How could a merciful God do this...?
The following argument is not original. I owe it to the author of The Veritas Conflict, Shaunti Feldhahn. But the argument was not original to her either. It probably transcends ownership – a sort of universal conundrum. Some people say they simply can’t follow the argument. Apologies if that is you! But try anyhow. Students particularly like the argument.
The problem to be understood is the following: Imagine the earth moves and an earthquake kills thousands of innocents. If there is a God who is merciful how could he possibly do, or allow, such a thing? There can’t be a God!!
One answer is: If there was a God so powerful that he could stop an earthquake, what technology would he use? I think many people would say, Well, it might not be technology as we understand it, it might be more like a kind of magic, a miracle. It might well be a process completely beyond our understanding, indeed that is almost certainly true.
If the rescue process is beyond our understanding, is it likely we could understand his thought processes? We all know how difficult it can be to understand, for example, an IT expert who appears to live in a different world!
The argument is – someone who can do things like stop an earthquake may have reasons for allowing it that are also far beyond what we can understand. We simply may not be able to understand, in the same way the way a child may not always understand why parents have to make decisions that make life temporarily miserable for the child. Understanding comes later.
Hard though it might be to believe, however bad the circumstances, any recompense at the culmination of all things will be so much better than the disaster, that we will only be able to applaud. God is no man’s debtor.