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Al had not been able to sleep. He rose while it was still very early in the morning. The safe house had an upper window, which was shaded by a smooth-barked tree with long narrow leaves. As Al sat in an armchair by the window, not even the beauty of the night and the magnificence of the stars shining through the gaps in the tree’s canopy could fill him with joy. His dashed hope about Pam and Little Thomas had brought him as close to complete and utter despair as he had ever been in the last few years.
Lord, get me out of my Slough of Despond![3] Al felt tears trickling down his cheek. A creak on the stairs made him turn around. Floyd Linder appeared carrying a light gourd.
Linder came into the room. As the light fell on his face, Al could see Linder begin to speak, then bite back his words. Linder sat down on the sofa and looked at Al thoughtfully. He seemed to come to a decision and said, “Al, I have a question. I know we talked about this when we had our long discussion about God and death after my grandmother died.[4] But the discussion still seems incomplete to me.”
Al felt annoyed at the interruption, but long practice made him give Linder his full attention. “How can I help?”
“Well,” said Linder, “Do you think God is sometimes forced to choose the lesser of two evils?”
“As I understand it,” said Al, inexplicably warming to the discussion, “God would never commit a moral evil such as lying or being malicious, but he might be forced to choose the lesser of two calamities in order to preserve his gift of free will to us.”
“But isn’t God omnipotent? To me, that means He can do whatever He wants. So why does He have to choose something He doesn’t desire?”
“If I’m an author,” said Al, “when I’m looking at a blank page I’m as omnipotent as a human being can be. But as soon as I write the first line, ‘The murder happened just before midnight on the moor,’ then I’m no longer omnipotent because I’m limited by the specifics of my own creation. God has to follow His own rules and be faithful to His own gifts and pronouncements. If He gives us free will, He has to live with that choice.”
Linder shifted on the sofa. Al looked out the window marshalling his thoughts. “Yeah,” said Linder, “I don’t really get what you’re saying.”
“Do you play bridge Linder?”
“Yes, I like to think what I do with the cards could be called ‘playing bridge’.”
“Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s pretend you and God are bridge partners playing a couple of world class players. How would the game proceed? For example, would God, sustaining the universe at every point, simply manage to deal Himself thirteen-trick hands all the time?”
“Speaking hypothetically, since I don’t believe in God, I would say ‘no.’ That would be too much like God playing the card sharp. He may have the power to give himself all aces, kings, queens and a jack, but the rules of the game are predicated on every player receiving a statistical distribution of cards. Furthermore, it would destroy the game by making it completely unfair and, frankly, boring.”
“Would God let Himself know what’s in your hand or the hands of your two opponents?”
“No, again. Playing with that information would be equivalent to peeking at the other player’s cards, and again, would be against the spirit of the game and would ultimately destroy what is most fun about it.”
“So, my point then Linder, is that God, by limiting Himself to the rules and spirit of the game, may lose hands playing bridge. He may lose hands because, by adhering to the statistical nature of the game, he will periodically receive hands so bad that it will be impossible to win any trick no matter how well He plays. On other occasions, you, his fallible partner, may make an error that causes a loss, which God has to accept because He has partnered with you.
“To choose otherwise would not only be unfair to the other players, but would also destroy the game.”
“So how will God being my partner make a difference?” asked Linder leaning back on the sofa.
“The rules of the game allow God to play every hand as well as He is able. Given the constraints of the game, He will still play every hand better than anyone else could play His hand. There will likely be imaginative choices and playing styles not yet discovered. At every point, God will play according to the rules and spirit of the game.”
Al leaned forward in the arm chair. “It’s clear He will not allow Himself to see other player’s hands, but He would likely go beyond that. You might think since He will know each individual so well that he can predict what their involuntary facial expressions indicate about their hands, that He would use this data to improve His play. But I think even in this grey area, He would act in a way that is within the spirit of the game—only making use of this information when it is proper to do so.”
Al could feel himself smiling. He had, for a short time, forgotten his despair. He saw Linder stifling a grin and a suspicion began to dawn on Al. “You didn’t open up this line of questioning because this question had kept you awake tonight, did you? You were trying to cheer me up and get me out of my gloom, weren’t you?”
Linder smiled broadly. “Did it work?”