Church Voices

Here is the way the problem of evil is typically argued. Its competent as far as it goes, however, it leaves out at least two very important details that would de-rail the argument (which would, of course change the entire tone, and conclusion of it).

The first of these is the eternal perspective. The essay allows that a certain amount of evil can be justified if the ultimate result of that evil is the “greater good”. But then the essay smuggles in the assumption that this “greater good” are only events, or states of being that occur in this life. However, God certainly doesn’t look only at this life, and if anything puts much greater weight on eternity. The ultimate “greater good” (greatest good) is the eventual eternity with God. If evil, and suffering work towards this greatest good then wouldn’t that fit into the justifiable evil category? This is the entire story of the Old Testament. Israel rejects God, God removes His protection and the Israelites fall into the hands of the Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, or some other expansionist nation. The evil and suffering they inflict on the Israelites brings Israel back to God. When humans encounter evil and suffering we immediately recognize it as “wrong” or “improper”, as something that shouldn’t be. This induces in us a longing for a world that is right and proper. This idea of right and proper is the idea of perfection which is found with and in God. Evil and suffering creates in humans a desire for perfection which is found only in God, and so evil and suffering always works for the greatest good.

The second is God’s gift of free will. Each human acts as a free will moral agent. Each of us has the ability to choose good, or evil. Or to put it more explicitly, to either choose, or reject God. With this gift comes the ability to commit evil acts. If God were to thwart all evil acts that humans would commit then it would essentially remove free will. If you knew any act of evil you tried to commit would either result in your death or would simply be thwarted would you even bother to contemplate evil? Without the ability to actually commit evil free will doesn’t exist.

The problem of evil has always struck me as unpersuasive, even when I was not operating from a strictly Christian worldview. It relies on only two of God’s attributes and so generally those making the case for the problem of evil argue as if God was only all powerful and all knowing. The end result is that the God the problem of evil argues against is not the God described in the Bible. You can see this especially in the first point I made. This particular permutation of the problem of evil leaves out the eternal nature of God.