Free God's Problem by Bart D. Ehrman

conflicts of the twentieth century. With respect to casualties, for example, the First World War is usually thought to have caused fifteen million deaths. Many of these deaths were grim and tortuous; trench warfare was an ugly affair. In terms of sheer numbers, the Second World War was far more significant: something like fifty to sixty million deaths, all told. That was 2–3 percent of the entire population of earth at the time. This is not counting, obviously, the severely wounded—soldiers with legs blown off by landmines or wounded with shrapnel they continued to carry in their bodies for the rest of their lives, and so on. What needs to be remembered whenever the raw numbers of those who die or suffer are tossed about is that each of these numbers represents an individual, a man, woman, or child who had physical needs and desires, loves and hates, beliefs and hopes. For more than fifty million individuals in the Second World War, thesehopes were savagely disappointed. And even survivors were scarred for life.
    One of the peculiar features of personal suffering is that it may not be worn on the face or evident from the externals of one’s later life. That’s not always true, of course: soldiers fortunate to have survived a war experience—whether a world war, Korea, Vietnam, or any other of the dozens of conflicts of the past century—were often unfortunate for the rest of their lives, permanently wounded or disfigured or so mentally and emotionally shaken that they could never lead a normal life again. Anyone who is inclined to glorify the exploits of war should delve deeply into Wilfred Owen’s poems or Dalton Trumbo’s 1971 film Johnny Got His Gun, one of the most terrifying movies ever made.
    Others, though, managed to survive a war, return to civilian life, and go on to lead a happy and prosperous existence—so much so that simply by looking at them, you would never know the deep anguish and suffering they had been through. There are millions of experiences like that, of course; here I’ll mention just one, the one I know best—the experience of my own father in the Second World War.
    By the time I reached the age of consciousness (I was a bit slow: say, age 13), my dad had the life of someone living out the American dream. We had a nice four-bedroom colonial house on a large lot, two cars, and a boat; we belonged to the country club and enjoyed an active social life. Dad was a highly successful businessman, working in sales for a corrugated box company in Lawrence, Kansas. He was happily married to a woman he considered his best friend, and they had three kids, one of whom, I might say, was particularly striking for looks and intelligence….
    Where is the suffering in a life like this? Well, there were of course the typical forms of disappointment, frustration, unrealized hopes, and the rest. And eventually cancer. But well before that, my dad had gone through more than his share of suffering in the world, particularly in the war. In March of 1943, as an eighteen-year-old, he was taken into the army. After a round of training in different branches of the service (a complicated story in itself), he eventually was sent over as a private first class to fight in Germany as part of the 104th Infantry Division (the “Timberwolves”). The ensuing battles marked him for life.
    His first day “on the job” he started out as an ammunition bearer, and by the end of the day was the first gunner on a machine gun. The two guys ahead of him had been killed, and he was the most qualified to take over. And so it went. The biggest trauma happened at a battle at the Roer River in Germany, on February 23, 1945. This was after the German surge at the Battle of the Bulge had been repulsed and the Allies were moving into German territory. The 104th was moving toward the Rhine under heavy fire but first had to cross the small Roer River, which was well protected on the other side by German troops armed to the teeth. The