The Problem of Evil

Copyright 1998:
William A. Simpson

Atheists use the existence of evil in the world to "prove" the non-existence of God.  The argument goes like this:  "If evil exists, God doesn't exist.  Evil does exist.  Therefore, God doesn't exist."   The theist answers:  "If God doesn't exist, evil doesn't exist.   Evil does exist.  Therefore, God exists."  In the first place, God can exist in the same realm as evil.  The argument is a non-starter.  There is nothing inherently contradictory about God allowing evil in the world.  The argument is extended to say that a "good" God could not allow evil.  It is said that a "just" God cannot allow evil to exist.  These arguments all fall far short of the truth.

In the first place, the notion that a thing is evil is a subjective argument.  What one person deems to be evil, another might consider to be wonderful.  For example, let us assume that a high iron worker falls and breaks his back.  Let's say that he has a family of six, many debts, and no disability income insurance, and that he will be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.  We would consider that a tragic situation.   He will never climb the high steel again, nor provide a luxurious lifestyle for his family.  The hearts of the world would go out to him, and all the more if he were a nice man.  There might even be a fundraiser or two in his home town.  His friends would commiserate with him and his family would wring their hands with worry.  

But suppose that this cripple, after a period of emotional adjustment, discovered a latent talent for painting that he had never known he had.  Suppose that he began painting with an ardor unsurpassed in the last five hundred years, and that he produced a large volume of wonderfully beautiful works that made him a rich man, famous and sought after by every top museum, gallery and collector.

At the end of his life, as he looked back over the years of his life, would he consider that accident a good thing or a bad thing?  Clearly, at first, he would have thought it a terrible evil that had befallen him.  Did his thinking it was evil make it evil indeed?  Did his reconsideration of the event at the end of his life make that which was evil become good?   Often, anything out of the norm is considered evil, when it is merely different.   Was God evil if He allowed the accident to occur?  Or was He kind and beneficent to the man, providing an opportunity that the man would never have availed himself of had he remained "healthy?"

Let's look at this from another angle.  Let us suppose that a fellow worker shoved him off the iron beam because he thought, incorrectly, that the nice fellow had harmed him in some way.  After all, an accident may not be considered evil, if we assume that an evil intent must exist in order for a thing to be evil, rather than merely random events.  If the man just lost his balance and fell, we might blame God, but if someone pushed him, then there was definitely evil involved, if not in the fall itself, then in the heart of the one who pushed him.  Would God become evil for allowing the evil that was in the heart of the one who pushed him?  Does the end justify the means?  The fellow, after all, went on to become famous even though he was pushed.

What we think of as evil is often serendipitous at worst.  Sometimes it is the greatest blessing that we will ever receive.  It cannot be said that God cannot exist if evil exists.   However, God does claim in the Bible that all things work together for the good of the one who loves Him.  Being eternal, God is not as caught up with time as we are, and doesn't arrange His providence according to our schedules.  The man may have been twenty-one when he was injured, and fifty-one when he discovered his artistic skills.  Or, let us assume that he was  never recognized in his own life, but that his name became revered as one of the world's greatest painters only years after his death, so that among every following generation of his descendants he was proudly remembered, and in the world his name rivaled Rembrandt's or Picasso.  Would that have made the fall an evil thing or a good thing?

Our judgment of good and evil is a subjective thing, based upon conditions existing at the time the judgment is rendered, not considering what may result from the thing.  Was the thirty years of suffering, ignorant of his talent, too high a price to pay for a name that survived the ages, and for the high reverence and esteem in which his name would be held throughout the generations of his descendants?

But what of the evil in the heart of the perpetrator of this evil deed?  How can a just God allow that evil to exist?  Justice has no meaning without both good and evil.  If there were only good, we could not know what good is, and justice would become an irrelevancy.  Without evil, there is no comparison, since any subtraction from good represents evil.  Therefore, in a perfect world, we could not know either good or evil.

Is God just, then, to allow evil?  No.  But God is just if He judges every evil deed.  God can certainly allow evil to exist if He also consistently judges every evil thing.  Many assume that, because He has not yet judged every evil deed, that God is not just, and, therefore, cannot exist as God.  This is based upon the assumption that, because He has not yet judged evil, evil will not ever be judged.  Every deed that is seen by God must be judged at the time it is seen, but judgments may be delayed.  As long as the execution of judgment is certain, it does not matter the timig or the sequence of events that brings it to pass.

