In light of everything going on in the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about the jarring dissonance and incompatibility of a cruel world and a loving G-d. The topic is mind-boggling because it defies understanding. On the one hand, part of existence is incomprehensibly hellish and heartless. Yet, on the other hand, life is breathlessly beautiful and magical. There is darkness and light, brutishness and beauty interlocked and intertwined in a stunning spectacle.
The only palatable position I ever found to this intractable problem was given by the Rabbi of Kotz. He was asked how one can explain G-d’s apparent mercilessness. He answered with one sentence: “A G-d who can be understood by anyone is not worth serving.” If one can thoroughly understand G-d and feels like he can make improvements on His creation, this would lead to the natural conclusion that such a G-d is no longer a G-d and certainly not worth serving.
More than a half-century ago, Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of the last century advised us to accept that nature makes no sense. “Do not keep saying to yourself … ‘But how can [nature] be like that?’ because you will get down the drain, into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.” Most physicists have followed Feynman’s advice.
I would add that if creation, which is finite, defies explanation, is it possible that the Creator of the Universe, who is infinite, should be any less complex? And if scientists have accepted the inexplicability of the world, would it not be, all the more so, wise for us to make peace with our inability to understand a merciless world and a loving G-d?
2021