Musings on Nietzsche Saturday

My brother wrote on his blog about an encounter he had with someone which prompted a lot of questions, the most basic being, "Why does God let bad things happen to good people and kittens?" The post got me thinking about the nature of God and our perception of Him, and while I don’t come even close to claiming I have all the answers, this is how I answer these questions to myself.

I think some of our dissatisfaction with God comes from an incomplete view of who He is. God is the most powerful entity in the universe, and He is not answerable to us. His only constraints are the ones He imposes on Himself. This is not a concept that sits well with Americans. The most powerful man in the world is the president of the United States, and he does what we tell him to. President Bush was so unpopular because he kept doing thing the American people didn’t like. Then along comes Barak Obama saying, "I will do all the things you wanted Bush to do but that he refused to do," and America voted him into office. And if, in four years, America is as dissatisfied with President Obama as it was with President Bush, there will be someone new in the Oval Office. But we don’t get a vote as to what God is like or what He will do, and we cannot vote Him out of the office of creator and ruler of the universe.

Today the message seems to be, "Jesus wants to be your best friend. Become a Christian and Jesus will fix all your problems." While there is a lot of underlying truth in that trite saying, it ignores the awesomeness of God and says nothing about sin and the fallen nature of the world. A God that kills kittens or lets kittens be killed has no place in this world view. But God invented kittens, and every kitten that exists does so because He lets it. And if God were to decree tomorrow: "Thou shalt kill all the kittens in the world for they are an abomination to Me, excepting the gray tabbies, for they alone are beautiful in My sight," that would be all right and good because God is boss and all kittens are His to do with as He pleases.

God created a perfect world, with a plan for how the whole thing would work. And He put man in charge of the world to take care of it. And man decided he had a better plan than God’s, and so brought sin and death into the world. Humans became mortal because of Adam’s sin. It is possible that death did not exist at all until Adam’s sin, and if that is the case, it is not God’s fault at all that kittens die. And we continue Adam’s legacy today. Every time I sin, I do my part to make this world a worse place to live in.

And yet, even though God has no responsibilities to us, His creations, even though we continually try to come up with a better plan than His, even though we continually blame Him for making us dirty after we have been wilfully rolling in the mud, even though He would be completely within His rights to completely wipe humanity off the face of the earth and start all over again with Adam 2.0, He came up with a new plan so that we can once again be right with Him. He sent His only son, Jesus, to die for us so that we don’t have to spend eternity separated from Him. He didn’t have to do that, but apparently He thinks that we are worth the trouble. The plan does not always make sense, but since God is not answerable to anyone and can do whatever He wants, it doesn’t have to.

And so I think it is an encouraging thought on this Nietzsche Saturday that the God who can do whatever He wants, went out of His way to provide for a bunch of losers like us.

My 2009 Movie Odyssey - Part III

Get Smart (2008)
Steve Carell does a fair job standing in for Don Adams in a film that did a surprisingly good job of preserving the feel of the classic 60s television show.

Man on Wire (2008)
This is a documentary that feels almost like a heist movie as a man conspires to walk on a tightrope stretched between the Twin Towers.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
There were a couple of memorable characters and the minimalist camera work was somewhat interesting, but the subject matter and the plot failed to keep my interest and I didn’t care about any of the characters.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
The film is fairly entertaining as a pretty Anne Hathaway flirts with losing her soul in an attempt to gain the world.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
I think I’ve officially become a fan of Danny Boyle with this film that is edgy and stylish yet sweet and hopeful and may feature the most easy to read subtitles I have ever seen.

Coming up next: Some song and dance and a couple 3D movies.