no one has the capacity to choose. I recently rewatched Terrence Malick’s beautiful and haunting A Hidden Life. The protracted, meditative form of the movie perfectly echoes a conscience utterly wracked by choice and consequences and a whole inner universe with its own spiritual chronology. It had a profound Edenic quality to it. The drama of the soul is drama itself. I’ve stood goosebumped in the cell where St Maximilian Kolbe breathed his last. Confined isn’t the word for how that purpose built place made me feel. The walls brooded oppression, still seeking to overpower, imprison and crush the unwary. Yet somehow, amid the suffocating darkness, taking into his very self the murderous poison of evil, this man chose with the freedom of the children of God, and let light be there.

Story, true stories, have ever been at war with the forces of determinism - whether from the right, or from the left, in the name of God, or modern algorithmic mammonism. It’s the same devil. His opening mantra is that all other choices are better. His closing mantra is that you’re now all out of choices. Because of past choices. This is how it was always going to end. Exactly like this. Inescapably. Tyranny of tongue. Vocal venom. Serpentspeak!

I had the great pleasure of experiencing another Macbeth performance recently. I studied the play at school, know the story very well, can recite various parts of it in front of the mirror when no one else is around. Of course, it’s precisely a profound exploration of fate. Macbeth is seduced by demonic lies into believing in a deterministic universe. The irony is, he believes or wants to believe he must cooperate with it. Obviously, knowing how a story ends or that certain types of stories follow certain rules is not the same as everything being pre-determined. Even in the most familiar stories, we’re constantly revisiting how human agency survives or thrives under the relentless pressures of existence. Expressed or not, the ever-pressing question is: how exactly are we free?

Divine Permission

Both creation stories are underpinned by two crucial ideas. Firstly, as discussed, that humans are gifted with freedom, because especially stamped and infused with the divine. Secondly, the earth is entrusted to them as their living domain. What isn’t mentioned, as we discovered, is that beings called angels are also similarly created free and that some of them have abused that gift by choosing to reject God’s love and bizarrely seem at liberty to roam earth at will.

Finally, then, we’re at the nub of that problem first noted in Tricksy Trees. It’s such a pain in the theological posterior that there’s even a special word for it: theodicy. Not, alas, Homer’s classic, but, attempts to reconcile the seemingly opposing realities of divine providence and evil. Please don’t hold it against me, but I’ve read rather a lot on this topic and find the various toing and froing somewhat meh. This might be due to the often philosophical bent of the discourses. I’ve no problem with philosophy but, much like Dostoevsky, feel this matter is much better explored through story.

In The Know

Cutting to the chase, the problem lies in God’s omniscience. Quite simply, if you know everything then you know everything that’s going to happen before it even happens. What do you imagine might happen if, for example, if I knew the winning numbers for tonight’s lottery? That’s just me. What if I were all powerful too? You might further imagine myriad possibilities for ensuring personally favourable outcomes.

More imagining. God creates a universe with no gifted freedom. God creates a universe with no devil character. God creates a universe where no free creatures rebel. All possibilities, no? All better stories than ours so far, right? No inexplicable chaoses and no nasty snakes. And no forbidden yet utterly tantalising fruit. What’s not to like? To be clear, all these alternatives mean the end of story as we know it. There would be no struggle to life. But who’d care, if that meant no evil? Drop your pens and grab your trumpets already!

Except, very weirdly, we got none of these alternatives. That’s sure some puzzle for the believer of these stories. This universe simply doesn’t seem like the best option; the most perfect world that might have been on offer. Readers can be ruthless if a story doesn’t stack up or if a particular story breaks canon. Why such a big deal? Well, we already know. Stories mirror life. You’re basically telling the reader their life doesn’t add up. I’m no neuroscientist but understand that stories mostly fire in the hippocampus of the limbic system which is principally responsible for integrating memories and experience; making sense out them and solidifying our sense of identity. A neurally related part of that same system deals with sensory processing. A poorly constructed or told story is also aesthetically offensive: it disgusts us. These antique visceral responses are likely grounded in the vital importance of memory for survival. Bad stories will literally get you killed.

