The Problem of Evil and Suffering

The Problem of Evil and Suffering Introduction
"Why do bad things happen to good people?" Rabbi Harold Kushner, a number of years ago, penned a book with that title. He had experienced the loss of his own child because of a dreadful disease. His faith and his understanding of what happened faced a serious impasse. His book was an effort to explain how his own views had changed on the nature of God and the existence of suffering. Kushner is not alone. Each of us frames the question in a slightly different way, but the sense of it is the same. Historically, this is know simply as "the problem of evil". The attempt to work out a solution is called a "theodicy", from the Greek theos (God) and dike (justice): providing a satisfactory justification of how God can allow evil.

Effort to work out a solution fall into different categories. We will look at the philosophical approach, the biblical approach, and then think about ways each of us wrestle with this probing issue. Another question should also get some attention: What impact does this issue have on our view of God, our own responsibility and how we respond to others who are faced with tragic circumstance? Clearly, this is not just an intellectual debate, but something which can weigh heavily on our minds. Moreover, true skeptics may hold back from faith precisely at this point: they find the existence of evil a telling argument on both the question of God's existence and on the sort of God he is, if he does exist. Making the issue clear and offering some approaches to dealing with it are important tasks facing the follower of Jesus.

The Philosophical Formulation of the Problem of Evil
"Is he willing to prevent evil, but no able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" (Epicurus, 341-270 B.C.E.)

In western thought, Epicurus gave the earliest statement of the problem of evil. The argument boils down to some direct statements:
God is all-powerful and all-knowing (omnipotent and omniscient).
God is perfectly good (omnibenevolent).
Evil exists in the world.
If God, defined in 1 and 2, existed, there would be no evil in theworld.
There is evil (in 3) in the world.
Therefore God does not exist.

As it stands, on the face of it, the argument seems plausible. Some thinkers, who hold to this argument, are willing to modify #3 and #5 is such a way as to say "There is unnecessary evil" in the world, which is to say that there is evil which could be prevented. The argument receives further elaboration by writers like Dostoyevsky (1822-1881) in his Brothers Karamazov where the death of innocent children becomes the greatest evil and leads the antagonist Ivan to say: "It's not God I reject, but the world he has made". Contemporary writers, like Bruce Russell, will claim that it is not evil but the "amount of evil" that is the most telling part of the argument.

Some Historical Responses to the Problem of Evil
Some religions tried to solve or partly solve this problem. Most do it by reducing or abandoning one of the attributes of God. A few religious leaders have admitted that they simply cannot solve the puzzle. This takes courage when faced with multitudes of people who desperately want answers:

Deists believe that God created the universe, set it in motion, and then withdrew from the scene. He hasn't been seen since. They regard God as not having omniscience; he has not chosen to remain aware of what is happening on earth.
Zoroastrianism was once the religion of ancient Persia. It remains a small religion whose members live largely in India. Their religion has largely settled the paradox. They promote a cosmic dualism between two more or less equal forces: A powerful God Ahura Mazda, who is the only deity worthy of being worshipped, and an evil spirit of violence and death Angra Mainyu, who opposes Ahura Mazda. The resulting cosmic conflict involves the entire universe now and until the end of time. Humans must choose which deity to follow.
Conservative Christians, Muslims and others believe in a personal Satan, an all-evil devil who roams the world seeking whom he might be able to destroy. Most evil occurrences are attributed to Satan. God is often viewed, by Christians, as providing a protective shield around the righteous.
Atheists have no problem with the theodicy paradox for the simply reason that they have no belief in the existence of God. Some positively deny that God exists. Atheists are generally moral relativists and conclude that a given act may be considered immoral by some people, morally neutral by others, and moral by still others. Bad things happen simply because people want to do them in order to accomplish what they feel is a great moral good. God does not intervene because, according to Atheists, there is no evidence that he exists.
Rabbi Kushner, author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," concludes that the theodicy paradox can only be solved only by redefining the attributes of God. Viewing God as all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful leads to internal contradictions. At least one attribute has to be abandoned. He suggests that we reject the omnipotence of God and believe in a deity with only finite powers to influence people's actions, but who remains all-knowing and all-loving. Kushner's God didn't prevent the terrorists because he didn't have the power to do so. God can only cry with the victims.
Process thought was originally promoted the early 1900s by a French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson. Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne developed it further. One of the three main areas of process thought is process theology. It teaches that that God affects history indirectly through gentle persuasion and not directly by coercion. He does not intrude directly in human activities; he does not violate the laws of nature by creating a miracle. Rather, "God gently persuades all entities towards this perfection by providing each of them with a glimpse of the divine vision of a better future. And yet all entities retain the freedom to depart from that vision." Individuals retain the freedom to reject God's messages and to engage in mass murder, genocide and other evils.
Open Theism, also called Free Will Theism is an alternate understanding of the nature of the Christian God. According to Dr. John Sanders: "God, in grace, grants humans significant freedom to cooperate with or work against God's will for their lives, and he enters into dynamic, give and take relationships with us....God takes risks in this give-and-take relationship, yet he is endlessly resourceful and competent in working toward his ultimate goals. Sometimes God alone decides how to accomplish these goals. On other occasions, God works with human decisions, adapting his own plans to fit the changing situation. God does not control everything that happens. Rather, he is open to receiving input from his creatures. In loving dialogue, God invites us to participate with him to bring the future into being." When faced with a terrible tragedy, God accepts it and attempts to make positive results come out of the evil. God is not omniscient in the normal meaning of that word; he does not foretell the future in detail because so much of the future is up to a complex interaction of countless decisions by individual humans, all of whom possess free will. God chooses to adapt to events and nudge the future along in what he feels is the correct direction. Open Theism is supported by more than 30 biblical passages in which God indicates that he does not control the future. In these passages, he repented of his previous decisions.
Limited human perception: Some theologians and philosophers argue that Theodicy does not exist. There is ultimately no conflict between evil and an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient deity. They would argue that from our limited human viewpoint, we cannot see the broad picture. God is beyond time and is capable of seeing the past, present and future. If humans had the wisdom of God, we would not be arguing about theodicy; we would realize that God always works in a moral manner.

