The problem of a good God and human suffering

In the opinion of both Satans, God should be judged according to humanitarian standards that measure a person's goodness by the amount of benefit or harm that person brings to the world. Based on this criterion, both condemn God because not only has God failed to show compassion by relieving suffering, but also, according to them, God is the one ultimately behind the dysfunctional systems that oppress humanity.

Both Satans want Jesus to join in their condemnation of God and of the flawed systems that God supports. In a very biblical sense, Jesus' fidelity to God is tested when God's character is attacked and Jesus is asked to join the assault. One of the main differences between the two novels is in the way that their Jesuses respond to these loyalty tests and the answers they offer to the question regarding God's goodness raised by the evil and suffering that exist in the world. In the end, both Jesus characters make the correct choices within their narrative worlds, but only one of those narrative worlds complements that of the Gospels.

164 Saramago's Jesus answers this question by agreeing with Satan's very accurate assessment of God's character. Abandoning his identity as the Son of God, this Jesus prefers to side with humanity against the "Ultimate Structure" oppressing them. Given the two options he faces of siding with a maniacal God planning world domination or joining with a compassionate Satan who offers to sacrifice his position in order to relieve human suffering, Saramago's Jesus makes the better choice available to him within Saramago’s fictional world.

As we have seen before, Saramago's characterization of God and the different metaphysical nature of his fictional world create a contradictory Jesus character who, unlike his Gospel counterpart, sides with Satan when tested rather than with God. Saramago's novel offers an answer that distorts the original premise of the question and blocks us from returning to it. Because of this reformulation of the given propositions, Saramago's narrative does not contribute to solving the problem of God's goodness in light of suffering. On that topic, his novel does not converse but only condemns. According to Gospel's worldview, there is no question of how a good God can allow suffering to exist. Its answer is simply that if there is a God, then that God cannot be good.

6.2.2. The response of The Hidden Years: redemption and true compassion

Boyd's Jesus, however, recognizes that Satan's portrayal of God's character and his feigned compassion for humanity are false. Realizing that God really does have humanity's best interests at heart, Boyd's Jesus remains faithful to his Father and his Father's proposed redemptive plan for the world.

Boyd's God, in one sense, turns out to be the true humanitarian for whom Saramago is searching. This God and the Jesus who represents him are so much in love with creation, flawed though it may be, that God refuses to destroy any part of it. Instead, his mission plan is

165 one of redemption, and it is embodied in Jesus' statement: "The role of good is to suffer and absorb evil and, by doing so, to redeem it" (235).

The Hidden Years' main response to the problem of evil and suffering is not an explanation of why it exists in the first place but rather a picture of what a good God is doing about it now. Once, when the disciples-to-be complain about the suffering they endure under Roman

occupation and ask why God has left them in exile in their own land, Jesus does not try to explain why they are suffering but answers by telling where God is during that suffering. According to Jesus, "God is with us. . . If we are exiled in our own land, so is he. He can be found anywhere, so if it is his will that we witness to him in suffering and want, so be it" (133). This statement encapsulates the novel's understanding of how God reacts to suffering in the world—by joining in it and by joining with his people.

In the novel, God provides this incarnational response most clearly through the character of Jesus whom Boyd depicts as the one through whom "God came to the Lake of Galilee" (144). Just as Matthew makes plain from the beginning of his Gospel that Jesus is Emmanuel—God with us (1:23), so too Boyd powerfully and artistically displays this theological theme

throughout his novel. Through his portrayal of Jesus, Boyd offers a truly compassionate response to the problem of suffering because he shows a Jesus who does not just relieve suffering but willingly suffers with humanity by sharing its pain.

Strangely enough, the greatest response to the problem of suffering and the best display of compassion according to The Hidden Years' theology is not pictured in the novel but only foreshadowed. The novel's temptation scene clearly points towards the cross as the path of humble obedience on which Jesus chooses to remain.242 _{His joining with the people in}

suffering throughout the novel and particularly in the testing scene prefigures the way that

242 _{Boyd’s point, like Matthew’s, is clear: “[I]n the Temptation Jesus began to move along a path of humble} obedience to the Father which, if continued, would lead inexorably to the cross” (Donaldson, Jesus on the Mountain, 100).

166 Jesus will finally take up all of that suffering on the cross and redeem it (cf. Matt 8:17).243 The "co-"passion, finally seen in Jesus' own Passion, is interpreted in Boyd's testing as the true embodiment of compassion—suffering with humanity by living among sinful humans under sinful structures and dying in order to redeem both. This version of compassion emerges as true humanitarianism because it destroys nothing and redeems everything.

Conversely, in Gospel, compassion for humanity and Jesus' passion are pitted against one another. Even so, Saramago ironically and perhaps inadvertently joins the two together when his Jesus decides to suffer as the King of the Jews in order to prevent the future suffering of many. Saramago’s version at this point partially coincides with the biblical accounts as Jesus experiences his own passion on behalf of humanity. The real difference between Saramago’s account and the view portrayed in Boyd’s work is that in the former Jesus’ passion is meant to rescue humanity from God whereas in the latter Jesus' passion will redeem humanity to be with God.

6.3. Is humanitarian compassion enough?