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A friend told me that God cannot be held accountable for the bad things that happen to people. My question is why? If we are to praise God for the good should he not at least receive some blame for the bad. I see at least half the homes in my neighborhood are in foreclosure, or have already been foreclosed and the families evicted. These were not bad people, they just lost their jobs, or had their hours cut enough that they could no longer afford the mortgage payments. Now investors are buying the properties and profiteering off the suffering of others. When I see good, faithful Christians being forced into homelessness I question the very faith that I have been brought up in and believed for so long. Why is God allowing this to happen?
You ask a great question about the nature of God. Many people have struggled with this issue, which might be best summed up with the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" No one has an answer to this question; I always point people to the book of Job in wrangling with this deep question, for although it brooks no answer, it still pierces the soul at times. In our liturgy, we usually read the first few chapters of Job and then the last. But those interveneing 3 dozen chapters show the struggle that goes on with this disturbing question. Allow me to help you with your crisis of faith in seeing bad things happen to good people.
St. Augustine wondered about the nature of evil. His conclusion offers some intellectual satisfaction: evil is the absence of the good. We believe in a good God who can only do good, so where does evil come from? Is it made by a guy in a red suit, horns, and a pitchfork, what we normally name the devil? Or is evil an absence, kind of like a spiritual "blackhole." Where we expect to find something good, we find the absence of the good. For example, where we expect to find a healthy lung, we find a lung which is deprived of health (emphysema or cancer or some other disease). And sometimes, we don't know from whence the cause of the evil originates; but other times, in the case of a smoker who gets lung cancer, we can pinpoint the evil to an action.
And that is what is happening with the evil you mention--people losing their homes in the financial crisis. We can give some reasons for the evil being done. First, the banks need not foreclose; there is nothing that says they HAVE to evict people; they have the legal right to, but that doesn't mean they HAVE to. And then there were those writers of these bad loans who were trying to turn a fast buck; the welfare of their clients wasn't first and foremost--for they knew these people could never afford the skyrocketing bump in interest rates--they just wanted to make money. Leo XIII warned of this problem in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, art 59...."(people who) inordinately use human beings as things for gain." Although Leo was speaking of employers and employees, I think this problem--seeing people not as children of God but as objects who can make one rich and nothing else--is at work here. If the writers of the junk loans (as well as foreclosing banks) focused on the human dignity of their clients, then they might act differently, re-write the loans, and help them stay in their houses.
But don't blame God for this--blame those who are complicit in the evil.
I do understand that this may be a crisis of faith for you; I would like to believe it is an opportunity for deeper faith and a better understanding of Christian faith. Here, I offer the symbol of the crucifix, the cross of Christ, as representative of our faith. In the complexity of faith, we preach that God is good, so good as to come to visit us in Christ. But if we only preach goodness, we miss the other reality: evil. Christ's message was simple: reject evil, do good, and the kingdom will be yours. However, a problematic understanding of faith has crept into the simple formula of faith; people mistakenly believe that if one lives a good life, one will be rewarded in the here and now and will know no suffering. This is nice when it happens, and this is how justice should work. However, we live in a fallen world where injustice does happen--sometimes mysteriously, but sometimes there are people to be blamed with the sin of injustice, as can be given in the housing crisis of our times).
And here is where the cross becomes a powerful symbol of our faith. If God's own Son did not escape suffering from evil, neither should we expect to be freed from the effects of evil. Think about it: if there is ANYONE ever born who should have never suffered, it was the sinless Christ. He did not sin; he should know no suffering. However, he suffered one of the most horrific deaths imaginable. To the one with no faith, there appears to be no reward for goodness, even complete and total goodness.
But here is where I offer an opportunity for deeper faith for you. In spite of suffering, Christ continued to do good and did not lose faith. This is our model of living: reject evil, and even if one suffers for it, continue to commit oneself to do good. This is the mystery of the cross; and through the grace of God, we can enter into it. And I deeply believe, that in so doing, we realize that goodness has a reward all of its own, despite any suffering.
And, in the life to come, with the eyes of faith which trust in the resurrection, then will goodness receive its ultimate reward: eternal life.
For our time here on earth, we commit ourselves to doing good in the face of evil. With the specific evil of which you speak, I am reminded of a story one of our parishioners told me: when her grandfather lost his home in the Great Depression of some 80 years ago, the local Catholic church took him and his family in. Somehow, they housed the homeless. Perhaps, in the current climate, the Church can reach out to those in need; and if we can house those made homeless by the current crisis, then they will see that, despite evil, the goodness of the Kingdom that Jesus preached still exists.
I do hope this helps you with what is one of the weightiest of all spiritual questions.
Grace and peace,
Fr. Chris
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