I've been studying for a test for the past few weeks covering all that I learned in Seminary. I have had to go over all my notes and papers that I've written, and I came across this. It's a paper I wrote concerning the problem of evil. I had to make up a person and write a letter to him as if we were discussing why God allowed evil in the world. I re-read this and liked it, and thought I'd pass it on. It's kinda long, but I think it's worth the read. Hope you enjoy!
Introduction
This is a letter to a friend named Herman Borchkie (fictitious character). We have been writing letters back and forth for several weeks. This particular letter is in response to a letter Herman sent me. In it, Herman brings up the problem of evil and makes various assertions. Herman and I were childhood friends; we even went to the same church, but since moving away for college, Herman has “lost” his faith. He is not very knowledgeable about many apologetical issues, but has recently been reading books questioning the Christian faith.
The Letter
Hello Herman; I hope all is well. You have brought up some very good points and some very good questions in your past letter. The problem of evil is one that has been debated for a very long time, and it probably will be debated for a long time to come. It’s not an easy problem to solve. I hope to at least respond to all the questions and misguided statements you made in this letter.
First, you said that if God is completely powerful and completely good, evil would not exist. Now, all that I need to do to show that this statement is false is give an example in which it could possibly be true. The burden of proof is on me to not necessarily prove that if God is completely powerful and completely good, evil would exist, but to prove that if God is completely powerful and completely good, evil might exist. In other words, I am not going to give you a theodicy, which explains why God would certainly allow evil, but I am going to give you examples of ways in which if God exists, and He is completely powerful and completely good, evil could still exist.
The argument can be broken down to three different parts. The first part is that God is completely powerful. The second part is that God is completely good. Finally, the third part is that evil exists. Your argument is basically that all three of these things cannot be true. One or more of them must be false. Since you and I know that evil exists, you are arguing that one of the first two parts is false (Plantinga, 13). I think it would be helpful to define some terms.
God is completely powerful. What exactly does this mean? Some would say that it means that God can do absolutely anything. However, this is not so. God can only do what is logically possible. Someone once asked me as a child, “Can God create a rock that He cannot lift?” It puzzled me, and caused me to question God’s existence perhaps for the very first time. The answer to this question, however, is quite simple. Alvin Plantinga, in his book, God, Freedom, and Evil, states, “Not even an omnipotent being can bring about logically impossible states of affairs or cause necessarily false propositions to be true” (17). So, it would be better stated that God can do anything that is logically possible.
God is completely good. Good is sometimes a difficult thing to explain, especially when it deals with God. C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Problem of Pain, says that God’s goodness is so far above ours, that we cannot put our definition of goodness on Him. He says, “To say, ‘God is good’… is really only to say, ‘God is we know not what’” (Lewis, 25). Sometimes the idea that comes across when it is mentioned that God is good is the idea that nothing evil can happen if God is involved. However, this is simply not true. Suppose you have a rash on your leg, and you go to the doctor and she tells you that you have poison ivy. It will be very itchy for a few days, but it will soon go away. The only other option to get rid of the pain of the rash is to amputate your leg. Now, the amputation would solve the problem, so would it be logical to go ahead and amputate? No, obviously not. Amputating the leg would bring about a much greater evil. So, the doctor is good precisely because he is not amputating your leg, even though the pain in your leg will still be there (Plantinga 19). So, we have to take into account the idea that in any given circumstance, God may be choosing the “lesser of two evils.” A professor of mine named John Cooper once wrote, “‘Either God exists or evil exists’ is a false dilemma” (1). He says that it is possible for there to be another possibility that God has sufficient reasons for allowing evil to exist. So, with that in mind as a backdrop for the conversation, I will now answer your objections and questions with possibilities for why God may have sufficient reasons for allowing evil.
You first said that since God is all good and all powerful, He would not have allowed evil. You and I both have knowledge of God’s sovereignty, and that is obviously part of the problem. If God is sovereign over all things, He should stop evil from happening. However, what must be understood is that God does give humans free choices. His ability to stop humans from doing evil would only override His “rule” to allow humans to choose for themselves what to do (thus, creating a robot-like society of people). Furthermore, He cannot be completely sovereign over every action (in the form of first-hand choosing everything that happens) and give humans free will. It is an either/or because they are contradictory. So, God may once in a while step in and choose one’s actions, but this would be an exception to the rule. We see this happening, for instance, in the Exodus story, when the text says that God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 10:20). So, in special cases, God may step in and override a moral action, but this is not normal. This is, however, still compatible with God’s sovereignty. It is only in respect to saving grace that God is the once-and-for-all decider. He is the one who brings people to salvation. He draws them and then holds on to them. This is the sovereignty of God in action. Far too often, I think, it is implied that God decides every thing that happens on earth, and that is only indirectly true.