However, if God were God, He would not be subject to our weak reasoning.  Neither would He be bound by our considerations of time.  For, in order to be God, He would have to be eternal, else He would have been created by some still higher Being, in which case He could not be God, but the other Being would be God.  As long as God eventually judges the perpetrator of the evil deed, He remains a good and just God, both using the evil in the other man's heart to bless the one who became the artist, but also judging the one who performed the evil deed.  And how wise is God, who not only is just, in judging evil, but who is also the Justifier of the one who has faith in Christ?  Who also works all things for the good of His children.  What a great God we serve so poorly.

Thus, God can not only exist while there is evil, but He can be just while executing judgment upon sin, and still not executing that judgment upon the one who actually committed the evil deed, but upon Himself in the sinner's place.   How much more good shall our God be, who executes judgment on our evil deeds, not upon us, but upon Himself?  We see, then, that God is both just and good, existing at the same time as evil, judging the evil, but offering redemption to the evil-doer.

Not only can God exist while there is evil, He must allow at least the possibility of evil to exist.    Since any God who is actually God would necessarily be worthy of the worship of His creation, it is necessary that He allow for the possibility of that worship not being accorded Him.  Otherwise, everyone would be forced to worship Him by a nature that had no choice in the matter, and that would not be worship at all, but the operation of a machine, or a puppet.   Involuntary worship is not worship at all.  When God created the angels, He had to allow for  their rebellion, else there would have been no glory in the creation.  And when God created Adam and Eve, it was also necessary for them to have a choice as to whether or not they would worship Him.  While it was not necessary that either the angels who fell or the humans who sinned afterwards should make the possibility of evil become a reality, it was necessary for that possibility to exist if there was to be any meaning in the creation at all.  For, without the possibility of evil, there would be no yardstick of the good, and all would lose its meaning. 

C.S. Lewis states the case for God co-existing with evil for a time this way:

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 doesn't 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?   If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?   A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man isn't a water animal: a fish wouldn't feel wet.  Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own.  But if I did that then my argument against God collapsed too -- for the argument depended upon saying that the world was really unjust, not that it just didn't happen to please my private fancies.  Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God didn't 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.  Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.  If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes we should never know it was dark.  Dark would be a word without meaning.

(The Case for Christianity [New York: Macmillan, 1943], pp 34-35)
(Amazon.com)

Bob and Gretchen Passantino state their objection to the skeptics position thus:

...we need to consider the consequences of accepting the skeptic's alternatives:  Suffering proves that God does not exist, or He is not all-powerful, or He is not all good.  If God does not exist, then all of existence, including our suffering, has no enduring value, purpose or goal.  If God is not all-powerful, then we have no hope that suffering will ever be eliminated.  If God is not all-good, then to pain and despair we must add the threat of immanent divine sadism.  Each of these alternatives is at least as problematic as the Christian alternative, so the skeptic has merely exchanged one answer he doesn't like for others equally unpleasant.  The skeptic has not solved the problem of suffering merely by refusing to solve it.  We should judge answers by truth, not emotion.
(http://www.answers.org/Apologetics/suffering.html)

In any discussion of the problem of evil one must consider the origin of evil, for this will impart some understanding of the possibilities of both evil and God.  God created His universe, and peopled it first of all with angels.  The problem arises when one considers how a perfectly good and untempted (from without) angel who stood in the very presence of God could be persuaded to sin in the first place. 

God, when He created the angelic realm, did not create any sin in them.  He saw that His entire creation was good.   However, as earlier shown, in order for the angels' worship to truly be worship, they had to possess the ability not to worship God if they so chose.  The angelic creation was made to be God-centered.  When their thoughts turned self-centered, they rebelled against God, making themselves His enemies.  God was not surprised by this event.  Being an eternal Being, God knew every detail of the entire span of time before He created it.  He knew from the deepest and darkest reaches of eternity that the angels would sin.  Why did He then proceed with the creation?  Was God not responsible for the sin that entered the universe by the creation of beings whom He knew would sin?  No.  For if one has a choice, a prerogative that is his alone, another cannot be held responsible for the exercise of that prerogative, though it results in something evil.  There is a difference between causing evil and allowing it.  Lewis Sperry Chafer, in an extended quote, remarks:

The creature -- whether angel or human -- is created to be God-centered.  To become self-centered is a contradiction of the basic law of creature existence.  The falsification of God's moral order, is, when self-centered, complete.  It is also found to be a violation of the original design relative to interrelationships between finite beings themselves.  Sin is not only against God, but is against all other fellow beings.

