The Problem of Evil
The other day, at the Alpha Course, we were discussing what we would ask if we could ask Jesus one question.
I had a lot of trouble coming up with a good question, for some reason.
Someone suggested that they would ask about the problem of evil, that is, why there is evil in the world. And, while I don't deny that that is a very good and unsolved question, I don't think that is a question I would ask, if I am honest. It doesn't really bother me that much.
Don't get me wrong. Evil bothers me a great deal. But the idea that evil and a perfect God can co-exist for some reason doesn't bother me.
I see the logical problem. How can a perfectly loving and all-powerful God allow evil to exist? Either He must not be perfect or He must not be all-powerful.
But the wrench in that logic is the free will of imperfect beings--namely, us.
Would a perfect God allow His people to have free will? I think so. Just ask Catalonia if they're feeling loved by their prime minister right now...
But allowing for true freedom of action means making room for the possibility that we will not use our free will for good, but for evil.
Of course, many people more intelligent than I have pondered the problem of evil, and many of them have pondered free will, and are still not satisfied with that answer. So maybe I'm missing something here.
Free will can perhaps explain some individual human-driven acts of evil, but surely if God was truly all-powerful, couldn't He work around it? Couldn't he have had an earthquake or something kill Hitler before the Holocaust? But where's the line? If God were to wipe out everyone who was going to do something terrible before they did it, how far should He go? How bad do our actions have to be to earn God's wrath? He can't draw the line at perfection, because then there'd be no one left. And what about the ethical question of punishing people before they've even committed the crime?
But that's only even half the problem. What about all the evil that is not the direct result of human action? What about earthquakes and disease and tsunamis? I wonder, though, if even these natural evils are the result of human sin in some Butterfly Effect chain reaction. This probably would have sounded crazier 50 years ago, and maybe it still sounds crazy now... And yet, natural disasters of many kinds are being blamed on global warming and climate change, which are presumably the result of human actions, driven primarily by industrialization--or, basically, greed.
The sum total of billions of tiny greedy human choices (mine included) could very well be responsible for flooding in Bangladesh, famine in Yemen, and hurricanes in the Caribbean.
Perhaps we underestimate the consequences of our own actions.
I had a lot of trouble coming up with a good question, for some reason.
Someone suggested that they would ask about the problem of evil, that is, why there is evil in the world. And, while I don't deny that that is a very good and unsolved question, I don't think that is a question I would ask, if I am honest. It doesn't really bother me that much.
Don't get me wrong. Evil bothers me a great deal. But the idea that evil and a perfect God can co-exist for some reason doesn't bother me.
I see the logical problem. How can a perfectly loving and all-powerful God allow evil to exist? Either He must not be perfect or He must not be all-powerful.
But the wrench in that logic is the free will of imperfect beings--namely, us.
Would a perfect God allow His people to have free will? I think so. Just ask Catalonia if they're feeling loved by their prime minister right now...
But allowing for true freedom of action means making room for the possibility that we will not use our free will for good, but for evil.
Of course, many people more intelligent than I have pondered the problem of evil, and many of them have pondered free will, and are still not satisfied with that answer. So maybe I'm missing something here.
Free will can perhaps explain some individual human-driven acts of evil, but surely if God was truly all-powerful, couldn't He work around it? Couldn't he have had an earthquake or something kill Hitler before the Holocaust? But where's the line? If God were to wipe out everyone who was going to do something terrible before they did it, how far should He go? How bad do our actions have to be to earn God's wrath? He can't draw the line at perfection, because then there'd be no one left. And what about the ethical question of punishing people before they've even committed the crime?
But that's only even half the problem. What about all the evil that is not the direct result of human action? What about earthquakes and disease and tsunamis? I wonder, though, if even these natural evils are the result of human sin in some Butterfly Effect chain reaction. This probably would have sounded crazier 50 years ago, and maybe it still sounds crazy now... And yet, natural disasters of many kinds are being blamed on global warming and climate change, which are presumably the result of human actions, driven primarily by industrialization--or, basically, greed.
The sum total of billions of tiny greedy human choices (mine included) could very well be responsible for flooding in Bangladesh, famine in Yemen, and hurricanes in the Caribbean.
Perhaps we underestimate the consequences of our own actions.
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