The way that I have heard God’s sovereignty explained that has made the most sense to me is a theory which states that before time, before creation, before there was anything other than God, God viewed, so to speak, all of the different universes that could be created. So, he viewed this universe, along with every other one in which human persons have free will. He saw all that could be if He created lots of other similar worlds, only with one or two or three differences, and He saw that this world was the most good. Given the free will of humans, there would be evil in every world, and no matter what God would plan to save mankind from that evil through Jesus Christ, but even though this world had lots of evil things happening every day (not to mention throughout history, with the holocaust as a prime example), this world was still better than the others. I will discuss this in further detail later in this letter.
I mentioned earlier the idea that if God created human beings without the capacity to make their own choices, they would be like robots. Let me explain this idea a little further. John Cooper, my professor, wrote, “If God always prevented evil acts, he would thereby override and eliminate the freedom and responsibility of the agents he created, whose created capacity for agency is a greater good than the evil that they do” (3) Here, Cooper brings back the focus of the idea to the greater good/greater evil idea, where God chooses the greater good over the lesser good and the lesser evil over the greater evil. In this case, he says, simply creating humans who have the actual ability to choose to do good, even if many do not, is a greater good than creating “robot-like” beings who have no real choice in the matter. Parents know this concept very well. It is much better, as a parent, to see one’s child choose to do something than to see him or her forced to do something. It is a joy to see my niece, who is two years old, say “thank you” when I tell her to say it. However, it is infinitely more joyous to see her say thank you when I haven’t asked for it. In the same way, God instructs us (through the Bible, logic and rhetoric, philosophers, psychiatrists, et cetera), but He, as a general rule, will not force anything upon us. He delights when we choose to obey Him. And, it is a greater good, or, to put it another way, it’s just better that way!
Another thing that was implied when you said that no kind of evil should exist if God is completely powerful and completely good is natural evil. I am not completely sure if you meant this as part of your definition of evil, but I want to clarify this in any case. Natural evil is, obviously, evil that is not directly caused by human beings, such as natural disasters and diseases. I have often heard the case that natural evil is a main reason why Atheists do not believe in God. The reason, I have heard it said, is that many Atheists will recognize that humans cause moral evil, and the blame can be then set on humans. However, it has long been understood that God is the only one who can directly affect natural evil. Even many Christians make this assertion, saying that, for instance, Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans was God’s judgment. If God directly sent that hurricane, does God directly send all hurricanes, snow storms, tornadoes, cancer, AIDS and other things that cause death in great numbers? The Bible even has at least one example of a natural disaster being sent by God (the flood in Genesis 6:9-8:22). In this case, the flood was sent as a judgment on ungodly people. So, is it safe to assume that all natural disasters and diseases are God’s doing, that they are judgments sent by God? The simple answer is that every case may be different. It is hard to know, and frankly, it may not be our place to know. However, let us speculate some reasons why God may allow natural evils.
The first reason God may allow natural evils is that it may actually be caused by humans. This speculation has been front and center of much of the news lately, especially with the theory of global warming. It is quite possible that in some way throughout the centuries humans have been the cause for what has been perceived of as natural evils. However, this is quite frankly a little unlikely, and if it were true, it would likely be limited to a small number of natural disasters. There may, however, be more of a case for natural evils such as diseases. In many cases, some kind of human doing may cause that human or another human to contract a disease. This is certainly not the case in every scenario, however. The second explanation for natural evil is that it may be the cause of spiritual unseen beings, such as angels and demons. Frankly, I do not really like this explanation very well either, since I view angels as beings who only do things on direct assignment from God, so saying that an angel is responsible would be saying that God is responsible. Demons may be a better explanation, since they are not sent by God, but have a mandate from Satan to destroy God’s creation. This theory, of course, does not necessarily imply that natural disasters and diseases are miracles. Demons may be the cause of scientific elements coming together in such a way that a hurricane may appear and cause destruction, or that a person picks up a disease when they would not have regularly (Moreland and Craig, 539). This is a possibility. Another possible explanation is one which Professor John Cooper pointed out. He wrote, “God ‘cursed the ground’ as just punishment for human sin. Natural processes that harm humans resulted, but just punishment is not evil” (3). At the event of the fall, God says, “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17). This may imply that nature is directly affected by the fall of mankind. As Cooper points out, however, God’s goodness is not in question because this is a just punishment. Since mankind’s evil is the cause of it, mankind would then be the recipient of its blame. This is a possibility that I actually hold to. I think God created a good world in which natural evil did not exist or existed to a much lesser extent (you may say that snowfall alone is an evil, to which I would only half-jokingly concede), and it was man’s fall that brought about the intensity of evil which we see today.
