Article June 16, 1986 Issue

Why doesn't God do something?

EVELYN M. S. DUCKETT

People sometimes ask: "How can you say there is a God when there seem to be so many desperate situations in the world—the famines, violence, terrorism, war, disease, and all the rest of it? If there is a God, why doesn't He do something about it?"

Gerald Priestland, a well-known commentator on religious topics in Britain, explored this profound problem in a recent BBC radio series called The Case Against God. Summarizing one side of the question, he commented in an interview about the series: "Maybe one has got God wrong. Maybe he is unutterably terrible and terrifying—not even vindictive but just uncaring. This could be one of the things that the Holocaust says to us: God of Love? Forget it."^{"God in the dock," Radio Times, October 27–November 2, 1984, p. 16 .}

And yet can we forget all the love we've ever known? Where did such love come from? It would help much more to say quietly to ourselves: "God is Love. Remember it." For there is a God. And God is Love. And God does all the things implicit in being Love—caring, supporting, strengthening, protecting His creation. In fact, God is pouring out love all the time, not because of some human situation, or in spite of it, but because that is what God's nature is. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, struggled deeply with the question of evil and found its spiritual answer. She writes: "The depth, breadth, height, might, majesty, and glory of infinite Love fill all space. That is enough!"^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 520.}