The Problem of Evil

Ever since I learned about the problem of evil as a theology student it has plagued me. They call it the “heart of atheism.” Specifically, the death camps of WW2 have been used to “prove” or illustrate that there can be no God. Quickly, let me go over the problem of evil for those who aren’t familiar with it (technically). I write technically because you are familiar with it whether you know the technical term or not.

P stands for “proposition.” C stands for “conclusion.”

P1- God is perfectly good.
P2- God is all-powerful.
P3- Evil exists both morally (e.g. rape) and naturally (e.g. hurricanes)
C1- God is either not powerful enough to prevent evil or isn’t good enough.
C2- God must, therefore, not exist, at least as defined (all-powerful and perfectly good).

The typical defense to this is a simple “free will” argument. That is, evil exists because God allows free choice. There is a huge problem with this. Let me use a story to explain. A couple tries to have a child for years. After three years of trying and both parents being in their mid thirties, the couple finally conceive. It’s a girl. They couldn’t be happier. They go through all the milestones of raising the child as she ages to three years old. At three, they start to notice some problems with her and take her to the doctor. There they find out a nightmare. They find out the child has a rare form of cancer and that she only has a few months left. The couple happens to be Evangelical Christians, and they turn to prayer. Nevertheless, the child dies despite genuine belief in the power of both prayer and healing. This is an example of a perfectly good God and perfectly powerful God not stepping in despite the ability to do so. To the atheist, it is proof that your prayers are just whispered words. Now consider the free will defense above. How does free will come into play in this situation? There was no free will bad choice by the child. This evil didn’t happen because the little girl was just getting what she deserved by her sin. The free will argument, while possibly strong for most situations, is fundamentally weak because it isn’t comprehensive. It doesn’t work in every situation which is like having its legs cut down and expecting it to stand.

One answer I thought of recently was “The Great Commission.” That is, if you want good to happen to you and those around you, then do something about your world. If you want to feel safe, then do something in the community to help people. Do something to stop the crime before it’s even a desire. I don’t know this for a fact but I assume that most home burglaries are due to the need for drug money. How about we don’t support films that make drugs out to be fun or funny? How many “teen movies” have drugs that make them out to be just recreational fun? Where is the reality in that? In real life, what do we do to make things better? The Gospel makes things better. It isn’t first and foremost about heaven and the afterlife. It’s about this life. It is supposed to effect the way we live here. The person who lives by the Gospel doesn’t steal from another. S/he doesn’t rape. That isn’t to say a person who is in the environment of a church won’t do those things, but it is to say they’re less likely. People can hear and not act, but those who continually don’t hear have no reason to not act in those manners. This is a difficult thing to implement outside of the church. The basic argument of this method is: “How can we expect God to prevent evil around us if we ourselves don’t try?” At the very least, we need to be partners in this endeavor.

Now, let’s consider the scenario I gave above, about the little girl with cancer, under the prism of the “The Great Commission Theodicy” (theodicy, here, means an active way to explain the problem of evil.) The only thing that could have been done is research into cancer. There are too many problems and diseases in this world for us to address everything as individuals. We can’t foresee what will happen to us and what we should invest our time and effort in. So, this “Great Commission” model fails just like the free will defense because it, too, cannot address every problem of evil.

So here we are without an answer. This past Wednesday night, I went to church. This subject came up, but not with it’s technical term. Someone gave the answer that makes my blood boil. It was “well God allows us to go through things so that we can minister to others.” That makes me so angry because, on the surface, it’s so stupid. It is essentially saying that we go through terrible things so that we can help someone else who goes through terrible things. I thought to myself, “HELLO! How about neither one of us go through this, Einstein.” That is exactly the argument of the atheist. But that is when it hit me. Community. Community. That is something the atheist would always miss. The foundation of practical Christianity may be the salvific work of Christ, but the foundation of high Christian theology is the Trinity. The Trinity is God himself in community. The Trinity is God the Father sending God the Son to the cross. It isn’t above pain and suffering, but there the three dwelled to the point the Father had to look away. Pain, despair, destruction, these are not above the divine. They, therefore, are not above us. People were right all along when they used the argument that “God allows us to go through things so that we can minister to others.” On its surface, it appears to be ludicrous but that is only because it was seen without the eyes of the triune God. Essentially, God is saying to us, “That is how important community is to me. That is how important inter-relationships are.” The “free will” defense is too far removed. It makes things out to be random. The little girl just happened to get cancer because of pure possibility and will live or die by pure possibility. The Great Commission model, on its own, says “well you should have been giving your money to research before this happened.” The Community model says, it’s time to turn to God, church, and family. Do you see what it does? It automatically connects us. Sure God could have prevented your disaster and a stranger’s disaster, but the same is true of Jesus. The Father could have said, “Not my son.” But he cared enough to take us into his fold. We can try to use this same method of connectivity. Remember, that is how important community is to God. And all of a sudden, the “Great Commission model” finds a home. It comes in after the connection (common crisis) to minister. So its Achilles heal that it couldn’t guess what would happen in the future is now irrelevant. It doesn’t predict; it reacts.

I don’t pretend that this solves everything. I do say, though, that it makes sense of some things that have been used for a long time. It provides a way for suffering and purpose to coexist without being ludicrous. If suffering and purpose can't coexist, then the cross is a sham. This is why the cross is always necessary in the discussion of the problem of evil.