BERLIN – Arkady Waispapir, the last known survivor of the Nazis' Sobibor death camp, has died in Ukraine. He was 96.
The Berlin-based Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe said Monday that Waispapir died Jan. 11 in Kiev.
Kurosawa had just asked Taichi to repeat his question from Tuesday’s lunch.
He did. “Sir, why is there so much evil in the world? If God loves us, why does He allow bad things to happen to good people?”
Taichi knew his question was not easy to answer, so he waited patiently for his boss to respond.
Meanwhile, Kurosawa was using his chopsticks to grab and pop a small rolled omelette into his mouth. Then another. Then another.
Taichi continued to wait. After a minute Kurosawa said, “Lad! Don’t just sit there like a statue. Eat! Give me a minute. I’m thinking about how to answer your question.”
Taichi obeyed. He twirled some noodles on his chopsticks and sucked them in.
After another minute Kurosawa finally spoke. “Hmm, all right. Tell me, Yaegashi, I have a question for you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Can God make a stone that is so heavy that He cannot lift it?”
Taichi was confused. “Huh? That is something a child would ask.”
“Yes, but how would you answer that question if you were God?”
“I wouldn’t. It’s a silly question.”
“Ok, but why is it a silly question?”
“Well, it just is. It’s just.. a bogus question, that’s all.”
“You mean the question is invalid.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But, Yaegashi, why is it invalid?”
“Uhm..” He thought some more. “Because it just is.”
Kurosawa smiled. “The proper response, Yaegashi, is to say that the question is invalid because it is ill-posed. The question is based on the assumption that God would ever desire to do something against His own will. The question stumbles on the double-meaning of the word ‘can’. It conflates its two definitions: to allow (you may) and to want (desire to).”
“You mean kind of like the question, ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’”
“Well, I suppose, sort of. But that question makes a different bogus assumption, that the person had been beating his wife, and the only question was to determine when he had stopped beating her. It’s a cheap rhetorical trick.”
“I see.”
“So getting back to the original subject.. now tell me Yaegashi, what do you think of your question now, ‘Why does God allow evil?’”
Taichi thought a bit. “Hmm. I think what you are saying is that it is like the rock that God cannot lift, right? The question itself is ill-posed. Invalid.”
“Yes. But why is it ill-posed?”
Taichi thought some more. “It is because the question stumbles over the meaning of the word ‘allow’, just like the first question question does over the word ‘can’.”
“You are correct. The question conflates the meaning that word, to permit (you may) versus to want (desire to). Now, in this case the second meaning is a bit more subtle than the rock question, because it turns on an implicit implication that God can do anything He desires, and so therefore He ought to be able to prevent evil and yet He does not.”
“I see. So in other words, what you are saying is that God permits evil to exist, but He does not desire it. But then please tell me, sir, why did God create evil in the first place if He does not want it?”
“You are asking me why did God create evil?”
“Yeah.”
Kurosawa looked a bit disappointed, for he saw that Taichi had just asked another ill-posed question without realizing it. He felt that Taichi should have been able to answer it himself. Kurosawa thought a moment about how to best explain it as simply as possible.
He finally said, “Give me that clean paper napkin.” Taichi handed it to him.
Kurosawa took out a ballpoint pen and carefully drew a round line on it. Then he showed it to Taichi. “What is that?”
“You drew a circle.”
“Yes, a circle. That is my answer to your question.”
Taichi picked up the napkin and looked at it. “This is a riddle.” He tried the understand the point that Kurosawa was trying to make. “Does it have something to do with the Taijitu, the Great Circle with the yin and yang? That good and evil are opposite forces?”
Kurosawa indulgently replied, “Nice guess, but no. Try again.”
Taichi thought some more. Eventually he gave up. He had no idea what Kurosawa was driving at. He decided to wait patiently for Kurosawa to explain the riddle to him.
Meanwhile, Kurosawa saw that Taichi wasn’t eating. Kurosawa narrowed his eyes a bit and looked at Taichi’s plate, then at him, then at his plate once more. Taichi got the hint and began digging into his meal again. As he did so, Kurosawa explained, “The answer to my little riddle, dear lad, is the circle itself. Its existence. Did God create that? I don’t mean this particular one, I mean the idea, the concept, of a circle.”
