The Problem of Evil (so-called):

 

Eniyekpemi Fidelis Oyinpreyebi 

The Problem of Evil (so-called):

This is a question that Christians have to grapple with because evil & suffering effect so many people (universal).  But the same evil exists in an atheistic worldview also – and they too have to account for it.

What is evil?  Evil is a privation (a lack of something) or deviation from that which is good.  Picture a straight line that we pull away from with God being that straight line.  Anytime we stray from the straight plumb line, evil results (crookedness).

For the Christian, the explanation of evil considers four things inherent to its own worldview namely:  God, love, eternity and the cross.

We start with God.  For the theist, God provides the standard of morality that we live by.  He is the loving, perfect, unchanging, and objective law giver and our moral standard is derived from His nature.

The question of evil itself doesn’t dislodge or disprove God.  And you don’t ask the question because you don’t know what evil is, you ask because you do know what evil is, which means there is an embedded moral law within you, and that wouldn’t exist apart from a moral law giver.  So the question is contemplated in light of God’s existence not outside it, i.e. it fits within the Christian theistic paradigm, worldview, or story.

In fact, the question of evil wouldn’t make sense in a world without God – He’s the straight line, the standard  – so He is fundamental to the question.

Next, God gives us the highest ethic in life - love - love is supreme and the fulfillment of the law– there’s nothing greater and it reflects God’s nature.  We all need to love God and need to be loved by God, and since God is love, we should exercise love toward our neighbor.

But for love to be real love, it necessitates volition which involves choice - the ability to love, and the ability to not love, so love is a choice.  Forcing someone to do something against their will is not a real choice - that would be considered conformity and compliance and that’s not real love.  So, a world without choice, is a world without love.

So the greatest ethic God gives us is love, but with that comes the real possibility of the choice not to love.  WE can give love, or we can withhold love.  When we choose not to love, and deviate from what we ought to do, the result is evil.  

We experience evil due to the volitional choice of man to deviate from good – the straight line.

Now it’s really important that we keep in mind that the question of evil is always raised by a person about a person.  When a weed chokes out a plant we don’t scream “that was evil”!  

If a piece of metal falls from the sky and hits a bug, bird, bonsai tree, or bedrock we don’t cry evil.  However, if it hit a human, we would say evil occurred.  i.e. it’s the intrinsic value of people that were concerned with – so the question of evil points to something greater, more important than itself - the person!

But how can a person be of intrinsic worth and value if the cause of that person is time + chance acting on matter – same as the bug, bird, bonsai tree, or bedrock, absent of an immaterial conscience or soul?  

If an animal kills and eats a human we call it evil, but if a human kills and eats an animal we call it an entree.  Why?  If we’re all just matter then we're no different than any other matter?  Wouldn’t animals, bugs & humans all be equally valuable because we're all just the result of a random accident with no purpose?

And although we value people, the value of a human being cannot determined by another human being.  That might sound appealing, but it’s had disastrous consequences in the past. (Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot)

The only way a person can be of intrinsic worth and value is if they are the creation of someone else that gives them intrinsic worth and value – God Himself.  It is the value He assigns to them that determines their worth.

When you understand that you are the creation of God, made is His image, and not by chance, then you can begin to understand your significance, and the question of evil makes sense.

When you understand that your value is based on what that God, that someone, is willing to do for you as per the Christian story of reality, then you'll begin to comprehend your real value.

Now, if someone takes a life, something tragic & evil has happened because they can’t restore that life.  But if God allows that to happen, he can restore that life, and now the component of eternity comes into view.  

Eternity offers the prospect of an explanation – it offers hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.  In eternity, God can restore that life, make right every wrong; He can deal with evildoer, and justice can be carried out.  And in light of the perpetual nature of eternity, our sufferings can be reduced to insignificance.

Without eternity, evil is not really evil because there is no ultimate consequence for it, and good is not really good because evil would have prevailed over it.  So far, we can see how evil fits into a theistic worldview based on the existence of God, love, & eternity.

Now against the backdrop of those 3 components (God, love, & eternity) the element of the cross comes into view:  If evil took place and God sat idly by, you might say he wasn’t loving.  But the greatest expression of love is God becoming a man, condescending and entering into the world he created, to suffer with and alongside, for the very people who would reject him. (Him coming to earth is like a parent who bends down to a child’s level to explain something).

He loves humanity enough to take on himself the consequence for their bad choices.  

HE ultimately deals with the evil that WE created at the Cross.

And His resurrection from the dead proves that there is an afterlife and hope!  Did it ever dawn on you that the identifying symbol of Christianity is an instrument of human suffering –a cross?  Suffering doesn’t just fall on us, it falls on the creator God also.  He doesn’t just view suffering from a distance and watch it happen, he actually enters into it and suffers with us.  And notice that He doesn’t retreat from evil – he faces it head on and deals with it, giving us hope. He’s the only God who’s done that btw.  This also demonstrates to us that not all suffering is evil!

Os Guinness says "Christianity is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil."

The pain on the cross was so horrific that they invented a word for it – excruciating.  Ex – out of, cruc – the cross – out of the cross.  In the flogging before the cross, your skin would be hanging from your body like ribbons.  Jesus could have chose lethal injection, beheading, or some other form of death, but instead he chose a cross.

When you look at the cross you cannot say God didn’t care – you cannot say he was indifferent or unloving.  More importantly, He demonstrates that suffering can result in something good, something very good for all eternity.  God uses the evil acts of humanity to bring Jesus to the cross where he ultimately defeats it.  That is real love, that is real power.  So, our creator loves us, suffers with us and for us, and in doing so, saves us.

The problem of evil becomes explainable in the Christian worldview.  In fact, the true strength of Christianity is its explanatory power on the subject of evil.

So how does evil fare from an atheistic frame of reference?

Let’s suppose God doesn’t exist:

If that’s true 

   1) the evil hasn’t gone away - it still exists

   2) you haven’t lessened the pain in any way

   3) and in one way you may have made it worse because now you’ve eliminated any hope 

   4) you eliminate the possibility of any future explanation

   5) you eliminate the possibility of future justice for the wrong do'er !

So when you consider evil & suffering in light of God, love, & eternity, against the backdrop of the cross, Christian theism provides a plausible and powerful explanation for evil and the eventual punishment of it.

The existence of Evil and its ultimate elimination highlights the strength of Theistic Christian Worldview, not its weakness.  The God who gives us life also gives us liberty - its just the way we use it that causes the problem.