A Theodicy For the World (Part Three - The Guiding Parent)

We’ve deconstructed theodicy, but we now must reconstruct something in its place if we are going to properly respond to suffering. How should we understand suffering and God? This episode sets up our journey to the book of Lamentations with an alternative theodicy - The Guiding Parent:

A child is the result of the parent, reflected in their image, and influenced by their being. The role of the parent is to guide the child. Therefore, the healthy parent respects the freedom of the child.

In doing so, occasions of failure are certain. The child will fall, experience pain, make unfixable mistakes, rebel, and possibly, cause harm to themselves and others; possibly even to the parent.

The parent, however, does not stop tirelessly pursuing their beloved child. Just as a child can never escape the parent’s love, the parent, even from a distance, stays immanently present, always calling the child toward goodness.

Yet, the method of a parent drawing their child to goodness cannot happen by force nor by removing the child’s self-agency and doing their life for them. The parent can only draw the child to goodness by displaying that kind of life and carrying the child from a present, yet autonomous distance. Only then can the child be guided to that good fullness for which they are intended.

The parent does not rejoice at the child’s suffering nor does the parent ever emphasize the good that may come from such suffering. But in allowing the child to discover the world for themselves, they know the possibility that suffering may befall them.

The parent hopes for perfectly good experience, but walks with the child in whatever landscape their freedom takes them, constantly honing their trajectory as supportively as possible until their story can exist in fully realized goodness.

Thus, the nature of the parent will be known, the nature of the child will finally and completely be synonymous with that nature, and the process of their story will be finished.