The Problem of Evil
one
If God is all-powerful, and all-perfect, why is there evil?
One of the greatest difficulties people have with the idea of an all-powerful, all-perfect God comes from the fact that there is evil in the world.
There’s the physical evil of sickness and death. There’s the psychological evil of mental and emotional disorders. And there’s the moral evil of sin.
If God is really all-powerful, then He could put a stop to all that. So why doesn’t He?
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Created Freedom
Well, the simple and obvious answer is that an All-Perfect, All-Powerful God would never create a universe with evil in it.
The next obvious point is that we know, when we look into ourselves, that we sometimes deliberately choose to do what is wrong, even when we don’t have to. We sometimes do bad things, even when we have no excuse. In other words, even when nothing else forces us to do it. Which means we know that rational creatures are able to introduce evil into the good world made by God.
We know that an all-perfect God would never do something evil, and that rational creatures like us do sometimes introduce evil into the world.
That’s precisely what the Judeo-Christian story affirms: That the world and everything in it was made good by a good God and that created persons, both angels and humans, have brought evil into the world through their own free choices.
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The Good of Free Will
When God made the world, He had two options.
He could make a world with no created free will in it. That would mean that nothing could ever go wrong. Everything would do exactly what it was supposed to. Nothing could interfere with its own design. On the other hand, there would be no love in the world because automated love, a love that you do not choose, is a contradiction in terms
So God decided to make a world that had the possibility of love.
That meant He needed to give some of His creatures free will, so they could choose to love freely. But it also meant that they could choose freely not to love. They could choose to be selfish, and to sacrifice other person’s goodness to their own
God chose the high-stakes universe. He chose a world with free will, even though it meant that some people could abuse that gift. He couldn’t force them to choose rightly, because a forced choice isn’t a choice. Again, it’s a contradiction in terms.
With free will, the possibility of love and the possibility of sin both come into the picture.
For God, the possibility of love was worth it.
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Personal Interdependence
When people sin, when people misuse their freedom, when they go against their own nature, that launches the virus of evil out into the world. But, of course, if each person only lived on their own private planet, then the only human being their sin would hurt would be themselves. But here again, God chose the high-stakes universe.
He chose to make a world where creatures not only related to Him, but to each other. He chose to make a world of community, of interdependence. That’s more high-stakes, because joy in community is much greater than joy by yourself, but the suffering and evil that can happen in a community is also much greater than suffering and evil by yourself.
The kind of joy I’ve had as the father of a family totally beats any joy I ever had as a single man but the suffering I’ve experienced, and the harm my own sins have caused to others has also increased.
If we live in community, if we depend on each other, that means that the moral failure of one member will hurt the others, just as the moral goodness of one will sustain the others. That’s why bad things happen to good people, because they have been created in a community with other people who are free to act wickedly.
God has made a decision and He’s never wrong.
In our heart of hearts we can actually see that He’s right. God has decided that the possibility of love is worth the possibility of sin. And the joy of being in a community, of being connected to other persons by ties of love, that’s worth the vulnerability that you will suffer innocently for something somebody else did.
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God brings good out of evil
Now we know why an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would allow for a world with evil in it, including evil that affects innocent people. It’s because He’s willing to permit the misuse of created freedom for the possibility of love and the beauty of human community and interdependence.
But of course, we Christians know there’s another crucial factor at play. We know that God doesn’t just put up with evil decisions but that He actually uses the evil decisions people make in order to achieve the greatest triumph of goodness.
Just as a Jiu-jitsu fighter will use his enemy’s attacks to over-power him, or just as an artist could use ugly bits of broken glass and tile to make a beautiful mosaic. So does the All-Mighty God orchestrate all things so that the evil of sin ends up contributing to the happiness and glory of those who are virtuous.
This is most definitively shown at Calvary, when the worst thing ever done becomes the supreme cause of all salvation. But in all things it happens that “where sin abounds, grace abounds more”.
So when there is evil and dysfunction in your life, or the lives of those you care about, remember that the All-powerful, All-knowing God will use it all for good. He always has and He always will. We can trust in Him, and look forward to the surprise ending when He’ll bring it all together and make it alright in the end.