Steelatheisting

Does the biblical vision stack up, then? Enter Ivan Karamazov.

…the price of harmony has been set too high, we can’t afford the entrance fee. And that’s why I hasten to return my entry ticket… It’s not that I don’t accept God, Alyosha: I’m just, with the utmost respect, handing Him back my ticket. (Rebellion, Bk 5, Ch 4)1

Masterly Dostoevsky gives perfect voice to the problem in his The Brothers Karamazov. In other words, given the state of the world and the prevalence of evil, you wouldn’t still create if this is the best on offer: this palsied paradise just isn’t worth it. A single horror is enough to cancel any amount of beauty. There’s no weighing it out; no justifiable cosmic calculation. Notice this isn’t an argument against God’s existence. Dostoevsky’s far too clever to wander into that cul-de-sac. It’s an argument against faith. If this is the best, then no thanks.

Notably, there’s no killer riposte in the novel. Dostoevsky’s approach is more as per Albert Camus’s insight in The Myth of Sisyphus:

We always end up by having the appearance of our truths.2

He leaves the reader to decide what a better led life looks like in the end: Ivan or Alyosha? But, it’s a portrait. Things can just as easily go badly for the good guys as The Grand Inquisitor serves to illustrate and which is tackled elsewhere in the Bible itself.

Good Job?

The closest the Old Testament comes to addressing these questions is the Book of Job – a meditation on innocent suffering. It isn’t exactly an answer to Ivan’s position, more a frame for it. Job exclaims before God:

I am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words. I’ve been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge. (42:2-3)

Something like: Ivan, you’re well within your rights feeling that evil outweighs the good, but (as Dostoevsky himself indicates) this isn’t an objective statement about the world, God, and the ultimate relationship between good and evil. No mortal could possibly weigh this or see the full contours of God’s benevolence bringing good from evil at every turn.

Fair enough. But it’s still credible to argue that, given the state of the world, the Christian call to empathy raises questions over God’s own empathy. The conclusion of Job is along the lines: don’t be too certain about drawing atheistic conclusions from your petty calculations. Ivan’s sentiments are: given all the innocent suffering around, don’t be so certain of a good God.

Of course, a great novel can leave such matters hanging. They’re likely better that way. Not so much a true story. The human heart demands answers. Everything depends on it making some sort of sense. For Ivan, God’s goodness simply doesn’t outweigh the suffering. This isn’t about winning arguments. It’s how the world has landed on him. Job’s acquired wisdom (the result of an absolute mauling) is a little like George Bernanos’s suggestion that if you’re staring at suffering hoping to find a path to God then you’re looking in the wrong place. Survey all the goodness instead. There’s wisdom in this, of course, but we’re still no closer to a decent answer to our main question: why create this exactly?

The God Problem

You’ve probably already worked out we won’t be taking Fr McLaisy’s ‘Ahh well see it’s all a mystery!’ for an answer. I’m also not going to attempt a free will defence which, well, has already been done but also isn’t wholly to the point. That’s because it feels to me the cracks in the story directly reflect cracks in the deity. That is, the story works and is ultimately consistent, but you still might not like it.

The crack isn’t spelt out in the Genesis accounts but screams from every page. The missing element is a clear statement of the reason why God created. The New Testament closes that gap. God is love (1 Jn 4:16) and this is why He created (Jn 3:16). Love is the meaning of creation because love is the meaning of God. You might reply, ‘that’s all good news, where are the cracks?’ Well, if God is also perfection itself then He’s perfect love. If He’s perfect love then He doesn’t need love from ‘elsewhere’. In other words, there’s no reason to create. Yet He still created. Why? For a love He didn’t need? Ahh, we say, love’s not like that, not about calculating needs but, rather, something gratuitous. Setting aside the utter mystery of how anything finite corresponds to anything infinite, let’s humour ourselves by imagining a sudden love impulse in God sparks it all off.

