Essays on Religion

Topic 2: Evil

Okay, so this topic deals with an all-too familiar question about God and evil. First posed by a guy called Epicurus around the third century BC, it goes something like this:

God is all-powerful

Evil exists

God is good

One of these statements has to be false.

Quick run-down of “why” that claims works: If God is all-powerful AND evil exists, he must not want to get rid of evil, which must make God himself evil. If evil exists and God is good, then he clearly isn't strong enough to eliminate evil. And if God is all-powerful and good, then there must be no evil in his creation.

Got it? Good.

Now, Epicurus was a pretty intelligent dude. He posited the existence of atoms based on almost 0 scientific research, and strove to attain a calm, peaceful life. And he came up with this nice little contradiction.

If this sounds too philosophical, or removed, that's because you aren't translating it into daily life. Even you best of Christians has probably said something like, “Why does God allow these children to die horrible painful deaths?” And most atheists are at least subconsciously aware of this problem. I daresay Theodicy (technical name for this debate) has made more atheists than any other three-part argument you could set up.

Christians have been dealing with “The Problem of Evil” for about as long as there have been Christians. But before we get to some possible answers, let me explore the third part of the argument again.

God is good.

What does it mean that “God is good”? Well, here's what it doesn't mean: God wants to maximize your earthly pleasure.

No. That's not goodness. That's not love. I'm not sure what that is, but it's not a trait we can ascribe to God. Oh, don't get me wrong. He doesn't hate happiness, quite the opposite. But his “long term goals” if you will are not temporal pleasure. If that occurs along the way, fine.

But the end goal is reconciling us to him. The end goal is the salvation of humanity. Now that may be quite a painful process. Nevertheless, that's what we're born into. And salvation, according to God, requires free will.

What do I mean by free will? I mean the potential to do both good and bad. You may have noticed that humans can be incredibly loving. We can be heroically selfless. We can be devoted, and charitable, and all sorts of good things. But we can be equally bad. We can be be ruthless and violent and greedy and—you probably know the whole list.

The real problem is: if humans are to be able to scale the heights of goodness—if there are to be Gandhis and Mother Teresas and MLKs—then we have to have the potential to hit the bottom of that scale as well. It couldn't go just one way. That's illogical.

I'm not saying, by the way, that this is “the best of all possible worlds.” This is an argument some people use to counter theodicy, claiming that if God HAD intervened against evil it would end up creating a worse world. This is an incredibly weak and amateurish argument. This is not the “best possible world.” That's patently obvious. What would be the difference between this world and one exactly identical to it with a single more blade of grass somewhere?

Now I purposefully left a gap in my explanation of God's goodness. Natural disasters. Surely these having nothing to do with human free will?

Well, in a way it does. God is not the creator of evil. But in allowing evil as a distinct human possibility, the earth carries physical reminders of our loss of God. Every hurricane, every earthquake, every flood is a sign of how the earth (us and everything around us) has fallen away from God.

By analogy, think of this. The earth is a battlefield. Neutral area. Or a contested border, you might say. Some like to talk about “God, the King of the World and all Creation,” and they're right, but they're also being a little optimistic.

God is the rebel force on earth. Take a look at the Old Testament with this view. First, God is sovereign. Then through human evil, the world turns against him and he is deposed. For what? Well, some would say Satan. But that's a little drastic. If Satan were ruling the earth it would be far worse than it is even now. Some say sin, and that makes a lot more sense. But I think the best answer is “nothing.” Nothing is totally sovereign over the earth right now. There's God, and a coalition (if you like) against God.

Then, starting with a single person (Abraham) God begins to build his forces back up again. He expands to a priesthood, a family, a tribe, a nation, and with the resurrection of Jesus, anyone and everyone willing to side with him.

In our lifetimes, there isn't much we can do except mitigate evil wherever we find it. But in God's true domain (heaven), justice exists exactly as you'd hope. Theodicy is resolved because there is no evil.

God is all-powerful, as I have said. So why—you may wonder—can't he just end that struggle now? Destroy sin and evil and all the things that are blocking him? Well, it's simple. Allowing earth to be “neutral” allows us to voluntarily choose to love and serve God. Or not. The choice has to be there. He's waiting for every human to make a decision. And he will, of course, one day totally eradicate sin. But that's the apocalypse, so don't hold your breath.

People who know me know that I love reading Jewish philosophy. I find it's usually very intellectual, where much Christian philosophy is rather too emotional. There's a strand of Jewish thought dealing with Theodicy which basically says, “It is not in our human capabilities to reconcile the traits of God. He's too beyond us for that.”

Well, I like that a lot. It's easy as a Christian to try to throw Bible verses at someone, screaming, “Why don't you understand the same things as me!” when in reality, we have to admit that God and God's word are infinitely beyond us.

The resolution of Theodicy makes sense to me. It makes sense that evil is a product of the potential for free will, and it makes sense that God is not perfectly sovereign of this world. Yet.

But I frequently see Atheists reading this very argument, and they throw it down in disgust.

Maybe in the end I should have taken Qoheleth's view and based my life on that “why?” which is both unanswerable and perfectly motivating.