Why the Fly Theology

I recall our son Luke, when quite small, asking his first theological question.  “Why,” he asked me, “did God create the mosquito?” I had a ready answer.  God made the mosquito to feed the bats!  My answer did not stifle Luke’s curiosity.  “Does God care more for the bats than for us?  Why does God have the mosquito feed on me before the bats get to it?”  Why, indeed, did God create the mosquito?

Mark Twain asked the same question about the fly in his essay, “Thoughts of God:”  

“How often are we moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the execution of some of His (God’s) works. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned.  No one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name.  It is believed by many that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want.  In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has been wiling to explain what the want was.  At least satisfactorily.  A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract.

There is much inconsistency concerning the fly.  In all the ages he has not had a friend, there has never  been a person in the earth who could have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination; yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him—and this without a blush.  Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man positively known to have invented the fly?…  

When we reflect that the fly was not invented for pastime, but in the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching purpose in view; that his character and contact were planned out with cold deliberation; that his career was foreseen and fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and the consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.”…Who made the fly?  The mosquito? And Why?