Sunday 29 January 2012

fireplace: Raymond Feist's Macros and why God doesn't seem to act

In Raymond E. Feist’s The Darkness at Sethanon, Macros, Tomas and Pug are travelling the Hall between worlds, trying desperately to get back to their world in time to save it from the Dragon Host when Macros drops the bomb that bringing back the Valheru, Ashen-Shugar, as Tomas was a desperate risk - almost as dangerous as the Dragon Host itself. He goes on to say, “There is no single being, save the gods, who could oppose him.”
“Then,” said Pug, “why haven’t the gods acted?”
Macros laughed, a bitter sound, and waved at all four of them. “What do you think we’re doing here? That is the game. And we are the pieces.”



Isn’t that what we do all the time? Blame God because things aren’t working out? Saying there is no God because of the way the world is right now? 

Where is the evidence of God? If he were real, why are people sick, suffering, hurting, dying? Why are there earthquakes and disasters and tsunamis? Why is there war and genocide? Starvation and waste? Why doesn’t this world make sense? Why are there abused children? Why is there evil?
And yet at the same time, the reason we are here, the reason we remain is to be His hands and feet.

Interestingly, an echoing thought was quoted in church yesterday, from Blaise Pascal:

Through prayer God gives humankind the dignity of limited causality.
Why doesn’t God act?
Because we aren’t.