In Case Anyone Was Wondering...

This semester, I'm taking a class on civil liberties and we've been discussing the idea of whether there are, in fact, absolute moral values in the world, or whether morals are relative to different cultures. I believe the Jewish faith dictates that there ARE absolute morals, and that they are laid out for us in the Torah. One of the questions on my last test was particularly interesting and required me to make a research phone call to my rabbi, so I thought I'd share it (and my answer) with you and see if anyone has other opinions:


QUESTION: Religious people ascribe a number of characteristics to G-d, a few of them being: omnipotence, omniscience, and compassion. How is this possible with the huge presence of evil in the world?
MY ANSWER: I divide the evils of the world into two categories: disasters caused or permitted by man and natural disasters. The horrors in the first category -- that of the Holocaust and Darfur, of scandals, murders, and crime -- are tests from G-d which force humans to be moral and to deal with each other fairly and justly. The question in these situations is not, “why didn’t G-d do something?” but in stead “where was humanity?” Bridges collapsing and airplanes breaking down also fit this category of human negligence or error because, however horrible they are, they cause people to be more cautious in securing people’s safety in the future.

The question is more difficult for natural disasters: tsunamis, malaria, accidental and pre-mature deaths. Harold Kushner offers an answer in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981). Kushner’s belief, and one that I accept, is that this type of natural evil is not an issue of G-d’s lack of compassion. In order for G-d to have created the world in which we live, one of spontaneity and free choice, randomness is, to some extent, necessary. Randomness is necessary for chemistry and astronomy. Entropy, a disordered and unpredictable collision of molecules, allows us to have the basic elements of our universe and all celestial objects. Isn’t it logical that randomness is also necessary in nature and the growth of bacteria which leads to diseases? You may think that this level of randomness in the world detracts from G-d’s “omnipotence.” However, I believe that in order for G-d to give us the world in which we live, there were sacrifices of direct control that She needed to make.

What do you guys think?