Theodicy: Smile, Jesus loves you!

The term "theodicy" always confused me. Back in 1710, when things made sense, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz coined the term by combining θεός (theós, "god") and δίκη (díkē, "justice"), to make theosdike, theodicy, "the justice of god". The problem I always had was that I thought the term a combination of θεός (theós, "god") and (Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia) so theos-odysseia, a theo-odyssey, a God-adventure, which is entirely not what the term means.*

Anyway.

So, a theodicy is an attempted explanation to the problem of evil: Why bad shit happens if God is not a jackass. And while I've been aware of the fact that bad things happen my immediate situation is pressing me into a mindset such that I need contemplate why the fuck so much bad shit happens if
1) There is a God.
2) God is not a jackass.

This afternoon I was at Wal-Mart, which might be an explanation for why bad shit is happening to me, when some random person handed me a piece of notecard. One side presented a smiley face with the word "Smile" above it. The other side contained the message that "Jesus loves you!" followed by some Bible verses to serve as textual evidence of this love, a Prayer I need say in order to invite Jesus into my heart, and a helpful list of instructions (Read the Bible, go to Church) for what to do after I offer Jesus occupancy in my cardio-vascular system.

Given the apparent randomness of this event (no one else ever gave me a "Jesus loves you" card at Wal-mart before) as it relates to my life at the moment (everything is fucking terrible) this has me thinking.

I've always thought a deity to be a necessary component of one's ontology. I am something of a fan of the Quinque viae, Aquinas' five arguments for the existence of God. So I'll accept God's existence for reasons of unmoved mover, first cause, contingency, etc. But the notion of a personal deity, some invisible man in the sky hovering around giving a shit about me, never made much sense.

The thing I realized this afternoon is that I've always replaced the notion of a personal God with concepts such as Love, Truth, or Good as somehow being controlling, regulatory processes of reality. I've clung to the notion that, in the end, things will work out for the best; Truth will overturn Falsity, Goodness will triumph over Evil, and Love has the power to actualize any possibility. Polio is pretty shitty, but we created a vaccine. The Nazis were Evil, but they lost. And they never did make a sequel to that god-awful Golden Compass movie.

So I've, apparently, subconsciously based my life on this notion that things will get better, that there is some regulatory process controlling reality whereby, though things may become shitty, wrongs are eventually righted, evil is eventually triumphed over by good, and truth will overcome all falsity.

The problem is that I think I lost that a few weeks ago. And I'm not sure what to do without it.

Living makes sense when one can maintain hope, when one believes in a triumph of good over evil or can articulate a theodicy whereby one can reconcile the abysmal aspects of life with some consolation that there will be a better tomorrow, that there is an answer, a truth, which will make sense of reality. But when one loses that core component of their being and understands life to be simply a neutral, inert medium within which various things happen for no reason, to not end, regulated by only the laws of physics and whatever force particular beings exert...nothing really matters anymore; we're all just sort of here.

So I can reflect upon this little smiley "Jesus loves you" card. I can read my Leibniz and my Aquinas and cling to some notion of a better tomorrow, or a victory of Good and Truth over Evil and Falsity. But at the moment it seems to be the case that these are simply coping mechanisms designed to stave off a realization that the entirety of one's existence is simply a haphazard amalgamation of random nonsense the meaning of which is void and the purpose of which is null given that soul-less, viscous, self-centered, unreflective, terrible people are capable of performing unconscionable acts without ever receiving any form of comeuppance.

I would like for there to be a God; I would like for there to be a Good, a Truth, a Right, a regulatory process to reality which ensures that meaning and purpose are preserved. But I think that, in the end, that might all be bullshit. And while we can hand out little index cards at Wal-Mart and cling to our hopes...in the end Evil wins, Lies persist, and the entirety of existence is a meaningless void of pain and suffering within which we all delude ourselves until we just plain give up.

So maybe the whole project of a theodicy is flawed project from the beginning. Not only may there be no God, but perhaps there is no Truth, no Good, no Falsity, no Evil. Perhaps people just do shit and spout little contextual pseudo-truths which are simply linguistic articulations of perceived or understood temporary referents. Maybe we're just little biological machines fucking about for no reason. Maybe this whole thing of existence is a neutral, inert cesspool of dumb.

I'm not necessarily advocating nihilism; I'm not really advocating anything. I'm just saying that there are times when the events of one's life fundamentally challenge one's core beliefs; when one's faith and primary understanding of self are tested from without.

And, sometimes, the beliefs, the faith, and the self do not pass the test.


* This may have resulted from my having spent a wealth of my childhood watching Superbook