How Can a loving god allow suffering?
and, where did evil come from anyway?
Known as 'The Problem of Evil'...
...this issue is considered to be possibly the oldest, most
perplexing issue when it comes to 'thinking' about God and His nature
or existence. Many questions regarding evil and God comprise
this issue, but all are known under the guise of 'The Problem Of
Evil". The answers to the Problem of Evil are known as
'Theodicy', which literally means "God Justified", (meaning God is
justified despite the existence of evil). Here is a summary
of the issues and their well-considered Theodicy's (answers to the
problems of evil), presented by theologians and philosophers over the
centuries.
The Problem Defined - The problem is perhaps most
succinctly summarized by David Hume (over 200 years ago) in the
following question: “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not
able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not
willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing
and able? Whence then is evil?”
C. S. Lewis explains the logical problem succinctly, focusing on evil
manifested in suffering: “If God were good, He would wish to make His
creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able
to do what He wished. But the creatures are not
happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or
both.”
Many personalize the problem, with a reluctance to place trust in a God
who would allow evil. Of course, this is typically an
emotional response, with the alternatives to the existence of God
usually not carefully thought out. So, the Theodicy's have
been pondered for ages, designed to figure out this most perplexing
problem. Here are a few of them.
The Free Will Defense - The Free Will Defense places
the blame for evil and suffering square on the shoulders of fallen
mankind. It was the will of God to create a universe in which
rational beings could freely decide to love and obey Him. In
this universe, the inevitable companion of freely doing good is freely
doing evil. This is most clearly evident when we realize that
the vast majority of evil occurs at the hand of man, not of
God. The hope of mankind therefore is that in the next world,
our sufferings will be extinguished and considered worth the price (if
they are remembered at all) for the union with the Creator of the
Universe.
The Laws Of Nature - The Free Will Defense
attributes the vast majority of evil and suffering in the world to man,
but there still remains that which is called 'natural evil'.
These are things such as devastating earthquakes, killer storms, fires
that ravage homes disease, car accidents and the like. We
know from revelation that the world suffers from our bad choices as
well. When mankind fell from grace, the world had to fall
also (perhaps to accommodate our bad choices!) In creating
this world in which we can freely choose for or against God, the
essential properties of nature (take the hardness of wood for example)
are stable and unchanging. As an example, wood can be used as
a building material because of its hardness and flexibility, but it can
also be used to bash someone over the head if one chooses to swing it
at another. It does not instantly turn into a feather just
because it is being used in an 'evil' act. It is our abuse of
our freedom that hurts the person, not the wood! God made the
wood that way, but He did not hurt the person with it. At
most, God is indirectly responsible because of the stability of the
laws of nature that He instituted, but again, these are required for
our exercise of our free will. Philip Yancey illustrates this
issue well:
...giving a child a pair of ice skates, knowing that he may fall, is a very different matter from knocking him down on the ice." Yancey; Where Is God When It Hurts; pg 65
In this world we are left to make our own choices, and then left to the
consequences of them. If God were to step in each time and
save us, say, by making the piece of lumber turn soft as a feather just
before it hits me across the head, then I will not be living in a world
that is free to choose. I would make different choices
knowing that I would be saved from harm.
Suffering Is A Reminder To Us That We Are Not In Control - Taken to the
extreme, this Theodicy describes the fallen world as a place in which
God 'shapes souls', but I believe that this a bit off the
mark. More likely, according to scripture, the pain and evil
we will inevitably experience is sometimes used by God to remind us of
our fallibility and cause us to search for what we long for - peace
with our finiteness. In the end, we will ALL suffer the
ultimate disappointment - death.
When we are fat and happy, we are generally content with ourselves,
even if the majority of our neighbors in the world live in hunger or
suffering. It is precisely our hungers, our sicknesses, and
our pain that remind us that we are not happy in this world, and cause
us to look for hope beyond what we see here. This was
summarized perfectly in C.S. Lewis' famous lines:
...the human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it...God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscious, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C.S Lewis; The Problem Of Pain; ppg 92-93
The person who realizes this and searches for answers from the Giver of
our purpose will have the strongest faith because of the
suffering. Rabbi Abraham Heschel says it clearly: "Faith like
Job's cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken."
