We Accuse God of being Unjust precisely because He is Just

In a by now viral interview, Stephen Fry, a self-professed atheist, was asked by the interviewer that if he were to face God, what would he say?  “Children with cancer, why?” He said.   He did not want to believe in a God that brought untold suffering or allowed unmerited suffering to people.

I have grappled with this question for a long time.   I have written a post asking and challenging the major points in the common answer.   I have answered in a Commentary that Christ asked God the same thing.   Why are we suffering unmerited pain?  

A conversation with someone sparked renewed debate.   While narrating a philosopher’s argument that God is Reason and therefore God has Reason, I asked a long simmering question, if God is rational, why does He allow unmerited suffering.   I was taken aback by his response.

Simply, a question: who’s to say it’s unmerited?

Unmerited.   We believe that suffering is unmerited because we believe that if we do Good, then no harm should fall on us.   But without a Cosmic Deity, an all Powerful God, can we really say that we will be protected from harm if we do Good?  And by what standards do we do Good?

If there is no God, or a Cosmic Deity does not exist, then we only have our laws to lean back on.   But how were our laws founded?  Upon what standards was the concept of Order created?   If not an all-knowing and all-Powerful God, then a common rationale among Men.   A Common Reason by which we come to agreement that something is Good or Harmful.

Then that only leads to affirming the existence of Reason.   But what is the foundation by which the Common Rationale stands?   If two people agree that murder is wrong, and another two people agree that murder is justified given circumstances, does Common Rationale dictate that murder is justified in some circumstances?

If we believe, however, that there is a Foundation behind that Common Rationale, that there is a Universal Law that prohibits murder because it is wrong, then who creates the laws?   Reason was founded on the pillars of existing Law, a list of do’s and don’ts based on a standard.   And who creates the standards by which our own standards—by way of Reason come from.

This proves that there is a Universal Law setting the laws for Reason, and that there is an Author behind that Universal Law.   But if this Author is above this Universal Law, then the Author is arbitrary and unjust, but that also invalidates the effect of the Universal Law.  

To accuse this Author—in this case, God—of being unjust is to affirm that there is a Universal Law by which we frame his Justice.   And the fact that we are affirming that there is a Universal Law, and there is a Justice by which God abides affirms that He is Just.   We are not questioning his Justice.   We are accusing God of being unjust precisely because of his Justice which we hold as our own standards.   For if He is not bound to our standards then we have nothing to accuse Him of.   And if we accuse Him by our own standards then that is insubordination, for how is God subject to the Laws of Men?

Therefore God is being judged by the Laws set by God.   We are accusing God of being unjust not because He is, but because He seems to be unjust given a certain circumstance (e.g. children with cancer).   This is not a demand for Justice.  Justice exists, that is why we demand it.

What we demand is a call to Accounting.

The same call Christ made at the Cross.   The same call Job made at the peak of his agony.

And remember what God said of Job’s question when He chastised Job’s friends?   He was right to ask.

It is right to ask God to account for the suffering of Man.

And He did.  On the Cross.    God accounted for the suffering of Man by dying on the Cross.   The ultimate sacrifice founded on the standards set by Universal Law.

But does that say that God was “punished” based on the Universal Law He set for Himself?  Or does He affirm the legality of an act of pain by Himself being subjected to what seems like “unmerited suffering?”

I do not know the Ultimate Answer to this question.   No man does.   But God become Man Himself was subjected to the same “unmerited suffering” all of us suffered.   He was not above the Universal Law.   The key to the Answer lies in the Cross.    We are not demanding God to answer for His injustice, but to account for that Suffering based on that same Justice.   I have no answer by what Reason and what Standard we are subjected to seemingly “unmerited suffering”, but God Himself died through this “unmerited suffering”, affirming His own justice.

But I don’t know why.   Only that it must.   Or God would not have suffered the same.