Moral Evil

Chapter Two: Evil as the Good in Disguise: Theodicy and the Crisis of Meaning

C H A P T E R T W O Evil as the Good in Disguise Theodicy and the Crisis of Meaning ‘‘Have you ever been to Florence, Reyes?’’ Felipe sat back, open-mouthed with disgusted incomprehension . ‘‘No,’’ he said acidly. ‘‘I haven’t felt much like touring, Sir.’’ ‘‘You should go. There’s a series of sculptures there by Michelangelo that you should see. They are called The Captives. Out of a great formless mass of stone, the figures of slaves emerge: heads, shoulders, torsos, straining toward freedom but still held fast in the stone. There are souls like that, Reyes. There are souls that try to carve themselves from their own formlessness. Broken and damaged as he is, Emilio Sandoz is still trying to find meaning in what happened to him. He is still trying to find God in it all.’’ It took Felipe Reyes, blinking, several moments to hear what he’d been told, and if he was too stiff-necked to look at Giuliani for the time being, he was able at least to admit that he understood . ‘‘And by listening, we help him.’’ ‘‘Yes. We help him. He will have to tell it again and again, and we will have to hear more and more, until he finds the meaning.’’ In that instant, a lifetime of reason and moderation and common sense and balance left Vincenzo Giuliani feeling as weightless and insubstantial as ash. ‘‘He’s the genuine article, Reyes. He has been all along. He is still held fast in the formless stone, but he’s closer to God right now than I have ever been in my life. And I don’t even have the courage to envy him.’’ —Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow 6 7 6 8 C H AP T E R 2 ‘‘With or Against, but Not Without’’ A victim of unspeakable torture and humiliation, having borne witness to a mass slaughter in which he took unwitting part, the once devout and still compassionate Emilo Sandoz is a broken man by the time Vincenzo Giuliani, the father general of the Society of Jesus, interviews him. Sent to the planet Rakhat along with seven others to investigate the possibility of intelligent life, Sandoz is the sole survivor in a hopeful mission that unravels into catastrophe for everyone involved. Mary Doria Russell’s novel about a believer forsaken by a God in whom his faith had never before wavered is tragic and humane. By the time Felipe Reyes and Vincenzo Giuliani hear Sandoz’s story, the reader is already well aware of the details, details that provide at least strong circumstantial evidence—if not a smoking gun—that God is not only cruel but deliberate in his cruelty. Russell’s title, The Sparrow, is an unveiled reference to Matthew 10:29, which speaks to God’s omniscience and, we may presume as well, his omnibenevolence and omnipotence. Not a single sparrow falls from the sky without God knowing it and therefore willing it. Asked whether it is God who is rightfully to be blamed, Sandoz’s conclusion draws out the unanticipated implications of the biblical logic: ‘‘You see, that is my dilemma. Because if I was led to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, then the rest of it was God’s will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness . But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn’t it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances,’’ he continued with academic exactitude, each word etched on the air with acid, ‘‘is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.’’1 For Sandoz, damaged as he is, meaning and purpose are tied to the persistence with which he maintains his relationship with God, a God he does not have the luxury of jettisoning in the wake of even the most brutal experiences life has to offer. ‘‘I can be with God or against God, but not without God,’’ Elie Weisel once said in response to a questioner who asked him why he didn’t lose faith after the Holocaust.2 When one commits in faith, one has...