The question at hand is a difficult one. This isn’t because there aren’t answers to it, but rather because engaging with this question might make me appear unsympathetic. After all, suffering is terrible. More than a problem, we rightly associate suffering with evil. It affects everyone to different degrees—some to the extremely painful. Furthermore, the idea that God is sovereign over suffering isn’t emotionally satisfying for many people. Why, they ask, would he allow rape or colonialism? If a sparrow doesn’t fall to the ground apart from God’s will (Matthew 10:29), others add, then neither do the bodies of innocents gunned down in war.
That God is sovereign over suffering isn’t emotionally satisfying for many people.
Claims along the above lines were made a while ago by Dr Khanyisile Tshabalala, in an interview with THEE ALFA HOUSE, a Pan-African broadcast. At one point, she says that her daughter once asked, “Did the guns and the Bibles come in the same ship? Did the soldiers and the missionaries come on the same ship?” Of course they did, Dr Tshabalala told her before admitting that she can’t handle the idea that God didn’t stop something he knew would alter Africans forever. He didn’t prevent it. She concluded the thought with these words, “He is a present God. I like the absent God.” Together with countless others, Dr Tshabalala thinks an absent and far-off God provides us with a better explanation for the gross injustices of history and human suffering.
Below, I’ll argue that an absent God in no way offers a better answer to the question of evil and suffering. My case is simple: if the absent God is truly God, then he knew what would happen and didn’t merely allow it to happen, he actively withdrew from human plight. He’s indifferent to all that goes on under the sun, unconcerned with our cries.
The Problem of God Being All-Knowing
In his African Religions and Philosophy, John Mbiti records that the vast majority of Africans’ theology about God presents him as all-knowing. “There is nothing, Mbiti writes, “hidden from him. He is called the Wise One, whose wisdom, knowledge and understanding are without limit” (p56). This raises a challenge for advocates of African spirituality, such as Dr Khanyisile Tshabalala and P. L. O. Lumumba. If “the absent God” is all-knowing, it follows that he knew about the colonisation of Africans, but chose to stay away. Surely omniscience includes foreknowledge. If God is “all-knowing” then the future isn’t a mystery to him. He knew the ancestors and chiefs couldn’t prevent colonialism. The ships didn’t surprise him. He didn’t stop them.
The ships didn’t surprise him. He didn’t stop them.
In all my reading and conversations in a host of African countries, I haven’t come across an African theology that denies God is omniscient. Coming back to Mbiti’s statement, then, we must ask if this absent God is as wise as he claims. Sure, some will rally in his defence, insisting that in his wisdom God gave ancestors and spirits to protect his people. But this would again raise questions about his wisdom. Furthermore, it suggests that the spirits and ancestors are actually impotent. For they failed in their task. This remote, distant God doesn’t appear to be very wise, in the end. Why would he entrust Africans to the protection of ancestors or spirits or chieftains? Did he know they’d fail? Maybe he didn’t. But then he wouldn’t be all-wise.
The Problem With Omnipresence and Absence
During her interview, Dr Tshabalala highly recommends Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu by former Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta (1965). In his book, Kenyatta writes, “The creator lives in the sky…but has temporary homes on earth, situated on mountains, where he may rest during his visits. The visits are made with a view to his carrying out a kind of ‘general inspection’…and to bring blessings and punishments to the people” (p224). Consistent with Dr Tshabalala’s view, the absent God isn’t omnipresent. But Mbiti insists that God is omnipresent, immanent and transcendent. “In theory,” he writes, “God is transcendent, but in practice he is immanent” (p33).
This raises a question about the nature of God in African theology.
This raises a question about the nature of God in African theology. Is God omnipresent or not? Both can’t be true. If one answers that God is omnipresent, then it follows that God isn’t absent. In other words, God must have been present during colonisation. If God isn’t omnipresent, he isn’t off the hook for permitting so much suffering in the world. Why? If God isn’t omnipresent, then he chooses where to be; and he must opt to distance himself from those who’re suffering.
Coming back to Kenyatta, in Facing Mount Kenya, he tells us that “God is a distinct Being and takes but little interest in individuals in their daily walks of life” (p226). This can only mean, at the very least, on an individual level, God permits terrible evil not because he is unaware but simply because he isn’t interested. Put a little more confrontationally: he just doesn’t care enough to draw near.
Again, in Kenyatta’s words, “God lives in the heavens, and he does not bother with the work or affairs of one man alone. He looks after the affairs of a whole people or a homestead.” The problem here is that colonialism falls within God’s jurisdiction, at least according to Kenyatta, because it affected whole people groups and extensive portions of Africa. In other words, being distant doesn’t exonerate him. God might not involve himself in the nitty gritty of everyday life, but he must surely be concerned with an entire continent.
Insisting on Distance Means Other Questions
African spirituality’s attempts to exempt God in matters of evil and suffering—indeed colonialism, among other historical and present atrocities—by claiming that he is absent, fail. They fail outright. In fact, they drive us towards concluding that this God isn’t God at all. Arguing that he was unaware of colonialism doesn’t fit with him being all-seeing. If all-seeing, colonialism suggests a serious lack of wisdom or power, or both. Added to that, why did he install ancestors and spirits if they were unable to protect African people? This would imply that he isn’t wise or all-seeing. Finally, absence can’t be squared with omnipresence, something nearly all African theologies insist on.
DON’T HAVE PAYPAL TO SET UP A MONTHLY DONATION? If you would like to donate via Payfast – a secure payment gateway available to donors both inside and outside of Africa – please click here.
