Dear Theophilus, 

In your last letter you mention that you had recently seen one of those programs on nature discussing the techniques used by various species of animals for survival. You were struck by the sheer meaninglessness of existence, how these creatures seemed to come into being for only one purpose - to be devoured. You ask - where is God in all this? Why does He, if He exists, permit this? Everything seems to work mechanically, without any interference from a benevolent creator. You go on from there to say that you took my advice and started to read the Old Testament and were horrified by what you found there - wanton killing, brutality, treachery. You end by saying that you are not surprised that sensitive souls find it almost impossible to believe in a loving God - a tyrant, possibly, but a loving God, no.

Theophilus, we all go through what you are experiencing but it is to your credit that you are honest about your feelings and are facing up to them. Remember that any problematical situation enables us to stretch our horizons and let's see what we can learn from this case.

Indeed, if we look at the world, it can be a frightening exercise. But the fact that the world is as it is, leads us to a very important conclusion. When we speak about God or about His attributes, on what do we base ourselves? If we were to look at the world as our prime source of information, we are going to get a distorted message or, what is even more serious, we will think that God is some kind of tyrannical sadist. Here we realize the importance of revelation, that is, God revealing Himself through means other than the created world. If God exists, then we cannot rule out revelation out of hand.

But I know that at the back of your mind, the question persists - why all this wasted life, why this savagery in the world? Surely, it need not be as it is. The fact that you may have these feelings reflects well on you. You are concerned and you are bothered. But, we have to analyze the situation a little more objectively.

We must beware of falling into certain traps and one of these is anthropomorphism, which is projecting human wishes and values on non-human entities. If you would listen to scientists talk about evolution, you would often hear them talk about it as if it were an almost conscious and reflective "being" that has specific goals in mind, reached through chance and time. This is totally false because the pattern, the meaning in evolution is placed there by humans. Secondly, we have to beware of applying human values to things which are not human. The fact that one million fish are born and one survives we cannot project onto the human scale. There are different levels of life and that has to be always remembered. A leaf on a tree is living, and if it were to be cut off, the leaf dies. But, in no way is this on the same level as when a human being dies. So, when you watch programs as the one you mention, keep this in mind.

However, there are deeper lessons to be learned here. Creation is not what it should be.; something has gone terribly awry. Death has become central for it has become an instrumental cog in prolonging life - you kill in order to eat and survive. It is a clear part of our faith that the world is skewed - that it has careened off onto a track it was not intended to take. Exactly why this happened, and how, we do not know but we are witnesses to its effects. Tied to this "fall" is a malevolent power referred to by different names and one of these is Satan. Many do not accept his existence (and maybe this is his greatest achievement) but I would not be so hasty to rule him out. There are two serious errors committed in our thinking with respect to Satan - to take him too seriously or to take him not seriously enough.

I think we need to explore a little bit more deeply what we have touched on in the past and that is the relationship between life in the Bible and what this term, life, means to society in general. In the New Testament, there are two different terms for existence: substantive life and eternal Life. Substantive life involves all the chemical and physiological processes which permit an organism called the body to exist and function. This existence has been mythologized in our age as the only possible life. In John's Gospel, when Christ says, "I am the Life", this is meaningless unless He is talking about life distinct from biological life. What is being said here is that being alive does not necessarily mean having life. Eternal life is so personal that it is a person as opposed to biological life which is usually impersonal (just consider all the insects and vegetation, not to speak of animals). Biological life is a process, a chemical process, which can be a vehicle for Life.

To support my proposal that there is life and Life, I'd like you to consider the following. The term life is fairly recent, coming up at the very beginning of the nineteenth century and was reinforced by Lamarck a scientist who christened the new science of living things, biology. For the Romans, the word closest in meaning to what we would call life is bios, which means the course of a destiny whereas the analogous word for the Greeks, zoe, refers to the brilliance of aliveness. Lamarck proposed the existence of life to differentiate between various components of the world, that is animate and inanimate. Life is defined as a certain level of organization which enables reproduction, evolution and other characteristics. What is central here is the development of a new view of the cosmos. In the past, nature was seen as teeming with aliveness but this aliveness was dependent on God. With the scientific revolution, mechanistic models start to predominate and this, in turn, colors our view on everything. But, how do you explain aliveness in a dead cosmos, dead since there is no Life outside of it? The answer is life - some abstract notion of material organization arising spontaneously in the evolutionary process. Now all of this may seem very abstract and something that does not affect you. But consider the discussion on abortion. The central problem of abortion is the inability to get a consensus on what life is, or to put it in another way, when life begins. Ethics now is seen as not governed by the good but by values, giving rise to a utilitarian society. There is an excess of life (overpopulation) and as a result the value of human life has declined. All economic models are based on this competitive supply and demand model and life, which is also a property, falls under the same restrictions. In fact, the tendency within our day has been to go even further in stating that the proven ability to exercise this life is a criterion for being granted "personhood".

I hope that from my letter you can at least see another view, that the life that we take for granted, the biological life, is not the fundamental life - at most, it is a vehicle for Life. You are probably saying to yourself: this is all very fine but when someone is sick, when someone dies, the pain that you feel is very real where all this talk about life being simply a form of material organization is just so much talk. Moreover, if life loses some of its importance, isn't it possible that crimes involving the taking away of life will be seen as less serious? These objections are valid and cannot just be ignored. First of all, let me say that reality always stretches our perception of it and although we may be more comfortable living with our accepted views, we must always be open to reality. If you will remember, in the Old Testament there is a lot of talk about not worshipping idols. Idols come in many shapes and forms, but their common characteristics is that they are false, and one of these is our attachment, over-attachment if I may so put it, to substantive life. It is inevitable that we will lose this life - this happens to everyone and when it happens, it is understandable that it will bring much pain and unhappiness. What heightens our pain is the acceptance of this biological life as the final word and when it is gone, well, that's it. But, we must keep a wider picture in our perspective: this is not the end. What I am saying in no way is intended to devalue life because it is through this life that we come to Life. A similar example occurs when people denigrate the material in favor of the spiritual forgetting that it is through this matter that we attain to the spirit. There is another, more important aspect to existence, and that is eternal Life and it is through this eternal Life that our biological life takes on meaning and value. Otherwise our lives become tales told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Maybe in a future letter we can talk a little bit about eternal Life.

Bar-Abbas

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