Taichi thought. “Uhm, well, not ‘create’ as such, no. The idea of a circle exists independently of any creator. It would exist even if there was no God at all.”
“Right. A circle exists intrinsically. It has always been ‘created’, so to speak, not by God per se, but by the fundamental rules of basic mathematics. These basic laws exist independently of any creator. A circle is the natural result of constructing the set of all points on the Euclidean plane that are at a given distance r from a given point. The end result is always a circle.”
“I see. So what you are implying is that evil works the same way, yes? That evil is the result of some deeper, more fundamental, rules.”
“Am I? Keep going.”
“And, uh, and so..” Taichi furrowed his brow. “.. and so there might be rules that are so deep that they are intrinsic to how everything works, right? So the ‘circle of evil’, so to speak, is intrinsic. It is intrinsic not in the sense of God creating our particular universe or world, but in how any such universe by necessity must operate. At least any interesting one. And so to prevent a circle from being created, Euclid could have stopped with simply a one-dimensional geometry instead of a three-dimensional one, say, a number line, like the ones we studied in elementary school. That would prevent anyone from creating an ‘evil circle’. But such a geometry would be incredibly boring and uninteresting.”
Kurosawa’s eyes twinkled a bit. “Very good Yaegashi. You just said something profound.”
“Uh, I did?”
Then Kurosawa appeared to change the subject. “Tell me, Yaegashi, why do predators exist?”
That thew Taichi off a bit. He wasn’t sure where Kurosawa was going with his new question. He thought some more. “Uhm, predators exist because they are a fundamental part of how life works..?”
Kurosawa beamed at him, “Excellent! Yes, predators do seem to be everywhere. Even amoebas are predators. Organisms would have never progressed beyond the level of pre-eukaryotic cells otherwise. Mitochondria would have never been captured, for example, and that is a necessary prerequisite to form cells that contain a distinct nucleus with internal organelles, without which life would have been incredibly dull and uninteresting. And so we have predators.”
Taichi said, “And so.. on a human level it’s the same thing, right? It’s a fundamental side effect of our having free will. If humans could never prey on other humans, if evil was not possible, then we would lose all of our free will, our freedom to make moral choices. And the freedom to make those choices is important to Him, yes? It part of what makes us precious in His eyes..”
“Yes. A forced confession is useless, empty. Meaningless. Worse than useless, actually.”
“Of course. Otherwise we would be nothing more than dolls, robots.”
“Which is why free will is fundamental. But tell me, Yaegashi, why not just simply outlaw all evil acts? Why not just create, say, some kind of worldwide police force that would always intervene as soon as we tried to do anything wrong?”
“Uhm.. because then there would just be resentment added as well. The desire for rebellion would be universal, and be quite justified to boot.”
“Okay. But now we are back to square one.”
Taichi sighed, “Ugh. I never realized how tricky it is..”
“You’re catching on. And yet we know that God’s solution is elegant. We know that His creation is amazing and majestic. I mean, just look at it.” Kurosawa gestured to the scenic vista on the horizon. “All of the wonderful and beautiful scenery that you see before you was constructed from just four basic physical forces operating on a handful of elementary particles.”
“And it is the same with us at the human level, right? That there are just a few basic rules of behavior? God has established those basic principles, like free will, which are needed in order for us to choose to love Him of our own volition. And so evil was also permitted, but not as flaw or defect, but rather as a necessary side effect of our ability to make choices.”
“Correct. I think C.S. Lewis said it best. ‘Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata - of creatures that worked like machines - would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they’ve got to be free.’ “
He went on. “When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Good and Evil, it gave them the awareness of the ability to make moral choices, which they then could make of their own free will.”
Taichi leaned forward. “But sir, didn’t they already have free will before the Fall? And if so, why couldn’t they do evil acts before then?”
“They did have it, but they were also in perfect communion with God, so having evil thoughts didn’t even occur to them. They didn’t sin because it just wasn’t even conceivable. Afterwards it was.”
“But why not just have both? Why can’t we have perfect communion with Him and the awareness to make moral choices, all at the same time?”
Kurosawa spun another noodle ball. “Well, you can either have the knowledge and ability to make moral choices - and face the consequences - or you can have direct contact with God, and with it immortality, and never stray because it never even enters your mind. You cannot have both. Once the option is open you are going to slip up. It’s inevitable, and then communion with Him becomes impossible. Well, that is, at least not until you introduce some kind of reconciliation mechanism.”
