A very common argument of skeptics is “The Problem of Evil”. It says that if a good and powerful God
allows evil, He must therefore not be entirely good or not be powerful;
otherwise He would get rid of it.
How would you answer this question?
This question might not seem urgent to Christians, maybe
because we know the extent to which God has gone to overcome evil, or perhaps
more likely because we don’t reach out with the Gospel enough to know how common
this argument is among skeptics. But if
we as Christians want to have relevance among non-believers, we need to be able
to have a ready answer for those who say it can’t even be possible that a good
and all-powerful God exists, given the tremendous amount of evil and suffering
in the world.
For example, in a recent sidewalk conversation a young man
named Alex told me that this question is his primary reason for rejecting faith
in God. Alex said he trusts science as his
source of truth – yet when there are questions science has not yet answered he
has faith that they will get answered one day.
I wondered about the apparent contradiction between his refusal to
believe in a God he can’t understand, but his willingness to trust in science
even when it falls short.
But there was another, more important question to ask of
Alex. If his rejection of God is based
on the overwhelming evil and suffering in the world, how much evil WOULD he be
willing to find acceptable? If evil and
suffering was limited, say, to only half it’s present amount, would that be acceptable? How do we know God isn’t already actively
limiting and restraining evil so that what we are seeing is really only a
fraction of the evil and suffering that would exist without God’s influence? An overwhelmingly horrible event like the Jewish holocaust reminds us of
the unspeakable evil we as humans are capable of if we are left unrestrained.
But those who judge the world to be too evil for God to exist
might need to ask if they themselves are part of the problem. If God must eliminate all evil in the world,
could you or I exist? Hebrews 11 tells
us that “…without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who
comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
earnestly seek him.” The problem of evil
would tell us that God can’t exist because He obviously doesn’t reward the
innocent and, conversely, punish the wicked.
So are we the innocent ones seeking after God, or are we the wicked ones
going our own way who would be destroyed if God were to suddenly eliminate all
evil?
I suggested to Alex that there might be another option he
hadn’t thought of and may not understand.
The binary options of God’s existence vs. the existence of evil might
need to include a third option, that of God being able to use evil for His own
good purposes. Just as pure light uses
something to cause shadows to be fully appreciated, perfect goodness can use “shadows”
of a sort to create an even greater good.
There are many clues and references to this throughout the
Bible. One would be in John 6, which
reads “As he went along, he (Jesus) saw a man blind from birth. His disciples
asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents
sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be
displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent
me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the
light of the world.”
Could the light of Jesus during His earthly ministry have
been fully displayed were it not for the blind man and hundreds of others sick
and lame whom He healed? Like a candle in a darkened room, the light of Jesus
shines brightest in the context of this dark world.
There is a lot we don’t know. Faith often tells us we must believe without
demanding to know the details. In Romans
8:18, Paul gives us a somewhat vague statement that tells us as much: “I consider that our present sufferings are
not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
I don’t believe we will ever have all the answers that
skeptics demand. We are given some clues
such as these, and that might just need to be enough for our faith to be
pleasing to God.
Thanks, Alex, for allowing me to record our
conversation. It can be seen HERE at https://youtu.be/eplv2y5i1f0
No comments:
Post a Comment