The lapse of an unfallen angel at once gives rise to two important theological questions, namely, (a) How could a holy God permit any creature to sin? and (b) How could an uninfluenced, unfallen angel sin?  In considering the issue presented in the former of these questions, it may be said -- though the subject is foreign to the present discussion -- that God's original creation is declared to be good in His own holy eyes; that He, being omniscient and knowing that certain moral beings would lapse and fall, nevertheless brought them into being when possessed with that certain knowledge; yet everywhere, in the case of angels as in the case of men, He predicates moral failure of those who fail and never of Himself.  As for the second question, this much may be added to what has gone before:  Moral evil is an ultimate fact in the universe which can neither be explained nor explained away.   When traced to its inception as committed by the first unfallen angel, the truth is developed which estimates sin to be a mystery, irrational, and exceedingly sinful.   Sin is not in God as it is not in any part of His original creation.  The decree of God anticipated all that would ever be; yet sin originates, not in the divine decree, but in the free act of the sinner.  Sin is not in the constitution of creatures as they came from the creative hand of God, else all would be sin.  Sin is not an inherent weakness of the creature, else all would have failed.  Sin is not a concomitant with free moral agency, else all free moral agents must fall.  Dr. Gerhart, writing of the first sin, says: 'Ego asserts itself against its own fundamental law, a fact for which no reason is to be assigned other than this, that the possibility of false choosing is a prerogative of finite autonomous being.'  But Dr. Gerhart would admit that the mere power of choice constitutes no reason for choosing.   The problem is unanswered.  Augustine has discoursed on this feature of sin with genuine profit: 'If we ask the cause of the misery of the bad angels it occurs to us, and not unreasonably, that they are miserable because they have forsaken Him who supremely is, and have turned to themselves who have no such essence.  And this vice, what else is it called than pride?  ...  If the further question be asked, What was the efficient cause of their evil will?  there is none.  For what is it which makes the will bad, when it is the will itself which makes the action bad?  And consequently, the bad will is the cause of the bad action, but nothing is the efficient cause of the bad will.  ...  When the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil, not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked.  Therefore, it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly desiring an inferior thing.' 

Sin is self-centered living and action on the part of a creature who is by creation designed to be wholly centered in God.   One course is present anguish and leads to perdition; the other is present tranquility and leads to eternal glory.  Some measure of these truths must have been understood by the angels, hence the more is the inception of sin a mystery.  Evil in the world is not an accident or a thing unforeseen by God, else He could not predict, as He does, its course and end.  The conflict of the ages is compressed into the few words of Genesis 3:15.  Evil must run its course and make its full demonstration that it may be judged, not as a theory, but as a concrete actuality.  "The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (Gen 15:16)  The wheat and tares must grow together to the the end of the age (Mt 13:30).  And he hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained (Acts 17:31).  And the man of sin will be revealed in God's appointed  time (2 Th 2:6-8).  Thus it is disclosed that evil must continue along with the good until each shall reach its determined end.  That the evil will be judged and dismissed forever is the assuring testimony of the Scriptures.

(Systematic Theology, Dallas, TX, Dallas Seminary Press, 1947-48, vol. II, pp 31-32)

The atheistic argument against the existence of God that is based upon the existence of evil is a sham, perpetrated by those who are predisposed by their sin to reject the God whom their heart recognizes as God by the things that He has made.  The argument can never be made to stand except among those who have exercised their free will in rebellion against God.  From the standpoint of pure logic, it falls.  From the standpoint of theology, it is hardly worth addressing.  Nevertheless, many theologians over the centuries have addressed this issue, and convincingly.  Indeed, every objection to the existence of God has been answered fully and completely, so that no one must doubt what his senses tell him, namely, that there is a God.  Every blade of grass shouts the existence of God to an unbelieving race.  The universe, taken together, even with its temporary evil, fairly screams God's name to rebellious men.  The Bible does not address the question of the existence of God.  Rather, it begins, "In the beginning, God..."