The Problem of Evil, Part 1
/“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”
Let me restate this in more contemporary language. Wouldn’t an all-good God require Himself to eliminate evil as far as possible? And couldn’t an all-powerful God make it happen? Then why is our world so full of evil?
No one is immune from feeling the need to ask these kinds of questions sometimes. I’ve suffered. I bet you have too. To be fair, I’ve brought on a fair amount of my own suffering by acting stupidly, but I can’t say that about every painful experience I’ve ever had.
And I think for most of us, suffering is what this question is really about. We don’t question God’s goodness or sovereignty when life is a pleasant stroll through the woods. We question God’s goodness or sovereignty when our hearts break and our dreams die, or when we fall victim to someone else’s depravity. When someone you love decides to not love you anymore. When the doctor walks in with a cancer diagnosis.
In this reflection, I want to spend a little time addressing why I think the classic Christian response to the “why evil?” question—that is, the problem of evil is rooted in God’s preservation of our free will—is probably the right one. I'll expand on this idea in a subsequent reflection.
A quick note to suffering people from a fellow sufferer: I think it’s true that when you’re suffering badly, philosophical reflection on the problem of evil may seem hollow, or maybe even offensive. It’s always been sort of the opposite for me. If you are suffering badly, then maybe these thoughts will resonate with you and bless you, but maybe they won’t. I hope they do. If you’re in the valley right now, know that whatever your circumstances, someone has almost certainly tread there before. Maybe even I have! At any rate, you don’t have to walk through it alone. And as the old saying goes, “this too shall pass.”
Now, back to my argument: I’ve noted that the preservation of our free will is the classic reason Christians give for why God allows evil to persist. I will assume here that every kind of evil exists as a result of the curse described in Genesis 3, which fell upon humanity for their rebellion, and upon the earthly domain God had given them to rule over. Accordingly, this includes both human-caused evils (moral evils like murder and adultery; also evils caused by human-imperfection, such as a poorly-designed building collapsing in on the innocent people inside), and non-human-caused evils (also called “natural” evils, such as disease, or any destruction of human life or happiness caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters).
So, what is it about free will that makes it worth all the pain and suffering? The merit of the free will explanation hangs on the answer to this question. Allow me to draw upon C.S. Lewis’s keen insights here:
Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having…. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2001], p. 48)
I think Lewis really nailed it here. I’m not a married guy (not yet, anyway), but if or when that changes, I want my wife to want to be with me, to choose me just as much as I choose her. And I’m willing to bet most people feel the same way about their relationships and marriages. I think we can all agree that the words “I love you” just don’t mean anything if spoken by force or compulsion.
Here’s another example. I love to make up stories, and would love to write a novel someday. I make up stories because it’s fun and I want to. But it probably wouldn’t be as fun if I had no choice, if somebody forced me to do it. Something inside would me would cry out in rebellion against whoever was forcing me to write.
As Lewis intimates—and this is important for our use of free will as an answer to the “why evil?” question—the truest and fullest benefits of our being free creatures are yet future. In the present life, we experience enough suffering to make us wonder whether or not it’s all worth it. But in the new creation, we’ll experience an “ecstasy” in our activities, and more importantly, in our relationships with God and others. This perpetual state of ecstasy will explode our present categories. This is something to look forward to.
David Hume mocks this delayed gratification idea in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and I’m sure many others have too. To be fair, if you reject the idea of an afterlife, this will be of little use or comfort to you. But allow me to push back. If you do believe in an afterlife, and particularly if you believe you will spend eternity with Christ in a restored creation, then this is huge. The Bible talks a lot about the hope of the Christ-follower, and I believe a lot of that hope finds its basis in the promise of a restored creation:
“Look! God’s dwelling is with humanity, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer, because the previous things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3b-4, HCSB).
The wonder and happiness that free will ultimately makes possible, particularly when it finds its fullest and most blissful realization in the restored creation, gives us the “greater good” that will make all the pain and suffering of this life worth it. For this reason, I am convinced that free will works as an answer to the “why evil?” question.