How Could a Good, All-Powerful God Allow Evil and Suffering?
Q&A • The Problem of Evil is a wrecking ball to unthoughtful faith and a trust-building gymnasium to those who ask hard questions and persevere to find biblical answers. Here I reason that (1) if we unwisely rule out God’s existence, good and evil lose all meaning, (2) God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil to be, and (3) only an all-powerful God can (and has promised to!) redeem and eradicate all evil, in the end.
Read time: 9 min
Many of us have endured personally or witnessed others endure suffering. Suffering results from moral evil (e.g. crime, dishonesty, hatred, etc.) and “natural” evil (e.g. disease, fires, earthquakes, etc.). Many of us have also wondered how such realities can exist in a world created and governed by a God good enough to want to stop evil and suffering and mighty enough to do so. And yet evil and suffering persist. This is called The Problem of Evil. You might wrestle with this in light of a loved one’s cancer, for example: Either God is not good, or he is not powerful, or he does not exist at all. In any case, the existence of evil and suffering pose a challenge to the Christian conception of God.
Below is one way to frame a helpful response: (1) If the Christian God does not exist, then we may not appeal to either good or evil as a basis for objecting to claims of his existence. (2) The Christian God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil and suffering to occur. (3) The Christian God is our ultimate hope for the eradication of evil and the redemption of our pain.
First, if the Christian God does not exist, then we may not appeal to either good or evil as a basis for objecting to claims of his existence.
This is somewhat of a mouth-full. But though a philosophical answer to a suffering skeptic may not be the final answer, it may be an appropriate place to start. For if a moral Law-giver does not exist, then who determines what is “good” and “evil?” Apologist Andy Bannister argues,
“If atheism is true, calling anything ‘evil’ is problematic, as all we really have are assorted personal preferences.”[1]
The atheist assumes God’s existence in order to use evil to deny God’s existence, which is self-contradictory.
Christopher Brooks, in Urban Apologetics, notes,
“The first problem with the problem of evil is the lack of moral foundation atheists possess for being able to label anything as good or evil. Skeptics like to use these terms when confronting Christians.”[2]
Former atheist turned Christian philosopher, C. S. Lewis, related in Mere Christianity coming to grips with his own self-contradictory rejection of God.
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[3]
This self-contradictory logic—though perhaps an intuitive leap when experiencing pain—cannot be the basis for our idea of God or of the world. Lewis continued:
“Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense.”[4]
Second, the Christian God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil and suffering to occur.
We just argued that for evil in any objective and meaningful sense to exist God must exist. But why must this God be good? Perhaps an evil God exists and therefore evil exists. To avoid this possible conclusion, one must further understand that a good God can allow evil to exist if God has morally sufficient reasons for doing so. By this we can affirm without contradiction that God is good and evil exists. What could such morally sufficient reasons be? The first reason may be free moral agency. A free-will defense answers this question, ‘Why did God not create a world in which there could be no evil?’ Alvin Plantinga weighs in:
“It is at least possible that God is unable to create free moral beings who never choose evil; that is, it is possible that if beings are to be free to do good, then God cannot make them always do good so that there will be no evil in the world. If that is the case, then he is justified in making a world that contains evil (because without it there could be no freedom and thus no moral good).”[5]
It is important that the phrase “God is unable” not be construed as weakness but rather as owing to the perfection of God’s moral character. For example, Scripture informs us that God cannot lie (Heb. 6:18), change (Jam. 1:17), or deny himself (2 Tim. 2:13). And for humans and angels to make moral choices they must be able to make immoral choices (Gen. 2:17; Ecc. 7:29). Of course, a free-will defense invites the question: ‘Given all the evil and suffering in the world throughout time, how then could free will itself be justified, if it comes at such untold cost?’
This brings us to the second morally sufficient reason. God may only allow evil and suffering that result in greater good than would have been had the evil not occurred. This greater good defense reveals that
“a central fault with the problem of evil argument is that it assumes that human beings have full knowledge of all the outcomes of a particular act.”[6]
By this is meant that objecting to a good God on the basis of evil assumes that no good could be so great as to justify the evil.
“If a greater good did come from the act, though painful, then [God creating us with free will] can no longer be viewed as evil.”[7]
One category of greater good embraced in Christian theology is that suffering builds moral character (Rom. 5:3-5). There are countless more that even finite minds could imagine. But how many more reasons could not the infinite mind of God conceive?
“Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), [argued that] innocent suffering may perfect a person’s character and bring them closer to God.”[8]
Another greater good is God displaying his glory by destroying evil and forgiving sins through Jesus Christ (Rom. 9:22-23). Nonetheless,
“the greater good argument may not solve all the issues that arise from the challenge of evil, but it does expose the finiteness of humanity to properly deal with this issue.”[9]
We must be patient with those who are hurting (including ourselves!) and not berate their philosophical inconsistencies and unbelief (2 Tim. 2:24-26).
Third, the Christian God is our ultimate hope for the eradication of evil and the redemption of our pain.
Rather than rage against God’s wisdom in creating a world in which free will and evil exist, Christianity rejoices in the hope of redemption. Moments after the first humans rebelled against God, bringing curse and corruption upon God’s good creation, God promised redemption by the hand of a human deliverer (Gen. 3:15). The apostle Paul echoed this hope, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us… [C]reation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption…. And not only the creation, but we ourselves … wait eagerly for … the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:18-23; cf. Gal. 4:4). Urban Apologetics encourages us to make this
“a positive and sympathetic case for God’s identification with our suffering through the cross of Christ…. His response to its dilemma was to join us in our pain and [deliver us] from the ultimate grip of evil, if we are willing to turn to Him for salvation.”[10]
In short, we should urge skeptics to yield their hurts to the One who promises in Christ to eradicate all evil and redeem all our pain. ❖
References
Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist: The Dreadful Consequences of Bad Arguments (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2015), Kindle edition, 202.
Christopher W. Brooks, Urban Apologetics: Why the Gospel Is Good News for the City (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publication, 2014), Kindle edition, 125.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1952), 38.
Ibid., 39.
Brian K. Morley, Mapping Apologetics: Comparing Contemporary Approaches (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015), Kindle edition, 136.
Brooks, Urban Apologetics, 125.
Ibid.
Morley, Mapping Apologetics, 228-229.
Brooks, Urban Apologetics, 125-126.
Ibid., 126.