Christianity Has A Unique Perspective On Evil and Suffering -
ALL other 'religions' place mankind in a position of reaching to God by
achieving requiring perfection or pacification of their gods.
But as we have learned elsewhere with God and Christ, unique in
Christianity, He instead is reaching to us. The same is true
regarding suffering. We know that God does not want us to
suffer, but we do because of the nature of the fallen world.
God has such compassion on us and our condition, that He SHARED in our
suffering - from the pains of birth to the strains of growing up, even
to the point of accepting a horrible death! Indeed, the
entire message of God's revelation to us (the Bible) is the story of
how God will redeem mankind from this suffering, restore the creation
back to the way it was meant to be, and reconcile us back to
Him. With Christianity, we are assured that we do not belong
in this world. ALL other 'religions' assert that we must
simply accept our miserable lot in life, and eventually die, placing
ourselves at a ruthless god's mercy (at the best!) In
contrast, with a view of the future unlike the others, Christians show
their faith when looking after the suffering, caring and sympathizing
for them. It is a most compassionate means of displaying the
love of Christ. Christians don't focus on the question of
'Why?', but on 'What can I do?' The false religions
essentially tell us to 'just deal with it.'
Most importantly, we are assured that suffering is NOT used by God as
punishment for sins. Christ took compassion on the sufferings
of those He came across, never once saying 'you're getting what you
deserve!" This is most clearly exemplified when Christ was
asked by His disciples why some died in a construction accident, or why
a person was born with birth defects:
...Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them - do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish! Luke 13:4
"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor His parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me." John 9:2b-3
Turning the question of evil around, many have proposed that the
existence of evil does not in fact disprove the existence of God, but
in fact PROVES His existence! How? One must
consider how one classifies something as evil. If there is no
lawgiver, then there is no law. If the forces of nature are
the ultimate reality, then suffering and 'evil' are natural things, and
we should just accept them. In fact, we must expect them as
part of life, just as we would the 'good' things in life...in effect,
there is no difference! We cannot call something 'evil' as if
it was wrong, because it is just natural. A person hurting
another would have a reason to, because it is his nature to.
Extend this thinking on to the generally accepted evils of the world,
from a school bus crashing, to the holocaust. But, something
inside us tells us that these things are more than just undesirable,
that they are wrong. But without a basis of right and wrong,
we cannot call something wrong. We know that might does not
make right (take Nazism for example), so we go to war in the 1940's to
stop the spread of evil. We know there are reasons that drive
us to do this, because if there weren't no one would have gone to war,
because it certainly wasn't in their personal interest to do
so! Therefore, by definition right and wrong must be
prescribed by something beyond nature. That being is called
God - and He puts that sense in us to cause us to seek Him.
"...they show the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thought now accusing, now even defending them." Romans 2:15
Finally, we must keep a proper perspective upon evil
and suffering in our lives. It is so easy to fall into a
'human-centered' frame of mind, and think that God is here to please us
and to make our lives comfortable. But nothing could be
further from the truth. The cosmos is designed to be
'God-centered'. We must remember that the purpose of life is
to serve God and to serve others, not to satisfy our own desires or to
seek total comfort. We live in a fallen world, which is due
to our own sin and rebellion from Him. God has every reason
to give up on every one of us, even the most 'good' of us, yet He
doesn't because of His love and grace. We should therefore
live our lives in constant thankfulness and praise because of that love
and grace, even despite our human condition of
suffering.
We must also remember that we are finite beings trying to understand
the ways of the infinite, so we 'see through the glass darkly', and
will never be able to understand the total blessings that an infinite
God has in store for us. We therefore place our trust in the
promise that our sufferings in this world will be 'worth the price' on
that blessed day of reunion with God, through Christ.
"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."
Matthew 10:39
"You [the Lord] asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge:' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful or me to know." Job 42:3
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed...And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." Romans 8:18-19, 28