Leaves a Mark points out a recent interest in theodicy, linking to a Slate piece and a NYT editorial.

In the NY Times piece, conservative columnist William Safire (of whom I am not a fan) writes a damn good sermon. He points out that if you read the real deal in the Bible, forlorn Job is anything but patient with his suffering. Job takes Yahweh to task for injustice, demanding a court trial. And Yahweh even shows up to answer (sort of) Job’s charges. Safire concludes from this that it’s perfectly acceptable to yell at god for cosmic injustices—after all, it’s right there in the Book.

In another must read, Heather MacDonald urges a boycott of god:

Centuries of uncritical worship have clearly produced a monster… Where is God’s incentive to behave? He gets credit for the good things and no blame for the bad. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is fond of thanking God for keeping America safe since 9/11; Ashcroft never asks why, if God has fended off terrorist strikes since 9/11, he let the hijackers on the planes on the day itself. Was God caught off guard the first time around, like the U.S. government? But he is omniscient and omnipotent.

And this is precisely what Leaves a Mark brings up. The three traditional “omnis” of god don’t play well with each other. To say that god is simultaneously omniscient (all-smart), omnipotent (all-strong), and omnibenevolent (all-good) seems the height of childish wishful thinking. All-good and all-strong in particular don’t mesh well with the real world; otherwise, god would get off his ass and stop things like the recent tsunami.

But that’s part of the problem. In comparison to other disasters this last year, the tsunami ain’t at the top of the list—it’s just better at kicking up our adrenaline:

Nearly four million men, women, and children have died as a consequence of the Congo civil war. Seventy thousand have perished in the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. In the year just ended, scores of thousands died in wars and massacres elsewhere in Africa, in Asia, in the archipelagoes of the Pacific, and, of course, in Iraq. Less dramatically, but just as lethally, two million people died of malaria around the world, and another million and a half of diarrhea. Five million children died of hunger. Three million people died of aids, mostly in Africa. The suffering of these untimely and terrible deaths—whether inflicted by deliberate violence, the result of human agency, or by avoidable or treatable malady, the result of human neglect—is multiplied by heartbroken parents and spouses, numbed and abandoned children, and, often, ruined survivors vulnerable to disease and predation and dependent, if they are lucky, on the spotty kindness of strangers.

The giant wave that radiated from western Sumatra on the day after Christmas destroyed the lives of at least a hundred and fifty thousand people and the livelihoods of millions more. A hundred and fifty thousand: fifty times the toll of 9/11, but “only” a few per cent of that of the year’s slower, more diffuse horrors. The routine disasters of war and pestilence do, of course, call forth a measure of relief from public and private agencies (and to note that this relief is almost always inadequate is merely to highlight the dedication of those who deliver it). But the great tsunami has struck a deeper chord of sympathy.

The problem of cosmic evil isn’t with god, it’s with god-talkers. We decided god is all-good and all-smart and all-strong but then we are shocked when real life doesn’t add up quite so nicely. That’s hardly god’s fault.

But don’t let that stop you from yelling at him. It worked for most of the heroes of the Hebrew Bible, so it’s gotta be worth trying. And it would be such a nice change from all the begging he usually gets.