Given this proposition, we are still wrought with the question of why God does not simply stop many of the terrible natural disasters that happen. Even though it may be humankind’s punishment, would it not be the responsibility of a good God to intervene and stop at least the terrible senseless ones from happening? Does the Edmund Burke quote, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” apply to God? This is a very subjective question because we honestly do not know how much God intervenes, if at all. It is quite possible that He intervenes on a regular basis, and the world would be a much worse place if He had not. One possible explanation is that God has simply placed limits on how bad natural evils can get, boundaries to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand, but will not step in to prevent many natural evils. This, again, is something that we cannot know. We often look at natural evils that were quite terrible and think that it could not get any worse, but the fact of the matter is that it could get far worse, ending in the destruction of the entire human race. So, perhaps the boundaries stop these natural evils in coming even close to that event. Another possible explanation is the idea of allowing humans to see a little bit of evil so they can recognize it and not be afraid of it. One example of this is giving someone a shot with a tiny bit of the flu in it so that their body can grow immune to it. Do you remember the Mighty Ducks movie? Goldberg, the goalie, was extremely afraid of the hockey puck. So, the coach tied him to the goal and had the entire team shoot at him for 10 minutes. After a minute or two, he realized the puck did not hurt as bad as he thought, and you see him become a great goalie because of his fearlessness. In the same way, God allows us to see evil so we know what good is, and we can fight for that goodness. Because of our fearlessness of evil, we can attack it head on and through us, God can bring about a good world.
Evils bring about pain and suffering, which you mentioned. You asked why God could allow bad things to happen to good people. Many books have been written on this subject, and, unfortunately, many of them do not do the subject justice. It is definitely a difficult subject, but one that I do believe has explanations that can still uphold God’s goodness. We must first affirm that we are contingent beings, or, in other words, we are not gods. Only God by definition has always and will always live. So, human beings necessarily are under God, and it is therefore viable for human beings to suffer death.
I once reprimanded a friend for sticking an ant in a toilet alive, just waiting for somebody to defecate on it and flush it down the toilet to its death. I still hold that it would be better to stop its misery immediately, but another friend reminded me that the small brain probably reduced the terror that the ant felt. This made me realize something. The greater capacity for feeling that a being has, the greater amount of both joy and terror it can receive. So, humans can feel much terror and experience much evil precisely because we have a capacity for much more joy and happiness. This can be looked on as a curse, but I would argue that it is really a “greater good.” As the saying goes, “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” The idea is that it is better to feel both great happiness and great pain than to not feel anything at all.
Because of the fact that evil causes such great pain, it is a greater responsibility for humans to be good to each other. If nobody could feel pain, wronging someone would not be such a terrible thing. Because of that, there would be hardly any motivation to do good instead of evil. God allows evil to cause pain so that humans can have a greater responsibility towards each other, and it shows the antithesis between good and evil. It shows the depth of the difference between doing good and doing evil. I believe this is a great reason for why Jesus told the story of the “Good Samaritan” in Luke 10:25-37. The priest and Levites were actually forbidden by God to touch corpses because it would have made them unclean. However, Jesus wants to be clear that an act of service to God is helping people, and by walking by the Samaritan who needed their help, they were actually doing evil.
Albert Wolters, in his book, Creation Regained, speaks of the world as going through a process of creation, fall, and redemption. He argues that the fall has reached every area of life (humankind, natural evils, everything). He says, “The new humanity (God’s people) is called to promote renewal in every part of creation” (Wolters, 73). Christians are called to transform society by helping to bring about the world as it was like before the fall. So, this emphasis on doing good is something that the Bible wholeheartedly affirms.
