The
Hubble Telescope is 25 years old. In that time, it has allowed us
to see further and more clearly across our universe than ever before, and
revealed the incredible, mind boggling beauty of creation.
It
is a very common to hear people asking some variation of ‘If there is a God,
why is there evil in the world’, or ‘If God is good, why would He allow
evil’? These are very valid and
important questions, and I’ve made my own fumbling attempts to answer them
according to my own understanding.
However,
it has occurred to me that this may be a very wrong-headed way of looking at
things. People generally focus on the
negatives. The glass is half empty far
more often than it is half full, and by and large we love nothing better than
having a good moan. Focussing on the
negatives can be beneficial, since it allows us to see what is wrong, and therefore
what needs correcting, what needs improving, what needs removing. However, it can also lead to us forgetting
the positives, wallowing in despair and depression, shaking our little fists
and demanding to know what kind of God would allow, or worse create, such a
state of affairs.
What
if we reversed the question? ‘If there’s
no God, why is there good in the world?’
How about, ‘If God is evil, why would He allow good?’ Why is there goodness? Why is there beauty? Many good things can, if one wishes to do so
(and I don’t), be explained away in materialistic, evolutionary terms. Love, even the selfless, self-sacrificing
love of agapé, can be construed as
improving the survival of a community.
Charity speaks for itself. Hope
keeps individuals alive when despair would claim them. Faith can be used to increase group cohesion. These are all things that we, as mere human
animals, could have developed purely for utilitarian, functional reasons.
But what
about beauty? I struggle to think of any
reason why humans should have an innate sense of beauty. I’m not talking about human beauty, since
again the evolutionary pressures for this are fairly obvious. But why would we find a sunset beautiful? A waterfall?
A rainbow? The incredible images
sent to us by the Hubble Telescope? It
seems to me that the ancient ape-person sitting staring at a sunset in
awestruck rapture will very soon be staring at the inside of a no-longer very
hungry leopard. Do the sheep and cows
that stand and stare look at their world and wonder at its amazing and majestic
beauty. I speak neither ovine or bovine
to ask them, but I have not seen anything to indicate it.
Why
should there be so much beauty in the world?
Or rather, why is it that we, odd little ape-things that we are, should
find things beautiful? What is it in us
that responds to the majesty of nature, the wonders of creation, that drives us
to try and capture them in paintings and photographs and poems and songs? Art and music can be waved away as things
that draw us closer together, increase group cohesion and social ties and
improve group survivability, but not what inspires them; the incredible
longing, the appreciation, the ability to stare in awesome wonder.
Should
we ignore the bad and focus only on the good?
Of course not. Evil has functions
of its own, helping us to strive towards, and to be, something better than we
are. We must not forget the bad, but let
us also not forget the good.
Yes God is good.
In Earth and Sky,
In ocean depths
And spreading wood,
Ten thousand voices
Seem to cry,
God made us all,
And God is good!
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