Last week, I ended my entry on Egypt by expressing my intention to write on the need for hope and for people willing to stand up for peace and justice in the country. It seemed like a natural continuation of what I had written. I wanted to end my discussion of Egypt on a positive, spiritually-uplifting note. As the week passed, though, I knew in my heart that I wouldn't be able to write about hope. Not right now. Not with the events of last Monday, in which at least 51 supporters of the Brotherhood were killed during protests against the military. Not with the detainment of most of the Brotherhood's leadership. Not while many Egyptians continue to strongly oppose the ouster of the president, claiming that they're willing to die before they submit to what they see as a military coup and usurpation of power.
Millions of their anti-Morsi counterparts, meanwhile, appear to be turning more and more to the military as the country's savior, with the potential danger of giving the military a blank check to do whatever it pleases. Will these people allow their hatred toward Morsi and refusal to live under despotic rule (in themselves, perfectly understandable sentiments) to blind them to the military leadership's actions? I'm afraid that they will wake up one day in a praetorian state, and that by then it will be too late. With these events, Egypt seems to be following a path of deep and sharp polarization (if not civil war), with no solution in sight. The possibility that the country will be torn apart from the inside and will take decades to recover looms on the horizon.
As humans, we should be united by a sense of concern and outrage at this situation and others like it that lead to human suffering and pain. Compassion and sympathy for those whose rights and livelihoods are being trampled on by others are traits that should transcend boundaries of ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and religious affiliation. But the seemingly universal presence of evil and suffering poses a special problem for those of us who believe in an omnipotent god. If an all-powerful and good god exists, how can he allow the death of millions through murder, poverty, war, natural disasters, etc? How could such a god stand by as the events in Egypt played out? Why does God seem to be so shockingly absent in instances of violence, in ethnic strife, genocide, acts of terrorism, child abuse? Jesus walked on water, calmed the wind and waves, raised the dead. Surely, many people feel, such a god could (and should) pluck people out of cars moments before deadly traffic accidents, or strike dead the terrorists onboard the planes involved in 9/11. For as many stories we hear about people who escape from car wrecks without a scratch, who overcome poverty, mental illness, and addiction, many more people seem to have been left by God to suffer. Why doesn't God intervene in all of these situations?
This is far from being my lightest blog entry. The problems and questions posed above have been discussed and debated by countless philosophers, theologians, writers, and “laypeople” over thousands of years. To some extent, they will always be shrouded in mystery, and I doubt that I will have everything figured out in the course of a few blog posts. However, we can't ignore the problems of pain and evil. As difficult and contentious as the issues are, we should attempt to grapple with the reasons why the world is so broken, why and how people hurt each other, and whether God actually is doing (or will do) anything about it.
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