Looking for Answers

My last post made me sound more religious/faithful than I am. That was a good day for me, I guess. The truth is that I'm a rollercoaster of faith. Yes, Hold Me Now does always manage to cheer me up and make me feel stronger, but unfortunately I can't have that playing every second of the day, and when i'm not being convinced of God's goodness, I question it.

Whenever i see something really beautiful in the world or study something in a biology class that amazes me with complexity, I'm convinced that there must be a God. Then I see a homeless person or hear about a bombing on TV and I wonder how there could be one. Sure, there could be a creator who did his thing, stepped back, and let events unfold without intervention, but that's not what Christians believe. How can there be a good God who loves his creation when there's so many awful things in the world? I've heard the arguments that there's no proof because if there was proof, there'd be no need for faith, and that all the evil in the world is a product of our free will and can be seen as a test of faith. But, well, that just doesn't make sense. If I created something and loved it I'd protect it and make sure no harm came to it. I wouldn't let it fend for itself and test it to see if it had faith in me even during hard times. I'd intervene so that the innocent didn't suffer. Unfortunately, that's something only humans can do, and most don't bother.

I've been reading Turning Stones, a book written by a man who worked in Emergency Children's Services in NY City. The organization would get calls from kids, teachers, psychologists, doctors, etc reporting cases of child abuse and neglect throughout the city, and the agents would respond to those calls, usually by intervening in the family to protect the children. Some of the cases of abuse are too terrible to imagine. How a parent could treat their child in a way most people wouldn't even fathom treating the lowliest animal baffles me. But what's more, how could a good God could let that happen?

Maybe on the one hand it's good for me to doubt, because it forces me into action. If I thought that God were good, everything followed a plan, and things were as he meant them to be, why bother helping others and trying to change the world? wouldn't it be enough to love God and not sin? I wouldn't think I were doing good deeds for the world FOR God, or because of him, because if that were the case, if he was intervening and did want us to love each other, helpful agents of God wouldn't be the minority of the population. God would have ALL of us help one another. That's not the case. As it is, I don't believe God will intervene to help the downtrodden, so I feel it's my duty to do so. Maybe that's the proof of God's existence- he speaks to me through my doubt, and that encourages me to help others. But, again, that seems like the long way around things, and he's still intervening by communicating with me, so why not just take the next step and help people himself without making me doubtful?

I can easily believe in a "clockmaker" God, as I think people used to call him, one who just let creation run it's course freely. That explains the complexity of life, the beauty of nature, our bizzare and inexplicable appearance out of nothing, etc. Yet, it's too troubling to believe in a good God because there just seems to be too much wrong with the world for it to have a divine protector. Don't get me wrong, I want to believe, I really do, but it takes more than blind faith for me. My faith has eyes, and it sees the sad state of the world around me. I've never heard an argument that convinced me or that I couldn't find a way to shrug off. Everlasting gratitude to you if you can be the first to provide me with one (J, I'm counting on you to save my soul, here!)