Last week I happened to stumble into the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, the movie about how the USA covertly helped Afghanistan defeat the former USSR back in the 1980s. A key character in the movie is a woman who confesses a lot about her Christianity. At one point in the movie, she gets into a discussion with the key CIA agent played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman’s character is asked by the woman, played by Julia Roberts, why he dislikes God so much….or generally, why does he not like her, which she presumes correctly to be due to her Christianity. He replies that he’s seen too much hatred and evil done in God’s name, perpetrated by humans showing the depravity of humans, to ever believe that there really is a God.
In other words, if there were a God, God would use his/her/its power to stop all the violence, all the hatred in the world. This is, of course, perhaps the number one reason why people are opposed to the idea of God, especially when religious people seem to demand that they, the non-believer, change their ways due to some supposed love or devotion to God. In that person’s mind, at least how it has been explained to me, they see little reason to submit to some supposed God who has all this power when he/she/it continues to allow that much evil and suffering in the world.
The problem with this logic is that the argument confuses God’s attributes with those of a human. In other words, the non-believer (and Hoffman’s character in the movie) generally is implying that “if I were God” or “if I had God’s power, then I would stop the evil.” If a good person had that kind of power, they would use it for good and stop the suffering.
It is a normal sentiment, especially for those of us who don’t like violence, get sad when the innocent or the weak are harmed. However, God is not a human nor does He follow the same path as humans do in various ideas or attributes. This is the point that trips up so many in their thoughts about God.
God does not act in the way a human supposes they would, or how they suppose a “good” person would act. In this specific case, while there are probably other aspects of this point, here specifically, we can say that God chooses to allow free will to remain dominant for us humans. In other words, He has chosen to limit himself to not use power in a way that alters human free will. What He wants is relationship with the human, but he wants that to be by choice rather than coercion. If God used his power to force obedience, it would be ultimately destructive (a point made by the Noah story).
J.R.R. Tolkien understands that concept and works diligently to show it in his writings. Eru, the God figure of the Middle Earth world, knows that He must limit himself to not intervene lest any action on His part destroys the entire world. Eru even limits his chief ambassadors, his “arch-angels,” the Ainur for the same reason. Thus, as you read the history of the First Age, written by Tolkien in his masterful work The Sillmarillion, while the “bad guy” Morgoth is free to do his worst, Eru cannot intervene in the way He would prefer because to do so potentially ruins his own creation.
This may seem like a hard lesson to comprehend, but many parents understand this perfectly, especially dealing with older teens. They watch their child making poor choices, perhaps getting into potentially ruinous relationships, maybe not taking education seriously, and they wish to intervene. The parent reasons that “I am the adult; I know best; I can see what my child cannot see and if they keep going down this road, their success in life could be compromised.”
However, if they do attempt to intervene, especially if they do so in a “powerful” way, it almost always proves destructive to the relationship with their child. We’ve all heard of the daughter who started dating the “bad boy” even more furiously once the parents “put their foot down” demanding she not see him. Their act of force to coerce obedience and submission merely serves to destroy the very precious thing they created in her birth.
Tolkien, in continuing the story of Middle Earth, finally does tell of the moment when the Ainur have to come “to the rescue” of the creation and attack Morgoth at the end of the First Age. The war is indeed successful in that they capture the Satan-figure, though not all of his supporters…various figures to appear later, most significantly his chief follower Sauron, will escape. However, the cost was very high. Take a look at the maps below. The first map shows part of Middle Earth, the area where all the action of The Silmarillion takes place. Notice those mountains on the far right? They are the Blue Mountains, the Ered Luin.
Now, look at this next map. It will be more familiar to the readers of The Lord of the Rings, especially if you’ve seen any of the movies. There’s Mordor. Up in the top right is the Lonely Mountain of Hobbit fame. See the Shire, the land of Bilbo and Frodo? Well, look to the left, now the far edge of the land. Those are the same mountains, the Ered Luin. They are all that is left after Eru had come back to Middle Earth in an attempt to stop the pain, to use his power for good to stop the suffering. Truly, part of the world is destroyed.
From that point, Eru (God) knew He simply could not come to the earth. As God, there is too much power inherent. He is not a human. That doesn’t mean he abandoned his creation. Instead, now Eru had to send emissaries….you know them already: Gandalf, Radagast, Saruman. These were minor angels, like the Ainur but not as powerful. They were of the same type as Sauron, though again since he was evil, he was more free to use his power thus he appears more powerful, at least in human eyes. These could not interfere in direct ways (which is one reason you rarely see Gandalf use “magic power” in the movies), but were there to counsel and encourage “Elves and Men and all living things of good will to [do] valiant deeds.”
Hoffman’s character perhaps wouldn’t like the point; he’s seen plenty of suffering, often done in the name of God (or Allah or other gods). It is easy to assume that God is not looking, not caring or simply not there. We want God, if there is a God, to move and act in power….yet, of course, we wouldn’t really want that once we realized such would force us to change.
However, God is not a human (thankfully) and has other concerns that He is focused on. He is patient as He waits and hopes for relationships with his creation. In the meanwhile, he sends emissaries to help us, even though typically, often we can’t see or understand who they truly are. He calls us to act good, to do “valiant deeds” but He will not use force, even if it means allowing evil and suffering to continue it the world.