Daniel Schorr Tells God to Explain Himself

William Stewart sends the link to John Piper's Was Katrina Intelligent Design?. It is a reply to Daniel Schorr's remark on NPR that if Katrina "was the result of intelligent design, then the designer has something to answer for.” Piper takes this head on, first quoting Job, and then concluding:

Our guilt in the face of Katrina is not that we can’t see the intelligence in God’s design, but that we can’t see arrogance in our own heart. God will always be guilty of high crimes for those who think they’ve never committed any.

But God commits no crimes when he brings famine, flood, and pestilence on the earth. “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6). The answer of the prophet is no. God’s own testimony is the same: “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). And if we ask, is there intelligent design in it all, the Bible answers: “You meant evil . . . but God meant it [designed it] for good” (Genesis 50:20).

This will always be ludicrous to those who put the life of man above the glory of God. Until our hearts are broken, not just for the life-destroying misery of human pain, but for the God-insulting rebellion of human sin, we will not see intelligent design in the way God mingles mercy and judgment in this world.

This is a truth — "My ways are not your ways, little man," as the Living Bible might put it — many of us find difficult to articulate without discomfort. It's not that we feel that God has a lot to answer for, as Mr. Schorr does, if he believes in God at all. The problem is that for various reasons we don't feel comfortable with stating the matter in the biblical manner. It's just too stark, too bold, too in-your-face, too . . . unapologetic.

I think we've been trained or conditioned to expect the Creator of the cosmos to say, in the manner of the tweedy English uncle in an old movie, "Well, gosh, things really are awful, aren't they? It's terrible, just terrible. Hurricanes, plagues, wars, locusts, cancer, tsuanmis, earthquakes . . . well, you know, damn poor thing this world. Now, I know you're thinking this is all my fault, and I absolutely understand why you do, don't blame you a bit, but do give me a chance to explain, there's a good lad."

Mr. Schorr, on the other hand, just blows off God with a smart remark. I don't mind atheists speaking atheistically, or agnostics speaking agnostically, but I do mind their speaking that way without counting the cost. It may sound witty to say that the Designer, if he exists, has something to answer for, which is to say that the Designer, if he exists, is an inept or corrupt designer whose mistakes (if he's inept) or sabotage (if he's corrupt) have caused untold and pointless suffering, but not if you haven't thought what the alternative means.

You have to face what it means if there is no God, and I've seen little evidence, actually almost no evidence at all, that people like Mr. Schorr have given the matter a second's thought. If there is no Designer and no design, then the people stealing medicines from sick old people in nursing homes, the men prowling neighborhoods raping defenseless women, even the incompetent and self-serving bureaucrats who bungled so much, are just as admirable, or not, as Mr. Schorr and his friends in the studio.

If the design doesn't work, there is no Designer. He doesn't have to answer for the apparent failures in his design because he doesn't exist. I can see that this seems a satisfying answer, one that solves the contrast we see between Divine claims and this-worldly reality.

But is it really a satisfying answer? Not, I think, if you look at the alternative. If there is no God, no Designer, no answer of any sort is possible, nothing can be said for or against hurricanes and the wicked who profit from them. If there is no God, all answers are equally true or equally false, the rapist's and the commentator's.

People like Mr. Schorr apparently don't feel the weight and horror of the alternative. They depend upon a belief in a moral order whose Guarantor they have declared unbelievable — a most comforting belief they have no intellectual right to hold. If they felt the horror of a world without a Designer, they might listen more closely to Job, Amos, and Isaiah.

Comments

[John Rush]

I heard Mr. Schorr's comments in NPR as well. (I always listen to NPR and don't know why. Self-flagellation, I guess.)

At the time I wanted to say to him, "Yes, this world is a world made by design. But it is also a fallen world. This fallen world retains the underlying design but shows the curse as well--especially by calamaties that the Katrinas of this world inflict. This is not God's fault. It is ours."

But of course, I don't have Mr. Schorr's attention. I used to get angry at him but I've moved on to pity--and hopefully compassion. How can a lost man see the design? What do we expect?

JRush

[Juli]

Daniel Schorr is Jewish. I didn't hear Schorr's remarks, but surely it's a fairly established Jewish tradition (understatement) to question and challenge God in trying situations, even to express anger. It's not impious by definition, or at least it's not unbiblical.

(When I listen to NPR it's because their coverage of almost everything is more in-depth than what I can hear anywhere else on radio.)

[Will S.]

> surely it's a fairly established Jewish tradition (understatement) to question and challenge God in trying situations, even to express anger. It's not impious by definition, or at least it's not unbiblical.

Ah, how did God react to Job's complaints? He demonstrated His omniscience and omnipotence, and Job repented of his words, and silenced himself, as he ought to have in the first place.

Yes, the Psalms often express discontentment with one's lot in life, as does Ecclesiastes question the meaning of it all, but in both cases, they return to faith in God as the answer. In contrast, Schorr's challenge to God is surely indicative of a lack of faith in God, notwithstanding some "ethnically Jewish" ancestry; it goes far beyond anything legitimate.

[Adrienne]

Juli wrote:

"Daniel Schorr is Jewish. I didn't hear Schorr's remarks, but surely it's a fairly established Jewish tradition (understatement) to question and challenge God in trying situations, even to express anger. It's not impious by definition, or at least it's not unbiblical."

Yep, absolutely.

Here is an illustrative clip from a book by Alan Dershowitz:

"The great eighteenth century rabbi, Levi Isaac of Berdichev...brought a religious 'lawsuit' against God and told God that he would refuse to obey any divine commands that endangered the welfare of the Jewish people...He stood up to a God who he believed had the power to punish him but who he also believed was acting unjustly. In challenging God, he was following the tradition of the heroic Abraham who argued with God over His willingness to sacrifice the innocent along with the guilty of Sodom, rather than the compliant Abraham who willingly obeyed God’s unjust command to sacrifice the innocent Isaac."

[Fr. Phil Bloom]

Thanks, David, for the thoughtful reflection. Daniel Schorr has an anemic idea of God. He seems to picture Him as an old man on life support - better to just pull the plug and rid ourselves of the annoying, senile presence. But, like you say, Schorr has not considered the consequences.

Even Dershowitz' Rabbi seems to veer in that direction. We cannot appreciate either the "heroic" or the "compliant" Abraham unless, like father of faith, we have some sense of the sovereignty of God.

[Adrienne]

The original post said,

"If there is no God, all answers are equally true or equally false, the rapist's and the commentator's."

I see this statement as totally illogical. But then, I am not a believer, either.

[David Mills]

There's nothing *illogical* about it. It may be untrue, but the form is perfectly logical. Being a believer has nothing to do with this particular matter.

[Adrienne]

"There's nothing *illogical* about it. It may be untrue, but the form is perfectly logical."

Say what you will, Mr. Mills, I find the conclusion drawn from the argument is illogical.

Something along the lines of this type of reasoning:

My cat is a Siamese.

My cat meows loudly.

Therefore, without the existence of a Siamese, all cats must be mute.

And I also find the conclusion itself ludicrious, but that discussion is already going on in a different thread.