The Problem of Evil Types
What do we mean when we say there is "evil" in the world? It might be easier to simply ask, "What is wrong with the world?" That question has at least four answers:
There are painful sensations: physical evil
There are painful emotions: mental evil
There are evil and undesirable states of affairs: state evil
There are evil actions: moral evil
The problem of evil, in a nutshell, asks "Why did God create such a world in which these kinds of evils exist?" In the case of the first three types, one could say that they are due to the "nature of the world and its laws". Given the laws of nature respecting geology, earthquakes will happen as will tsunamis. Some natural conditions must exist for these evils to occur. In respect to human beings, we could say that #1-3 are passive evils. However, when we get to #4, the exercise of human choice enters to the picture.

Evil Due to Free Will: Moral Evil
The very presence of "free agents" in the created world complicates the problem. The anti-theodicist (one who thinks there can be no explanation for evil) will argue, "God ought not to create evildoers", and that would mean even the possibility that a human being could become one. Presuming God can do anything, surely, this view argues, he could create a world without evil choices. But is that argument a good one? Alvin Plantinga, a contemporary philosopher, has responded this way:
It is not logically possible for an agent to make another agent such that necessarily he freely does only good actions.
Hence, if a being "G" creates a free agent, he gives to that agent power of choice between alternative actions, and how he will exercise that power is something which G cannot control while the agent remains free.
It is a good thing that there exist free agents, but a logically necessary consequence of their existence is that their power to choose to do evil actions may sometimes be realized.
The price is worth paying, however, for the existence of agents performing free actions remains a good thing even if they sometimes do evil.
Hence, it is not logically possible that a creator create free creatures such that necessarily they do not do evil actions."
But it is not a morally bad thing that he create free creatures, even with the possibility of their doing evil.

Plainly, the creation of free moral agents carries great risk and great promise. So, goes the argument advanced by Plantinga, God judged it a better thing to populate the world with free creatures (like human beings and angels) rather than not to do so. The risk was the choice of evil (which, of course was realized). But, to put it somewhat tritely, "nothing ventured, nothing gained" or "no pain, no gain". It might have turned out that free will creatures might have chosen only good. But freedom has no meaning in a universe when only one outcome can happen.

Evil in the Nature of Things?
We might be able to get God "off the hook" with regard to moral evil by acknowledging that it is the by-product of free will which is itself a good thing, at least better than the alternative. But what do we do about so-called "passive evil" (#1-3 above)? In those cases, things happen in the universe, it would seem, because that's the way the universe works. Does not the anti-theodicist make a good point in questioning, as Ivan does in Dostoevsky's novel, "the world God has made"? There are some large assumptions here, however, about the complexity of the world. Or that the world has always been as it is now. Or that the world is actually in its finished form. Several points could be made in response to the anti-theodicist:
The theist (one who believes in a personal God) makes the claim that God made the world and pronounced it "good" when he created it.
But the world included not only free moral agents who were human beings (earth-bound creatures), but also angels (intelligences without earth-bound bodies). These agents were present at the creation of our universe, having been a part of God's larger creation at some prior time.
These intelligences also had free will which God risked in making them that way.
Some of these intelligences misused their freedom and became fallen angels (demons).
Their presence in the created universe influences events in the universe, much in the same way human choices influence events.
The acceptance of other moral intelligences in the order of things adds to the complexity of the cosmos and makes the possibility of evil likely in the "passive sense".
God has chosen to make the world like this and continues to work within it to bring about a restored state of affairs.
In carrying out his project for the universe, God enlists the help of moral agents who freely choose to have a relationship with him, calling them his "children".
The universe is plainly "not finished" and God works together with his children to bring it to completion.
The presence of free will intelligences who oppose the work of God in no way stops his efforts in this task, but clearly results in a cosmic-wide conflict, a war, between good and evil. The casualties of that war are largely the "evils" we have already identified.

