It was indeed rather late. Yet Iwao said he still had more questions to ask. So I advised him to sleep on them and to produce them for our further discussion the following morning, when we would have more time to deal with them. Then we retired to our rooms, and for a time silence descended on the house.
Why were we ever born?
“Now,” I said when we had all gathered in the sitting-room after breakfast, “what are the questions still troubling your mind, Iwao? Or preferably, what is one of your questions? It might be difficult to deal with them all at once, if they are as fundamental as you imply.”
“As a matter of fact,” admitted Iwao, “you’ve already touched on it. It was the question of Hamlet you mentioned last night, ‘What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?’ You said my question was simpler, while his was more complicated. But I’m not so sure. When I asked, ‘What on earth are we here for?’ I was indeed thinking of the simple question of man’s existence on earth, as Hiroshi explained it. But there was something complicated at the back of my mind, and I think Hamlet put it very well. In my mind there’s the thought not only of ‘I’ but also of ‘such fellows as I’. I think of the many possible men who might have existed, all of them much better than I. Yet here I am, with all my faults and failings. Why, I wonder, has God chosen me to exist, and passed over the many possible men who might have existed, all of them better than myself? That’s what I can’t understand.”
“And I have another, similar question,” added Hiroshi, “though it may sound a little insulting to Iwao after what he’s just said. It isn’t only what Iwao thinks about himself, with some feeling of inferiority. It’s also what appears everywhere in the universe. When we think of the whole order of the universe, how one part fits in with another, especially the parts that are closer to us on earth, we can’t help admiring the intelligence and providence of the Creator, as we were saying last night. But with the light I see a shadow. With all the good qualities of the creatures we see around us, there are not a few defects as well. I don’t just mean defects of qualities they aren’t supposed to have, such as the defect of creative intelligence in a monkey sitting at a typewriter, but I mean defects of qualities they’re supposed to have. Most cows, for example, are submissive animals, but some of them sometimes become aggressive. In fact, everywhere in the animal world we see signs of strife, or what is called ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. Can we say that these are defects in the loving providence of God?”
“The question you raise,” I said, “is a really deep one. Or rather, it isn’t just one but two deep questions, about the universe in general, and about human beings in particular. As you say, it may be easy enough to see instances of order and love in the universe as signs of the loving providence of God. To that extent the question of being is a simple one. It may be called a mystery, but it’s a mystery of light. On the other hand, beside this mystery of light there’s another mystery of darkness. The signs of loving providence are indeed to be seen here and there, but only here and there, intermingled with opposite signs of strife and disorder. It reminds me of Christ’s parable of the wheat and the tares. The farmer has sown good wheat in his field, but then his enemy comes at night and sows evil tares, or harmful weeds. So when we see good in everything, like Shakespeare’s exiled duke in the Forest of Arden, we are led to praise him and thank him for his gifts. But when we see the evil in things, such as war among men or a massive tidal wave, we begin to lament our earthly lot and to wonder, with Job, why we were ever born.”
“Now you mention it,” added Mariko, “I’ve had similar thoughts to those of Iwao. Not that I’ve ever wondered why I was born, or why I’m now crawling about between heaven and earth. God has been very good to me. My life both at home and school has been a happy one. But I feel uneasy about my happiness, even a little guilty, when I read about so much unhappiness in the world. There are so many people, for instance, especially children, starving to death in parts of Africa. There’s so much warfare, misery and oppression everywhere in the world today. And not only today but yesterday, too, and in almost all ages of human history. The more I think of it all, the more miserable I become. Then I reflect on my present situation and wonder why I am exempt from it all. It’s somehow the reverse of what Iwao feels. He was wondering why he was chosen to exist, when so many others, possibly much better than himself, don’t exist. I wonder why so many others are chosen to suffer, when I am happy. Then I begin to suffer with them, if only in sympathy.”
“As for myself,” I commented, “I can well understand both your feeling and that of Iwao. In any family the happiness of one member is bound up with the happiness of all. The sufferings of one bring sufferings to all, if only in sympathy. Then we can think of all men as forming one large family, even if we are scattered all over the world. At least, we are all united by the gift of reason and rational discourse. So if we find ourselves stranded on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe, we are only too happy to meet a fellow man, like Man Friday, even if he is a savage and can’t speak our language. We can also extend our sympathy from men to animals and plants, and to all created beings. We all have something precious in common, and that is the gift of being. So poets speak of a symphony of nature, in which everything has its appointed place and makes music in praise of the great Creator. For this very reason, however, we feel sadness and distress at the many signs of discord and strife in the world.”
“Can it be,” asked Chieko, “that God allows these signs of discord and strife for some higher purpose of his own? Maybe what sound to our ears mere discords somehow fit into the greater harmony of creation. When one is close up to things, one notices all kinds of defects in them. But when one hears or sees them from a distance, they seem to disappear or blend into something good. When I hear my friends singing in the Glee Club at school, I can better appreciate their voices if I’m not in the same room but walking along a corridor outside.”
“That may be so,” I commented, “but it doesn’t quite solve the problem of why there’s strife in the world to begin with. You may say that God allows it, because he can control it and even make use of it in the long run for his higher purpose. But can you say it was God who first put it there? Can you say it is God who causes millions of poor people, men, women and children, to die of starvation in Africa? If we agree that God is a loving father who cares for his children, how can we say he is the cause of such strife and suffering, unless we also say that, while he is loving and provident, he is also somehow impotent?”
“That’s exactly my problem,” agreed Hiroshi. “There seems to be strife and suffering everywhere in the world. It even seems to cancel out everything we were saying last night about the loving providence of God as our heavenly Father. Even if he somehow brings it out all right in the end, why does he leave it to work itself out over such a long period of time? And how did it get into his creative plan in the first place? Before he created anything, didn’t he have the foresight to realize what was going to happen? Couldn’t he have arranged things otherwise? All I can say is that, if God exists, he must be, as you say, impotent against the power of evil.”
“But then,” added Iwao, “there’s the evil in ourselves. I find it in my study at school, when our teacher sets us a term paper to be completed by a certain time. If I’m late in handing in my paper, I invent various excuses, such as a cold or my mother’s serious illness, when it was only my laziness. Then I blame myself for having told a lie. Or at a students’ party, I know I am weak in alcohol, yet I allow myself to be persuaded to drink more beer than I can take. And so I get drunk. Then again I feel ashamed of myself. And then I wonder, like Hamlet, what should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth. In our minds we know very well what we ought to do, but we don’t do it, because in our wills we don’t really want to do it.”
“You speak about very little things,” I said. “But it is the same law at work in much larger crimes. We begin with such trifling faults on a small scale, telling lies to