Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[1098765432]

I'm trying to learn find my way with Christianity having no real background in it beyond church at Christmas. I have some things which have bothered me and are connected. They're pretty much child like in their nature but do bother me: How are we in a world where children can be born with disabilities leaving them with a life of dependence and struggle? How can we live in a world with abuse, rape and torture?

A relative is a devoted Christian and has cancer. He said to me that we had Eden but spoiled it for ourselves, and here we are now where illness ravages what we would judge 'good' and 'bad' people equally. Is that how the church explains children being born into degenerative illness? I could half understand adults suffering, but newborns seem particularly cruel to suffer.

Are we 'decent people' responsible for ensuring people don't commit hideous crimes and it's our own fault that we have child abuse, rape, murder etc as we haven't made a better society all round? As we have free will we don't have God swooping in to pluck children from the arms of abusers?

I'm really not trying to say "there's no God because some children I work with have, through no fault of their own, degenerative diseases which will ensure they die young and with no chance of a normal life," but I cannot explain it in my head.

[jimwalton]

There's no reason to think that the existence of God, the acceptance of suffering by Christians, and the existence of suffering in the world are contradictory concepts. Logically speaking, there's nothing in the "syllogism" that is irrational. What's really hard about it (besides the suffering itself) is trying to make sense of it all.

For one, I think that's a clue. You feel a pull to make sense of it all. That tells you you believe in purpose in the universe and in our lives, both of which point to the existence of God rather than just random natural processes. But the scene contradicts your sense of justice: Why didn't God do something? Why do things like this exist without God's interference, especially for his own people? A couple of thoughts come to mind.

One is the retribution principle: if the world was a just place, then good people should get rewarded and bad people get punished. If God was just, that's the way the world would work. But that doesn't really make sense. If that were the case, people would start being good just to get the prize, and so they really wouldn't be being good, just selfish or greedy or whatever. But then would it be more fair if the good people had it worse than others? Of course not; there's nothing fair about that. So the retribution principle really is not the way the world works or the way God works. Good and bad things happen to us all, at apparently undetectable percentages. That doesn't mean there is no God or that he is unfair.

As far as suffering, it also can't be true that REAL good always works to eliminate evil as far as it can. For instance, we say that pain is evil (and suffering is an absurdity), but wait a minute: when a doctor performs surgery, he causes pain, but he doesn’t stop being good because he did that. As a matter of fact, the pain was part of the good he did, and you can't get rid of that "evil" without getting rid of the "good" too. So a "good" God and "pain" aren't automatically contradictory.

Well, you may continue, then, maybe it's only evil when it doesn't produce a good that outweighs the evil. Well, but you’ve already admitted then that the existence of pain is not a contradiction to a person being good and allowing that suffering.

OK, then. Maybe God is perfectly good only if he tries to eliminate every evil that he can without also eliminating a greater good? Bingo. God can be all-powerful and good, and certain evil can still possibly exist. That’s what I would say, for sure. Sometimes suffering brings out the best in people, and they display nobility and courage in the face of it. Sometimes people get stronger by it, or learn important lessons. It’s very possible that good and evil together can be a good state of affairs. And that means that God can be all-powerful, and permit as much evil as he pleases without forfeiting his claim to being good, as long as for every evil he permits there is the possibility of a greater good—as long as there is a balance of good over evil in the universe as a whole. That’s exactly what the Bible teaches.

People's suffering is tragic, no doubt, but it's not an absurdity. If you think so, you have to show that if there is ANY evil, it's unjustified evil, and that evil is always unjustified. But even if it’s remotely possible that evil is justifiable for a possible greater good, than there is no contradiction with God being good and evil existing. Is this getting too tangled, or is it clear? You’ll have to let me know.

All I’m saying is that it’s possible that God is perfectly good, and that God allows evil to exist in the world although he could prevent it. The point is there may be reasons he doesn’t prevent it, but that doesn’t make Him not good.

But what about those "evil" and "absurd" things like cancer, abuse, rape and torture? To prove that it's unfair (besides the deep pain you are feeling), what you have to prove is that even those suffering never do and could never possibly have ANY redeeming value. I would say that’s difficult, if not impossible, to prove, and that what the Bible teaches is still possible, and certainly not a contradiction or an absurdity.

I'm so sorry for the ache you are feeling.

Let's also talk about a dynamic world. A dynamic world is better than a static one. Our minds can actually generate new thought patterns where there is brain injury or where creative problems cause us to rethink things. Our bodies can actually create new blood flow patterns where needed to bypass obstacles. These are only possible because the world is dynamic, not static. Free will is also a dynamic principle. Quantum mechanics shows us infinite possibilities of undetermined paths. This results in a far more sensible and wonderful world than one of static determinism and robotic interactions. But it also produces the possibility of things gone wrong (cancer) and of evil choices (rape and torture). All in all, a dynamic world is a far superior existence, and actually allows things like science, reason, logic, healing, free will, love, and a thousand other things that could not exist in a static world. But back to a previous paragraph. As long as the existence of good far outweighs evil in the universe, it is possible for God to be all-loving and all-good and still allow the existence of suffering and evil, for many more reasons than I have described here. The only other choices strip us of our humanity and make our brains into meaningless robotic mush.

Let's talk more. This is a far deeper subject than I can write in one post, but hopefully I've given you enough to chew on to respond to me.