Exodus 22: 18-23
bq. Moses then said [to God]: "Please grant me a vision of Your Glory." He [God] said, "I will cause all My goodness to pass before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord in your presence. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will be compassionate to whom I will be compassionate." And He said, "You cannot see My Presence and live." And the Lord said, "Behold there is a place alongside Me, and you shall set yourself on the rock. When My Glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My Hand until I pass by. Then I will remove My Hand and you will see My Back, but My Face shall not be seen."
Rabbi Benjamin Blech responds:
"Most people who are reading this literally assume that Moses is asking to know what God looks like, and, in answer, God won't show His face, but lets Moses take a peek at His mighty shoulder blades. That is, of course, absurd.... It is very significant that this passage appears right after God's absolution of the Israelites for the terrible sin of the Golden Calf. God had led the Israelites out of the slavery of Egypt; He had performed astonishing miracles before their eyes; He had spoken to them at Mount Sinai; and then, when Moses went up the mountain, the Israelites repaid all this goodness by rejecting God and building an idol. Yet when they atoned for this great sin, He had not only forgiven them, but also responded by describing His essence as being one of complete mercy and compassion. That is when Moses chose to make his request, as if to say, "If that is true, then will You explain how Your glory is reflected in the suffering of children and in the gloating of the wicked? Can you give me the gift of seeing how that makes sense?" In short, Moses wanted to know why bad things happen to good people. God's answer contains what Moses, as well as all of us reading these words thousands of years later, have the right to know. So let us look very carefully, point by point, at what God is telling us....Rev. Donald Sensing also spent one of his sermons to talking about this issue from a Christian perspective, using Luke 13:1-9 in The New Testament as his jumping off point: "Stuff Happens, In Grace." It's actually quite complementary to the Rabbi's discourse above, and makes an important High Holidays point. If you really want to graple with these questions, I recommend reading them both and giving it some thought.
when our lives are new, when we have just become adults, it is hard to look backward to see the pattern which exists in our lives. but when we've lived a little longer, the pattern becomes clear.
for example, in junior and high school, i studied many things. still in school, i was convinced that some of these things were useless. i believed my art and languages would be useful. but as to some of the other things, i wasn't so sure.
as it turns out, i've run a company for a friend ... i used my knowledge of bookkeeping (also in my checking account too), i started a couple small businesses, and used that knowledge again. i used every single language i've studied while working in law and much to my surprise, i've used some of them while working as an engineer. my skills as a housewife were less critical.... but helpful. my experience in facing severe emotional traumas in my family stood me in good stead, because no matter what happened later, it wasn't that bad. and i knew how to weather storms in life. when i lost my job, then lost my home and lived on the streets for more than a year, i learned that that which i believed to be the absolute worst wasn't ... indeed, it was survivable... and much to my surprise, i had time to really look around me and see the beauty in my world.
you see.... the world is a very very good place. the trees stand tall in all kinds of weather. rain drops sparkle at night on glass when city lights shine through them. snow insulates and actually warms....
.... i have survived. and i have seen a part of gd.'s face.... there are still many things i do not understand. but i know my husband's death was a blessing. my son's death, i'm not so sure. but life goes on. birth is a doorway. and who isn't to say that birth is actually a 'death' of another kind of life about which we've forgotten and death the beginning of a life we have yet to reach.
I'm no longer a believer in a literal, anthropomorphic God, so the question of theodicy doesn't interest me in more than an academic way. I did want to comment, though, that Rabbi Blech's article employs a form of the "hidden harmony" argument explicitly and eloquently rejected by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
If I were still a theist, I might be more partial to Kushner's understanding of human suffering than to Blech's, though I found much to like about Blech's article, including the anecdote from the Besh't.
One thing I've found profoundly disturbing is Peter Berger's treatment of theodicy in The Sacred Canopy (Chapter 3, I think). Berger envisions something like an abuse dynamic, in which the powerless craft explanations that keep them from hating the all-powerful abuser. Berger's definition of theodicy is wide enough to include nontheistic religions, which I suppose is why I mention it.
"Hidden harmony" would be, by Berger's reckoning, just such a coping strategy. God doesn't need to justify himself when we rush to do his work for him.
I suppose my own response to Berger is that he makes a mistake: he tries to paint our tendency to craft theodicies as somehow perverse. The problem is that, if so many people do it, then this isn't exactly a marginal phenomenon. Far from being perverse, it's actually pretty natural to "theodicize" (if that's a word).
A really interesting take on the theodicy question is from a "theological science fiction" novel called Blameless in Abaddon, by James Morrow. It's the second in a series, but can be read alone. I highly recommend it, but you have to be able to stomach morbid humor. The book can be hilarious, but it can also make you squirm.
Hapjang,
Kevin Kim