The Problem of Good

Mine are almost gone...

"Head is normal, legs are normal...everything else is normal."  The perinatal specialist was completing a growth scan on Arthur. 
"Crazy." I murmured.  Knowing so much was not normal in Arthur's little body made it seem odd to be commenting on his totally normal head circumference and femur length.  "When you think about it, it's amazing that so much is developing just right."
"Women who have totally healthy babies have no idea how amazing." the doctor added.

And there, in a nutshell, is a deep philosophical conversation.

Much ink and many tears have been spilled over the problem of evil and suffering.  I've done some of the spilling.  How, why, could something have gone wrong between 7 and 12 weeks gestation such that Arthur's diaphragm didn't attach?  That a few parts of his heart, at that point smaller than a dime, didn't form just right?

How, why, do school shootings happen?  Cancer?  Genocide?  Natural disasters?  Suffering rocks our world, makes us question what we thought to be true about God, the universe, human beings.

But did you ever spend so much emotional energy wondering how your unborn child's perfect femur came to be?  How, why, could a few cells become a human being with perfectly functioning organs and limbs?  And yet it happens all the time!

Why do we have best friends?  Why is food so delicious?  Why are there colors?  Flowers?  Music?  Surely beauty and pleasure are just as remarkable as evil and suffering.  Why don't we allow the good things in life to raise questions about God, the universe, and human beings?

Pain makes us angry at God, wonder if He exists or cares.  We are tempted to believe that our world is just a collection of random occurrences and that humans are beyond help.  But does pleasure shape our assumptions just as much?  I think we have so many pleasurable experiences that we don't philosophize over them.  Just like someone who's only had healthy babies wouldn't stop to marvel at their child's leg.  We just take the long, rarely-broken string of good for granted.  Only when it's interrupted by pain do we start thinking.

So, here's my Thanksgiving challenge to myself:  This week, every time something makes my life a little happier, easier, prettier, I want to stop and think. I want my mind to be occupied with the problem of good as much as it has been with the problem of evil.  As I ponder all the good in life, I see that the only appropriate response is to give thanks.  Not in a cheesy, preschool "Thank you God for M&Ms" kind of way.  But then again, yes, in a cheesy, preschool kind of way.  I just know why I'm giving thanks while the preschooler might not.

I mean, did God have to put M&Ms in my life?  Or do they exist because He is a good God who delights in giving good things?  A God who made a good universe, who stamped His good image on human beings.  Oh, sure, He is a God whose plan I don't understand, and His universe and people have been marred by sin.  But there's so much good left that I experience so often, and yet I never let the wonder of that good carry my mind away.

For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the Love which from our birth
Over and around us lies:

For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon and stars of light:

For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and brain's delight,
For the mystic harmony
Sinking sense to sound and sight:

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth, and friends above;
For all gentle thoughts and mild:

For each perfect Gift of Thine
To our race so freely given,
Graces human and Divine,
Flowers of earth, and buds of Heaven:

Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.

~Folliott S. Pierpoint