“You mean Christ.”
“Yes.”
“So, evil is basically the inevitable byproduct of our having free will combined with our ability to make moral choices.”
“More or less.” Kurosawa unspooled the noodle ball into his mouth.
“I see.” Taichi understood that much now, but then he thought of another objection. He leaned forward and asked, “But then please tell me, sir, why does God allow so much suffering in the world? Why does He allow bad things to happen to good people? I don’t mean evil acts, but things like accidents, illnesses, natural disasters and such?”
The large man finished downing his rice and said, “Ah, your second question from Tuesday. That one goes even deeper than your first. Indeed, it goes about as deep as any such philosophical question can go. You certainly do have a knack for asking hard questions, my boy.”
Kurosawa leaned back. “Well, the truth is, I don’t have a fully satisfactory answer for you.”
Taichi looked a bit disappointed.
Kurosawa put down his chopsticks. This was the first time Taichi saw him actually stop eating during their talks. “But I tell you what, I’ll give it my best shot. Is that okay?”
“Thank you sir. I appreciate it.”
“Hmm. Okay.. let me think a moment.”
Taichi waited.
“Hmm. Here it goes. Now, please understand that this is only my personal view on the subject. Don’t take my word as gospel.”
“Of course, sir. I understand.”
“Well, let me see. First of all, let me ask you another question: What kind of world would you like there to be? Would you like a world that was a utopia where there was no pain, no labor, no hills to climb? Nothing to accomplish? No obstacles? No challenges?”
“Well, uh.. no..”
“Now, pick any human trait or quality that you admire.”
“Hmm. Courage.”
“Courage only exists in the face of adversity. Whether it be war, serious health issues, or a threat to oneself or another. In a utopia there would be no need for courage. Now pick another.”
“Compassion.”
“Compassion only exists where another is in pain or in need. Otherwise there would be no need for sympathy, no empathy. Or how about healing? Healing can only exist where there is sickness or injury. We can keep doing this endlessly. Taichi, don’t you see? No good quality of man can exist without suffering in the world. We have to understand and accept this.”
Taichi said thoughtfully, “I see. I know this is a basic Buddhist teaching.”
“Indeed. It is one of Buddhism’s most central concepts, called dukkha. The Buddhist’s response to suffering is basically, ‘Yeah, life sucks and then you die. So deal with it and move on.’ This is why Buddhism teaches that we ought to detatch ourselves from worldly desires in favor of spiritual ones. I do respect Buddhism in that regard, but as a Christian I know there is far more to it than that.”
Kurosawa folded his napkin. “Now, you remember on Tuesday the hint that I gave you, the three words that I told you to think about?”
“Corrective, constructive, and controlling.”
“That’s right. In light of our discussion so far, do you think you can explain them to me?”
Taichi thought a moment. “Well, sir, I think I understand the first one. By ‘corrective’ you were referring to the bad things that can happen to us as a direct consequence of our own willful, negligent, or foolish actions. Things that are our own fault. For example, when a chain smoker gets lung cancer. Or when a driver doesn’t wear his seat-belt and flies through a windshield. It is our own fault that these bad things happen.”
“Fair enough. And the second, constructive?”
Taichi put down his chopsticks. “There is an old saying, ‘Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger.’ I think here you were referring to the bad things that happen in your life that temper or mold your character, that change you, that make you a wiser or a better person for it.”
“I did. And it includes even things that actually kill your body, even though the Lord will never put you in a situation beyond what your spirit can bear.”
“I see.” Then Taichi took a chance and said, “And it includes the reason why you are sitting in that wheelchair.”
Kurosawa was impressed with Taichi’s insight. He had never told him what happened. “You’re right. And one day I will tell you my story, but not today. Our remaining lunch time is getting too short.”
It was at a later lunch that Kurosawa explained to Taichi his story, of how God had to break his body to break him. To break him of his own smug sense of moral superiority over his tormentors, and how he had fancied himself to be like Jesus in that regard, when in truth he had acted more like a Pharisee as he accused and condemned everyone around him for their moral failings. It wasn’t until his body was broken and his mother taken away - the only person in the world who he felt had loved him up to that point - that his spirit was changed, and he was transformed, as he finally understood what Jesus had really done for him and everyone else at Calvary. And from that he understood what mercy and compassion really were, and it changed his life forever.