Pain is a necessary part of life. You’ve read stories of people who indulged themselves with food until they could no longer move and weighed a thousand pounds (although this is an extreme example, it proves the point). Because these people refused to discipline themselves and exercise and eat healthily (both of which are painful at times), many of the people who have reached that point have died at a very young age. The maxim, “No pain, no gain” is one that many sports teams ascribe because the pain makes the team better and stronger. In the same way, pain reminds us that humans are weak, and ultimately it reminds us that we need a savior. Mortality brings with it a sense of need. If any one person was immortal, he or she would understandably be fearless. However, since there is a one hundred percent chance that you and I will die, we are reminded that there is more to this short life than pleasure; there is something deeper, and that deeper meaning in life is serving God.
One of the great themes of the Bible is that the righteous will inherit the earth and that the wicked will perish. This is an important feature of the Bible. I believe it’s true, and I believe that it should be taught. However, like many doctrines of the Bible that are taught in our churches, this doctrine can be abused. It should be noted that being righteous does not necessarily bring wealth or pleasure, or whatever it is that you desire, to come about. Often, in fact, the opposite is the case. Part of the answer lies in the fact that this theme is a proverb, or an adage. The Bible does not purport that this adage will always be true, but that it is a general rule of thumb that, for instance, doing good will bring about goodness into your life. Another answer lies in the fact that we live in a fallen world, and combined with the fallen nature of human beings, often the blessing that should be coming does not. The answer may lie in the idea that the treasure we will receive will be in heaven, after we die. This is, I believe, part of the answer, and I believe it is taught by the Bible as well.
Another thing you brought up was an instance where there was no good that came out of an evil. I realize this is something that many people feel and struggle with. I have myself as well. When I was in college, I was in a car accident with a very close friend who died the next day. It was the single most devastating event of my life. I searched for a while for something good to come of it, but was left disappointed. I can say now that I am stronger because of it, but I’d much rather my best friend was still here. The question of why God did that has haunted me, and sometimes still does. It did cause me to start considering different possibilities for why something like that, that had absolutely no good outcome, could happen. I like an explanation that John Cooper gives concerning this: “Perhaps it is consistent with the greater good of God’s maintaining a fallen creation in order to save it that he allows a certain number of genuinely gratuitous moral and natural evils to occur” (6) This is simply a defense of God’s goodness in allowing what he calls “gratuitous evils.” He contends that it is possible that God is simply upholding the laws of creation that He put in place. If someone were to say that since these things are happening, God should simply end the world, and none of them would happen, the response would be that the good of redeeming creation from its fallen state and nature is good enough to keep the laws of nature that God put in place there.
In his book, The Reason for God, Timothy Keller gives a story of a person who experienced a great deal of suffering who became angry at him for giving sermon illustrations in which everything turned out alright. She told him that giving a philosophical reason for why God did it does not put God “off the hook.” He wrote, “In response the philosopher Peter Kreeft points out that the Christian God came to earth to deliberately put himself on the hook. In Jesus Christ, God experienced the greatest depths of pain.” Keller points out something I think is pretty incredible: that Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection are a response to the unnecessary pain, since He Himself was not required to suffer, and yet He did for our sakes. And so, although Christianity may not always provide a reason for why pain and suffering occurs (although, in my opinion, it does a far better job than other worldviews), it does help people in facing them (Keller, 27-28).
The problem of evil is not an easy one to face. I believe that the answers I gave here in this letter is a good start to understanding the problem, but there are still so many theories to be studied. I maintain that God must have reasons for what He does. I maintain that God is wholly good, that God is wholly powerful, and that evil exists nonetheless. Faith plays a part in every single person’s worldview. The reason for this is because we just do not know so many things, so we can only guess. I base much of my faith on the Bible and what it reveals about Jesus Christ, and I believe it to be a consistent worldview. I am open to listening and considering other options, but until I am convinced that the Christian worldview is inconsistent, it is the faith that I hold to. I pray that each person who considers this problem of evil will come to the same conclusion.
Bibliography
1. Keller, Timothy, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Penguin Group, 2009) 27-28.
2. Lewis, Clive Staples, The Problem of Pain (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1943) 25
3. Moreland, J.P. and Craig, William Lane, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003) 539.
4. Plantinga, Alvin, God, Freedom and Evil (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1974) 13, 17, 19
5. Wolters, Albert, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005) 73.
