One of the things in current American language use that bothers me the most is the misuse of the word "tragedy" to describe intentional mass murders and other horrible crimes committed with full intent by human beings. Those are not "tragedies" that happen at the whims of the gods or because of fate or the atheist-materialist-scientistic god of random chance, they are crimes. It romanticizes them, lessens them, in the apt words of Hans Kung, it does what he explicitly and strongly states IS NOT TO BE DONE, it reinterprets it, it lessens it, it adds some kind of aura of glory to it. To turn intentional criminals into the mere toys of external forces is to let the the criminals off too easy, them and, the extent to which others up to and including the entire society that they arose in, it enables that to be repeated.
There are crimes which are tragic but the only ones that I think are relevant are when those are committed by someone driven beyond tolerance by circumstances, either through mental debility or through their own terrible suffering. A person driven past the point of endurance at witnessing of fearing unendurable pain for a loved one may be led to kill them, someone who is starving may shoot someone during a robbery (though they are probably more liable to being killed, themselves). But that is a rare circumstance that would require a different and longer general discussion. Only looking deeper at the circumstances of a particular case could do them justice.
That my general objection to that confusion of language is related, I suspect, to the distinction that must be made between evil and suffering. Suffering is a general condition, it is the condition of much of if not all of sentient life. Evil is always suffered by someone, a person or animal or other sentient being but not all suffering is a result of evil, the intentional or indifferent causing of pain by a reasoning creature - a created being who thinks. It might be something which only people do, I don't know how the mind of a cat tormenting an animal before it kills it thinks, how aware they are of the pain and terror they are inflicting. If that's related to the delight that people take in causing pain,I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me. if it was like it. I don't know if cats have an excuse for that, I know people don't in so far as people can comprehend it.*
In the passage I posted from Hans Kung's book On Being A Christian yesterday he said two things that contradict the accusation that "Christianity is all about causing pain and death".
Suffering and death remain as an attack on man's life. Suffering is not to be reinterpreted belittled or glorified. Nor is it to be accepted stoically, apathetically, unemotionally. And certainly, it should not be sought masochistically, making asceticism a source of pleasure. It is to be fought by every human means - as must be made clearer later - in both the individual and the social sphere, in both persons and structures.
The Crucifixion of Jesus was, by human design, a "freak show" as intended by the Roman authorities who killed him, not by his followers, those who after his Resurrection started what became the Christian religion. Part of the use of crucifixion as an instrument of imperial state terror was its public torture and degradation, the spectacle used as terror is always meant to be used as a tool for controlling "the masses" of making them afraid to exercise freedom and demand justice.**
He also said:
It [evil, pain] is to be fought by every human means - as must be made clearer later - in both the individual and the social sphere, in both persons and structures.
"As must be made clearer, later." This book is part of what I think even Kung considered something of a trilogy of long, extensively documented, tightly argued books, including Does God Exist? and Eternal Life? I may not get around to going into that clarification as Hans Kung presented it but I will point out that it is obvious from the teachings of Jesus, Paul, etc. that that is a task given to the people who would like to be followers of Jesus, that they become that by doing the will of God. He would certainly have meant as set out in The Law and in his teachings.
If you were really interested, get Kung's books and read them, look up as many of his citations as you can if you doubt he's a reliable scholar. He is quite excellent, as it happens.
The Mosaic Law is probably the most radical prescription for lessening evil and suffering yet set out, especially as modified by the teachings of Jesus - all those death penalties were certainly not intended to be retained by Jesus. That is what is asked of human beings, humans only having the capacity to do what humans can do. The periods when churches and religious establishments did quite a bit of evil through holding earthly power are definitively in opposition to the words of a man they claimed to believe spoke with the authority of God. Which supports the Gospel statement of Jesus that his kingdom was not of this Earth, no matter what "most Christian monarchs" most "Christian" prime ministers, presidents, legislators, judges, "justices" princes, etc. wanted to pretend, they could't possibly know even the most well known of the teachings of Jesus and believed they were acting as those commandments told them to. "Do unto others . . . " "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword," "Judge not lest you be judged."
I'd think humanity had enough to be getting on with, to the extent we are humanly able, to ending the evil that we choose to do. Making that distinction as to what is in our power and what isn't would certainly go a long way to doing that.
The endless taunting of Christians by raising the question of evil, demanding an answer in terms atheists, materialists and the cult of scientism would demand should be treated for the absurdity that it is. If that has not been done in the period since the Book of Job was written down, it's not going to be given. Even the Buddha who is held by so many millions as the best hope of a non-theological solution to the more general problem of pain didn't present an answer in those terms. Atheism has certainly never given one nor do I believe it ever really cared about the problem.
If that is dissatisfying to them, or, rather their polemical purpose, well, life's tough, ain't it. Tell me what happened before the Big Bang, or even right after it. Tell me why the atheist god of random chance indicates that by an incredibly enormous factor to one, we shouldn't be here and that all of the atheist attempts to get out of that cannot escape the most absurd of mythological entities, multiverses - either simultaneous or in a clearly absurd infinite regression in pasts that would have to come "before" every indication we have, now, time begin.
The solution as presented by Hans Kung is one that is there, it doesn't end pain, it doesn't end evil, not in human understanding. It doesn't even give an explanation of it but it does present that if humans cannot know the answer to it they can find a way out of it. But, as I pointed out, the pain that is the vehicle, the substance and the meaning of evil is the most intimate of experiences - it is entirely "subjective" - and no answer which will satisfy anyone is going to be had except as the most personal of choices. There will be no "objective" explanation of it. Human evil is the responsibility of human beings. So is ending it.
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And a related, insoluble problem.
The most difficult situation in trying to live this way I can think of is the killing of someone who is a present danger to someone else, I have absolutely no answer to how that is compatible with the teachings of Jesus though I can't bring myself to condemn it when that is what it really is. In Matthew, even as he is being arrested to be crucified, Jesus rejected violent protection but even then he said that his death was part of his purpose. I don't know how to relate that to the problem of killing someone in defense of someone else or yourself. If there's one thing I know, I'm not Jesus and I doubt anyone else is. Short that present danger, there is absolutely no way to justify killing someone who could be prevented from harming other people by non-lethal means.
The "just war" theory associated with Augustine along with all of the late classical, medieval and modern Christian theology that so obviously violates the teachings of Jesus on behalf of worldly power leads into nothing but the justified rejection of what calls itself "Christianity" which has nothing to do with Jesus or what I'm talking about here.
* I wonder if redemption doesn't include the idea that even the worst of us can, perhaps ultimately will fully know our guilt and will be offered the choice of rejecting that. I like to think it does. The argument that that is what the New Testament and even some of the First Testament indicates is possible.
** Remember that the next time you hear some play-lefty excusing the use of terror by dictators they support or terrorism as a tool of "revolution" or change. Terrorism is always a certain signal that those who use it will almost certainly not turn out to be democrats or "social democrats". Though there have been extremely ruthless despots who used terrorism who were not atheists, in the modern history of the West and those who have been influenced by the west, especially as fascists and Marxists, the worst of those have been anti-religious. That is a simple fact of history.
No one ever followed the teachings of Jesus into using terror. You can't do that while doing to them what you would have done to you, loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you, etc. You can't even hold them as a slave, slavery being entirely about treating others as you would never want them to treat you.
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