Thread by @BikoMandelaGray

I don’t know what else to do, so I’m just talking into the void now, I guess.

I study theodicy not because it’s some abstract philosophical problem.

I study it because there is something ontological about black suffering. Something that exceeds institutions.

As I say in #blacklifematter, sitting with a suffering beloved is not the moment to offer theodicean explanations. Jesus *might* work it out—and we hope that he does—but to offer this in the acute moment of pain seems insensitive at best and downright foul at worst.

To sit with someone is to look at their pain and see that it isn’t limited to them. It is to see the source of that suffering clearly, “to know and do and be from there,” as @hystericalblkns might say (I’m quoting from memory, so that might not be precise).

It is to notice them. To notice how and why they suffer. To notice and take note of the ways that their suffering is occasioned not merely by random occurrences, but also structural neglect.

To sit with someone is to do nothing less than notice that things could be different—but they are not. And in noticing this, sitting with someone requires a different approach. It is to yearn for otherwise while trying to keep your eye on exactly why things aren’t.

I do this as a philosopher. I study theodicy because it is *the* religious and philosophical logic that occasions such neglect. Ppl fawning over Augustine miss that he was the one who sought to protect *God* in the face of evil.

But God needs no protection. God needs no salvation. God needs no healing, or defense.

We need that. All of it.

I’m going to write a book about this. And I’m going to do all I can to rid us of this brutal logic.

Because it isn’t just God who functions as the object of theodicy. This world also functions that way, demanding our acquiescence and adherence in the face of the suffering it deals to us (and by us, I mean black people).

I wrote about this in #blacklifematter. And I will extend that analysis in the next work. Because theodicy kills people. It encourages what William jones called “quietism”. It siphons resignation out of resistance, and dries up the will to fight through claims of belief.

We can no longer think like this. We need something better.

I will fight for that something better. Until my last fucking breath.

Be well, beloveds.