Our story writers have been at pains to show that God’s perfection is reflected in an analogous perfection in creation. Cosmos is the word to describe this. Which means God’s love must also find perfect correspondence. We discover humans best reflect this but then also discover angels have a similar character. That is, they are capable of and called to love. Now we have the full picture about freedom. Love depends on it. No freedom, no love. But, as we’ve seen with the devil and cohort and then with our duped couple, if you’re truly free you can reject love or transgress, and (crack) God won’t stop you even if it (crack) makes a mess of His perfect creation! Why? Because it would be a contradiction of His own loving nature, and freedom itself, for God to force His creatures to choose goodness. Love is always a free response. Uncoerced.

Love is the problem, then. It creates an inevitability of the gift of freedom. Once freedom’s in play, there’s no loading the dice. God won’t compel love in return for love offered. So, in what universe precisely could God make free creatures that only ever choose goodness? As in, ensure a total outcome? That’s impossible to answer, of course, but given what we’ve got, it raises the question whether realistically there could ever be a better alternative with freedom in the mix. Removing freedom from the story to ensure a fix requires removing perfect love too which contradicts the very purpose. Yes, that’s a Catch-22.

That Thread Thing

It looks like we’re left with only two possible grand narratives that make sense of our Creation stories, neither of which make conventional sense. First option: knowing the mess to come, just don’t create in the first place. Second one: if you do, have a clean-up operation on hand. It should be clear that the first option isn’t really an option. The inherent story-rules paradox here is: although God is utterly free, because He’s also love, that sort of makes creation inevitable including one with free creatures in it also capable of loving, and rejecting love. It doesn’t mean He has to, it just means He will. The problem with the second option is: how will it ever be possible to clean up a cosmos-sized mess, unless you turn back the hands of time?

Let’s take a breath. We’re talking about GOD here. If He’s the problem we know by definition He must also be the solution. And, of course, you might say the whole New Testament is an exposition of that solution. But, again, it’s some answer! The clean-up operation turns out to be a sort of retroactive internal fix also based upon consent but also requiring rather a lot of profound reflection and personal commitment. Other than that, everything looks pretty much post-edenic bedevilled. What was lost still appears lost in time. No turning back. Only waiting it out. The new prospect is that when literally everything’s fixed up it will be incomparably better than everything before. Super-upgrade coming! Called heaven. So hang tough. What? What’s wrong with an external fix too; this tantalising new Eden delivered right now?

Hopefully you can see why responding ‘all in God’s good time’ isn’t a great way to meet this difficulty. Our story architecture is just about holding together here. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not trying to deconstruct the Christian position. There’s no backdoor atheism going on here. In fact, the atheist position is far worse. Suffering is only arbitrary and ultimately meaningless. And there’s nothing to look forward to. Camus realised this:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.3

His answer is: life’s absurd so just embrace that absurdity as a sort of defiant declaration of human dignity. Yeah, that’s not gonna get me pushing the same rock up the same mountainside over and over and over again until death comes a knockin. Not with that other option making far more sense.

Conclusion

Our journey, then, into the story of how things are and why, has led us to a strange pass. Extending the metaphor, we’re between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the absurdity of stone cold atheism. The hard place is our unfolding biblical story. Who’s going to tell God He shouldn’t have created this? As with Job, we might at times feel it would be better not to have been born, but that’s a psychological state. Pace Ivan, none of us can afford the entrance fee but returning the ticket helps nada, or, nischto.

Here’s the message: just because suffering and evil are more obvious doesn’t make them more significant than trust and hope. From a faith point of view, if evil, suffering and death cannot be avoided in a free universe then there’s only one credible response to those realities, and that is love. With every fibre of our being, with all the fire in our hearts, with the feistiest forces of grace welling up within, we must love; become it, radiate it, however tiny our sunbeams compared to the source.

So, this is a story like no other. We’re being asked to trust the storyteller. This is no fiction or metafiction. No mere diverting entertainment. It’s not even a question of suspending disbelief.

If you have understood then this is not God.

St Augustine

We’re being asked: ‘will you believe before you can see?’, ‘will you love even when love looks forlorn?’, and most importantly, ‘will you wait till the turn of the last page before casting judgement over the entire story?’ Barely reasonable demands are being made of us; all a far cry from simply sitting down to enjoy a good book. We’ve discovered we aren’t reading a story, as such. It’s reading us.

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Betrayal Story: Chapter Three

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