Some Implications for Understanding the Problem of Evil
This account attempts to preserve the freedom of God's creations, while at the same time it acknowledges the misuse of that freedom and the complications resulting from that misuse. It also has some important implications:
By making the world in the way he has, God has bound himself to relate to it in certain ways. In the case of free will, God chose not to force himself on free creatures, but attracts them through his love.
The attribute of omnipotence (all-powerful) cannot mean that God "will do anything", though it seems to imply he "can do anything". Scripture actually says "God cannot lie" (Titus 1:2), "Cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13), "Cannot fail" (Hebrew 1:12), etc. This is a bit like the time-worn philosophy student's question: "Can God make a rock too heavy to lift?" The best response is simply, "Why would he want to?" The whole idea of "power" as it relates to God is not some abstract concept. God's power, when looked at in all of Scripture, has more to do with his creative acts of love than his coercive ability. In fact, the notion that power means "always having one's way" looks more like a Greek philosophical idea than a teaching from the Bible.
God plainly surrenders his own power in the interest of his creation. This is seen most clearly in what we know of God through Jesus Christ, his most perfect expression. Jesus, as God, surrenders his power and dies in behalf of his creation, not to coerce them, but to save them. Any interpretation of the power of God which ignores this fact is an incomplete account of it.
Evil, in the context of Scripture, is something to be defeated, not just something to be explained. In the bigger "story", God declares war on evil, while seeking to rescue its casualties. Preserving the sacred notion of free will, God goes about the business of restoring the brokenness of the world redemptively.
Making sense out of evil requires attention on the importance of Jesus' arrival within the world where evil exists. If evil where just a matter of "how things are" or simply an illusion or part of God's larger plan for the world, why would God go to the bother of sending his Son into the world to identify with human beings by becoming human himself, heal sick people, raise the dead, cast out demons, and finally die on the cross?
Nothing we say about evil must suggest God wanted it here. Its existence plainly runs counter to God's intended project for his universe. It is something to be defeated and eventually eliminated.
Here we must avoid efforts to justify the existence of evil by either saying it is not real, or saying that God willed it to somehow make goodness look better.
The notion that one cannot have good without evil presumes evil belongs to the true nature of things: on the account given in the Bible, the world is "good" without evil and becomes "bad" when it arrives.
We must also reject the idea that God causes evil to happen in people's lives to bring about some greater good. We know enough about the nature of free will intelligences within the world to see how evil occurs without God making it happen.
Biblical Teachings on the Problem of Evil
God made the world and declared it to be good (Genesis 1).
Part of his creation were human beings, made in the image of God and given "dominion" over the creation to govern and manage it, tasks which require free choice (Genesis 1:26).
Angels where observers of the creation of our universe (Job 38:4-7).
At least one angel, Lucifer ("bearer of fire, light"), was in the garden of Eden carrying out an assigned role (Ezekiel 28:12-15).
By exercising free will against God's purposes, Lucifer becomes the "Adversary" (trans.of "Satan") and leads an angelic rebellion (Revelation 12).
Satan tempts human beings to question the character of God, arguing that God is depriving human beings of some greater "good" by denying them the right to decide what is good and evil and by forbidding them to be the independent judges of right and wrong (Genesis 3:1-5)
Human beings become co-dependent with Satan in their misuse of free will and fall into sin (Genesis 3:6)
The combined effects of Satan's fall and human sin were numerous:
A sense of unnatural shame about the human body (Genesis 3:7)
Estrangement and a desire to "hide" out of an unnatural "fear of God" (Genesis 3:8, 10)
Loss of relationship with God, such that God comes calling "where are you?" (Genesis 3:8)
The creation became damaged in various ways (Genesis 3:14ff)
Plainly, the abuse of free will on the part of angels and human beings is credited with the arrival of various evils within the world which persist to this day. But, the price of free will must have been worth the risk of what happened.
Satan continues to oppose the purposes of God in the biblical story, particularly as illustrated in the story of Job (Job 1-2):
Unknown to Job, God and Satan engage in a heavenly war over Job's well-being.
God sets boundaries on the extent of Satan's activity, but allows Satan to exercise his free will in bringing disaster to Job.
Job and his friends, over the course of most of the book, debate the reasons for his suffering.
Those reasons include the idea that Job has secretly sinned and this suffering must be a punishment for sin. This position of Job's friends is known to be wrong by the reader who already has the background of Job 1-2. But it shows graphically what happens when human beings try to make judgments about what they know as "good and evil" without the larger perspective of "what's really going on in the world".
