I recently heard of a belief called “antinatalism”: life is suffering, so it’s better (ethically, I think, is meant) not to create more lives. That sounds like a logical next step after the old argument against God’s existence: there’s a lot of suffering; God, if he existed, could fix it and would want to; so there is no God. I believe in God nonetheless, so I’m a large step behind the antinatalists and therefore not positioned to understand them.

     That argument against God’s existence is an expression of the basic theodicy question: if God is as powerful as he’s supposed to be and likes us (even loves us) as much as we say he does, then why doesn’t he fix things so we don’t suffer, or at least don’t suffer so much? The question is itself based on, or shaped according to, an abstraction that has been at the center of understanding of God in Christian academic theology for a long time, namely, “the attributes of God.” Simply put, God is the guy who has those attributes, such as omnipotence (he has all power), omnipresence (he’s present everywhere), complete holiness, and perfect love. Talk of God’s “attributes” sets up standards for God, and the theodicy question asks whether he meets those standards and names counter-evidence.

     By the way, I quoted Thomas J. White recently (in Aquinas 101 and The One Story): “We need a better class of atheists.” That is true because, as White pointed out, there’s too much reliance among many published atheists on an outdated and false understanding of the history of religion (that is, of the history of humankind, since religious is one of the things that humans are) and too little knowledge of the actual history of philosophical debate of the question of God.

     Anyway, the theodicy question collapses time by wanting everything to be okay now. It is as if a suicidal person complains to his friends as they drive him to the hospital that death is the most sensible option, not realizing that it is so only under the assumption that there can be no change, or, in theological terms, no redemption. The theodicy question requires that everything be alright right now. It is no good to say that things will turn out right, because surely someone as good and powerful as God could have made things right to start with. But, rather than calling creation into question in this way, perhaps it would be better to wait and see how things play out before passing judgment. The gospel asks for such patience (as in, e.g., Revelation 6:9-11, though a bit bizarrely there, and in James 1:2-4).

     So what to say to antinatalists (and I’m not sure they have to be atheists, though it seems likely)? Not that babies are so cute, because (1) not so much when they’re poopy and screaming and (2) they grow up to be drug addicts and bankers. Rather, and this applies to what we have to say to many people in our time, we bring the dimension of time into the conversation. And the best way to do that is to proclaim the gospel. We thus tell the story that becomes the context for all human questions and difficulties, including questions about babies that grow up to be disagreeable or messed up sorts.

     That “wanting everything to be okay now” might be stated differently (though not by antinatalists, I suppose) as a disconnection of the reality of human suffering from what we think humans are. “Why does it hurt so bad?!” Well, Johnnie, it’s like that for everyone whose leg gets run over by a bus, not just you. Or, in my case, whose pancreas is flipping out (see Uh-oh; Capacity). Because, Johnnie, that’s what it’s like being a human. Being human also includes thinking that babies are cute, that being in love, while a stupid thing to do, is also a good thing to do, and that riding a bicycle uphill is also a good thing to do even if you fag out halfway and hurt like hell the next day. All very human.

• Some of this is quoted or paraphrased from The One Story, which I do have to spill the beans on soon.
• To carry all this self-reference farther I can mention “a joy in living and in seeing others live,” quoted from Henri-Frédéric Amiel in delight in humanness, and Israel Zangwill’s delight, which I talk about in Fantasy.