“Of course sir, I understand.”
Kurosawa started eating the remainder of his meal again. Taichi then leaned forward and asked, “But sir, I’m still unsure about that last one, ‘controlling’. From what you’ve said so far today I think I have a small glimmer of what you were hinting at, but I still don’t really get most of it. I don’t understand why God would allow all those terrible disasters to occur, like massive earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and such.”
“All right. Give me a moment to think.” Kurosawa sat back. “Again, please keep in mind that these are just my own opinions and should not be taken as gospel.”
“Of course.”
Kurosawa decided that he had finished his meal even though his plate wasn’t empty, which was uncharacteristic of him.
“I have another question for you, Yaegashi. Tell me, what is mankind’s oldest sin?”
Taichi knew that one was easy. “It is to try to become like God, which is what the serpent said in his lie to Adam and Eve to induce them to eat of the Tree.”
“Correct. In other words, mankind’s oldest sin is in trying to replace God. We do it over and over. We do it every time we try to create a utopia based on so-called ‘scientific’ principles. And it doesn’t matter if it is a workers paradise, a Volksgemeinschaft, a Nietzschen dictatorship, or any other form of secular society that rejects God. These attempted utopias have always failed, and they always will. One reason they keep doing it is because the 19th century German secular philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, ‘God is dead, and we have killed him.’ He said that God could be replaced by the Ubermensch, the superman. All that was needed was the will and the power to do so.”
Taichi chuckled, “Isn’t that the old joke?”
God is dead.
-Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead.
-God
Kurosawa grinned, “Well, yes, heh. And it doesn’t help his case that he went completely insane at the end, running around the streets of Turin babbling about being crucified.” Then his face became more serious. “More to the point, I think these attempts are one reason why natural disasters periodically happen to us. You see, I think that God needs to kick down our little anthills once in a while, to remind us who is really in charge. We humans try to create great societies, construct large public works, build majestic bridges, tall buildings, and huge cities. And we can marvel at all of these great achievements. But we need to remember that we are not in charge of the place. Somebody else is in charge. And I think our landlord has to periodically remind us of that.”
Taichi grinned, “And a good thing too, otherwise there would be no need for people like you or me.”
Kurosawa made a small smile again. “Yes, if there were no disasters you and I would be out of a job. We’d be unemployed.” His face became oddly wistful. “I look forward to that day..”
“Sir?”
“The day when the suffering ends, when the story is finished.”
Taichi wasn’t following. “The story?”
“Oh, I mean God’s story, the Bible. The story begins with God’s chosen people, the Israelites - the name the Lord gave to Jacob after he wrestled with the angel: Israel, ‘He who wrestles with God’. The Israelites are literally the God-wrestlers. The Old Testament is a basically a love story about a parent and His wayward children. God had sent his prophets to His unruly children, the God-wrestlers, to try to bring them back home to Him. That’s the whole OT in a nutshell. And He never gave up on them. And He still hasn’t given up on them, and He never will.
“And then, in the New Testament, the story expands. His offer is extended to all of us to become His adopted children, to cross the impossible gap with His Son as the bridge, to give us the opportunity to reconcile us all with Him so that we can all call Him ‘Abba’ (Daddy) and finally be united with Him and be brought home. But instead we rebelled and killed Him. And we will continue to rebel again and again, right to the very end, until the day He returns and we are finally reconciled and brought home to Daddy.”
Taichi asked, “But why make us go through all that suffering and pain in order to get there?”
“Ah, you asked another good question. Yes, why didn’t the Lord simply jump to the end of the story? Why not just jump to the Bible’s final chapter, Revelations 22, and leave out all the other 1,180 chapters and all that history, most of which was abject misery? Why not just have everyone go to live in with Him in Heaven right at the start?”
“I don’t understand it either, sir. Why did all this rebelling and suffering have to happen first?”
“Well, I think it is because God is trying to make a point. You see, I think that all of human history is basically a demonstration exercise.”
“A demonstration exercise?”
“Yes.”
“But for who? Himself?”
“No of course not, silly.”
“Then for who?”
The chime sounded for the end of the lunch hour. Kurosawa looked at his watch. “Well, you and I need to go back to work.
