Does a Lack of Aptitude for Faith Always Stem from Shortcoming?

Mostafa Malekian: I have no doubt that there are personality types in whom the aptitude for faith is low. If these individuals had even an epsilon of faith, we should thank them and not ask why they do not have more than an epsilon of faith. These individuals fall into several categories.

1- The first category consists of those who have followed Kant's advice to "think for yourself"—people who, by nature or due to their upbringing and education, are independent thinkers. Those who do not imitate and are not given to dogmatic submission have less aptitude for faith.

2- The second category comprises those who can put themselves in another's place; these individuals have a low aptitude for faith. If I look at Tehran from the window of my own apartment, I see Tehran in a particular way. Now, if I have never seen Tehran from behind any other apartment's window, I can have faith or belief in the image I see from my own window. But if I sometimes also look outside from a neighbor's window, then I see that Tehran can be viewed in another way. In that case, can I cling firmly to my initial conception of Tehran?

3- The third category consists of those who are very sensitive to human pain and suffering. Religion generally holds an optimistic view of the world. Most religious teachings, directly or indirectly, inculcate an optimistic view of the world. If I am emotionally dull (just as some people are dull-minded) and do not feel the pain and suffering of others, I can maintain the optimistic view that religions inculcate. But for those who are very sensitive to human pain and suffering, maintaining religious beliefs is more or less difficult.

I myself am deeply affected whenever I read the harrowing story of that man in the Lisbon earthquake. If someone feels that father's pain and suffering, they will have difficulty with religion's optimistic view. (A man among the survivors of the Lisbon earthquake recounts: "My five children had died in the earthquake's destruction; my wife lay in a corner with a wounded, torn body, and there was no one to tend to her; the bodies of the children were each lying in a corner; in this situation, I was digging the ground to bury the children, and my wife was crying and pleading, 'Don't bury the children, I want to see them'; I kept saying, 'I can't not bury them, the weather is hot and their bodies will decompose.'") Of course, this optimistic view might be denied in a subtle and delicate way.

It is narrated from one of the mystics that he used to say: "O God, on the Day of Resurrection, I will stand at the gate of Hell, and whomever You wish to send into Hell, I will say, 'Place his sin upon my shoulders,' so that when I have sent everyone to Paradise, I myself will go to Hell in place of all of them." This is a kind of protest; that is, when a person is sensitive to the pain and suffering of other human beings, they say: Why should Hell even exist? Was the pain and suffering of humans in this world not enough?

Question: Is this not another expression of the "problem of evil as evidence against the existence of God"?

Answer: Yes, it is indeed a kind of evidence. Of course, someone might accept the argument of a certain philosopher in justifying this pain and suffering. For example, John Hick says the world is not a sanatorium for the body, but a soul-making workshop. If God wanted to create a sanatorium for human beings, then sickness, poverty, oppression, crime, etc., would negate that. But God wanted to create a workshop for making souls.

Someone who is emotionally dull says it is fine for a person to endure one or two small pains and sufferings so that, in return, their soul is made. But consider the situation of someone whose sick child needed surgery; they went to the hospital but had no money. So, with tears and lamentation, they begged for their child to be operated on and swore they would bring the necessary money the next day. But their child was not operated on, and the delay in surgery caused that child's death. At dawn, they wrapped their child's body in a blanket and handed it over to them. If a person feels this human being's suffering, they can no longer consider the world to be that workshop for life and soul that Hick speaks of. In my opinion, the objections that sensitive people sometimes raise go back to this point. For some sensitive and tender-hearted people, having faith is difficult.

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Does a Lack of Aptitude for Faith Always Stem from Shortcoming?

Source: Mostafa Malekian, Running After the Song of Truth, Kian No. 52, page 34

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