God is good to all - is this a joke?

ט טוֹב-יְהוָה לַכֹּל; וְרַחֲמָיו, עַל-כָּל-מַעֲשָׂיו.
9 The LORD is good to all; and His tender mercies are over all His works.

Is David Hamelech joking? Are there not enough calamities out there? Will a victim of the holocaust, Tsunamis, earthquakes, pandemics not to mention personal illnesses, losses and other such catastrophes agree with this statement? How can David say that God is good to ALL? His tender mercies over ALL his works?

The answer to the above is at the crux of Theodicy and Providence. It is a complicated and lengthy discussion that will require more than one post. I will try to break down the issue into its components and address each one separately.

The question that one needs to ask first is whether any component of the universe is more important than another. If let us say everything exists so that humanity may come into being and thrive then anything that works towards that goal is good and anything that tries to thwart it is evil. If however every component of the universe is equally important, we can envision a conflict where an action that promotes one component threatens another and we can still consider it as good.

We have to distinguish between the most advanced organism, which is humankind, and seeing man as the goal of creation. Although it so happens that man has unique attributes that does not make him more important. In fact, as I have mentioned in an earlier post, he may be just a necessary component of the whole universe working in tandem with its other parts to maintain it and at its service.

If we see existence as a natural occurrence clearly there is no room for seeing even a possibility of a goal. Everything just exists and man is part of it. If we attribute existence to God, His will is the cause for everything. We cannot decipher what His wish is other than for everything to just exist. There is no reason to believe that the existence of man is the goal He wishes for more than the existence of any other component of the universe. Whichever of the two positions we chose, clearly good is anything that perpetuates existence and evil is whatever destroys it. That is of course from the perspective of existence and not from the individual component.

What we are left with is that events that are detrimental to humankind are good as long as they promote the perpetuation of the whole. Man’s tribulations are insignificant when seen in that context. With this in mind we now can try to understand and categorize what we consider as calamities and see if God’s role in them is good or evil.

The first category is composed of natural disasters. Starting from the personal and individual, illnesses caused by genetic defects are part of nature. It is a biological imperative for the survival of a species that genetic mutations occur. It is inherent in the system that some are not successful. Of course it does not mitigate the suffering of the individual that is smitten, nor his close ones, but it is unavoidable and is good in a macro sense. Rambam being a keen observer of diseases, although unaware of genetics puts it in remarkably modern words:

“The first kind of evil is that which is caused to man by the circumstance that he is subject to genesis and destruction, or that he possesses a body. It is on account of the body that some persons happen to have great deformities or paralysis of some of the organs. This evil may be part of the natural constitution of these persons, or may have developed subsequently in consequence of changes in the elements, e.g., through bad air, or thunderstorms or landslips. We have already shown that, in accordance with the divine wisdom, genesis can only take place through destruction, and without the destruction of the individual members of the species the species themselves would not exist permanently. Thus the true kindness, and beneficence, and goodness of God is clear. He, who thinks that he can have flesh and bones without being subject to any external influence, or any of the accidents of matter, unconsciously wishes to reconcile two opposites, viz., to be at the same time subject and not subject to change. If man were never subject to change there could be no generation”. (MN 3:12)

(I am quoting just the pertinent segment. If one reads the whole piece it is clear that Rambam was basing this on Galen’s understanding of medicine not modern genetics.)

Of course the same argument applies to other natural events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, storms and so on. In a macro sense they are all necessary as part of a system that perpetuates the existence of the earth. I do not think I have to elaborate further.
Coming back to our opening question natural disasters can be seen as good. They may be destructive to their immediate surroundings and those caught up in them. They are however necessary and an integral part of the survival of the whole and therefore inherently good.

That leaves us with wars, holocausts and individual illnesses. I will address it in a future post.

(MN 3: 10 thru 14 is an interesting read on this issue).