The Problem of Pain

Fashionable thinkers, I perceive, still have the temerity to dismiss God, out of hand, for the reason that there is so much suffering in the world.

What a soppy bunch these fashionable thinkers are!

Observe that it is the characteristic feature of such types that they are unlikely to have experienced anything like real suffering in their own lives. Observe, too, that the heft of the world's faithful find themselves in the Third World.

No doubt, there is something to the sociologists' claim that ignorance, hunger and pain make a person more than reasonably susceptible to Insubstantial Hopes, to ethereal promises. But one can't help noticing too how insubstantial this analysis is, coming as it does from full bellies, often tranquilized nerves, and (I say with irony) inordinate education.

We have no trouble recognizing that, say, a man must suffer for his art. We see that a Good, that can be shared with our fellow men--and for which we are often strangely grateful--comes as a consequence of suffering. Did we think individual human lives so worthless that they were not more, by far, than our fumbling little attempts at authorship?

Benedicamus Domino!