Evil and the Father of the Prodigal Son

So, Fr. Spitzer, (S.J.) the president of Gonzaga university and a great philosopher, gave a mini lecture at a dinner I got to go to. The subject was the problem of evil. Can an all loving, all powerful, and all knowing God coexist with evil? It was totally awesome so I'm going to try and type up what I got from it. The way he said it was, of course, much more entertaining and articulate. He's writing a book about it. It comes out in about six months. I want to read it. You should all look him up and read one of the books he wrote. Brilliance. In any case this is something like his points from the other night:

1. The first thing to remember in times of suffering is who God is. Jesus came to reveal the Father to us. The parable of the prodigal son reveals God to us. God is the father of the prodigal son. Any image we get of God, that cannot be reconciled to the Father of the Prodigal Son is wrong. He is not the vengeful god who waits for a chance to get us back for all the nasty things we do. He is not the steel god who is sick and tired of our whining; "Stop being such wimps! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." He is not the god who could care less. All these false images of God come from the devil. If you start thinking God is doing something that the father of the prodigal son wouldn't do, then you have something wrong.

2. The father of the Prodigal son didn't cause any of the bad things that happened to his son. God did not create evil. He is not the steel god who created evil to make us stronger. He created love and freedom. Love is a choice. So if God had made humans to love Him but not given us free will to love Him then He would have created nice little robots who display loving behaviors. God can't make true love without freedom and you can't freely choose to love without also being capable of choosing Not to love. But, God, if He is all powerful, can create us any way he wants, so why did he create us with the ability to choose not to love? Fr.'s answer to this was that God is incapable of making a square circle and it's not God's problem it's a problem with the square and the circle. They exist in a finite world. They are mutually exclusive of each-other. God cannot create a contradiction. A creature who can choose to love but cannot choose not to love is a contradiction. The Father of the Prodigal Son does not withhold the inheritance from the Son. Neither does he limit how and on what the son uses that inheritance.

3. God works through suffering and evil in the world. He did not create them but he works through them. (Just like in Tolkien's Silmarilion,) God robs evil of it's victory by turning it to His greater glory. We can trust the Father of the Prodigal Son to make good come of rather bleak situations. One example of this that Fr. Spitzer gave was the loss of his own eye sight. Spitzer has macular degeneration and is almost completely blind. He says the worst part of this is that he has to ask for rides. He told us about when he first found out and he made God a list of things he could do if God gave him back his sight. But you never hand God a plan cause he doesn't follow them. And you never hand God a time table cause his time table is always bigger and longer than yours. Since he has been almost blind, Spitzer has gotten twice as much work done as he did all the years before. "I was lolly-gagging!" He pointed out jubilantly "Since I've been here, I've written five books!" There were questions after and he told us that he would not be offended if we left early. He wouldn't see us anyway. It was not as if God liked to see Spitzer struggling with his sight. He has compassion: He suffers with us. But He worked through it for the greater good of Spitzer and (I think) the world.

So, that is what I got out of the talk. There was a lot more. Fr. Spitzer is a very entertaining and articulate speaker. I wish I could reproduce all the stories he told and the points he made. It was awesome. You can just feel love and deep faith radiating from this man. I can't wait till his book comes out.