The book reaches a climax when Job encounters God "out of the whirlwind" and has God put the question to him: "Where were you when the world was created?" Through a series of examples, God shows Job that his failure to understand the complexity of the universe leads him to make false conclusions about why he is suffering. It's not because God is malevolent ("bad willed"), but because the world is simply much more complicated a place than meets the eye. And so evil is not due to anything God has directly done to Job, but the consequence of the ongoing battle between God and Satan, among other things.
Job and his friends seem to give credence to what Gregory Boyd (in his book Is God to Blame?) calls the "blueprint" model for way God works in the world". Boyd describes this model and then rejects it as unbiblical:
The blueprint model assumes that God operates like a desert chieftain, ruling with absolute power over his subjects. This would have been Job's view and that of his friends. He is responsible for everything that happens, both the good and the evil. Everything is "controlled by God".
In fact, the Bible gives a different picture, that God's attributes of power, knowledge and goodness flow from his overwhelming love for his creation. He does not "have is way" through coercion, but through grace and love.
God's knowledge of the world does not assume he planned every detail, but built into the world tremendous possibilities ("potentialities") including the gift of free will to intelligent creatures.
When God looks at the future, he does not necessarily see all things "actually", but some things "potentially"; not only what "will be", but what "might be".
In the process, God includes the operation (and cooperation) of these free will intelligences when he works out his project of the universe.
When evil occurs, God indeed could foresee its possibility--nothing catches God off guard--but not its necessity.
God's entrance into the world in the person of the human being Jesus allowed him to show human beings what he was truly like. Jesus was the perfect expression of the character of God (see such texts as John 1:1-18; 14:7-9; Hebrews 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-20).
When Jesus teaches, heals people, raises the dead and casts out demons, he is obviously interacting with the world in ways which show he wants to change what he sees. Evil is not just something to be debated, it is something to be gotten rid of.
Jesus' interaction with demons (fallen angels) shows that he takes seriously the participation of other free will intelligences in the world besides human beings.
On one occasion, when Jesus encounters a "man born blind" (John 9), his disciples query, "who sinned", in an attempt to explain the man's condition. Jesus responds that neither the man nor his parents sinned. John's use of the Greek language is terse and direct. Jesus simply says, "Let the glory of God be seen!" (9:3), and then proceeds to heal the man. The world of the disciples, like the world of Job and his friends, could only explain the man's condition based on his sin. And somehow God was judging it. And that's why he was blind. Jesus takes the approach that he is blind and needs to be healed, so let's get on with the work of doing just that (see 9:4).
It is a fundamental error on the part of Christians to imagine what God is like apart from what they see in Jesus. It follows, then, that the problem of evil can only be appreciated when seen in light of Jesus, the true expression of the character of God.
If asked, "why doesn't God take responsibility for the evil in the world?", we may safely respond, "He has and he does". Not because he directly caused it, but because he cares about the lives of his creations.
Jesus spent his earthly life doing battle with the underlying causes of evil. But he did not exert a coercive power to work his will. Rather, he allowed himself to be subjected to the humiliating death of the cross to demonstrate that God would sacrifice himself so that free will agents might be saved from their sin and restored to wholeness.
The resurrection of Jesus was God's way of showing what life free from sin and restored to its proper condition looks like.
In Jesus, God demonstrates that he is committed to removing sin from the world, redemptively, while at the same time preserving the sacredness of free choice.
Even in the closing pages of the Bible, where the risen Jesus appears on the proverbial "white horse" (Revelation 19) to mount the final assault on evil, he is dressed in a white robe "dipped in blood". When the followers of Jesus encounter Satan himself, they overcome him by the "blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony" (Revelation 12:10-12) and only in this way is "Satan cast down".
Ultimately, when the world suffers, God suffers with it, according to the story we read in the Bible. Read through the lens of Jesus' life and work, the Bible comes into focus on the question of evil. It is possible to read the Bible in isolation from Jesus' life and work--to grab this or that passage without thought for how it connects to the larger story. Satan did that when he quoted scripture to Jesus during the temptation. What's important for us is to know that "God is for us" and that "nothing can separate us from the love of God found in Jesus Christ" (Romans 8).



Robert I. Brown, 2005