Biblical/Doctrinal Studies:
The Problem of Evil
by Jeff Kimble

Some of the most keenly felt and universally pondered questions concern God and evil: If God is all-good and all-powerful, why does evil exist? If God is all-good, wouldn't he want to prevent evil? And, if God is all-powerful, couldn't he prevent evil? Yet, if nothing else, recent events indelibly stamp one uncontested fact on our minds: evil exists. For some, these questions raise doubts about the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God. Journalist Kenneth Woodward in a recent Newsweek article put it this way, "Every monotheism...must struggle with a metaphysical conundrum: how to explain the existence of evil in a world governed by a single creator God who, by definition of the Hebrew prophets, is both all-powerful and all-good."

So whether the problem demands an explanation for the existence of evil or raises doubts about the existence of God, it's not a problem easy to dismiss, either logically or emotionally. How can we forget the 20 million people killed in Stalin's purges and gulags, Hitler's extermination of six million Jews, or the tragic deaths of six thousand innocent civilians in the recent terrorist attack in New York City? The question of God and evil is not an intellectual parlor game. It reaches to the core of our humanity and touches many of us personally. The question is both a logical one and a psychological one.

The logical problem essentially charges Christianity with inconsistency, since a God who cannot prevent evil is not all-powerful, and a God who does not want to prevent evil is not all-good. But, the Christian God is both all-powerful and all-good by definition. The argument looks like this:

1. God is completely good (and presumably would want to stop evil).
   
2. God is completely powerful (and presumably desires to stop evil).
   
3. Evil exists (which suggests either God can't stop evil or God does not desire to stop evil).
   
4. Therefore, an all-good, all-powerful God cannot exist.

As such, the logical problem is often used as an argument against the existence of the Christian God.  At the core of this argument, however, is an ironic twist. The moment a person claims that evil exists, he also implies the existence of a moral standard against which actions are measured. In other words, unless a standard exists against which to measure human behavior, how could he know that, say, murder was an evil? So to state that evil exists implies a moral standard or moral law. A moral law implies a moral-lawgiver, and the logical problem, rather than disproving God, ends up implying His existence. In addition, drawing another possible conclusion answers the charge of inconsistency while putting the Christian on firm biblical footing:

1. God is completely good.
   
2. God is completely powerful.
   
3. Evil exists.
   
4. Therefore, God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that exists.

Based on the character of God as revealed in Scripture, Christians can affirm the goodness and power of God and logically conclude that God has a morally sufficient reason for permitting evil. But God doesn't always provide us with those reasons, and this poses a real crisis for faith.

As C. S. Lewis said after the death of his wife, "Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not, 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'" What Lewis describes is the temptation to doubt God's goodness because of a painful and heartrending situation. To make matters worse, God sometimes appears more concerned with sadism than sympathy. (To watch a child suffer from a terminal illness or a spouse suddenly die from heart failure, and then in those quiet moments of loss you sense only distance when you cry out to God in your grief.) In the words of Jean Paul Sartre: "I prayed, I demanded a sign. I sent messages to Heaven, no reply. Heaven ignored my very name. Each minute I wonder what I could BE in the eyes of God. Now I know the answer: nothing. God does not see me, God does not hear me, God does not know me. You see this emptiness over our heads?  It is God. You see this gap in the door? It is God. You see that hole in the ground? That is God again. Silence is God. Absence is God.  God is the loneliness of man." The danger, here, lies not so much in disbelieving that God is, but in believing what God is not. This is the psychological problem of evil.

The psychological problem occurs when reason pushes us to make hasty judgments about God's goodness due to our circumstances. Rather than trust God and anchor our confidence in what we know about His character, we're tempted to press Him for an explanation. When an explanation doesn't come, we're tempted to think God is unfeeling, mean-spirited, vindictive and cruel. It's possible, however, to take another posture—one illustrated in Basil Mitchell's parable of a resistance fighter:

In time of war in an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one night a Stranger who deeply impresses him. They spend that night together in conversation. The Stranger tells the partisan that he himself is on the side of the resistance—indeed that he is in command of it—and urges the partisan to have faith in him no matter what happens. The partisan is utterly convinced at that meeting of the Stranger's sincerity and constancy and undertakes to trust him.

They never meet in conditions of intimacy again. But sometimes the Stranger is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful and says to his friends, "He is on our side." Sometimes he is seen in the uniform of the police handing over patriots to the occupying power. On these occasions his friends murmur against him: but the partisan still says, "He is on our side." He still believes that, in spite of appearances, the Stranger did not deceive him. Sometimes he asks the Stranger for help and receives it. He is even thankful. Sometimes he asks and does not receive it. Then he says, "the Stranger knows best."¹

Mitchell perceptively observes how faith can prevent reason from making hasty judgments about a person even when circumstances appear to favor those judgments. Similarly, we embrace a Stranger who rarely explains the reasons for misery, injustice, suffering, and evil, but He calls upon us to trust that He has a morally sufficient reason for allowing it. Because we know Him, we forbid reason to draw unwarranted conclusions about His goodness, but say with the partisan, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, "the Stranger knows best." Such is the rationality of faith, a rationality that anchors us in the assurance of things not seen.

 

¹ Much of my thinking on the psychological problem of evil was inspired from a chapter called "Keyhole Theology" in Os Guinness' book In Two Minds (now entitled God in the Dark). The parable of the stranger is a quote from that chapter.

Jeff Kimble is the Business Data Specialist at Schenectady Christian School in New York. He also teaches a senior-level philosophy of religion class and leads a high school apologetics mentoring program.